Notes From the Midnight Driver

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  I didn’t open my eyes, but I didn’t have to. My mom had that loud whisper people use when they’re doing a really miserable job of being quiet, and she was only fifteen feet away. “Ssshhhhh!” she said, “They’re asleep.”

  Then a man’s voice answered: “I see them. What the hell is that splotch on the rug next to them, though?”

  I had a question, too: What was my dad doing here with my mom at two A.M.?

  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

  Okay, I admit it: I employed the “fake sleep” trick, at least until the murmur of my parents’ voices eventually blended into the strange language of dreams. The next thing I knew, it was morning, and Laurie was desperately spraying vast quantities of carpet cleaners on the chocolate amoeba that had nearly swallowed the room.“Funny,” I remarked.“The stain didn’t look so big last night.”

  “Well, now it looks like one of those giant oil spills in Alaska. I keep expecting a flock of endangered herons to come staggering out from under the towel and die at my feet.”

  Hey, there’s an image to drown out any ugly thoughts I might be having about my parental units.

  I dove right in and helped with the cleanup by spraying even more bluish gunk all over everything (which, by the way, why IS every liquid cleaner some shade of blue-green? Just wondering.). Pretty soon, the stain was mostly a lovely fluorescent greenish-brownish gray, if that’s a color. And the smell was like what you’d get if you dumped a tub of toilet tank fresheners into a vat of melted Hershey’s Kisses. Just then, my mom stomped down from upstairs, took one whiff, and fled back up with a hand over her mouth. I had that “she’ll be back” feeling, though.

  Boy, am I smart. About ten minutes later, while Laurie and I were feverishly brainstorming for either a solution or an excuse, Mom came down again, with a sheepish dad in tow. We stopped trying to figure out a way to smuggle the entire roomful of carpeting out of the house, and started wishing we’d smuggled OURSELVES out instead.

  Since my social skills are so finely honed, I broke the ice. “Hi, Dad. Did somebody put the city of Philadelphia upstairs without my noticing?” The ’rents looked at each other, and I noticed they were—ugh!—holding hands. This was an unusual scene, to say the least.

  “Well, we…that is, I…your mother…uh…”

  “OK, Dad. Thanks for clarifying. Mom?”

  “Can we talk about this later, Alex? Like maybe after some breakfast? After all, we have company here!”

  We sure do, I thought. “All right, Mom. Let’s eat.”

  “But wait, Alex. What’s that stain on the carpet?”

  I smiled like a choirboy. “Stain? Oh, you mean THAT little dot on the rug? I’ll be glad to explain it to you after all the COMPANY leaves.”

  So we sat down to the ABC special: awkwardness, bagels, and coffee. All of which went down great with the lingering disinfectant and chocolate fumes. Laurie kicked me under the table and rolled her eyes as my parents chatted like two people who hadn’t just spent twelve months and thirty thousand bucks battling each other tooth and nail through the legal system. I rubbed my shin and made faces back at her behind my coffee mug. When she got up to get more cream cheese, I caught myself checking out her legs again, and immediately made my first New Year’s resolution: NO SCOPING LAURIE! And I didn’t break that one for a good five minutes, although my parents must have been breaking their own resolutions left and right. Whatever. Laurie ate in a hurry, and didn’t say anything else until it was time to say good-bye to my parents:

  “Bye, Mrs. G. Bye, Mr. G. I have to go work out at the dojo. Thanks for breakfast. Sorry about the rug!”

  Off she went, looking chipper. Sure, she was feeling good—she was off to karate-kick things just for fun, and I wanted to karate-kick my parents, but couldn’t do that OR have fun. Plus, I still had to cope with this weirdness, and the rug issue. “Hey, Mom, Dad. What’s going on?”

  Oh, no. Dad put down his coffee mug, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb. Mom took a big swig of orange juice, pushed aside her glass, and nervously pulled her hair back away from her face. It had been a while since I had seen these signals, but they were instantly familiar, and I knew a Big Talk was coming. It’s always been exactly the same: When my grandfather got sick for the last time, when I asked my day care teacher why the classroom goldfish was floating faceup, when I did the little skateboard-roof thing—Dad pinches the nose and Mom does the hair pullback. Plus, the longer and more elaborate the pinching and pullbacking are, the worse the talk is going to be.

  So this time, when Dad fiddled with his nose for about half a minute until I was ready for his skin to start blistering from the friction, and Mom pulled her hair back so tight it looked like she had just gotten face-lift surgery, I knew this Big Talk would be a doozy.

  “Honey, do you remember yesterday morning, when I was a bit upset?”

  “Uh, Mom, do you remember the Titanic movie, when the ship hit a bit of ice?”

  “Okay, fine, a lot upset. That was because your father and I had a long argument about his moving to Philadelphia. Then we agreed to have dinner and talk it over last night. There was this jazz trio playing in the corner of the restaurant, and they played our wedding song, and one thing led to another…”

  “Stop right there, Mom. I don’t need to hear any more, especially when I just ate. So you’re telling me Dad paid these guys to serenade you, and you took it as a sign from God that you should get back together?”

  “It wasn’t like that, Alex. Was it, Simon?”

  “Well…”

  Mom took that moment to demonstrate her unique mood-switching abilities: “Wait, you PAID them to play that song? You SET ME UP?”

  Oh, boy. Now things felt back to normal.

  “Yes, Janet, I did.”

  Mom took a deep breath and held it. So did Dad. I felt an instant cold sweat bursting out all over my back. Then Mom reached over and squeezed Dad’s hand on the table. “Thank you, Simon. That was really sweet!”

  Wow, a double mood switch! I give up. Maybe things were NEVER normal in this family.

