No Sad Songs

by Frank Morelli

  “So, you must have done a phenomenal patch job here on the drywall.” He looks back at the fender and smiles. Then he runs his palm over the drywall. “Wow. I’m impressed,” he says. “I’ll bet not even a seasoned contractor can make it look so seamless.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Guess I got lucky.” He walks over, runs his palm over the fender, pulls his hand back, and inspects it like he’d just been cut by something sharp.

  “Yes, it certainly appears as though luck may have been one of your tools.”

  He’s no longer smiling. Now his eyes are narrow and his jaw is clenched. Bad cop’s back in town. “So, I hear you play baseball,” he says.

  “Yep. Second base.”

  “Good hitter?”

  “I’m alright, I guess.”

  “Have any problems seeing the ball?”

  “Not at all. Just problems hitting it sometimes.”

  “I see.”

  He brings his thumb and index finger to his lips and stares up into the rafters for a second. There’s nothing that catches his interest, so he moves along to the workbench. He picks Dad’s Phils hat off the hook I’d placed it on—as if being a cop somehow gives him the right to paw at my personal stuff. It kind of pisses me off because I really hate rubberneckers. I want to tell him to get the hell out of my garage; to stay away from me and what’s left of my family; to do anything at all—I mean, slap the freaking cuffs on me if he has to—besides steal the last few memories I have of my dad. But like I said, he’s a cop, so I don’t say a word. I just stand there with my fists clenched until he places the hat back on the hook.

  “So, if a pitcher were to, say, throw a heater high and tight, you’d be able to jump out of the way?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t see what this has—”

  “Reflexes, Gabe. You have them. The driver of the car that struck the Mullins boy did not. That’s why I let you go the other day, because you don’t add up to me as a suspect.”

  He turns and begins to pace the length of the garage floor. Up and back. In silence. Each time passing Grandpa in his slumber and eyeing him through narrow slits. In his beach chair, the old man looks like he could star in the movie Weekend at Bernie’s. Like I’m about to pull a string and raise one of Grandpa’s limp and wrinkled arms to a full salute. But the only string is a small line of saliva dribbling down his chin—and it’s not really the best time for me to join the mop-up team. So I leave it there and hope the officer doesn’t scoop it up and toss it in one of those clear baggies cops use to store evidence. And suddenly I notice my heart is bouncing all around in my chest, and not in a good way—like when Marlie sneaks up behind me in the school parking lot. It takes all of my energy to keep the damn thing from flying out of my mouth when I speak.

  “That’s good,” I say.

  “However, there’s a pretty big elephant sitting in this garage right now.”

  He points to the car and I know I’m screwed.

  “I took a few paint samples off your car the day I was at Schuylkill High. Had them tested in the lab. They match the scuff marks on the kid’s bike.”

  Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.

  “Would you mind explaining how that could have happened?”

  “I, uh …” Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap. “I—”

  Just then, like a groaning zombie reanimating from its grave, Gramps pops up off his beach chair. He takes one look at Officer Patterson in his uniform and suddenly he’s standing at attention—in full salute.

  “Lt. Ernest LoScuda reporting for duty, Sir!” He says it crisply and clearly, like he’d somehow found a little voice left over from twenty-year-old Ernie. Officer Patterson’s eyes bulge open and I pop up from my crouch in front of the fender in the hope I can wrestle him back into the house before he says anything stupid. But it’s too late. Officer Patterson has already blocked my path, and there’s a look of recognition in his eyes—like a devious plan has just been set in motion.

  “At ease, soldier,” he says, and Grandpa’s shoulders drop a bit and his eyes focus on the officer.

  “What are you—”

  “See this vehicle, soldier?” Gramps looks at the Trans-Am and nods.

  “Can you drive it, son?”

  “Wait,” I say. “You can’t.” I try to maneuver around Officer Patterson but he’s big and he boxes me out and I’ve never been a particularly good rebounder, so he has me beat.

  “Sir, yes Sir!” I hear Grandpa shout, and I don’t like where this is headed.

  “Did you drive it last week, soldier?”

