No Sad Songs

by Frank Morelli

  I hold up the bottle. John bursts out laughing.

  “What the hell do you expect to do with that?”

  “Paint the car,” I say. “It’s a small spot.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not a finger nail!”

  He laughs so hard the convulsions drop his entire body to the cement where he rolls around and laughs some more. When he rises, his shirt is peppered with chips of sanded-off paint.

  “We’ll make the best of it,” I tell him.

  But the best of it isn’t very good. No, it’s not very good at all.

  In an effort to gain maximum paint coverage on a melon-sized gap of naked metal using only the contents of what amounted to a bottle of Wite-Out, things had gone horribly wrong. Blotches of deep red collide with the edges of the original paint and blend together in the same way you’d mix peanut butter and tuna fish.

  In the middle of the disaster—front and freaking center—the pockmark looms larger than ever. Like an inverted volcano or a distant wormhole, all signs of light and color are sucked into its void. In a way it makes the car look like a giant juice box—maybe filled with Ecto Cooler—and someone has already jabbed a hole in its side with a stabby straw and sucked out all the fluid. Around this gaping nether eye is a patchwork of spidery brushstrokes that covers the virgin metal like a veil. Long, puffy streaks of raised red stretch down as arteries in places where the paint has pooled and collected. If you stand back, the whole thing looks like a giant, bloodshot eyeball. Without professional help, the car is basically ruined. And I can’t afford professional help, so …

  “Hey …. that’s not too bad,” John says. The kid’s a gem. He really is. But he’s also full of shit sometimes.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We should probably open a body shop together. Bag the whole school thing. Invest in a bunch of leather vests. Grow mullets. We’re freaking naturals, man.”

  “Yeah … I guess it’s pretty shitty,” he admits.

  “Pretty shitty?”

  “Ok then … extremely shitty. Like if a cargo plane full of whale crap crash-landed on a mushroom farm.”

  “So you’re saying that opening up a body shop is not a good idea?”

  John doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t say anything. Just keeps staring. Then, all of a sudden, he’s smiling, and I can tell he’s thinking evil thoughts because he gets this look on his face where he’s all pained and stoic like Abraham Lincoln, but also kind of devilish like, well … the devil.

  “What?!” I ask before the kid’s face explodes.

  “Just thinking …” he says, casually. By now though, he’s laughing like a Muppet. “… of you picking up Marlie for the prom in this thing. What a tool!”

  I guess I can’t really argue with him so I join him.

  “She’d take one look at it and be like, ‘Gary … I think I’ll follow in my dad’s Audi.’”

  “Yeah. Or ‘Gareth … it appears that your limo driver sideswiped the azaleas.’”

  He says it in a real snooty voice, probably how people talked in The Great Gatsby or something, and it gets me laughing a little—but if a best friend can’t put a stop to your corniness, who can?

  “Gareth?” I ask. “Big time stretch.”

  “What? You didn’t see what I was doing there?”

  “Not your best. Besides, none of this matters. Marlie doesn’t even know my name. I’ve never said more than two words to her. She wouldn’t let me take her to a hospital if her hair was on fire. The prom? Please.”

  “Don’t give up the dream, man.”

  “Whatever. Maybe I’ll ask Sofia.”

  “Who?”

  “Some girl I met at the veteran’s hospital.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “I don’t know. Kind of weird.”

  “How does she look?”

  “She’s pretty in her own way, but she likes to poke holes in herself.”

  “What?”

  “Piercings. Tattoos. You know. The usual stuff.”

  “Usual?” He says it all weird, like if he were judging each letter in us-u-a-l as he said it. “Does she go to Schuylkill?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That might be a nice detail to find out when—”

  The latch on the door between the garage and the house moves and I freeze. I can see John out of the corner of my eye. He looks like a mannequin too. The door swings open and Nick staggers down the first step and steadies himself into the garage. John and I stand there like we’re in a prison lineup. I resist the urge to shuffle to the front of the car to serve as a blockade between Nick and our mishap. That would be too obvious. Nick’s pretty oblivious to most things. Maybe he won’t notice. Then again, staring at him like we’re a couple of prairie dogs is probably not going to throw him off the scent.

