The World of Normal Boys. K.M. Soehnlein
Frank stick his hand under her bikini top. By the end of the afternoon he has nothing to say to her. She has her high school schedule to show him, but it yields only disappointment—they have no classes together. Without warning he jerks the starter cable for the mower. The clamor swallows up Victoria’s voice and seals him into his own bubble of envy. Watching her strut away in her new pink satin jacket, like some tough-girl out of Grease, he can predict she’ll fit right in at Greenlawn High. Hands in pockets, shoulders back, Gloria Vanderbilt jeans accentuating her developing body, she looks like she’s getting away from him.
Todd is staring across the hedge. “Hey—”
“Don’t say it,” Robin interrupts.
“What?” All innocence in Todd’s voice.
“You know. Don’t call me that name anymore.” He pushes the lawn mower back into the garage. Speaking to Todd like that, telling him what to do, gives him the jitters—something bad is bound to follow.
Todd is still standing there when Robin walks out of the garage. “All right, cool out, man. Robin.”
Robin. Not “Girly Underwear.” It isn’t quite an apology, but he relaxes a little. He looks Todd in the eyes.
“So,” Todd says, shifting his gaze away. “So, you wanna cut my lawn for me?”
“I thought your mother had a landscaper.”
“That faggot quit, and now my father wants me to do it.”
Robin shrugs his shoulders. “I charge three dollars.”
Todd shakes his head. “No, see the idea is like this: you cut the lawn, and I give you a break on calling you—you know, that name.”
His face is so sure of itself, Robin thinks. He sputters out, “Like I can believe you? I’m not stupid, Todd. I’ll cut your lawn, and then you’ll just go ahead and call me whatever name you want.”
Todd moves a step closer, lowers his voice. “That’s the risk you take. That’s what life is about, man. Especially in high school. Taking risks. Don’t ya think?”
Robin stares in amazement. Has Todd been reading his notebook? Or is he just reading his mind? “I don’t know.”
Todd’s face falls. “Man, I’m not getting any money from my Dad for doing it, so I can’t pay you. How about if I give you a jay?”
“A what?”
“You know.” He pinches his thumb and middle finger and mimics inhaling.
Robin gets the reference. “I don’t think so.” He turns to walk away, but Todd is suddenly through the hedge, right there at his back.
“Think about it,” Todd says, and swats him on the ass.
Each step across the lawn, back to his house, he feels that pull. That magnetic thing Todd sends out like he’s an evil Jedi Knight wielding The Force. The smell of cut grass and gasoline on his fingers, and Todd’s voice echoing back at him. “Think about it.” How weird to have Todd making some strange deal with him, Todd wanting him to take a chance.
His mother had taken him to R-rated movies a couple of times—usually on their City Day, when they take the bus into New York, just the two of them—but she outright refused to let him see Saturday Night Fever.
“Gratuitous,” she pronounced its violence and sexual content, though she hadn’t seen it herself. Robin suspected her objection arose from her dislike of John Travolta, whom Robin had become fascinated with ever since Grease; no, it went back even further, to Welcome Back, Kotter, a show everyone Robin’s age had watched devoutly when it first premiered, but which Dorothy blamed for inflicting base expressions into her children’s conversation: “Up your nose with a rubber hose,” “Get off my case, toilet face.” Saturday Night Fever elicited from Dorothy more than one harangue about disco and polyester and John Travolta, all of which Robin couldn’t get enough of.
Robin reads that night in the Living section of the Bergen Record that the studio has announced Saturday Night Fever will be reissued as a PG. Robin is all resentment: a PG version! They’re going to cut all the good parts! He checks the movie timetable: the R-rated version is still playing at the Old Tappan Drive-In. Someone has to take him to see this version before it is pulled. Someone seventeen or older.
The plan comes to him the next day, when the roar of an engine from the Spicers’ yard catches his attention. Todd’s Camaro is fixed! Todd could take him to see Saturday Night Fever, and in exchange, Robin can mow the Spicers’ lawn for Todd. Forget about the “Girly Underwear” reprieve, Robin reasons, there is no way to make it stick. He brings the plan to Victoria, prepared to have to talk her into it, knowing how much she hates spending any time with her brother, but it takes no effort at all. She wants to see the R-rated version as much as he does. Apparently Frank had seen it, and it was one of his favorites.
Todd’s reaction: “No fucking way I’m taking you to some sucky disco movie.”
Robin: “We’ll pay for our own tickets.”
Victoria: “You don’t even have to watch it. You can bring a date and make out in the backseat.”
That part hadn’t been Robin’s idea, but it seemed to tip the scales for Todd.
The Camaro rushes from the end of Mill Pond Road, slicing open the afternoon quiet. Robin raises his face from the green of the lawn to meet the speed in the air. Sunlight on the glass and chrome, a blur of black metallic paint, the skid of rubber as Todd torpedoes into the driveway. Victoria protests the display—the noise, the skidmarks, the plume of gray exhaust. Todd struts out, lording over everything he sees.
Robin is mesmerized. This sweetens the deal, Todd eyeing the lawn, nodding approval at his work, shaking his hand. “OK, buddy. Looks like I’m taking you to the disco movie.” Buddy. Robin wishing that it would be just the two of them, no Victoria, no date for Todd. Robin and Todd, he whispers to himself. Buddies.
When Mrs. Spicer gets home, she rewards Todd with a kiss on the forehead for his yard work. Robin takes note: how easily Todd accepts this undue praise. How he gloats.
It’s been a long time since he prayed to God. He’s never been led to believe that praying was particularly important. His father’s obscure Protestant background, combined with a few years of his mother’s halfhearted stabs at raising them Catholic—the showy display of First Communion, the endless hours of Sunday School—have all added up to a lot of nothing. They’ve become what his grandmother, Nana Rena, refers to as “A&P Catholics”—“ashes and palms,” people who go to church when they can bring home something to show for it. Even on those occasions when he sits through mass at St. Bartholomew’s, Robin prefers silence over talking to God. Why would he expect anything from a Heavenly Father when he rarely asks for anything of his earthly father? If he needs something, he turns to his mother.
But now he has a secret to keep from her, and so he finds himself, without quite planning it, lying in bed, eyes raised upward, his hand moving into the Sign of the Cross. It is the night before Saturday Night Fever. He whispers out loud, “God, make it go OK.”
Across the room, in the other bed, his younger brother sits up. “What’d you say?”
“Nothing.”
“You said something to God,” Jackson persists, a mocking amusement in his voice. Persistence is one of Jackson’s trademarks. Unlike Robin, who tends to walk away from conflict, Jackson grabs hold and forces the issue. It’s only one of their differences. In a new situation, Robin hangs back and observes, while Jackson gravitates impulsively toward the center, harnesses energy, and quickly begins spinning trouble. He laughs easier, has more friends—more guy friends; he is rambunctious where Robin is tentative. Jackson’s half of their room gleams with brassy Little League trophies, Star Wars action figures, a colorful array of baseball caps lined up on his dresser; Robin has postcards bought at museum gift stores, a short stack of Broadway cast albums at the foot of his bed, scrapbooks