The Cure for Modern Life

by Lisa Tucker

  Part of him knew it would never happen, but another part of him, deep in his chest, felt lighter, like a hand had just reached inside him to hold up the weight of his heart. Each and every stupid time. He always felt like a fool when his mother inevitably failed again, usually within hours of the nausea starting. Even the detox places couldn’t help because the free ones were always seventy-two hours, and seventy-two hours wasn’t enough to make his mom get better. She’d come out still throwing up, sometimes as often as every fifteen minutes. When she tried to go back in, the detox place said there wasn’t an open bed; she’d have to go to the ER. The ER was out; his mom had been arrested the last time she went there, and Danny had barely managed to escape with Isabelle before the cops took them away, too. By the time his mom finally broke down and got more drugs, she would be so dehydrated she’d have trouble finding a vein and have to sniff the stuff until she could hold down Gatorade. Yeah, he knew about Gatorade for dehydration, and he knew about Emetrol, too. His mom had tried everything to stop vomiting, but nothing seemed to work except the stuff in the needles.

  The winter after Isabelle was born, his mom stopped being pretty. She’d lost too much weight and she was always dirty, refusing to wash when the rain bucket was full, saying it was too cold, or even to clean up when Danny offered her one of Isabelle’s precious baby wipes. She looked like a homeless person, which just made it harder, since no one would believe her when she said she needed money for food or diapers, even when it was true. By the time Isabelle was a year old, all the begging fell to Danny, but, luckily, he knew that providing for the weak was part of a knight’s job. Of course a knight had to be dignified about it, too. He couldn’t just come right out and beg for food. That was beneath him; plus, it wasn’t smart. Danny could tell it made people nervous, knowing they were looking at someone too poor to eat, at least if that someone was an eight-year-old kid holding a one-year-old. After a few hungry days, he discovered that what he really needed to ask for wasn’t food or diapers or even money, but train fare.

  Over the next month or so, he developed an elaborate story about his mom taking him and his sister shopping at the Gallery, but then losing sight of her. “It was all my fault,” he’d say, sniffing like he was holding back tears. “She told me to stand right by the fountain, but I saw this toy car and I walked away with Isabelle. When I got back, I couldn’t find her anywhere.” Before the person could say a word, he would stand up straighter, square his skinny shoulders, and add, “But my dad taught me what to do if this ever happened. You know, like in a 9/11 attack or something. Dad said to go to the train station and buy tickets for Isabelle and me on the R5 and then get off at Ardmore Station. Our house is only a block from there. I know how to walk home, too, ’cause Dad taught me.”

  So far, so good, as long as he and Isabelle were reasonably clean (face and hands washed, no heavy body odor) and he was in the vicinity of Suburban Station, where he liked to be anyway, since the big companies with lots of employees were around there. He’d learned how to pick out people who were comfortable in the city, people who knew that kids rode trains all the time, even if most of those kids were older than Danny. He’d learned not to be too close to the Gallery, or some lady might try to force him back to the mall, thinking they could just have a security guard page his missing mom. He’d also learned that it had to be his dad’s advice to take the train, since when he used Mom instead people mumbled that his mom was harsh and suggested calling either his parents or the police—in which case he said no thanks and took off. The house in Ardmore was trial and error, discovered after a bunch of other towns didn’t work. He wasn’t sure why; maybe because they didn’t have houses a block from the train station. The 9/11 part he never would have thought of, but it was handed to him by a stooped old guy who said, “I bet your dad taught you that in case of another terrorist stunt like 9/11. You can never be too prepared. Your dad is one smart fellow.”

  The final touch was all his own idea, and it was the best part. He would take a toy car out of his pocket and force out the tears, sputtering, “But now I can’t do what Dad told me, because I spent the emergency train fare he gave me on this.” Almost everyone who’d stayed with him this far—and Danny told the whole story very quickly, knowing most people can walk away from pleas for help without a second thought—would hand over the train fare. Sometimes they gave him ten or even twenty dollars extra, “just in case.”

