The Normals

by David Gilbert

  $14,332,509.04.

  Celebrities, the stars, from Adrian to Zmed, like Christopher Atkins, Red Buttons, Nell Carter, Tony Danza, Chad Everett, Fabio, Lou Gossett Jr., Buddy Hackett, Julio Iglesias, Arte Johnson, Casey and Jean Kasem, Rich Little, Chuck Mangione, Jim Nabors, Tony Orlando, Markie Post, Mickey Rooney, Kevin Sorbo, Rip Taylor, Leslie Uggams, Ben Vereen, Vanna White, Tina Yothers, Pia Zadora, sing and dance and tell jokes and get seen again, dressed in award show glamour. There's Charo. There's Yanni. There's Norm Crosby who Billy thought was dead. They enter waving, greeting long-lost fame, and they point toward Ed and Jerry and briefly banter and plead for money. Just a dollar, if everybody gave a dollar, well, we'd have, a lot of dollars, says Charlene Tilton, bouncing up and down, much to Jerry's Yoweedoychoomoygaa delight. They seem to inhale the camera, the lights, like oxygen is a part of these mechanics. Their moment in the sun, however long ago, last month or thirty years, still shines in their eyes when they perform, and though they can be easily ridiculed for being a desperate lot, a laugh riot of sentimental smarm who give their time because time is all they have, for those five minutes onstage they ride the memory of who they once were and hold on tight, faces squeezed, hands fisted, shoulders tensed, like they're never letting go. Billy takes these people, not seriously, no, but not without charity. Even after the applause and the embrace from Jerry, they linger onstage until a nod of oh, yeah, right, whereupon they depart, waving long past the curtain.

  $20,455,323.23.

  Night washes against the window and sweeps, Billy imagines, toward Los Angeles, a tidal wave curling over the Rockies and leveling the land with darkness. The only light in the room is from the TV which glistens with lesser acts—the Famous People Players, Partners-N-Rhyme, the All Night Strut, the High Skating Garcias, Jumpin' Jimes Band, K-9 in Flight, Rock Steady Crew Dancers, the Osmonds Second Generation, Those Darn Accordions—who treat the past-midnight time slots as their biggest opportunity yet. Billy assumes they must be dead by now—Beep! —his parents, a full day dead. Who knows if they've been discovered, or if they're still in the bedroom, in bed, nestled together and watching TV like this is their hereafter. "They're dead," Billy says, testing the sentence outloud. They seem to gain substance in death, no longer a collection of various frustrations but an irreducible corpse. "My parents? They've passed away." No more questions, no more ambiguity. He sees them in pajamas, propped up on pillows, holding hands in a world without commercial interruption, while Miss America 1999 sings "America, the Beautiful." Her reign is nearly over and she latches onto the final sea with full coloratura, reaching into the air with her left hand and closing her fingers as though gripping a rung and the floor is no longer there and she's hanging on, losing her strength, slipping from the note before finally letting go and bowing into oblivion. Dead, Billy thinks, and now he's a twenty-eight-year-old orphan. He does not begrudge them an afterlife together.

  $38,678,932.64.

  Breakfast on the tray table, sun in the window, Billy—Beep!—daydreams himself floating over Ragnar, Ragnar preparing for the barbecue, getting ice, arranging the booze, and pounding hamburger meat in his palm, or maybe letting his son-in-law do the work so he can sit outside and have a cocktail and take in the Ragnars around him, a small silly event—Please, Labor Day!—but his wife was right and how often is that the case, and he's glad he's here and not babysitting in Albany, glad he's noticing his puttering ex-waitress wife as she sashays the tray of plates and silverware, glad he's still married to her, nearing fifty years, glad he maintained this idea of himself as a dedicated, loyal, faithful husband even if he was rarely happy and silently toyed with leaving her for at least ten other woman, no longer bitter but glad, glad he stayed with her for his own sake, for this house, for these children here, all held together by his whim, glad, as the scene washes over his inscrutable face, grandchildren trumpeting blades of grass, the ocean sounding like distant Parkway traffic, glad because God knows how many more good years he has left and his marital poor investment is finally paying off, fifty years of nothing much so he can die feeling loved, Ragnar smiling, brushing sweat from his forehead, figuring he'll give his wife a nice anniversary present, with the millions he stands to collect from the Schine settlement—Honey? his wife asks, You all right?—and Ragnar nods and strokes her hand knowing the kids love this crap, and thinks, seeing her nasty neck, forty grand should do the trick, that'll buy a decent twenty-four-karat chain from Fortunoff.