  “Hey, Nick,” I say, “can we help you find something?”

  I walk as far away from the car as possible, flashing my palms and rubbing my fingers together like Nick’s a stray cat and I want to lure him outside. “This place is pretty messy. Like a dungeon in here some—”

  “What the hell happened to the car?” he asks. Wow! That was quick. Who knows? Maybe Nick isn’t the slobbering baboon he appears to be. Maybe he’s just playing a part—like a method actor or something.

  “It’s no big deal,” I say. “Just a few scratches.”

  “It looks like you hired Picasso to do your bodywork.” A Picasso reference? Damn, Nick. Maybe he’s leaving his primate cousins behind after all. He has definitely been standing a little more upright of late.

  “It’s under control,” I tell him.

  But he’s not listening anymore. He’s lost somewhere.

  In thought.

  Nothing seems to be happening, but then he steps a bit closer to our handiwork and I see something. A glimmer. And he turns. Stares at me with enlightenment in his eyes. And I realize this monkey has suddenly become a man. He’s climbed the evolutionary ladder and has discovered the human ability to perform mathematical equations—in this case the ability to put two and two together.

  “You?” he asks, and his eyes flash like he’s trying to brace himself for a punch.

  I shake my head. “I rode my bike over to Perdomo’s.”

  He glances over at John.

  “John was home doing calculus homework,” I tell him. “Mrs. Chen had the the place surrounded by federal agents.”

  Nick doesn’t smile. Neither does John.

  “But I heard the car,” he says a moment later.

  “You did.”

  “That means—”

  I don’t know why but I put my hand on his shoulder. It just feels like the right thing to do.

  Nick looks at me and says, “… that means the worst.”

  10

  BEN DAN OR 笨蛋

  I usually sit in the back of Mastro’s class like a sea sponge—silent and soaking up whatever nutrients happen to float by me before the tide changes on a forty-five-minute period. It’s easier for me to concentrate that way. No chance of fumbling through words or saying something stupid. Dad once told me, “No one can know you’re a moron if they never hear you speak.” He was part joking and part trying to get me to shut the hell up while he was driving, but I guess I took his words to heart.

  But today I can’t help myself. I don’t know what it is—I mean, we’re still talking modern poetry like we have been for weeks—but something just pisses me off. Makes the rage rise a little between the vertebrae in my neck.

  “It’s obvious,” I say without bothering to raise my hand. Everything in the classroom stops. Pencils rise from the scratchy surfaces of notebooks. Routine chatter in the back row is swallowed up on cue. Even the noisy second hand on the industrial school clock above the doorway seems suspended on its last tick. All eyes are on me. “He’s talking about death, the dying of the light,” I continue, “and the need to rebel against it. It’s a poem about inevitability.” The poem is Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,’ a cl
assic I’d read probably a million times on my own before this class. I wasn’t about to let my idiot classmates bastardize the thing.

  “I agree, Gabe,” Mastro says as if I’ve been a class participant all along. “And good word: inevitability. It’s a part of human reality, isn’t it?”

  Mastro. You got love it when he gets all rhetorical on you. “The question Thomas poses here is: will you become a slave to it?” He pauses to write the word “slave” on the chalkboard as if any of us plan to copy it down. I swear, Mastro kills me sometimes. “Or, will you spend your entire life in an unsuccessful battle against it?”

  Of course, some smartass named Dominic DiBruno has to chime in just to prove he’s smarter than the teacher. He’s one of these kids that looks like a rat or a weasel or something. And he’s always annoyed by other people’s opinions, as though he is the only person on Earth capable of thought. “Aren’t both choices essentially the same?” he asks, and he’s mad as hell—like Mastro’s question had just ruined his life.

  “That’s a question I’ll deflect right back at all of you. What do you think?” I see DiBruno’s eyes roll and he exhales deeply, noticeably.