  The toy car was back in his pocket before anyone could get a good look at it, but that just made it seem like Danny didn’t care about the dumb old car anymore, which happened to be true. He hated that car because he’d stolen it. This was before he’d sworn himself in as a knight, but it was still embarrassing to him. The code was to steal only when absolutely necessary, meaning food, clothing, shelter, or medicine. Since his story was a lie, his begging was stealing, too, and he knew it, but it was okay as long as he used the money only for necessities. The only toy he had ever let himself buy with the train fare money was Isabelle’s stuffed elephant. He bought it because she wouldn’t let go of it, but also because it had a string on its back that you could pull and make it say things. He figured she’d learn some words that way. He was wrong, but even his mom said it was a good idea. Somehow Isabelle had to learn to talk.

  Of course Danny wanted all kinds of things for himself, but most of them he could put out of his mind by reminding himself that toys were for kids. It helped that he didn’t really feel like a kid anymore, partly because he had to work so hard to get money for his mom and his sister, but mainly because he was the only person in the house who tried to clean the toilet and bathtub or even dumped the trash can before it overflowed.

  Isabelle was fourteen months old when his mom suddenly found a place for them to live. “And it’s free,” she said. “All we have to do is walk over there and move right in.” Danny was glad to get out of the abandoned car, but he wondered what kind of house could cost nothing. He found out when they got there. The tiny yard had junk all over it, half the windows were boarded up, and the front door was split at the bottom, like someone had tried to kick it in. But Danny was relieved, figuring his mom might have lucked out and really found a house no one else wanted. Too bad it wasn’t true. The house already had lots of people living there—so many that Danny never learned half of their names. It didn’t help that new people were always moving in just as people he’d gotten used to decided to leave, or “split,” as they called it. Almost everyone who lived there used needles like his mom; the only ones who didn’t were babies and kids. Danny was terrified of these people and he begged his mom to move back to the car, even though it was October and already getting cold again, but she said it had been towed. When he walked over a few days later, he was surprised to discover that she wasn’t lying; the car was gone.

  So they weren’t homeless anymore and, really, the house wasn’t as bad as it looked on the outside. It didn’t have much heat, but it did have running water and flushing toilets and a microwave oven someone brought and an old TV, though no refrigerator or stove. The lights were off a lot, but when they had power, it was like a party and everyone made bags of popcorn in the microwave and sat on the floor, huddling around the space heaters, watching the one channel they could get on the TV, the one with Eyewitness News , which Danny liked because it taught him so many useful things about the city. For example, though he’d already been to most sections of Center City—Society Hill, Queen Village, Old City, Northern Liberties, the Art Museum area, Rittenhouse Square— Eyewitness Newstaught him that West Philadelphia wasn’t a slum, like his mom always said, but a place with the richest college in town, the University of Pennsylvania. He wouldn’t have been on the Walnut Street Bridge that night if he hadn’t known this. His plan was to find a rich college student coming back late to the dorms. He was going to tell this college student the truth: that his sister was sick and he needed money for a cheap hotel, just for a day or two. The power was off again at the house, and even though he’d man
aged to find enough branches to keep a fire going in the fireplace, it was still way too cold there for Isabelle to get well.

  His mom had insisted on coming with them because it was so late, even though she was out of drugs. Everyone in the house seemed to be out of drugs that week; Danny wasn’t sure why, but he knew all that sickness had to be bad for his sister. That was the other reason he was determined to get her out of there. Someone was always in the bathroom, and he couldn’t even get in to wash the vomit off Isabelle’s face and hands.

