The Normals

by David Gilbert

  "Man has become its opposite," Billy says, going along for the Socratic ride.

  "I mean, you can say unethical, immoral, unseemly, but don't say unnatural."

  "Strike unnatural from all dictionaries," Billy pronounces with a flourish.

  Honeysack laughs—it's a geeky hiccup of delight. "Sorry, it's been a long day."

  "And it's still early," Billy says. "So I'll be going."

  But Honeysack keeps talking. "You know who'll end up doing something like our stasis study." He pauses, dejected. "The Chinese. They'll do it. They'll use prisoners, no problem, and they'll succeed, and they'll develop some marvelous new drug, and the FDA will scream at us and ask why couldn't we have been first. Mark my words, it'll happen. We'll be forever stuck doing the most innovative Nobel Prize—worthy treatments on pigs and chimps."

  "I'll do it," Billy says, the words slipping free without tweak, always wanting to be offered up to Honeysack, battler of death, theriac against the poison of too many thoughts, of Abe and Doris, of Ragnar and his punishing debt—elaborate me, Billy thinks, into something that sticks.

  "What's that?" Honeysack asks, not listening.

  "Your study, I'll do it."

  Eyebrows briefly lift, then fall, like caterpillars going nowhere. "No, it's too dangerous," Honeysack says. "Ideally you'd be an accident victim, not in perfect health."

  "Wouldn't my health raise the chances of success?"

  "But failure might kill you, and success certainly wouldn't save your life."

  Billy leaves the doorjamb, steps into the office. "Not that I'm about to kill myself but—" he stops himself. Temporary death shimmers like the grandest of all temp jobs, a dip in the pool of timelessness where all of history sinks. "I have confidence in you, but if the study fails, it won't be the greatest tragedy in the world. If it succeeds, great. Maybe I'll get a little money, or a lot of money, which will be very helpful in my particular situation. But if it fails, that's all right. Not that I have a death wish. I don't. Doing this would be the opposite of a death wish. I mean, I really could really use the money. And maybe a certain kind of focus would follow, you know, after the fact, when we're all having a celebratory drink. Cheers, I survived. It might be the sort of depth of experience I as a person need right now to settle things in my head a bit. Otherwise I'm so—" shallow, ridiculous, worthless, Billy thinks, but the right word seems impossible. "I just need something like this," he tells Honeysack.

  Honeysack shakes his unenchanted head. "It won't happen."

  "Why not?"

  "Honestly, your psychological profile would raise some flags. A person rationally choosing this would be deemed irrational. That's why we need people who don't have a choice, people already wrapped around a telephone pole."

  "But maybe it will save my life," Billy says. "Maybe I'm already wrapped around a telephone pole."

  "Won't happen," Honeysack assures him. "And at the end of the day one person proves nothing. We need a range, and a range, the FDA tells us, is too dangerous in this case. They like the results, sure, but they hate the idea of tossing the results into the realm of public trauma. Too risky. Too many losses, too many lawsuits. Too difficult to find subjects willing to consent while they're bleeding out in wrecked cars. No, I think as research, we're done. Five years and we're done in two days of delibera­tion."

  "Maybe you just want to see if it works," Billy says.

  "What's the point?"

  "Curiosity. Satisfaction."

  "Too risky."

  "I won't tell a soul," Billy says, fearing the chance slipping away. "I'll sign any release form. I'll pledge eternal nonliability. I can guarantee nobody will miss me. If it doesn't work, cremate me and spread my ashes somewhere nice. If it works, I'll be a bit wiser and richer, and you'll know that your research meant something."

  "Yeah, by almost killing you."

  "Semantics," Billy says.

  "It would be something," Honeysack muses aloud. "In concept."

  "Absolutely something," Billy says. "At least something to think about. So think about it." Billy turns around and leaves. In the hallway, under the glare of advertised affliction, he wonders if anything he just said was true.

  29

  "BILLY?"