  “I think we all know death is something we can’t avoid,” he says. “Is Thomas going to tell us all to rage against taxes next? I hear they’re inevitable too.”

  There are a few muffled laughs in the back and I see Mastro’s face tighten. He’s smiling. He still appears amused, but I can tell he’d like to strangle DiBruno about as much as I do. Maybe more. So I jump into the ring and look to take my metal chair of literary knowledge to the misshapen gourd that is DiBruno’s skull of ignorance.

  “It’s not that simple,” I blurt out, and the laughter trails off like a record screeching to a stop. The silence startles me and, for a moment, everything I was about to say gets all jumbled up in my throat.

  “Gabe?” Mastro asks when it seems I’m already out of material. “You were saying?”

  “Yes. I, uh, said it’s not that simple.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, Thomas is not only talking about death. He’s also commenting on sacrifice, determination, and regret—all feelings we can be aware of before the light goes out.”

  “Kind of how I regret not faking an illness this morning,” DiBruno says in a loud whisper, which is the kind of crap guys like DiBruno do when they want everyone to hear them. Mastro frowns and takes a deep breath. He’s about to unleash something on DiBruno, but I don’t give him the chance.

  “No. I think we’re the ones who regret that decision,” I say.

  Everyone laughs, and suddenly I’m rolling—feeding off the healthy scoop of humiliation I just dished out to DiBruno. “When Thomas writes of the ‘good men’ and the ‘wild men’ and the ‘grave men’ who ‘learned too late, they grieved it on its way,’ he warns of those who didn’t take full advantage of life’s gifts.”

  “But one of life’s gifts might be a couch and a television,” DiBruno grunts. “If death is coming anyway, why not go out munching Doritos and watching Tom & Jerry?”

  “Because that’s selfish,” I say. “To rage against the dying of the light has more to do with sacrifice than pleasure. Like a soldier, DiBruno. Or a firefighter. You’ve seen them before, right? Between cartoons, of course.”

  I get another round of laughter from my classmates and watch DiBruno slowly deflate in his seat. Mastro’s lips curl up hard and his eyebrows inch toward his hairline. “And me,” I continue. “Think about my situation. You really think I want to—”

  But then the door swings open and Principal Geckhardt steps in. Everyone sits up a little straighter in their chairs. Even Mastro hops off his perch on the surface of his desk and starts walking around, as if moving around the room is proof he’s working harder than anyone else.

  The fluorescent, overhead lights reflect off Geckhardt’s bald head. He fiddles with his pocket square as he speaks. “Mr. Mastrocola,” he says, “we have a visitor who would like a word with one of your students.” I look past Geckhardt out to the hallway, praying not to see a flabby, middle-aged man in a stained t-shirt. But it’s not Uncle Nick. It’s much, much worse.

  “Can we borrow Gabe LoScuda for a moment?”

  My legs go all numb and my heart starts to beat so hard I think it’s going to burst. The man outside the door is in full uniform—a police officer’s uniform. And police officers don’t just roll into your class everyday with a hall pass so they can treat you to a slice of pizza.

  I see Mastro’s face tighten again, like he wants to protect me—like he wants to rage against the dying of the light—but he can’t. He has a job and a wife, and the fate of some random Italian kid from Philly isn’t worth losing all that. “Sure,” he says. Then he glances at me with this nervous smile that tells me he’s sorry.

  I grab my books and stuff them in my backpack, but it doesn’t feel like my own hands doing it. I can feel everyone’s eyes on my back as Principal Geckhardt puts his arm around my shoulder and leads me out to the hallway. The door closes behind us and suddenly I feel like one of those guys in Thomas’s poem who didn’t make things count when they had the chance.

  “This is Officer Patterson,” the principal says in a soothing voice. “Nothing to be alarmed about. He’d simply like to ask you a few questions.”

  I nod because if I say anything they’ll be able to tell I’m freaking out about now. “Good,” he continues. “I’ll leave you two alone. Please release Mr. LoScuda back to class when you’re finished, Officer.”

