The next night, after the Community News runs a story about a couple of Greenlawn kids busted for selling pot and speed, Dorothy corners him in the bathroom. “I’m going to use this as ammunition,” she says, brandishing the paper. “I’m going to tell your father that this kind of thing doesn’t happen in art school.”
“That’s not going to work.” He imagines that everyone would be doing drugs in art school.
“Of course. I’ll make it work.”
He dreams that night that his father is a priest giving him communion. He is waiting in the aisle at church, waiting to receive the body of Christ, when he realizes that they’re at funeral mass for Jackson. The coffin is open. Robin leaves the line to look into the dark box, but the closer he gets, the surer he is that he will not be able to see what lies inside, will not be able to see the image of death. He spits something from his mouth to the floor—an onion, pearly white, smooth. Again and again he tries to pick it up, but it slips from his fingers. He wants to hide it. His mother and father begin arguing over the onion, over who is to blame for it.
Chapter Ten
On his way out of the bathroom—drying his hands on his pajama pants, having just jerked off and cleaned up hastily—Robin hears Ruby crying in her bedroom. He rests his ear against the thin pressboard door. The sobs are muffled, buried beneath her blanket. He steps back, thinking it best to leave her alone; let her cry herself to sleep or let his parents deal with it. But then the thick, phony ruffling of a television laugh track travels up from the living room. He had passed his mother and father on his way upstairs. They were staring at the TV, not conversing, she with her glass of wine and he with his Seagrams. Now, as the insistent canned laughter fights with Ruby’s misery for his attention, he realizes how dreary their faces had been and how quickly he has grown accustomed to this. The two of them have been transformed since Jackson’s fall: his father’s once comfortable detachment has hardened into rage; his mother’s irresistible style has been honed to a brittle edge. They have become authorities, decision makers, strangers who argue with each other and stare in confusion, or anger, or some other unreadable agitation, at him and Ruby.
It used to be important, and easy, to play big brother to Ruby. She’s always acted young for her age; it’s been common for strangers to assume that Jackson was older, that Ruby was the baby of the family. Robin has defended her more than once against taunting from girls who were more mature, more popular. He’s helped her with homework, taken her to the movies, brought records home from New Sounds and invited her to listen with him. Just this summer, he’d walked her into town, where they pigged out on candy while he gave her advice about starting middle school. Months have passed since he has asked her how school was going, if classes were hard, if she was making new friends. The accident—that’s what changed everything. He can’t shake off the anger that it never would have happened if she had simply gotten off the slide when Larry and Jackson were tormenting her. Coming to her rescue was the beginning of the end.
Since then, only Nana has paid any attention to Ruby, but Nana’s been away for weeks. Robin takes a deep breath, knocks on her door. The sobs stop quickly, silenced by surprise.
“Ruby?” he whispers. “Can I come in?”
“Why?” Her voice is tentative, choked with phlegm.
He pushes the door open and navigates the darkness. The confectionery smell of the room envelopes him, reminding him of those weeks he spent sleeping here: the talcum powder, the candy-sweet girl’s perfume. There is a new smell, too: the spooky aftersmoke of an extinguished candle. He says, “I heard you crying.”
She sniffles. Shifts her small body lightly beneath the bedsheets.
He asks, “Are you thinking about Jackson?”
“I’m scared he could—I mean, I had a bad thought. That he could get worse.” Her voice is like the shuffling of paper, raspy breaths between words. She inhales wetly. “And then I thought that God was stupid.”
Robin reaches into the darkness, his hand landing on the fuzz of her pajama sleeve. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s like a broken record in my head,” she says. “God is stupid, God is stupid, God is stupid. It won’t go away.”
He bites his upper lip, glad the darkness hides his struggle not to smile at his sister’s blasphemy. He wants to tell her that maybe she’s right, that if there is a God He must be stupid, because stupid things happen all the time and stupid people are in charge of everything. But her sobs distress him; without her newfound faith she might fall apart. What else does she have right now? “Maybe you just need to go to sleep and ignore the bad voices,” he says. “In the morning you’ll feel better.”
