No Sad Songs

by Frank Morelli

“You’re a fine soldier, lieutenant,” I say, and we salute each other before I dismount the bed and file back into the ranks. Gramps goes back to unfolding and refolding his dirty laundry—one of the perpetual rigors of a man in assisted living.

  I feel Doc’s hand on my shoulder, patting out the universal rhythm that says, “Good job, kid.” But I feel this urge to slap his hand off my shoulder and tell him to go to hell. That if he ever treats my grandfather like he’s some kind of hopeless case, some deranged mental patient, I’ll fire him out through the grimy windows of Room 706. But then I remember: Gramps is a hopeless case. He’ll never get better. Never rise up out of that bed and recite the state capitals. So I let Doc have his moment—let him think he’s turned out to be some great mentor to me or something. Adults seem to love that crap. Mostly I keep my mouth shut because I don’t want to upset Gramps on our only day together.

  After we’re all settled, Doc sits us down in the back of the room and updates us on Grandpa’s condition. “It’s pretty much status quo,” he tells us. “He’s eating, taking his medication with some prodding, and he seems to be sleeping rather consistently.”

  “That’s good,” I say. “But does he seem happy?” Doc looks at me funny, like I’d just asked him to explain the theory of relativity to a classroom full of third graders.

  “Well, he seems comfortable,” Doc says.

  “That’s not what I asked. I asked if he’s happy.”

  Doc exhales and taps his pen on the corner of his clipboard.

  “Are you happy, Gabe?” he asks. “I would say, in looking at you, that you are a generally happy person—but is that truly the case?”

  I don’t respond because I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Doc takes the silence as a cue to continue his Psych 101 lesson.

  “You see, we’re the only ones who can truly say whether or not we’re happy. You don’t have to be a patient in an assisted living facility to fall in that category. Does your grandfather appear to be happy? At times, yes. But if you want an honest answer, Gabe, I can’t provide it for you. The research on patients like your grandfather hasn’t reached levels where we can predict with any reliability what the experience is like from a mental standpoint.”

  “Is he suffering?” Nick asks.

  “Not at the moment,” Doc says. “He’s just as strong as any healthy man his age, but you can never predict how the body will react to changes in the brain. We’ll have to monitor him and cross bridges as we come to them.”

  “I’m not,” I say. And that puzzled look rises on Doc’s face again.

  “Not what?” he asks.

  “Happy. This whole situation sucks for all of us.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But I’m not incapable of being happy again,” I say, “and I guess I can accept what’s ahead of us—because what choice do we have?”

  “Well, that’s a start,” Doc says, and he pats me on the shoulder.

  This time I don’t have the urge to put him in a headlock.

  “We changed dosages on some of your grandfather’s meds. Nothing major, but you’ll need to sign off on a few documents for insurance purposes. Don’t forget to do so at the front desk before visiting hours are over.”

  I thank Doc and tell Nick to enjoy some time with his father while I get all the paperwork out of the way. I hop on the elevator and press the button with a big star on it to go to the lobby. There’s some lame elevator version of Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling” playing—as if the original wasn’t lame enough. The elevator lurches and begins its slow, shaky descent to the lobby. After it passes the fifth floor, I feel the cable tighten and the floor push up against my feet. The bell chimes as the number four pops up on the overhead indicator. The doors rattle and open and, standing in front of me, is a splattered nightmare of ink and mascara holding a cup of coffee.

  The dark circles around her eyes make the sockets look bottomless, and they clash against the redness of her lids. Streaks of makeup slash across her face like war paint, and her shoulders hunch forward like she’s bearing the weight of eternity on her back.

  Her eyes flash when they meet mine. She recovers and plods forward to join me in the elevator car. She pushes the button for the second floor—the cancer unit—and stands on the opposite side of the car, as far away from me as possible.

  “You can talk to me, you know,” I say as the doors slide shut.

  “I know,” she says, and her voice sounds all distant and empty.

  “You okay?”