  “Yes, sir,” Officer Patterson says. His voice is low and monotone—like you’d expect from a veteran cop who probably drinks two or three pots of black coffee each day. He looks at me with eyes so dark you can barely see the pupils—reptile eyes that send a shiver from my head straight down to my feet. “Follow me,” he says, and he’s all business, like some mad scientist has removed all of his vital organs and replaced them with a central processing unit.

  He leads me into a conference room that’s mostly used by teachers for lounging around and having meetings. “Have a seat,” he says. His gun makes little clinking noises against his belt as he takes a seat across from me. Then he opens up a manila folder and tosses three Polaroid photographs down on the tabletop.

  “Recognize any of these?” he asks in a robotic voice.

  I glance down at the pictures and recognize them immediately. One is a landscape shot of a red sports car—the Trans-Am. The other two are close-up shots of the handiwork John and I had performed a few days ago. My heart slows down from its steady rat-tat-tat and almost stops completely.

  I’m screwed and it’s inevitable. Thank God DiBruno’s not around to see this. He’d never let me hear the end of it. Officer Patterson is staring at me, not saying a word. He knows his silence is the rope I’ll use, like most criminals, to hang myself.

  I start thinking about Grandpa being led away in handcuffs, rotting away in some squeaky gurney in a smelly prison hospital where they serve split pea soup four times a day and sponge-bathe the patients with paper towels. I think about Dad and letting him down, and about Mom—how she’d probably look at me with her doe eyes and make me feel all guilty for the rest of my life. And I think about Nick and me and how we’d never quite know if we could exist together on this planet. If he could be uncle and I could be nephew like in a normal family.

  And I couldn’t accept any of it. It’s time to rage on, Mr. Thomas.

  “Yes,” I say. “I recognize it. That’s my car.”

  “And it’s currently parked outside of school?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Officer Patterson lifts one of the close-up shots from the table and holds it in front of me. “Can you tell me how this happened?” A few minutes ago this question would have blown me out of the water, but now I’m steely. Armed with the words of Dylan Thomas I know exactly what to say.

  I let out a small chuckle, as if the whole interrogation is no big deal and happens to me on a daily basis.
<
br />   “Oh, that? Funny story,” I say, and I’m getting downright congenial. I’m suddenly feeling proud of myself. “I was trying to pull it into the garage the other night. It was dark and I judged it wrong. Scraped the fender across the doorframe and hit a couple of miscellaneous items in the garage. Kind of embarrassing.”

  Officer Patterson’s expression does not change. If he’s amused, he doesn’t let on.

  “And who did the repair work on the vehicle?”

  “Oh, that would be my friend John and I. We basically sanded it down and repainted.”

  “Does Schuylkill offer an auto shop program?”

  “Can’t you tell?” I ask with a nod. Officer Patterson is unmoved, expressionless. I decide to change my answer. “No, sir,” I say.

  “Why didn’t you bring it to a professional?”

  “I’m not exactly rich,” I tell him. “Thought I’d save a few bucks.”

  “And your mother and father? What did they say about it?”

  “Nothing,” I tell him. “Absolutely nothing at all.”

  “They had nothing at all to say about their son crashing into their garage?’

  “My parents are dead,” I say

  Officer Patterson’s eyebrows raise up about one millimeter—probably the most emotion this guy’s ever expressed in his life. But something tells me he knew all along and just wanted to hear me say it. The bastard. I’m a little pissed so I fire back. “I’m sorry, but is there some kind of law I broke by being a horse’s ass?”

  He doesn’t answer. Just keeps firing off questions.

  “You live alone?”

  “No, I live with my uncle and grandfather.”

  “Your grandfather?”

  “Yes. We take care of him. He’s sick.”

  “How so?”

  “Alzheimer’s.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He says it like he’s known for longer than just a second, and I don’t respond.

  After a moment or two of silence, Offcer Patterson then asks “So, can you tell me who fixed the damage to the garage?”.