Seriously Norman! Read online

  contents

  cover

  title page

  dedication

  stop

  abyss

  balthazar birdsong

  leonard

  bombastic bombshell

  the twins

  a little cloudy

  a bit cantankerous

  how to eat a chip

  dig

  a firm foundation

  the maestro

  yabba dabba what?

  go fly a kite

  great ear to great ear

  jefferson oak

  observation and imagination

  a proper balance

  dropping things on other people’s heads

  let us consider watson

  his father’s karma

  vienna katzenjammer

  fun house

  go fly a dragon

  crazy garden

  since the age of the neanderthals

  the sound of mary poppins

  the under mountain

  can you sell bombers on pluto?

  the key to unlock any door

  celestial domes

  theory of the air terminal of the afterlife

  a three-year-old with a stick

  obushead

  no thumbs mcsweeney

  giant pixies

  Ps and Qs (and Rs)

  royal wedding

  operation shoo-in

  the great little india walk

  triangles, trephination, and trepidity

  quite prepared

  more prepared

  operation w.s.b.b.

  the tall bar in singapore

  act! act!

  flying horse

  now or nothing for the karma

  a bit more of the bubbly

  zowie

  begin

  about the author

  copyright

  stop

  “Pencils down, please.”

  Norman Normann put his pencil down and listened with half an ear to the final instructions.

  Of all the miserable ways to spend a miserable Saturday morning in the miserable month of January, this had to be the miserablest. In fact, the most miserablest.

  So thought Norman.

  Norman shrugged, heaved his body out of his chair, and then dutifully placed the completed test booklet facedown in the upper-left-hand corner of his desk. Scooping up what remained of his number-two pencils, he arranged himself in the line forming at the door, to be marched back to the cafeteria, where his mother, he guessed, awaited him.

  “Norman!” said his mother, rising like a small hot-air balloon. “Norman—sweetie-monkey-muffin-puffin-honey-bumpy-lumpy—my Norman. How was the test?”

  Norman considered the question. As a whole, the test just taken is best described as being like:

  A. A four-hour dental appointment, only without the comfortable chair, the painkiller, or the raspberry rinse

  B. A grilling, barbecue-style, to the point of charring, leaving not an ounce of juice

  C. Having each of one’s twenty fingernails and toenails removed slowly by a little old lady with dirty tweezers

  D. Death

  E. All of the above

  Norman said, “It was fine, Mom.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad, my darling,” said his mother, folding her short arms around him. She pressed her warm cheek against his and rocked him gently back and forth. “And because you did fine, next year you’ll be able to go to a super-duper-super school to make you more and more smarter than ever!”

  She gave him a squeeze. “Oooooo, I’m so proud of you!”

  “Yup,” answered Norman thoughtfully.

  Norman executed an expert duck-and-twist to escape his mother’s grip and reached a distracted arm into his winter coat. Normally, he didn’t think much about the future, but now he wondered what a super-duper-super school might actually be like. If he really had done fine on the test, maybe he would find out. And if he had done only medium fine, he guessed life would go on much as it had before.

  He slipped his other arm into his coat and looked at his mother, who had begun to knead moisturizing cream into his face.

  “Mom, I’m twelve years old,” said Norman.

  “Exactly,” said his mother. “And it is extremely cold out and I’d like to avoid chafing.”

  Having finished with the moisturizer, Norman’s mother wrapped Norman’s head in three turns of a red scarf, then, unwrapping him, rewrapped him in four turns, as it was, she believed, very, very cold out indeed. She patted his hair and, leaving just a slit for his eyes, pulled a thick woolen hat onto his head.

  It was within these four turns of scarf and beneath this woolen hat that Norman wondered: But what if I did less than fine—say, really, really badly? What then?

  Norman had no answers.

  He couldn’t even make an educated guess.

  abyss

  Exactly three weeks and three days later, Norman’s mother looked up from her plate of slightly burned pancakes and then, taking a nervous sip from a glass of orange juice, said, “Norman, we got a letter from that nice testing agency. It arrived yesterday afternoon.”

