The Normals

by David Gilbert

  His parents lived in the middle of the postwar housing boom in Cincinnati, when developers plowed fields into towns and packaged the American dream in quarter-acre lots. Over the years these basic ranch houses had gone through small adaptations, crawling from the primordial muck of the working class and into the more complex biology of the middle class. Second floors were added; carports were turned into family rooms; backyards were jammed with aboveground swimming pools. In some cases, next-door properties had been bought and razed and mansions sprung up in their place—not really mansions but ideas of mansions, with white columns and stone lions and giant brass knockers. There were special names for these estates. Shenandoah. Candymore. Perisailles. Billy could've laughed at the topiary, the slopped turrets, the Palladian windows, but he would've been laughing at the easiest sort of target as well as the sweetest sort of pride.

  He pulled the rental car into 220 Cypress. As with every homecoming, the house seemed lesser. Today it verged on the size of a Monopoly house on Baltic, its rent too cheap for all his complaining. His parents owned the last remaining ranch house totally untouched over the last half century. Rumor was the local historical society had been pushing for landmark status, claiming this was the prime example of preplanned, mass-produced housing in the area. The neighbors, Billy guessed, must've been pissed.

  His father answered the door. "Good, you're here," he said.

  Billy raised his arms. "In the flesh."

  "We're all packed." The bags were waiting by the door.

  "Okay."

  "We should go soon."

  "Could I get settled?"

  "They said early afternoon."

  "It's eleven-thirty-five A.M." Billy said.

  "Exactly why we should go."

  "Let me just use the bathroom and maybe get a drink of water."

  "Fine. Then we should go because they're expecting us."

  Billy surrendered with "Sure."

  He followed Abe into the living room where Doris sat on the couch.

  Abe quickly joined her, as if the space was up for grabs and Billy might leap in. He touched her knee and whispered, "He's here. We'll be going soon."

  Doris had no reaction.

  "She's ready to go when you are," Abe said.

  To Billy, his father never really aged. The man always looked the same, whether forty, fifty, or, as he was now, sixty-four. Neither youthful nor elderly, he was just Abe with dark eyes bruised by shadow. He might've been obsessed with time—already he had checked his watch twice—but time had no need for him. The lines in his face, the cleavage of worry, were unaffected by wear. His hairline was forever receding but never balding. His paunch, his waddle, were present in the earliest known photos, the pre-Billy photos that covered the house. It was as if Abe had been painted on wood instead of canvas, like a Bruegel, one of his less exciting seasons. The Glass Cutters. But in the background, away from the primary action, you could catch glimpses of quiet tragedy and undetected suffering, an Icarus falling behind Abe's shoulder. His poor wife looked horrible. She had lost weight, but it was weight you'd never mention. She was sunken and sallow. A wick could've been buried in her head. But she seemed more relaxed than she normally did around Billy. There was no register of his presence, no frowns, no nervous asides, no opportunistic shame floating around the room. It was just Doris rocking with her hands clutched together and singing two notes back and forth, LA-la, LA-la, LA-la. There was an honesty about the years and their toll on her. Mothers show their age, Billy thought, while fathers stay moored in the present until that last moment, that day when you visit and notice too late that they've turned into dying men.

  Abe checked his watch again.

  Doris was the calendar and Abe was the clock.

  Billy crouched into his mother's line of sight. "Hey Mom."

  "She doesn't talk much," Abe explained.

  "Nice to see you."

  "She just groans. But they're happy groans. Usually."

  "I'm sorry I've been away so long," Billy told her.

  "It hasn't been that long," Abe replied.

  "I'm talking to her."

  "It's not worth the trouble."

  Billy turned toward Doris. "I should've come home sooner."

  "This is soon enough," Abe said.

  Billy noticed Doris's clenched hands. Bright colors were visible through her fingers. Every so often they twisted the colors and a creak of plastic could be heard. "Is that a Rubik's cube?" Billy asked.