  “No,” I say in the background. “No, of course he—”

  “Sir, yes Sir!” Grandpa shouts over me.

  Officer Patterson turns to me and he has this smug, little grin on his face. I swear if he wasn’t a policeman and didn’t outweigh and outmuscle me by at least thirty men, I’d smack that stupid look right off his ugly mug. Instead, I just stand there staring at him.

  “Correction,” he says, “It appears we have two very large elephants in the room. He points with his left index finger to the car and his right to Gramps, who’s still standing at full attention.

  “What are you suggesting?” I ask as if I don’t already know.

  “Witnesses at the scene couldn’t give us an accurate description of the driver, but every one of them touched on one common point. Age. They all saw a driver much older than the boy who registered the car.”

  “I’m not a boy,” I say. “And besides, that’s impossible.”

  “How’s that, Mr. LoScuda? I think it’s pretty obvious that your—”

  And then I do the only thing I can think to do. The only thing that can keep Grandpa safe and my promise to Dad intact. “Because it was me,” I say. “I want to make a full confession.”

  “What? But—”

  “I said I want to make a confession.”

  Officer Patterson is stunned, as if someone had actually slugged the smug grin off his face. He takes one final step toward Grandpa and says, “Dee-smissed!”

  Grandpa slumps back in his beach chair and begins to nod off again.

  Patterson shakes his head and leads me out of the garage.

  “You’re making a big mistake, son, but that’s where my jurisdiction ends.”

  He nudges me forward and I feel my feet shuffle a few steps across the pavement. The handcuffs click against each other as Officer Patterson pulls them off his belt. I feel the cuffs tighten first around one wrist, and then the other.

  “You can’t take me anywhere,” I say and I hear my teeth chatter against each other like hollow Chiclets. “What about my grandfather? I can’t just leave him here.”

  “But he didn’t do anything wrong,” Patterson says. “You said so yourself. Now, if you’d like to amend your story—”

  “I’m not changing my story.”

  “Then your grandfather is a law-abiding adult. And he looks like he’s comfortable.” I don’t say anything and Patterson takes the silence as an opportunity to tighten the steel on my wrists. “Gabriel LoScuda. I am placing you under arrest You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney …”

  And that’s all I hear before I tune the rest out.

  Gabe LoScuda

  English 4A – Personal Essay #5

  Mr. Mastrocola

  December 19

  Pie in the Skye

  Charlotte Bronte, perhaps one of the most influential feminist writers of her time, has something in common with my Uncle Nick. Trust me, I’m as surprised as you. Probably more, because all it takes is one shared meal with the guy and it becomes obvious you better keep your valuables, any stray body parts, and maybe even your soul far away from his mouth. Dude’s like a human vacuum cleaner at the dinner table—a sight that would have surely made a refined, sophisticated lady like Ms. Bronte shrivel up and disappear right there in her seat.

  But her poetry remains and, from that standp
oint, it becomes hard NOT to notice the connection. At least for me. See, I have the benefit of history. You take, for instance, Bronte’s poem “Regret.” In it, she writes, “Long ago I wished to leave / The house where I was born; / Long ago I used to grieve, / My home seemed so forlorn.”

  Like Nick, Charlotte Bronte saw the grass on the other side of the street and thought, “By God! It looks greener!” Like Nick, she left the place she’d called home and realized, much too late, “how utterly is flown / Every ray of light.” Like Nick, she made a snap decision and it rewarded her with nothing but the weight of her regret.

  But, unlike Charlotte, it never had to turn out that way for Nick.

  “Hold on tight,” he had said one morning as he wrapped his thick fingers around my waist and pulled me back against his body. “I’m gonna send you to the moon, Gabey!” Uncle Nick grunted and heaved me forward. The soapy scent of lavender from Mom’s bushes rode the spring breeze and tickled my nostrils as the tire swing catapulted me toward the treetops. I squealed like a little idiot and relished in the ride as the tire swung lower and lower on its pendulum. Then Nick grabbed the ropes again and the swing lurched to a stop. I rested there on my stomach, panting, my tiny, five-year-old heart still humming at a thousand miles per hour.