  And that’s all it takes for Sofia to drop her cup of scalding coffee on the floor and to bury her face in the sleeve of her flannel shirt. Sobs take over her body and wrack at her ribs and back until my arms are around her and her tears stain the shoulder of my t-shirt.

  “She’s not gonna make it,” she squeezes through the tears and the sobs and the sniffles. “My mom. She’s not gonna make it.”

  She says it over and over again as I press her to my chest and rub little circles on her shoulder blades. The doors open on the second floor and I lead Sofia to a pair of folding chairs outside of her mother’s room. I grab a box of tissues off the nurse’s station and wipe the tears from Sofia’s face the way my mother used to do when I’d fall off my bike.

  “What’s happening?” I ask when it seems I have her calmed down.

  “It spread,” she says with a sniffle, “to her lungs and her lymph nodes. It’ll be any day now.” And that instigates a whole new round of sobbing and embracing and tear wiping. The whole time I feel like this wimpy little alien who landed on a new planet where there’s no chance for survival. And here’s this girl who’d literally make me piss my pants if I didn’t know her and happened upon her up some dark alleyway—and even she can’t seem to stand up to this freaking bully we call life. And it’s weird because, in those moments of grief and strife, I see the frightened little girl under all of those tattoos and the dyed hair and the ripped clothing and the punk rock. I see that, under it all, she’s just Gabe LoScuda like the rest of us—just in a meaner and cooler package.

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “I really am sorry.”

  “I know,” she says.

  “And you might not want to hear this, but you were right.”

  “About what?”

  “Grandpa. You and John did the right thing. I didn’t see it at the time, but it was what I needed.”

  “I know,” she says.

  “And, even though we’ve been kind of like strangers lately, I need you to know that I’ll be there for you because I’m not a poseur. Not even as a friend.”

  “I know,” she says. “I’ve always known. From the first time we talked, Gabe, I’ve been all ears. See?” She unbuttons a tiny pocket on the sleeve of her flannel and pulls out a small piece of flesh-colored plastic. She hands it to me.

  “It’s a freaking ear,” I say. “Don’t tell me you’re going all Van Gogh on me. I mean, you’re a pretty good artist but—”

  “You don’t remember?” I flip the plastic ear up in the air like a coin and catch it on the back of my hand.

  “Of course I remember. Mr. Potato Head! The dude wouldn’t shut the hell up that day in the waiting room.”

  Sofia laughs and tries to mask her smile, but she can’t. When I see the tension lift from her face, I can’t help myself. I laugh. And then I think about what Nick had said to me back in the parking lot about finding the laughter again. The good times. And I look at Sofia’s face. There’s so much in it. So much character. So much pain. So many years of caring for her mother that I doubt she’ll understand life when she’s not bound by her servitude any longer. She’ll barely recognize it—like a wimpy, little alien on a foreign planet filled with pain at every turn.

  “Keep it,” she says.

  “No, no. You have to keep it,” I tell her. “You were smart enough to save it so—”

  “I already have my own,” she says, and she pulls down the front of her shirt a few inches to reveal a
new work of art. “I did it myself. Had to use a few different mirror angles to get it right.”

  I’m amazed. On her chest, just a few inches above her heart, is a tattoo of a Mr. Potato Head ear. There’s a dangly earing hanging from the lobe—one like you might have seen worn by Giants legend Lawrence Taylor—with a diamond-encrusted cross hanging from the end of a chain. Only Sofia could have dreamed up something like that.

  “As usual, mine’s a little cooler than yours,” she says.

  I laugh. Again.

  “I love it,” I say. “It’s perfect.” And before I can make a protest to my body, I feel my face move closer to Sofia’s. She doesn’t look away, just stares at me through midnight eyes. The warmth of her lips meets mine, and our fingers instinctively lace around each other and, for a few moments, we’re lifted far, far away from the antiseptic din of the hospital; far away from court rooms and assisted living facilities and funeral homes; far away from all that makes the act of living on this planet feel like living. And then our lips part and Sofia rests her head down on my shoulder.