  "Yeah."

  "My Rubik's cube?"

  "I suppose. I really don't know. One day she had it and she's had it ever since. The doctor told me that that can happen with Alzheimer's patients, that they get fixated on something. I think it relaxes her, like knitting."

  "Of all things," Billy said.

  "I tried taking it away from her."

  "Why?"

  "Because it seemed a cruel joke. A mind-bender? A puzzle? But she got upset." Billy watched her turn the colors with all the devotion of the rosary. She could've been meditating on fifty-four mysteries, eighteen rows of three, saying a prayer with every new combination. The Rubik's cube. It had been a brief glory for Billy; in his youth he could solve the thing in less than four minutes—198 seconds his record.

  "Have you forgotten where the bathroom is?" his father asked.

  "No."

  "Because we should go soon."

  After pissing, Billy peeked inside his old room. Besides the bed and bureau, it had been stripped bare. Shelves were empty. The strange childhood mishmash, the archaeology of toys and hobbies from his different periods—the Stone Age of stuffed animals, the Copper Age of action figures, the Bronze Age of board games, the Iron Age of nunchucks and rock star posters—was gone. Only meager evidence remained. The walls carried the forensics of Fun-Tack. The rug was still stained with cranberry juice that Billy improvised into a bloodbath for green army men. Otherwise, nothing endured. What was he expecting? A shrine? Not likely. This was right, he thought. Give his entire youth to Goodwill. But maybe his parents could've used this space for a guest room, an office, a media center, storage even. At least slap on a fresh coat of paint and new carpeting. No crimes had been committed here. There was no need for it to look like a murder scene.

  "I heard you flush," his father called from the living room.

  "Yeah?"

  "So let's go."

  His parents sat in the backseat, Abe with his arms draped around Doris, his head resting on her shoulder, his mouth cooing sweet nothings while she stared straight ahead with oh-say-can-you-see posture. They were like flag and flagpole. She flew his heart and he proudly embodied her love.

  Billy almost gave the rearview mirror a small salute.

  The Whispering Pines Assisted Living Center was near the airport, on the other side of the Ohio River, where the sprawl of Cincinnati slipped into Kentucky and nobody was sure of their home state. Buckeye or Bluegrass? North or South? Urban or rural? In the middle of this mild confusion stood Whispering Pines. It was located among low-story apartment buildings and chain hotels and various support services for the airport. It was the sort of flipbook community glanced from fast-moving cars, never noticed unless you needed gas. But Whispering Pines might catch your attention. Eight stories tall, constructed in white postwar brick, the roof was topped with a massive central air-conditioning unit. It resembled the head tefillin for a moonfaced Jew who had forgotten all that came after Baruch.

  "Here we are," Abe said.

  Along the side of building was the signage for the previous occupant. The letters remained behind in ghost form—Marriott—while down the street its new incarnation rose in a glory of tinted glass.

  Billy pulled up in the circular driveway where a revolving door seemed like a game of chance for the elderly. Abe helped Doris, and Billy unloaded the bags then parked in the lot behind the building. Walking back, he noticed a plane circling high above and another plane ready for landing. Either thanks to the wind or the tonal properties of turbo
jets or just his mood, the engines sounded like they were failing.

  The lobby had probably changed little since its Marriott days. The visitors lingering around inside could've been the waylaid travelers of yore who had time to kill because of a missed connection or a delay or a bad storm. None of them were happy to be here and all of them were happy not to be here long. Billy glanced about for his parents. No sign of them. He went to the reception desk. A man asked, "How may I help you?" with the Kentucky side of life.

  "I'm looking for the Schines."

  "They just checked in and went up to their room."

  "Where's that?"

  "Six-ten, sixth floor. Are you family?"

  "Son."