  It's Do. His voice is a surprise. Lately, he's been quiet, saying nothing except yes or no, letting conversation pass through him as if words have the weight of neutrinos. His meals are eaten without comment; food is barely touched, just bread and water and whatever starch is being served. But his odor still screams. Showerless since that first morning, he hasn't brushed his teeth or shaved or spritzed any deodorant under those odor-catching hair traps. The bathroom has been avoided except for the essential business and that's handled with as much speed as possible, then it's quickly back to bed, the sheets pulled up to his chin. He smells of wet leaves leavened with sweat instead of rain. It's the primal funk of man, of gym bags tossed deep into closets and forgotten for months.

  Billy glances away from the Sunday afternoon breast augmentation on TV where an already well-endowed woman is adding another letter. It seems there's no blurring of breasts when breasts are informative, even for these moneymakers, and Billy wonders if fourteen-year-old boys pop boners to these antiseptic orange tits on the operating table. "You want me to change?" Billy asks.

  "Not if it keeps Lannigan away."

  "I agree." Billy smiles hoping he might prove himself an ally.

  "You're smart, aren't you?" Do asks.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're reading that big important-looking book."

  "This book is cheating," he tells Do.

  "No, you're smart, I can tell."

  The surgeon squeezes the newly implanted breasts for the sake of uniformity then steps back and regards the drape like he's hanging a velvet painting.

  "Where are we in Luke," Billy asks, changing the subject.

  Do consults his Bible. "Sixteen twenty-three: 'And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom.'"

  Billy pauses at hearing his father's name. "Really?"

  "Yep."

  "Lazarus as in the Lazarus?"

  "Different Lazarus. That Lazarus is much earlier, around seven in the morning."

  "Oh."

  Do turns over on his side. "Billy?" he says.

  "Yeah."

  "You ever think of yourself as bad?"

  "Bad?"

  "Yeah."

  "I certainly don't think of myself as good."

  "But I mean bad, like really bad."

  "I've done some bad things," Billy says. "I've been a jerk to a lot of people."

  "Really bad?"

  "Bad enough."

  Do shakes his head a bit too vigorously. "No, I mean really bad, evil bad, like bad through and through." His voice trembles. His eyes seem to channel a deeper spirit within. "Like I have these thoughts about women, when I'm passing them on the street or anywhere, I think about how their breasts must look under their shirt, saggy or firm, round, pointy, I think about what kind of nipples they have, dark or light, big or small, like it's a secret they're keeping from me. Then I think about their privates, their vaginas, and I imagine all those vaginas behind pants and under skirts, shaved or bushy, blond or brunette, and I look at their eyebrows like I'm looking at squints of their vaginas, and I just want to reach out and grab them. I have to stop myself and tell myself no because I can feel my hand reaching. In buses. In any crowded place. Even with the nurses here. I want to know those secrets. I have to know. I can imagine the whole thing, the actual moment where I grab them. It's like a flash of what might happen, just seconds away, and I'm always relieved and kind of shocked when they walk by me without anything happening. The problem is, there's always another woman in the distance. And they have no idea what kind of person they have next to them."

  "They're just thoughts," Billy tells him. "We all get strange thoughts."

  "These kinds of thoughts?"

>   Billy treads lightly. "Sometimes, sure. They pop into your head, but it doesn't mean you're an awful person, especially if you don't act on them. It just means you're nineteen years old."

  "I've never had sex," Do says.

  "Even more reason why you have these thoughts."

  "I could have," Do says, "plenty of times, but I didn't. I stopped. I said no because I was scared of what I might do because I know, I know what I might do. I've imagined it. I've done it in my head a hundred times. Now I'm a nineteen-year-old virgin and that seems worse, you know, a big joke. It's something you can never lose, being a virgin at nineteen. That fact stays with you for the rest of your life."

  "It's not a big deal," Billy says.

  Do balls his hands into fists; the whole room seems to squeeze around him. "These thoughts are constantly screaming in my head and they're always the worst possible thoughts. They always storm in before I can stop them. Like I think about raping nuns. Is that sick or what? It's not as if I spend my whole day thinking about raping nuns, it's not my number-one thought, but when I see a nun, a nun in her habit, young or old, rape kind of slams into my head, me raping this nun." Do grinds his face into splinters.

  "Calm down," Billy says.