  She put down her glass and folded her hands. “It was such an impressive-looking envelope, too, really good-quality paper. Lovely paper. Inside, the paper was nice, too. I thought it might be some horrible machiney paper with machiney writing on it, but no, this was typed out very nicely, with your name beautifully printed, two Ns in Normann, all exactly correct.”

  “Three Ns in Normann, Mom,” said Norman.

  “Really, I was very impressed and tickled,” she said, her eyes growing wide. “Of course, there was some machiney writing, numbers mainly, but I guess that’s to be expected.”

  Norman stopped eating his pancakes and looked at his mother. He loved his mother. He had to admit, to his innermost self anyway, that he loved his mother. How could he not help but love her, knowing as he did how she had met his father in college, when she was Norma Peasley-Knapp and his father was a young man who knew where he was going, with a captain-of-industry name—Orman Normann. How cute everyone had thought it was that someday she might be Mrs. Norma Normann. It was fate, written in the stars, they said. And it was written in the stars, for they did marry, and when a baby had come along and it was a boy, well then, it could only be named Norman. Fate again. And now she was his mother. For all of this, he loved her.

  However, there were moments, like this one, when Norman wished that his mother would just get to the point.

  “Mother, what do the numbers say?”

  “Well, dear, that is just what I was getting to. The numbers indicate—that is, your father and I feel that, seeing these numbers in relation to—well, the numbers would seem to be a little . . .”

  “Mom, I bombed on the test, right?”

  “Well, dear, ‘bombed’ is such a harsh, such a violent word. And you know I don’t like anything to do with explosives, you know that. No, no, you mustn’t think you bombed.”

  Norman skewered a portion of pancake.

  “Okay. I stunk. I stinked. I stank. I blew it. I choked. I crapped out.”

  “Norman!”

  Norman could not help it. Tears came into his eyes.

  His mother reached her arms across the kitchen table and grasped Norman’s syrupy hands.

  “Norman. This is what I wanted to tell you. Your father and I have decided that because your numbers are, well . . .”

  “Abysmal? In an abyss? As low as you can go?”

  “Not super-duper-super high—well, your father and I have decided to . . . well, what I mean is, your father is home now and would like to discuss everything with you in his study. He’s waiting for you.”

  Norman’s bro
w furrowed darkly. He pulled his sticky hands from his mother’s wet grasp and stood up from his chair.

  “Listen to what your father says, darlingest, and then you’ll feel better.” Her eyes widened a smidgeon more, entreating.

  “Oodles better.”

  * * *

  “Oodles better?” said Norman to himself as he walked along the hall to his father’s study. “Oodles better? Oodles better, oodles better, oodles bedoodles better, oodles better, oodles better oo.”

  He approached his father’s study door quietly and knocked.

  “Come in, Norman!” sounded his father’s booming voice.

  Norman pushed open the heavy door to the study, a room he was very rarely allowed in. He stepped in and looked around.

  It was not a pretty room, nor was it a cozy room. A large black metal desk stood in its center, facing away from the French doors leading to the backyard. No bookshelves lined the walls, only mismatched metal filing cabinets, a heavy green safe, and, opposite the desk, a couple of vinyl armchairs. A large fluorescent ceiling fixture cast a minty shimmer over the metal furnishings. The scent of drugstore aftershave hung in the air. The thick, whitish shag carpet, which went wall to wall, hushed the faint whistle of the fluorescent light but did little to dampen the whining of a toy bomber that buzzed around at the end of a stick, creating a kind of mechanical halo two feet above Norman’s father’s benevolently beaming face.

  “Come in, come in, come in,” said Orman Normann, putting aside some papers. “Come in, this isn’t going to hurt.”

  Norman stepped farther into the room and then jumped, startled by the discovery that his father was not alone.