  We sit in folding chairs outside her mom’s room without saying a word and listen to the squeaky wheels of a portable IV unit call to us from a distant hallway. And everything feels all right. For once.

  “So what are you gonna tell Marlie?”

  “Oh God,” I say, “you know about that?”

  “John and I have kept in touch. You didn’t think I’d stop spying on you, did you?”

  “Boy, am I screwed with her.”

  We burst out laughing and raise the eyebrows of a stern nurse who’d just returned to her medical station. But we don’t care because, at least for now, the laughter has us insulated from the worst—lying only a few yards behind us through the hospital-white threshold. We know we can’t stop it from coming.

  22

  LAUGHTER

  Uncle Nick must have grown tired of looking at the stupid grin I had plastered on my face all the way from the hospital to our driveway. I didn’t talk. Just smiled and kept my foot on the pedal.

  “You didn’t happen to swallow some of Grandpa’s pills, did you?”

  “What?” I ask, with the same stupid grin still stuck on my face.

  “Pills … grandpa’s pills,” he repeats. “Maybe one of the little, pink ones?”

  He was talking about Razadyne. Happy pills. They give them to building jumpers and people like Gramps, so even if we can’t tell if they’re happy or not, at least it looks that way on the outside. Makes us feel better. Also makes me wonder whom the pills are really meant to serve.

  “No. You’re kidding, right?”

  “Well, we go to a hospital and you come home with a face that looks like it should be floating over the Thanksgiving Day parade. What am I supposed to think?”

  “I’m fine, Nick.” Shitty grin still hanging strong. “No. I’m not fine. I’m great, actually. Really freaking great!”

  I lean back against the grey cloth of my faithful car’s interior. Take a breath. If I inhale just right and think hard enough, I can still smell the new car scent from the day Dad first rumbled into the driveway with it. It would have been nice to make him proud. To stand up in the face of the improbable—maybe even the impossible—and flick it away like some annoying fly.

  But today, after seeing Sofia transform from the model of Athena into a puddle under Athena, and seeing how even she is nowhere near indestructible, it made me think: maybe Dad isn’t so disappointed in me wherever he may be. That maybe somewhere, stuffed deep inside the hard shell that has cooled around Grandpa’s surface, the old man is happy. He’s taking Sunday drives down wooded roads and there are no squirrels in sight.

  And hey, at least I have Nick. And at least I have time. And at least I have friends. And that’s about when I feel the grin vanish from my face like it’d never been there in the first place—because something very big was missing.

  “Nick. Can you get out of the car? Now. Please,” I say. Nick looks at me like maybe he was the one that swallowed half a bottle of pills.

  “You alright?”

  “Yep. I’m fine. But there’s somewhere I need to be.”

  Nick steps out on the driveway, pushes the door closed, and leans in like he’s about to say something. Probably something like, “Dude, did you catch something from Grandpa?” But I’m already halfway down the driveway, maybe even nipped the poor guy’s foot with my front tire. I couldn’t tell. But I’m too locked in on necessity to worry, so I spin the Trans-Am around and race off down the street.

  I ring the doorbell and listen to footsteps scatter across the wooden floor inside. John and I used to pretend we were Olympic speed skaters and glide around on the same sheet of pine in our socks on days after Lily had waxed it to a shine. She was like a tiny Zamboni filled with fury instead of water—especially after a few rounds on the “rink” wiped away her shine.

  The door swings open and Lily Chen stands there expressionless.

  “Hello, Gabe.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Chen. I was—”

  “John’s not here.”

  “Oh, I see. I was—”

  “I gave up my secretary job long ago. If you have a message you can tell him yourself.”

  “He won’t talk to me.”

  “Me neither.”

  It’s weird. For a second, I think I see a muscle twitch in her face as she says it. Probably just my imagination.

  “He won’t?” I say, trying to sound as surprised as possible. “That’s weird.”

  “Not weird, Gabe. It says so in this book.”