“How can I sleep with this sin in my mind?” she says.
“Hah!” The exclamation jumps from his chest before he can squelch it.
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I wasn’t laughing at you. I was just thinking, you’re so much better than me, Ruby. If you’re a sinner, than what am I?”
“What do you mean?” Through the gray light he can see curiosity take hold of her.
Should he explain? He couldn’t possibly tell her the details, yet something inside his throat flutters for a moment, the wisp of a need to tell someone, anyone, what his life has become. His secrets fester in the cavity of his body: he could burst open in confession, skin peeling back to reveal fresh sores in need of attention. “Well . . .” he says. “I just mean, you know, I cut school, and I smoke cigarettes and other stuff that’s worse than that.”
“Like what?” Now she is almost rigid with interest. “Did you steal something?”
“It’s just worse than anything you’ve done—trust me.” An uncertain silence descends; he waits for the moment to pass, for the mood to shift—or for it to deepen, for a force to take hold and bind them more tightly together. Robin listens to the warbled TV noises beneath them, their parents separated by only carpet and floorboards. He revisits those moments just before coming in here, when he was in the bathroom spinning fantasies from an underwear ad in his father’s Runner’s World magazine. He thinks too of all the mornings he wakes confused by his dreams and wants to hurt someone and of all the lies he tells instead. A fantasy blooms before him now, of him and Ruby on the slide that horrible evening—except this time they are holding Larry upside down over the edge, each of them clasping an ankle and then letting go...
“I stole something,” Ruby says, snapping him from his reverie.
“What? From where?”
“You can’t tell anyone.” She shuffles out from under the covers and steps on the rug. He is amazed how light she is on her feet, how skilled at making herself unnoticed. She reaches behind her dresser and pulls out a brass chain with a large pendant on it.
“What is it? Bring it over here,” Robin says. He steps to the window, letting it catch streetlight. On the medallion is a sculpted relief of two swimming fish surrounded by planets and stars.
“It’s Aunt Corinne’s,” Ruby says.
He remembers seeing it on his aunt—the Pisces symbol, bobbing between her breasts against a striped blouse; she had it on last time she was here. “It’s your sign, too, right? When did you get it?”
“She left it in the bathroom, and I took it. I don’t know why she took it off anyway.”
“Mom could get you one for yourself.”
“I don’t really want one. It’s kind of ugly.” She takes the medallion in her hands and runs her fingers over it. “I think I’m getting possessed. Remember that movie The Exorcist?”
“You didn’t see that movie.”
“So? I heard about it. The girl in that got possessed by the devil. So maybe that’s it. First I steal this, and then I can’t stop thinking that God is stupid.”
“Duh, Ruby, you’re not possessed. You’re practically a nun. ” He takes the medallion back from her, impatient with her ideas. “Do you want me to give it back to Aunt Corinne?”
“No
! I don’t want anyone to know.”
“You could just say you took it out of the bathroom where she left it and then you forgot about it. It hasn’t been that long.”
She shakes her head vehemently.
He is ready to walk away in frustration when he remembers the resolve that impelled him into the room to begin with. “OK, here’s an idea. Why don’t we sneak it back? Next time we go over or they come over here?”
“Will you do it? I’m too nervous.”
“OK. But you owe me one.”
There is a quick rap on the door. It swings open and the overhead light is flashed on—blinding, rude. Clark squints in at them. “What are you two doing? It’s almost 11:30.”
“Ruby couldn’t sleep, so I’m telling her a story.” Robin hides the medallion behind his back, slips it down the waistband of his shorts as he speaks, feels it rest between his briefs and the skin of his backside.
Clark softens a bit. “Let’s call it a night already. Come on, everyone to bed.”