  “Again,” I said to Nick, and the big bear churned his shoulder muscles and blasted me off into the stratosphere.

  “You’re gonna be the next Buzz Aldrin, Gabey-Boy!” he shouted from below.

  When the swing slowed to a stop I asked, “Who’s Buzz Aspirin?” Uncle Nick laughed.

  “Buzz Aldrin. He was an astronaut. One of the first humans to walk on the moon. Nobody’s done it since.”

  “Think I’ll walk on the moon some day?”

  “If I toss you any higher that day may be today,” he said, and then he grabbed my nose between two of his fingers and squeezed. Not hard enough to hurt, but just enough to be annoying. I snorted. “You gotta start learning how to live without oxygen,” he said. “Figured I’d help you out a little.”

  Even back then—minus twenty pounds of back fat, the perpetual odor of whiskey, and a whole lot of ear hair—Uncle Nick still knew how to piss me off. So I took my tiny, five-year-old fist and socked him in the arm. I was serious, too. But Nick played along. He turned it into a game, and before long we were chasing each other around the yard, howling like morons, and attempting to recreate wrestling moves that were best left to guys like the Junkyard Dog and Jake “the Snake” Roberts.

  Just as Uncle Nick hoisted me into pile driver formation and pretended to talk a bunch of fake wrestling smack to an imaginary audience, I heard a car roll up and park along the curb. Dad’s car. I always knew when Dad was home because I’d memorized the muffled p-p-p-p-p-p of the Volvo’s engine and the quick, rickety thwack of Dad’s traditional yank on the parking brake.

  Uncle Nick’s voice dried up mid-speech and he replaced me, upright, on the ground. He watched as Dad stalked up the driveway without acknowledging Nick. Dad vanished into the shadows of his garage, but the sounds of a slammed cabinet door and some under-the-breath cursing told us he hadn’t ventured inside.

  “Go play on your swing,” Uncle Nick said. “I need to talk to your father.”

  I listened because that’s what five-year-olds do when confronted with directives from people who could probably eat you for breakfast. But I wish I would have gone with him, because then he and Dad wouldn’t have had the argument, and then I wouldn’t have had to hear all the stuff I heard. And then maybe, just maybe, my Uncle Nick wouldn’t have disappeared for all those years.

  “How can you be so goddamned irresponsible?” I heard Dad say from my perch on the swing. He didn’t sound happy, like he was trying to use his words in the same way my G.I. Joe figurines fired missiles.

  “I studied, Sal. I really did. I just didn’t pass.”

  “Bullshit!”

  There was silence for a few seconds and then Dad’s hammer clanged off the side of his vice grip. He was building a birdhouse again. That’s what he did when something was on his mind. Never hung them in the yard. Just built them.

  “It’s the stress,” Nick said when the hammering died down. “It was killing me. I need a break, Sal.”

  “A break? Your whole life has been a break!”

  “I just need to get away for awhile. Clear my head.”

  “Yeah, well you already cleared out Dad’s bank account. You might as well work on your head next.”

  The hammering started up with greater intensity, and for a moment I thought the conversation would end and the two brothers would cool off. But then Dad stopped pounding on the birdhouse and said, “How can you be so inconsiderate? What the hell is Dad supposed to do now?”

  “Look, I won’t be gone long. I’ll come back, and I’ll be prepared, and I’ll pass the thing this time. Ernie’s investment won’t be wasted.”

  “Investment!” My father spit out the word like it was a bad taste in his mouth. Then he continued his hammering. When he stopped, it was Nick who looked to further the argument.

  “Look … his money won’t be wasted … I promise. It’s just …”

  “Here we go again,” Dad muttered.

  “… that me and Skye. We’re … It’s Jerry Garcia, Sal. I just need a few months.”

  “Months?!” Dad said, and his voice rose two octaves like he’d suddenly transformed into Frankie Valli.

  “Get your teaching license, then you can have months—it’s called the summer. Until then, just grow the hell up.”