  She holds up a copy of some text-booky looking thing with a picture of these two lanky teenagers in cutoff jean shorts walking down a wooded path. Their backs are turned and they both have 70s-style afros, so you can’t really tell which one is the guy and which one is the girl—or if that’s even the combination of genders at all. “It says here that teenagers rebel. They try to leave the nest. Avoid responsibility. Get pimples.”

  “I’m sure it’s just a—”

  “It says it, Gabe. In this book. Right here. You see it?”

  She spins a few pages and shoves it about two inches in front of my face. I push it away.

  “It’s just a book. And it can’t account for people like John. He’s a good son, Mrs. Chen. He works harder than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s always on time. He holds doors—all the stuff you’re always ragging on him about.”

  I take a breath and notice Lily’s eyes are wild with fire, but I’m on a roll so I jump right back in the ring. “He does his homework, has perfect freaking attendance—and he’s my friend. And that’s not an easy thing to be, Mrs. Chen. I mean, have you seen me? My Uncle Nick and my crazy, robotic grandfather? We’re borderline psychopaths, us LoScudas. If it wasn’t for your son we’d all be in straitjackets by now. He’s a great kid, Mrs. Chen. The best that I know of, and no book is ever gonna tell you that. You have to look. With your own eyes. And you’ll definitely see it.” Then I notice it again. A muscle twitches and then an eyelid budges, and then a single, perfect tear rolls down Lily Chen’s face, extinguishing the flames.

  “And one more thing—please, get that kid a car! Don’t you think he deserves some freedom?”

  But Mrs. Chen never gets a chance to respond because the door swings back a little further and from behind it springs the Asian Michael Jackson. My best friend.

  “The car thing was a nice touch,” he says, “but don’t count on it.”

  “John!” I say. “So I should keep picking you up late every morning?”

  “How do you think I’ll get to school? Walk?”

  And for the second, maybe third, time that day I find myself laughing.

  Gabe LoScuda

  English 4A – Personal Essay #9

  Mr. Mastrocola

  March 17

  No Sad Songs

  Life is a series of your best and worst moments. It’s like pizza—and hear me out on this. Because, one day, you might find yourself sinking your teeth
into the cheesiest, crustiest, most pepperoni-laden slice of pizza you’ve ever experienced. It could be, in the moment, the greatest slice you’ve ever encountered—the grand, motherload of all of pizza’s past, present, and future. But inevitably, that moment passes and you find yourself—at another date in the not-so-distant future—nibbling at the edges of a slice of pizza with a cheese-to-crust-to-pepperoni ratio that makes your current favorite taste like an old dishrag.

  My point is that living life, like being a self-proclaimed pizza connoisseur, takes a certain understanding of how to cope with rising temperatures—because you always have to be prepared for the next in a series of escalating degrees. You have to be prepared at all times for something far better or something far worse than you’ve ever imagined to swoop in and steal the title of “best or worst thing ever.” Whatever that thing may be.

  Take me, for example. I thought the hardest thing I’d ever face was losing my parents on some random night in August. I figured I’d binge out on some video games, go to sleep, and see them in the morning. The next thing I know, a crowd of officers flanks me and they’re asking me if the two lifeless shells on the metal gurneys in front of me are the same people who raised me. It was hard. Shocking. Life shattering.

  But then I became a parent. At the ripe old age of eighteen, I became the world’s first teenage male to give birth to an eighty-year-old man. And it happened at the precise moment Dad’s Volvo flipped over the guardrail and passed beyond this world forever.

  And if it wasn’t enough, at that point, to clean dribble off an old guy’s chin, and bathe the man who used to bounce you around on his knee, and to run back and forth from doctor’s appointments to work to school and back again, enter my Uncle Nick—the only man in history too invisible to be named as the black sheep of his own family—with a half a pint of scotch and two smokes in his pocket. Suddenly, I’m a single parent of two. As if I hadn’t already been striking out with Marlie—and any other girl within a fifty-mile radius—at a rate that made Pete Incaviglia look like Ted Williams. I was about one disorderly conduct charge away from a Jerry Springer episode.