  When the rich man offered to help them, Danny was stunned. He was almost sure the guy was on something, but it still didn’t make sense because, from everything he’d seen, being on drugs didn’t make a person more likely to help anyone. Before the man passed out, Danny’s plan was to take the Emetrol and Gatorade and then ask him for the hotel money, which he was pretty sure the guy would have given him. He would never have dreamed of asking to spend the night in the man’s apartment. Even the most sympathetic people wouldn’t offer to let Danny and Isabelle stay in their house, not for a night, not even for an hour.

  He was still planning to ask for hotel money in the morning, when the man woke up, but by then his mother had changed everything by stealing from him. Isabelle was sleeping so peacefully, but he still would have picked her up and left with his mom if only she’d given him enough of the stolen cash to pay for a hotel. When she wouldn’t give it to him, he told her she’d have to leave without them. She cried and said he didn’t trust her. “What has happened to you? I’m your mom. With all this money, I can find us an apartment. I have enough here for a down payment and the rent for months!”

  They argued for a while, but he wouldn’t budge and finally she left, saying she’d be back in the morning and prove he was wrong; she’d come by and get them and take them to their new home. He didn’t believe any of it. He blamed himself for bringing his mom along in the first place. He’d been worried that she’d just lie on the riverbank and freeze to death, but he had to learn to harden his heart to her, somehow, if he was ever going to protect Isabelle. What if the man really had called the security guard and the police? His sister might have ended up in some home for retarded kids where no one cared for her, and no one even saw how special she was. And Isabelle wasn’t retarded anyway; he always wanted to punch kids who called her that. She was slow in some ways, but she was thinking a lot, he was sure. She laughed at jokes and even tried to make some herself, without words. Even his mom said Isabelle was “funny as all get-out,” which was one of her phrases from childhood. She’d grown up in the South: a small town outside of Memphis. Danny wasn’t sure why “all get-out” would be funny, but he knew what his mom meant.

  If it weren’t for Eyewitness News , he wouldn’t have known that some grown-ups like to have sex with kids, and he wouldn’t have known how horrible everyone thought grown-ups like that were. He felt like a creep using that to threaten the guy, but he knew he didn’t have a choice. Even if the man would have given him the money for a hotel at that point, just to get rid of them, there was no money left because his mom had taken it all. There was no time to go to an ATM, either, because he was going to Japan, which Danny knew was a long way from here, but still, he planned on keeping his word. As soon as Isabelle woke up, they would leave. She was obviously feeling better because she hadn’t vomited all night; the Emetrol must have done the trick. He’d find some food in the kitchen, and then he’d walk out of there forever. They’d go back to the house, where they’d probably find that his mom had blown all the cash she stole getting drugs for everyone. She was always generous like that.

  In the meantime, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to tiptoe around and take in all the wonders of this place, the most beautiful house he’d ever seen, better than any TV apartment, so large it was like the inside of a castle. There was an entire wall of enormous windows. A ceiling that went up so high, it was like some giant lived here. A bathroom large enough for a giant, larger than the room where he and Isabelle and his mom slept with six or seven other people. An enormous tub and, across from it, a shower in a box all by itself, made of glass that was so clean you could see the on/off handles sparkling without even opening the door. If there was a door—Danny didn’t see one, and he wondered how you got in the box. Maybe there was a button that made one of the glass walls evaporate. Anything could happen in a place as fantastic as this.

  In the kitchen, he looked up to see dozens of gleaming pans hanging from the ceiling. A case of knives that all looked serious enough to stab someone, though he figured they were just for cutting thick food. Dozens and dozens of white electric gadgets; Danny didn’t know what most of them did. He gently opened the cabinets, looking for food, but there wasn’t as much as he expected. He did find a box of Premium crackers, which he knew would be good for Isabelle since she’d been sick. Then he kept looking until he found a drawer with a loaf of bread. He took out two slices, hoping to make himself a sandwich, but the refrigerator didn’t have any meat slices or cheese. He couldn’t even find any peanut butter, so he ended up eating the bread by itself—an “air sandwich,” as his mom called it. He also found some fancy cookies that tasted like ginger and ate about a dozen of them.