  "Let me tell you your mother is in excellent hands. It's a hard, hard thing, what she has, what you're going through, a hard, hard thing, but we will do our best to somehow make it easier, for you and your family, because it is tough, Lord, is it tough, and I feel for you, we all do." The man was almost teary.

  "Sure," Billy said.

  The elevator seemed to hum the first bar of Oklahoma, a sort of mechanical, breath-defying fermata, all the way to the sixth floor, where the doors opened and the wind came rushing through the plains. Room 610 was a double with its own bathroom. A curtain divided the beds. On one side was Doris; on the other side was an old black woman who looked like a bundle of twigs anticipating a match. Three women, probably daughters, hovered over her; they were force-feeding their loved one some sort of mush, laughing a bit too loudly as they mopped up her messy chin.

  "Look Mom, they sent you a cute young man."

  "Dessert."

  "Hi ladies," Billy said.

  One of the daughters came over. "Whatever you do," she told Billy, "do not, and I mean do not, allow them to put in a feeding tube."

  After Abe got Doris settled, he asked Billy, "Should we be worried?"

  "About what?"

  "The ring. Do you think stealing might be a problem?"

  Billy was not surprised by his father's mild unoriginal racism. "I doubt it."

  "Because I've heard stories." Abe reached over, uncurled Doris's left hand from the Rubik's cube and slipped the ring from her finger. "See how easy it is," he said. "It pulls clean because she's lost so much weight. And she'll never protest, never scream. God forbid the Rubik's cube but the ring is for the taking."

  "What comes around goes around."

  Abe leveled his eyes on Billy. "This was our dowry, our due."

  Billy regretted the introduction of family lore. "I know, I know," he said.

  "This bought our freedom, always remember, this half-carat delivered us."

  "I know. I'm sorry."

  Billy knew the story (Christ, he knew the story). He was more biographer than son. Abraham Schine, twenty-five, and Doris McMinn, twenty-nine, met in 1958 under the marquee of the Winter Garden Theatre. It was the year Mike Todd died in a plane crash while his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, was spared by a timely cold; the year Cheryl Crane, daughter of Lana Turner, stabbed and killed Johnny Stompanato; and the second smash year of West Side Story on Broadway. Abe and Doris, single-ticket holders, stood as strangers outside the theater during the Wednesday matinee intermission. Both had left their jobs early, sudden illness the excuse, Doris with a stomachache, Abe with a headache, though the true cause was the infectious combo of Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins. They lingered under the sun-bleached lights and risked discovery by bosses or coworkers, but they needed air after hearing "Something's Coming" and "Tonight." The usher paraded about with a handheld xylophone chiming the three notes for the second act. The crowd started filtering inside. Abe and Doris stood alone for a moment, on opposite ends of the marquee. They waited for the other to move first, to break this unspoken sideways spell. Finally, the usher stood there and hammered one note and Doris gave up. On her way inside, she dropped her Playbill (on purpose) and Abe raced over and (of course) picked it up.

  "Quite a show," he said.

  "Oh, yes," she replied.

  That was that, they were in love.

  Abe gestured toward Billy. "See this." He was holding up the ring.

  "Yes. I know," Billy said.

  "This is our Exodus."

  Instead of Passover, his father celebrated the story of the stolen diamonds. During meals, before bed, Abe would recite the particulars. The family store—Schine Brothers Gems—was on Forty-seventh Street with all the other diamond merchants. For eighteen months, Abe and Doris secretly dated, knowing their parents would be against the match. Irish Catholic, Orthodox Jew, they were the original Jets and Sharks. They would meet in Times Square and take in the various entertainments, arcades and shows, lunch at Howard Johnson's, until one day they were discovered and, as predicted, they were forbidden from seeing each other again. After crying, they obeyed, disappointed in their lack of romantic resolve, but not surprised. This was the real world. They were too old for rebellion. Soon enough, the Winter Garden marquee changed to The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Liz Taylor was remarried (Eddie Fisher, no less), and Cheryl Crane was cleared of all murder charges. Just when Abe and Doris were settling into their chosen roles—he a fiance to the right woman, she an unmarried aunt—the film version of West Side Story hit the Rivoli. Memories flooded back. The movie was even better.