  Seated in a chair along the wall to his right was an elderly gentleman dressed in careful business attire, who was unremarkable but for two things: an enormous silky gray mustache and a cone-shaped fur hat that rose a foot and a half above the old gentleman’s skull.

  “Son, meet the foreign minister of Alfur. Minister, my son.”

  Norman bowed his head sheepishly to the old gentleman, whose dark eyes flashed as he tipped his own briefly in response, causing the great hat to nod like some deaf-and-dumb beast.

  “The minister here wants to buy some of my airplanes,” said Orman Normann, and on the word “airplanes” he made the two-handed, two-finger waggle that means “quotation marks.” “But that can wait a minute. Minister, you’ll excuse us?”

  The old gentleman nodded and closed his eyes, and the great fur hat appeared to sleep.

  Orman Normann put the tips of his fingers together. “Norman, your mother tells me you crapped out on your test. Well, she didn’t say ‘crapped out,’ of course, but that’s what she meant. You know that and I know that. And we’re not afraid to say it. Ha! Heck, we could even spell it: C-R-A-P-T O-U-T.”

  Norman’s eyes began to brim again.

  “Now, then, there’s no need for tears, son,” said Orman Normann, standing up. “Norman, I’ve crapped out on plenty of tests myself. Plenty! NO, this just goes to show you what I’ve always said all along: That school of yours is just no darn good. NO darn good. I mean, you learn the same thing every year. Every year it’s the Colonial Era Eastern Woodlands Indians! Now, how’s knowing about the Colonial Era Eastern Woodlands Indians going to help you in your life? It heap big no darn good! How!”

  Norman wiped his nose. “That’s not very funny, Dad.”

  “You’re darn right, it’s not funny!” Orman Normann struck his hands in the air. “And you know what else it isn’t? It’s not good business. What you need is a good business plan for your education.” He pronounced it “edgercation.” He hooked a thumb under his lapel and rocked on his heels. “I want to see quarterly statements for your edgercation with net and gross gains and losses on a percentage of the capital!”

  “Huh?”

  “Huh! I want to see a turnaround in the fortunes of that hot little property I like to call my son.”

  “Huh?”

  “Son”—he stopped rocking and, stepping around the desk, placed both hands on Norman’s shoulders—“what does the CEO of a parent organization do when one of its subsidiaries is about to go belly up?”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll tell you. He brings in an expert. A turnaround man. A rainmaker. A shamus. Or, in your case, the best darn tutor we could get on short notice.”

  “Huh?”

  “Stop saying ‘Huh,’ huh? First thing I’m going to have that tutor do is learn you some new words, a little better vocaberlary.”

  “What?”

  “That’s better. Now, that’s our new business plan. Quarterly progress reports. Up, up, up! And a personal tutor to make sure you move up and stay up. Okay, get going. Your new tutor will be here in a couple of ticks. Can’t remember his name. Your mother knows, she’ll tell you.”

  “What?”

  “Stop saying ‘What?’ Now get going already. Beat it. Scram. Vamoose. Hoof it. I’ve got business of my own to conduct with my elderly friend here, har, har!”

  What else could Norman do? He beat it.

  * * *

  Oodles better! Oodles better! thought Norman as he beat it, and beat it furiously. A tutor! Norman beat it through the entrance hall. His own personal tutor to point out all of his own personal mistakes. Norman stamped his slippered feet up the carpeted stairs. A tutor—to fill his head with what?—more useless stuff! Norman stormed down the hallway, shaking his fist at the flowered wallpaper. What about his free time? What about seeing his friends?