  The desk where his mom found all the money was right out in the open, in what the man had called the “loft area” but his mom called the living room. Probably because the desk was too big to fit anywhere else in the place. The top was as big as the double doors that led to the kitchen. The chair was big, too, but not big enough to let the man reach the far side of the desk, where a bunch of magazines were stacked up, all with weird names. Danny had a library card and he read at night when Isabelle was asleep, whenever he had batteries for his flashlight, but he had no idea what a lot of these words meant.

  When Danny sat down in the chair, he was just planning to watch the big screen change pictures while he waited for Isabelle. He knew this was called a computer monitor, and the thin gray thing attached to it was a computer. It was the man’s second computer, actually; Danny had noticed another one peeking out of the top of his black bag before he zipped it up and left. To most people the pictures on this screen might have been boring, but to Danny, just watching them shift and change was interesting enough to keep him sitting quietly for ten minutes. He loved watching the word Research dissolve and be replaced by Innovation , even if he didn’t know what Innovation was. He wasn’t sure about Integrity, either, but he knew it was all some kind of math when he saw the big orange block containing an equal sign. He waited through several more pictures before the screen finally put it all together:ASTOR-DENNING. RESEARCH +INNOVATION +INTEGRITY =ENHANCING HEALTH ,SAVING LIVES .

  He’d been very good at math in first grade, but they hadn’t gotten around to how you add words together. He smiled at how cool the idea was. Everything here was so cool that he thought the man was the luckiest guy on the planet. He even liked him more because he had all this great stuff and because Danny had a hunch he’d gotten all this from that weird equation. Maybe the guy was even saving lives, which would mean he deserved to have a palace, like any good king. No wonder he had to protect this place from strangers. Danny was relieved his mom hadn’t thought to take the computer. She would have pawned it without even knowing it contained the equation, and maybe been responsible for killing someone.

  After Danny finally grew tired of the pictures on the screen, he noticed something else hanging off the side of the gray computer. He couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to see this beautiful thing. It was the one thing in the world that was absolutely irresistible to him.

  He’d thought about it for months, wanting one so bad, even though he knew it was as unnecessary as a toy. He’d reminded himself over and over that he couldn’t steal one, no matter how easy it would be. And it would be so easy—that was the hardest part. Though it cost hundreds of dollars, it was so small he could drop it in his pocket and run before whoever he’d taken it from even noticed it was gone. And people treated theirs so cas
ually. Every day, he saw these treasures hanging out of backpacks and purses; once, he even spotted one sitting all alone on the bottom step of a fire escape. That one he would have taken if its owner hadn’t remembered to come back for it right as Danny made up his mind that it didn’t belong to anyone now, so it wasn’t stealing.

  Obsessing about this stupid thing had made him so miserable that he wished he’d never discovered it. If only he hadn’t let that teenage girl talk him into listening to it. The girl had just given him thirty-two dollars, though she said she didn’t believe his train fare story. Probably because he didn’t have Isabelle with him; it never worked as well when his sister wasn’t there. That day she had a doctor’s appointment, and his mom had promised she’d take his sister to the clinic for all her shots. His mom wasn’t sick, so he knew she’d do it.

  “But hey,” the girl said, smiling, “I know you need money and I don’t; my parents are loaded. So here, I’ll give you whatever I have.”

  She had long golden hair, just like a princess. He thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, even if she did talk too loud. He must have stepped back from her voice because she laughed and said, “Sorry. I’m shouting over Radiohead. God, I love that band. Ever heard them?”

  “No.”

  She pulled tiny white plugs from her ears and handed them to him. “Check it out.”

  “I better not.” He wasn’t sure how to work the plugs. The only headphones he’d seen people use were much bigger, probably because this kind was too small to notice unless you stared at someone, which Danny never did. It put people off to be stared at.

  “Come on, don’t be scared. I’m not going to bite you, even though I am a girl.”