  But Do is on an unfortunate roll. "Or with African-Americans, when I meet them or walk by them or whatever, like with Joy, with her I'm nice and friendly, but in my head, in my head, I'm thinking 'nigger' all the time. I can't help it. It's an echo between my ears. 'Nigger nigger nigger.' Sometimes it's almost on my lips. I hate it, I hate that word, but I cannot not hear it. 'Nigger' so loud in my head I'm sure she can hear it. They all can. Nigger—"

  Billy says, "Okay, okay," hushing him. "But that word is just a word, a very charged word, maybe the last powerful word, but thinking that particular word doesn't mean you're an awful racist, it just means you're intrigued by the word. It's just about the worst word you can say. That's all. It's that temptation to scream in a theater. I mean, do you hate black people?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Are you a member of your local KKK?"

  "Of course not."

  "So there," Billy says, pleased with his reasoning.

  "But it's nonstop. This nigger stuff is nonstop. I get all the awful words in my head. All the wrong words. 'Cocksucker.' 'Cunt.' 'Faggot.' They're in there, just waiting. And they ruin everything nice. I have an older brother who has these great kids, a boy and a girl, and I really love these kids, I live for these kids, even though I'm not crazy about my brother. But say I'm wrestling with them, goofing around, and my brother and his wife are in the kitchen or something, and say they come in and see me rolling around with their kids, I swear they look at me funny, like I'm some kind of child molester, like I'm touching them in the wrong places, like I'm too physical with them. I can see it in their eyes, and maybe they see something I don't see, you know, because I am always aware of where I'm touching them and I try not to touch them anywhere I shouldn't. It's constantly on my mind. Be careful, be careful, stay above the waist. I get scared I might get an erection, which can happen for no good reason, and I'm like, you're so sick. These are kids. But I can't help it. I'm thinking about it so much that I can't turn off the thought that I might hurt them, that I might do something horrible."

  "Uhm . . ."

  Do is near tears. "My thoughts, they ruin everything," he says, frustrated. "It's got to be that I'm an evil person. All these crazy thoughts, what else can it mean. Out of the blue murder comes into my head. I'll be in a mall and I'll be walking around and doing nothing and all of a sudden I'm carrying an imaginary machine gun and I'm mowing everyone down. I can hear the screams; I can see the blood. I go to Mass and pray to be good, or if not good, at least forgiven, but I know I'm just saying the words. I volunteer and give myself to charities, but I know I'm just pretending. I want to get married, I want to have children, but I know I'll manage to mess things up royally. I start thinking about incest and all the awful things I might do to my children, to my wife, the hell I'll put them through. Some day I know all the bad will outweigh any good I might have done and this evil inside will fly free and you'll read about me in the newspaper." Do looks as though he can already read the headline.

  Billy lies there, unsure of what to say, hearing some of his own fears expressed with such inner turmoil, as if Do is one of the research animals who will not survive the high dose of doubt, part of the fifty percent who convulse while the other half merely shudder. "You're, uhm, you're not insane or anything," Billy says, unsatisfied by the words.

  Giving comfort has never been one of his strengths. In the face of other people's emotions he often shuts down and simply stares, hoping his silence will be read as quiet empathy instead of helplessness (or worse, coldness, which is his own opinion). It's not that he's apathetic; it's just that he's uncertain of the terrain. The topography of shh-sh-sh rises above him with dizzy awe. "They're just thoughts," he tells Do, "sick thoughts, but just thoughts. If we were liable for every single thought, we'd all be in jail."

  "You try living with these thoughts," Do protests. "It's exhausting.

  When you sleep, you dream these horrors and they're all nightmares. You never have a moment of peace." Do rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, then drags his fingers over his cheeks, his nose, his mouth, his chin, leaving behind a reddish wake.

  "You seem to me a nice guy," Billy tries.

  "That's what everyone thinks and it drives me crazy."

  "Maybe they're not wrong. And remember, you're on a pretty heavy-duty psychotropic drug right now. It's got to be doing something to your brain."