  $48,001,543.22.

  And Billy dreams himself floating over Gretchen Warwick as she walks the streets of New York and flashes her one frame of loveliness per minute, arching her eyebrow as she scopes her reflection in passing dark glasses and pictures those retinas burning with her memory, of Gretchen naked, of Gretchen on all fours, whatever they might remember, Gretchen going down Broadway, Broadway and Chambers, under the old Sun Building where the clock has been broken on 10:17 forever, and Billy imagines himself showering down gold upon her, like Zeus with Danae, by far the strangest of mythological conceptions, the money shot of all money shots, Billy opening up his pockets and letting everything fall, his entire being ground down into dust, hoping her purse will be filled with the man she never kissed and she'll feel on her arm the true weight of worth.

  $48,001,664.71.

  And Osspp and Dullick handcuffed together and led away, Dullick lifting up his arms in camera-worthy protest, Ossap getting his gravity-straining wrist cut to ribbons, Dullick's arm bandaged because of a dog bite, Ossap's scalp shaved for thirty rhesus-stricken stitches.

  $48,002,704.63.

  And Chuck Savitch slowly dying, his condition unchanged except for the designation from the church that he is not, as once thought, a victim soul but a sympathetic sufferer, which is a rung lower on the saint ladder—no true miracles would spring from his fingers, only uncanny empathy—which causes the pilgrims to thin, much to the relief of his mother who bends lower and lower over his bed like an unwatered plant, his sister in the kitchen boiling a pot for tea.

  $48,003,002.82.

  And Honeysack and Marx, and Joy and Rufus, and Sally—Billy is in a reverie of morphine-induced epilogue, seeking meaning in all the people who brought him here, fresh from dead in Albany, like his father who stands in the doorway of his room, a treacly ghost who might be in the wrong place, staring at the room number and a piece of paper in his hand, his haunting unconfirmed by the sight of his tubed-up son. His father? Billy tilts his head toward the doorway. If this is a vision then the vision has aged. A bloodshot nimbus surrounds the man. His hair seems to have been combed by inconsolable tugging, and his clothes are formal yet dispossessed, as if he was forced to flee in the middle of the night and why not take his best suit. But undeniably it is his father in the flesh, if rice-paper thin.

  "Abe?" Billy asks.

  "So this is your room?"

  "Yes."

  "They sent me to the wrong room."

  "Oh."

  "They sent me to the wrong room, to a patient who had his eyes bandaged up, arms and legs tied down, and I thought, I mean, I knew that this wasn't you but I stood there for almost five minutes because it's been a while." Abe's voice is dry and uncomfortable, full of short breaths like his lungs can only respire so many words.

  "Did he say anything?" Billy asks.

  "Who?"

  "That patient."

  "No, he was sedated. The nurse talked to me like he was my son. She said he was still a danger to himself, that's what she said until I finally said this isn't my son and they sent me here."

  "What time is it?" asks Billy.

  "I don't know, a little after eleven."

  Billy imagines Do, alone but for the visit of a mistaken father.

  Abe stays in the doorway, still uncertain of entry, uncertain of any forward action, his arms wrapped around a manila envelope like a schoolboy fearing a bully. "They called me yesterday," he tells Billy. "They called me and told me you were in the hospital and I should come as soon as possible. T
hey even flew me here on a private airplane and told me what happened."

  "Who are they?" Billy asks.

  "The people taking care of you."

  "Please come in, Abe."

  But Abe stays put. "You don't look so good."

  "You look better than expected," Billy says, still dazed. "I thought you were dead, you and Mom, I thought Saturday was the day."

  Abe's hands crinkle the manila envelope. "She died Thursday night. She stopped breathing in the middle of the night. Just stopped. There were no signs earlier in the day, no sudden turn for the worse, nothing like that. She was the same and then she was dead. And I was right there, right by her side, yes, I was, when she passed."