Back in his room, Robin rubs the medallion under his bedsheets. He runs the smooth side of it across his belly and lets the chain drop into his groin, where it tickles until it snags on a hair. He tosses it under his bed. The annoyance at having to undo Ruby’s thievery fades as he considers what a relief it is to see a break in her pious mood. The changes that have come over her since the fall are the biggest mystery of all. He thinks it’s just as weird that she’s going religious as it is that he seems to be going in the opposite direction. Even weirder: Ruby’s never shown any signs of being a Holy Roller, but he can remember things about himself going all the way back to first grade. He and his cousin Larry are six and five years old, hiding in the root cellar under Nana’s old house; their pants are pushed down and their hands are inside of each other’s underwear, wiggling around until they both get stiff. Yeah, he thinks as he falls asleep, this has been going on for a long time.
A brittle morning, everyone on edge: Clark is to meet later in the day with Jackson’s doctors to determine when Jackson will be coming home. Over breakfast Robin asks, “If Jackson comes home this week, where will we put him?” and Clark slams his fists into the table, sending a full cup of coffee crashing to the floor. “Not if, Robin. When. When. ” It has been over three weeks since Clark announced his intention to build Jackson’s new room. The room has not been completed. The physical therapy equipment is on hold until they make a payment. Jackson fades and withers like an old newspaper. Robin has expressed what is not meant to be spoken: the fundamental fear that Jackson will not be coming home at all. He repeats to himself his father’s command: Not if, when. If he can think this way, will it be true?
When he gets to the locker room that day, he finds Scott waiting for him, agitated, grave. “Let’s get out of here.”
Robin accepts without hesitation, relieved at the notion of escape. They run across the playing fields to the trees that separate the school from nearby houses. The earth, wet from melting frost, squishes under their feet. Watching his breath whiten the air, Robin realizes he hasn’t taken his coat along. Maybe this is why Scott is always in his zip-up jacket: he’s ready at any moment to make a getaway.
They pass a cigarette back and forth without talking. When he asks Scott what’s going on, Scott just says, “A lot,” and retreats into his bottled-up agitation.
“Are we going somewhere particular?”
“I don’t know. Just keep moving or you’ll get cold.”
“Do you want to go to The Bird?”
“No.”
Robin looks back toward the school, its sand-colored bricks and banks of windows still visible through the leafless trees at the end of the block. It might not be too late to return, to cut himself off from Scott’s sullen mood.
He tries once more with Scott. “What do you want from me?”
Scott stops abruptly, crushing the cigarette butt with his sneaker, splaying tobacco on the sidewalk. “I need to maybe crash at your house again. I can sneak in. Is that ladder still out there?”
Robin can’t remember if it is or it isn’t. He crosses his arms over his chest. “Last time I got in trouble because you left that note.”
“I don’t remember,” he mumbles unconvincingly.
“Come on, Scott. You put it on the fridge.” Robin stands still, raising his voice as Scott resumes walking. “My parents could have totally snagged you.”
“Maybe that would have helped.” Scott coughs up phlegm and spits. He keeps his head lowered, his shoulders curved, his hands in his pockets. “My old man’s just going nuts lately.”
“Did he hit you again?”
Scott nods and brushes his arm at the point of contact. “We just got this letter from the hospital where my mother is. They’re saying she’s in there six more months.”
“They’re making her stay?”
“No one’s making her,” Scott says, his voice hardening. “She just don’t want to leave. But she don’t know what it’s like for me with him.”
They have reached the corner of a busy street. Scott sticks out his thumb. “I’m going there—Bergen Elms. You coming?”
Robin skips ahead to catch up.
The hospital is older and larger than the one in Greenlawn. It looms like a prison, with locked doors, barred windows, and security guards patrolling the grounds. A black woman with straightened hair pulled into a bun sits behind a counter, buzzing people through three separate doorways. She listens to Scott dispassionately, refusing him entrance without an adult. Scott argues with her and then with her supervisor, who tells him to come back with his father. Robin withdraws from the increasing volume of these confrontations, but when Scott finally gains access to an administrator named Dr. Buckley he pulls Robin along with him.