  "No," Do almost screams. "This has nothing to do with anything here. This is not something new. Even when I was a kid I had these thoughts, that I might be bad, really bad, son-of-the-devil bad. I did. I read Revelations and thought this book was about me. It was the only part of the Bible I enjoyed. All the monsters, the seals, the signs. I even had a friend check my scalp once for the three sixes, you know, the mark of the Antichrist. I was so sure. I'd try strangling people with my eyes, impaling them, throwing them from windows, drowning them. I would give teachers heart attacks. I would explode the heads of bullies. Airplanes and I'd blink engine failure. I probably killed my parents a hundred times. When nothing happened, I was always disappointed. No, these thoughts have been with me long before this place. Do you know what it comes down to? It comes down to who I am every minute of the day. Every minute of the day is a test whether my thoughts will just stay thoughts and not see the light of day."

  "I think maybe you should talk to someone here," Billy says gently.

  "Oh, they already know," Do tells him with matter-of-factness. "They've known since the beginning of the study. They can see it in my blood, in the genes, the bad gene; they've isolated it and they're ready to put me under lock and key and study me even more. They know I know. He knows, Honeysack, the nurses too, the security people, Carlson Dickey, they all know, me included, so there's no need to say anything. You should see how they treat my blood. It's like acid. They wear gloves because it's such toxic stuff. Oh, they know. And I've known you've known forever, which is fine. Lannigan doesn't know yet. All the researchers are frightened and interested because this is all so new, my kind of blood. They're calling in experts. Reputations will be made because of what's inside me. I'll be shocked if I ever leave this place. But right now we're pretending that we know nothing, that we don't know what we really know." Do seems pleased, his left foot churning under the sheets, and though the conversation has taken a dramatic turn, paranoia is easier for Billy than the previous anguish, the fear and sadness. Yes, delusions are preferable. Do seems to feel the same way because right then he calms down and settles back into bed, a lump once more. "They know," he says, relieved.

  "Look," Billy says. "I'm five feet away from you and I'm not nervous. I think of you as a gentle person, I do, maybe too gentle and that's why these thoughts hurt you so much. It's the normal subconscious shit that most of us bare
ly notice, or if we do, we're semi-proud to be so twisted, but for you it kills."

  "How do you think of yourself?" Do asks.

  "What's that?"

  "Are you good or bad?"

  "I don't think in those terms," Billy says, avoiding words like Manichean or Zoroastrian though they persist in his head like precocious students who moan pick me, pick me. "I'm more of a believer in gray."

  "But deep down you must have a sense."

  "A little bit of both," Billy answers.

  "But say there was a gun at your head."

  Luckily, at this point, Lannigan storms in giddy with something, which is finally made clear when Billy notices the dark stain around his groin. "I just peed my pants," he tells them. "Right in the middle of the lounge. I was talking with some guys, shooting the breeze, and suddenly I peed my pants. I put on a show of being upset, like what the hell is my body doing. You should've seen their faces."

  30

  THAT NIGHT, Billy lies awake in bed, thinking about bad and good, his thoughts slouching toward his parents. The word messier has caught his imagination, of Mom and Dad ending things with a shotgun and a lurid splatter on the wall. He should get up and go, hop on the next plane, that's what a good son would do. But a good son would've done so much differently, starting three years ago, five years ago, the goddamn beginning. It's all too late, he thinks, if not for that word messier. How long would it take for the bodies to be discovered, for the smell to seep into passing noses and neighboring yards, for the growing pile of mail to elicit curiosity from an already curious home? Weeks? Months? The bodies getting messier. Bills unpaid and the power turned off. Grass growing into suburban hay. Windows broken by Saturday night teens daring themselves into existence. Abe and Doris melting into myth and mattress. Until, finally, their discovery followed by a search for the son, the bad son who let this house turn into a tomb. Billy gets up. Lannigan and Do are sound asleep. Do makes small moans of containment, like inside his head a hand is teasing a puppy's cage. Billy tiptoes toward the door, his feet balanced on a tightrope of silence. In the hallway, the fluorescence stings his flesh as if skin has sublimated from vapor into solid without the cool liquefaction of morning. He glances left and right. No nurses, no security personnel. He listens. Nothing but the natural analog of the well-worn world.