  Thursday night, Billy thinks, his memory brushing aside the curtain and seeing the animals in the courtyard, somewhere in that time, in that evening, asleep or awake, holding Gretchen's hand, hearing the frightening hush in the hallway, slipping back into bed after the SHAME vans peeled away, too wired for sleep, head spinning thoughts as if they would crash to the floor if stopped, somewhere in that time his mother died and Billy was none the wiser. Yeats would have the right words, Billy thinks, looking at his father, newly sundered, yes Yeats who Billy mispronounced Yeets in high school, like some by-product of Keats, he'd be able to translate the pit in Billy's stomach into proper elegy. On My Mother, Now Dead. But death renders a corpse, not a metaphor. And The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is nowhere to be found, stored away somewhere with his personal effects, leaving Billy with his pitiful pit, with his unexpected father standing in the doorway as if an earthquake has struck. "I'm glad you were with her," Billy tries saying without hearing the words and judging them.

  "It was the middle of the night but I was there. I was. I begged the nurses to do something, pound her chest, use those machines, but they said they had policies against resuscitation."

  "She was sick for a long time," Billy tells him.

  "I should've gone to a place where they resuscitated."

  "Abe, please come in."

  But Abe does not move.

  "Maybe it was for the better," Billy says. "She died in her sleep, peacefully." An itch ripens on his scalp and Billy scratches, scratches hard, the scratching creating more itching. Dandruff snows down. His fingernails are crusty with the stuff. "I'm so sorry, Abe."

  "We had plans."

  "I know."

  "I was getting things ready, very busy, all the last details. I didn't have much time to see her on Thursday. I was going to get her home Friday, so we could have a day together in the house."

  "It's better this way," Billy says.

  "It was going to be perfect. I should've been there but I wasn't. I wasn't with her when she died. I was so busy. I wasn't with her. I said good-bye and the next time I saw her she was at a funeral parlor. They took her away so quickly." Abe glances down as if gazing upon Doris on a refrigerated slab. "And when I saw her she looked fine, all right, considering. I had an outfit for her but I figured why bother, go ahead, cremate her. I didn't tear my shirt and cry over her body. I just looked down at her and felt, well, relieved. That's what I remember feeling. Relief. She's gone and I don't have to go through with the plan. Isn't that awful? That's what I thought. My first thought. Saturday wouldn't be such a headache because I never did hear back from you, and who knows how things would have worked out, if she survived and I died or the other way around, so thank God, I thought."

  "It's been a long haul for you," Billy says. "Relief, you know, that's natural. She's finally at peace." The itch on the scalp seems to spread downward, not so much an itch, but something for his hands to do, his fingers insisting themselves on his skin. "Now come in, okay, don't stand out there anymore, just come in."

  Abe finally shuffles forward. "I have something for you," he says, stopping in front of the bed. "Something I think is important." He hands over the manila envelope. A will, Billy thinks, her last will and testament done when she first learned she was sick. This is what his mother has left him. Billy feels the outside weight of what's inside. Yes, she always understood, he imagines, she just never had the words. Her eyes, when they glanced away, hinted that she knew and she was sorry but she had no choice but to choose his father over him. Yes, Billy thinks, the envelope has some heft. Maybe she's bequathed him everything, probably not much, but maybe it's more than he thought. Maybe she died so she might give Billy the gift of a father. Take care of him, the brass butterfly-clasp suggests.

  "I signed it," Abe says.

  "Signed what?"

  "They told me on the airplane that it was very important that I sign because I was your only relative and you were unable to consent to treatment because of your condition and they needed consent to carry on." Abe seems pleased with his paternal duty.

  "When was this?"

  "This morning. They were so happy to have found me."

  Billy opens the envelope. Inside is a thick and seemingly unbreakable personal damages settlement from HAM. The sum is a quarter million dollars, with the aggrieved party agreeing to a strict nondisclosure clause under penalty of a ten-million-dollar fine. Abraham Schine is scrawled throughout the document, directed by red SIGN HERE arrows sticking out of the pages like bloody shark fins.

  "They want you to sign as well," Abe tells him.

  "I bet." Fresh pain piques the duller ache in Billy's chest and he reaches for the morphine trigger but relents, giving the pain a fingerhold on his sternum. His father rocks slightly and rubs his hands for warmth. He could be the lone survivor in a cornfield, the airplane burning behind him, a man who's found himself alive by mistake. "Do you have a pen?" Billy asks. The slight vibrations in his throat are excruciating. Naked nerve endings beg for Beep!