  “But Skye and I, we’re—”

  “And to hell with this Skye girl. She’s not for you, Nick.”

  “But I love her.”

  “So what? Get out of love with her and do it quick—before she talks you into tattooing Buddha on your ass or strangles you with her love beads.”

  There was no more hammering. No more talking. Only the reverberations of a slammed door echoing off the garage walls.

  Nick trudged out onto the driveway a minute or two later with a canvas backpack slung over his shoulders. He kneeled down in front of the tire swing and looked me in the eyes. His were red, puffy—the way mine looked after a tantrum over bedtime.

  “Hey, Gabe! I’ll be on the road for awhile,” he said as he ruffled the hair on my head. “Won’t be gone long. But I need you to train hard while I’m away. Get that swing as high as you can—and don’t let your daddy convince you it can’t touch the clouds. You understand?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Oh, here and there. But don’t worry about me. I’ll be back to get you before you know it.”

  “Get me for what, Uncle Nick?”

  “For our trip to the moon,” he said, smiling. “That’s what all the training’s for. Weren’t you listening?”

  I nodded but, even then, something told me Uncle Nick’s idea of “before you know it” was a lot different than my own. If only I’d known about Charlotte Bronte back then. At least then I would have felt comfort in her words. At least then I would have grown up with the knowledge that regret—the evil but necessary demon that perches on each of our shoulders—would eventually bring Nick back home.

  14

  BARS

  It’s hot, and I stare at the ceiling from my squeaky cot. The mattress is about as thick as the bars that hold me from the outside world. I lie there quietly, listening to a distant prisoner sing an old country song that could be Hank Williams, but might well be made up on the spot. I can’t tell. He sings about his old truck and how it’s still in better shape than his woman, but he misses them both equally. And it has this Christmasy feeling to it, like something he might sing if he were out caroling with a pack of bearded Tennessee farmers.

  But maybe it’s just my imagination.

  Maybe it’s what I want to hear. Because, this time last year, I was busy helping Dad string lights on the boxwoods and eating baskets full of Mom’s pizzelles. I could never eat enough of those things, and I don’t even l
ike the taste of black licorice. But, damn, something magical used to happen when Mom would ladle a few tablespoons of batter on the old iron and scoop off one of her thin, waffle-shaped delicacies a few moments later. She’d stack them all in cellophane bags and send them off to the neighbors and her coworkers, and then she’d spend all of January retrieving thank-you letters from the mailbox and whitewashing the refrigerator door with them. It always made it feel like the holidays.

  I doubt I’ll see anything resembling a pizzelle behind these bars. I mean, Officer Patterson might have the license to carry a firearm, but a pizzelle iron? Those were best left to the professionals. Like Mom. Makes me want to cry to even think about it.

  So I think about Emily Dickinson instead, and her obsession with death. And I think about the many thousands of lines of poetry she managed to crank out in her lifetime—all of them great, but all boiling down to one short set of lines that will cling to me always, but never more stubbornly than at this moment.

  In this short life

  That only lasts an hour

  How much—how little—is

  Within our power?”

  Apparently not much. I mean, all I did was ride my bike a few blocks and eat a slice of pizza. Now I’m in jail. How’s that for a short life with little to no power, Emily? Good enough for you?

  I stare at the cinderblock walls, absent of everything including color, and I think about all I’ll miss while I’m stuck in here rotting away like freaking Doctor Manette, until I’m some old man cobbling shoes in an abandoned attic. Baseball. Marlie. Graduation. College. Kids. Everything. But at least my promise to Dad is intact. I hope that’s enough to keep me company behind these lonely bars.

  I roll over and trace the line of Dickinson’s poem on the blank wall with my naked finger. I do it over and over and over again, like if I do it enough they’ll actually show up. Then I’m rudely interrupted.

  “How are the accommodations?” Officer Patterson asks through the bars. I don’t answer, just keep tracing. How much—how little—how much—how little. He continues. “I pulled a few strings, got you a private suite. Didn’t want you in with real criminals.”