  "Natalie Wood," his father would say. "Who knew she had that voice?"

  "She was dubbed," Billy would tell him. "Marni Nixon."

  "Well she did a good job sounding like Natalie Wood."

  A month later, Abe snuck inside the vault of the family store and grabbed his disinheritance. The amount was respectable without being brazen: forty grand worth of diamonds. This was the price on their heads. This was the cost of exile.

  "But the smallest we never sold," Abe told Billy.

  "I know. A thousand times I know."

  Abe continued, his eyes alternating between Doris and the diamond ring, like the facets subtitled her impenetrable face. "The smallest we saved for ourselves, didn't we. Just under half a carat, a melee, not a centerpiece, but the look, the clarity, flawless, and the color grades D, and those two things I was taught above everything else." Abe squinted. His eye was threaded for a loupe, like nut and bolt, though now he cut decorative glass for a living. "This came from the alluvial beds of Southwest Africa. In water, it blazes. No blemishes, only a few pinpoint flaws, character marks really. Otherwise ideal. If I had the proper tools, I could show you specks of another mineral deep within the carbon. Invisible bits of weakness." Abe breathed on then buffed the diamond against his shirt. He slipped the ring back onto Doris's finger. "Thirty years old and I was a thief and a pariah and for a moment a perfect ten on the Mohs' scale. I love you, Doris, with all my heart, I will always love you." But Doris was too included to notice.

  After escaping from New York, Abe and Doris settled on Cincinnati with no roots, no connections, creating their own country with a population of two. This is part of the story that never went said, that Billy filled in on sleepless nights. For years they must have waited for the authorities to find them, to charge them with robbery, but the knock on the door never came. Day jobs supported their true ambition: themselves. Neither trusted the other's friends so they surrendered them without a fight. Every morning they woke up with their sole reason for bravery; every night they fell asleep with their lonely choice. Happily ever after was imperative. A lapse in affection, even for a second, might prove devastating. They were Tony and Maria shopping for discount socks, Romeo and Juliet washing chipped dishes. When they tried having a child, and success seemed doubtful, they dropped the subject without issue because failure might introduce strain and strain might threaten everything. Years passed. Then a miracle happened: the feared symptoms of early menopause—hot flashes and nausea—were the signs of pregnancy. Doris was forty-five, Abe was forty-two. They excitedly prepared for parenthood. And when the boy was born, William, they held him and cried and for a moment forgot themselves, forgot their struggle and sacrifice, forgot th
eir essential love. All they had abandoned, their families, their histories, faded in the background. The ether of passion and romance condensed into a far more complex compound—a screaming infant. Mother and father glanced up in unison. They recognized their mistake too late. What had they done? Self-devotion was everything. They had given up too much to replace it with a son. Right then they pulled away as if the child's heart pumped nitroglycerin and the merest rattle could destroy their fragile world. A safe distance would have to be maintained, an emotional two-mile radius.

  In room 610 at the Whispering Pines Assisted Living Center Abe rubbed Doris's hand. Billy stood in the corner inspecting the metaphysical space around his shoes. He knew there was no room for him here. Soon enough he would say good-bye and he understood it would be for the last time. The view from the window was of the parking lot and the small, minimally maintained garden for family visits outside. Of course he should come back and visit, like a decent son, but he decided right then that he would let them be. He'd stay away and allow regret its foothold and contempt the place of perhaps not being loved. Billy went to the edge of the bed. Abe finger-brushed Doris's hair while Doris worked the Rubik's cube. As she turned the rows and mixed up the colors, her diamond ring caught the afternoon sun and broke the light against the wall. Billy reached down and touched her foot under sheets. Her toes curled. Just a reflex.