  In his room, he paced and muttered. He stopped at his bookshelves and considered his collection of action figures. He hated action figures! He hoped that his father would never bring him another single robo-vulture or technomasher! This was an insult! This was an insult to him and to his school! He liked his school. He did not care about those other fancy schools. His father said they studied the Colonial Era Eastern Woodlands Indians too much. It was true that they had studied the Colonial Era Eastern Woodlands Indians the last three falls running, but so what? Norman liked the Colonial Era Eastern Woodlands Indians. Norman wished he were studying the Colonial Era Eastern Woodlands Indians right now. Darn it, Norman wished he were in the Colonial Era with the Eastern Woodlands Indians—in a longhouse, rolling around on the deerskins on a platform bed with all his cousins in the smoky air, eating whatever it was the Colonial Era Eastern Woodlands Indians ate, which he could not remember exactly at this moment but would be sure to learn about again next fall.

  Norman looked out into the backyard, imagining where he could build a longhouse, which would have to be a short longhouse, because his backyard was not that big.

  It was a beautiful day. He was annoyed by the dazzling snow; he hated the brilliant sunshine and the fluffy clouds. What good was dazzling snow? Who cared about brilliant sunshine? It was dazzling and brilliant just to be annoying.

  Norman turned from the annoying sky and clenched his fists to his temples. Why were there tests? Why should he go to a new school? Why couldn’t he just stay home, here in his yard—in the short longhouse? And why did he need some strange and horrible tutor?

  balthazar birdsong

  The shriek of a blue jay startled Norman, and he looked back out the window. Other blue jays joined in, and Norman peered through the pine trees to find them.

  As he searched the branches, the gate to the alley swung open and through it strode a thin man wearing a long overcoat and a gray scarf and hat. At the same time, one of the French doors to his father’s study opened and out stepped the foreign minister, his tall fur hat now bent forward and leading the way down the path as if, like a dog kept too long indoors, it sought the fresh open spaces and maybe a bush. The thin man hesitated, but then strode forward and bowed to the foreign minister, who took no notice of him. Turning to watch the elderly gentleman pass, the thin man shrugged and continued toward the house. The foreign minister passed through the gate, adjusted his hat, and was gone.

  Norman waited. Then he heard the soft so
und of the back doorbell, which was just beneath his room in the small hall off the kitchen, and then the first notes of his mother’s piccolo voice skittering up and down, apparently greeting his new tutor—for who else could the man be?—and then a voice like a bassoon, smooth, low, and a little gooselike. There was also a smattering of percussion, supplied, presumably, by his mother’s tripping over various outdoor implements, such as sleds, shovels, scooters, etc., which always littered the floor by the door.

  “Norman!” his mother called. “Norman! Please come downstairs, dear.”

  Norman remembered the foreign minister. Perhaps he could make his escape with him to a foreign country. He calculated the force needed to launch himself from his bedroom window into one of the pine trees. Then he estimated the force of his impact on the lower branches. Would the branches withstand the impact and catch him? Would his ribs withstand the impact of his being caught? The little pine tree had not been looking too healthy the last couple of seasons. His ribs had been feeling a little crackery just the other day. What about over the roof? No, it all required planning! For the first time, Norman acknowledged to himself that perhaps he had spent too much time reading comics when he should have been perfecting escape plans A, B, and C. Why wasn’t he prepared for this?

  “Norman! Come down here, now! Please, dear, if you’re ready, do, please, come, now, immediately, please, do come.”

  Norman took a breath and a long look around his room, as if it were his last, and walked to the top of the stairs.

  At the base of the stairs, in the front hall, stood his mother and the man.

  “Norman dear, come meet your new tutor,” said his mother.

  Between the stair posts, Norman could make out the man’s sharp eyes and beaky nose.

  “Norman, come down now. This is Mr. Balthazar Birdsong. Shall Norman call you Mr. Birdsong?” Norma asked.

  “If I may call you Norman, you may call me Balthazar,” said Balthazar Birdsong, unpocketing his right hand for Norman to take as he reached the bottom step.

  Norman shook the man’s hand and nodded, hesitantly.

  Balthazar Birdsong said, “Norman Normann is a fine name. The name of a conqueror, I should think. A discoverer. A seafarer. Even a devastator and pillager, I would not be surprised.”