  Abe digs inside his jacket—"Uhm, yes"—and hands Billy a ballpoint courtesy of Hargrove Anderson Medical.

  "Did you read this?" Billy asks, curious.

  "I didn't have time but they gave me the gist, very nice people." Abe, listless, leans against Billy's bed. "Hey, Jerry Lewis," he says, noticing the television and the last minutes of the last hour of the last telethon of this century. Charo is gone. Rich Little is gone. Roy Clark is gone. They're all gone. No more researchers saying how close the cure is. No more executives presenting giant checks. Just Jerry. The camera tightens on his face as he treats his microphone like a flute of overindulged champagne. Sixty years in this business. Crazy. Little Joseph Levitch from Newark, New Jersey, the trick-monkey Jew who could do impressions. Above him hangs his official caricature in an almost regal escutcheon: young Jerry bucktoothed and in mid-guffaw. Abe points toward the screen. "In his prime, with Dean Martin, that man pulled in ten grand a weekend and that was 1950s dollars."

  Billy nods. Bending his legs, he creates a painful desk with his knees. He starts tackling the signatures, peeling away the SIGN HERE'S and sticking them to his thigh. His chest feels stamped upon by small feet, feet playing a children's game, up and down and around and around.

  Jerry speaks with a Hollywood lockjaw, an earnest accent of love from the heyday of fabulous. Good times and bad times, heart attacks and pill addictions, breakdowns and breakups, being number one in the box office to being who the hell is he, but I always had this, this telethon, these kids. His lips kiss every emotion, his tongue a pink exclamation mark. All of this. He queers the air with his hands. All of you. He's almost beyond irony, too slippery for sarcasm, so phony he verges on being real. All of me. He points into the camera, his fingers splayed flamboyantly, body tired, swaying, chin angled upward, as though bobbing for last breathes. Just you and me.

  The afternoon sun has found the window. The temperature in the room elevates by just enough to raise perspiration on Billy's skin which, thanks to the air-conditioning, brings about a chill. It's an environmental fever. Abe edges up on the bed so he can sit. Billy notices he has a slight hump, and the skin between collar and hair is flaky and red. Billy sticks a SIGN HERE arrow on the back of his father's jacket, an imperative as a small wound.

 
Jerry presses his fist against his mouth as if suffering from emotional gas. The band is thanked, best musicians in the world, the wonderful crew, the cameramen, the cue card boy, the gal who does that thing with the clipboard, and finally his show friends. Let me tell you about show people. I come from show people, show parents, so I know show people and I know one thing: show people have big hearts. God has blessed show people with talent and energy because show people have such big hearts. Show people care. All these show people, all these great show people here on this show, I called them up and told them about the kids who need their help, about the money neededfor research, about how close we are to beating this bastard once and for all, and do you know what every single show person said? When and where? Because that's what show people are all about. Love. Yeah, love. I'll say it. Jerry taps his hand against his chest, then he laughs, laughs his famous gawky laugh, but he cuts himself short, as if he hears another noise, a more desperate noise, a rattle in his lungs. His once rubbery flesh searches for a different expression.

  "He's a born entertainer," Abe says, his back gaining two more SIGN HERE'S.

  Billy is. almost done with the document. His fingers cramp with autograph, sick of putting his signature down. It's starting to resemble a seismograph of something ridiculous; though hundreds of miles away, on the Jersey shore, Ragnar will feel its repercussions. Billy imagines the ice in Ragnar's gin clinking, mistaken for senior tremors and not the rift of pen on paper.

  Abe shakes his head. "Younger people don't understand how great he was," he says. "They should give him the benefit of his youth." From his suit pocket, Abe pulls out a Rubik's cube and begins turning the colors, never once checking his progress.

  "Is that Mom's?" Billy asks.

  "Last few years she no longer cared but I kept it by her bedside just in case."

  Billy thinks about asking his father for the old puzzler. Maybe he could give the cube a try and see if he still recognized the pattern and find the solution, see if his hands and brain remember what was once rote. But Abe has a hard grip and what's the point anyway.