Dr. Buckley is a pink-faced, white-haired man in a three-piece suit. He looks to Robin like he should be on Channel 13 introducing Masterpiece Theater. He shakes Scott’s hand as they enter his office.
“Scott Schatz? I’m Dr. Buckley. Head of client relations.” He turns his gaze to Robin, meeting his eyes for just a moment. “And you are?”
“Robin MacKenzie.”
“He’s my buddy,” Scott says quickly.
The doctor frowns. “I really can’t discuss your mother’s case with anyone outside of the family.”
Scott grabs Robin by the arm. “Just stay. This guy can’t make you leave.”
“Actually, Mr. Schatz, I can,” he says officiously. “I can make you both leave, so why don’t you just cooperate?”
Scott, still curling his fingers around Robin’s wrist, steps toward the doctor’s big desk. “Look, I’m not stupid. You can say anything you want and I don’t have any rights. But at least if I got a friend here I got a witness.”
The doctor’s face lightens with amusement. Robin hates the condescension he sees there and resolves to stay by Scott’s side. “Very well. Why don’t you both have a seat?” He motions them to chairs: leather upholstered, chocolate brown, and very deep. The toes of Robin’s sneakers just barely graze the plush beige carpet.
Scott’s face is pure determination. “We got this letter saying that my mother wants to stick around here another six months and I want to know what the deal is.”
“Well, the deal is ...” Dr. Buckley’s voice trails off. He consults a file through a pair of reading glasses at the end of his nose. “You can read the diagnosis here, son. She’s clinically depressed and could still potentially do herself and others harm.” He slides the folder across his desk.
“She’s been here over a year and you can’t make her not want to hurt herself?” Scott peers into the folder, his eyes darting frantically across a stack of white and pink and goldenrod-colored pages, forms and charts thick with medical lingo. To Robin, Scott looks like a lost traveler, incapable of reading the only map he has.
Robin clears his throat. “May I look?”
“Out of the question,” Dr. Buckley declares, but Scott hands Robin the folder anyway. Robin scans the
top page; he only manages to make out “mg” a number of times before Dr. Buckley snatches it back.
“They’ve got her on a lot of drugs,” Robin tells Scott.
The doctor shuts the file and crosses his hands on top of it. “Of course she’s being given medication. That’s standard procedure.”
Scott leans in toward the desk, his neck tense with anger. “What are you doping her up with?”
Dr. Buckley takes off his glasses. His sober face seems to Robin to be the picture of insincerity. “Scott, this is a perfectly reputable hospital, one of the best in the state. Your mother isn’t being harmed. Quite the contrary.”
“Bullshit,” Scott scowls. Robin looks past Dr. Buckley’s desk to the half dozen diplomas and certificates on the wall. He’s amazed at Scott’s ability to call a man with so many official documents a liar. He wonders if his parents are being jerked around by Jackson’s doctors. With a stab of guilt he remembers his father’s meeting scheduled for today. Will there be any good news tonight?
Dr. Buckley drones on, unruffled by Scott’s distrust. “Any other information specifically about her treatment will require the presence of your father, I’m afraid.” He motions grandly to the phone. “Shall we call him now? I assume he knows you’re here and not in school.”
Scott sinks back into the voluminous leather cushions. Robin senses their loss as the battle winds down.
“I’ve said all I can say. Your mother has asked for an extended schedule of recuperation, and I’m sure it’s in her best interest that you support that decision.”
Scott’s voice tightens in desperation. “If she knew I wanted her to come home I bet she’d get out. If she knew what Dad’s like. I’ll be the next one in here if I have to stay alone with that guy for much longer.”
Dr. Buckley leans forward on his elbows. “Is there trouble at home, Scott?” Scott averts his eyes and says nothing.
Dr. Buckley scribbles on a pad in front of him, then passes this to Robin, whose seat is closer. “Your buddy might want to hold on to this,” the doctor says to Robin. “It’s the number of our twenty-four-hour referral line, especially helpful for the families of clients.” Robin hands it to Scott, who crumples the paper into his pocket and charges from the room.
The World of Normal Boys Page 26