  But Mom never stopped trying for normalcy, anyway: “Now, Alex, about that stain…”

  ENTER THE CHA-KINGS

  On January 2, which was a Tuesday, we went back to school. In homeroom, I was talking with Laurie about my problem with Sol when inspiration struck me like a ham-sized fist.Well, actually a ham-sized fist struck me like an inspiration. Or something. I got punched, and inspired. Here’s how it happened.

  “Laurie,” I was saying, “how am I going to show up at Sol’s place today? What am I supposed to say?”

  “I already told you he’s not mad. That’s just how he is—he blows off some steam once in a while.”

  “Oh, like you’re the big expert on Solomon Lewis all of a sudden, O feet-washing genius.”

  “Don’t get mad at me just because you befriended an old man under false pretenses. I’m just trying to tell you things will be okay, that’s all.”

  And then came the fist, bashing into my right upper arm with three hundred pounds of semi-blubbery football player behind it. Bryan Gilson. “Hey, Lawn Boy. I missed you over the break. Why didn’t you come to Jody Krasiloff’s New Year’s party? Oh, that’s right, it’s because you’re a complete loser who’s grounded for life.”

  He sat down on the edge of my desk while I struggled desperately against the urge to rub my arm where he’d clobbered me.

  “Anyway, I couldn’t help overhearing that you got your geezer friend mad at you. Since I know you’ll go to jail if you blow off your probation, and since homeroom wouldn’t be the same without your sorry company, I’ll give you some free advice.”

  Laurie was never much for staying quiet. “Free advice from you? You just learned to speak in sentences like, last week, and Alex needs YOUR wisdom? Anyway, he’s trying to stay OUT of trouble, which isn’t exactly your specialty. Why don’t you go impress your friends by walking away AND chewing gum?”

  “No, re
ally. All you have to do, dorkwad, is make the old man feel special. You know, like, bring him a gift. The severed head of a lawn gnome, maybe?”

  I crossed my eyes and pretended to think about it for a second. Then I really DID think about it for a second. Then I got an amazing idea, just as the bell rang for first period. I grabbed Bryan’s hand and shook it profusely. “That’s IT! You ARE smarter than your girlfriend told me you were last night! Thanks, Bryan. I owe you one.”

  As I ran off in triumph, Bryan and Laurie were shrugging at each other, trying to figure out why I was so excited. It was like a little pixie-bison bonding moment.

  Bryan’s “advice” had actually given me a great idea. This idea was amazing on about seventeen different levels:

  1. It would impress the judge with my apparent selflessness and personal growth.

  2. It would entertain and amuse dozens of oldsters.

  3. It would make my mom think I might have some shred of redeemable goodness.

  4. It was a chance to play guitar.

  5. It might even shut Sol up for an hour.

  Okay, so it was only amazing for five reasons. Still, they were mighty big reasons. The idea was this: I would stage a benefit jazz concert at the home, with profits going toward future cultural events there. It would help people, and might even prove to Sol that he wasn’t just my “punishment.” It was a win-win situation all around. And I knew exactly the people I would need to make it happen.

  The Cha-KINGS. These were two members of my high school jazz band. Steven was a superhuman drummer, and his eterna-girlfriend Annette was a hellaciously gifted piano whiz. I called them the Cha-KINGS after the sound that happens in a sciencefiction movie when two spaceships’ airlocks are slammed together by the nearly irresistible force of a magnetic tractor beam: cha-KING. That’s how close Steven and Annette were. I needed the Cha-KINGS for this project because of the three things they loved nearly as much as they adored each other, which were jazz, being do-gooders, and their constant quest to create the perfect benefit concert.

  Why were they so into benefit concerts? Well, the obvious reason was that the concerts they put on together always involved playing jazz and do-gooding. But there was more to it: Three years ago, they had fallen in love while planning and rehearsing a benefit concert to pay the hospital bills for Steven’s little brother, Jeffrey, who had cancer. Even though Annette never got to play a single note at the concert, and Steven had to run out during intermission to take Jeffrey to the hospital, the gig was a huge success. The bills got paid, Jeffrey became the unofficial town mascot, a position he holds to this day, and of course Steven and Annette got each other.

  Really, it’s so sweet I could hurl.

  The Cha-KINGS are A students, of course. They are the most beloved couple ever to walk the halls of a high school without wearing athletic uniforms. They are jaw-droppingly good musicians. And they are very, very nice. Kind to animals. Honor Society officers. Patron saints of the Key Club. Very, very different from the mediocre guitarist, the car-thieving lawn-gnome mangler, the convicted delinquent who would now be attempting to enlist their aid.

  Good thing I’m so charming.

  Oh, who was I kidding? These people LIVED for benefit concerts. If Steven’s mom were choking on a chicken bone, he would start the Heimlich maneuver while Annette started designing the poster for “Bone Aid.” They would jump on this opportunity. It was in the bag.

  Right?

  I thought about my approach all day. We all had jazz band practice right after school, and then I would be heading straight for the home. So if I did this right, I would have the news of the concert ready as ammunition for when I had to face Sol. I decided to leave my last class early, because Steven and Annette had an independent-study music class at the end of the day. That’s how amazing these people’s lives were: They had convinced an entire high school to give them a special daily period built for two. As for me, I had to practically promise my firstborn child to my precalc teacher just so I could miss the last eight minutes of his valuable instructional droning.

  So there I was, on the long hallway approaching the band room. As I got closer I could hear the tinkling of Annette’s piano, along with something else: like a clink, clink sound, but with different pitches, and beautiful. I peeked in the little square window of the door, and saw Annette playing chords, while this complicated single-note line of clinks was floating over the top. It hit me that I knew the melody: “Sunrise, Sunset.” Well, that was fitting. Steven was playing the marimba, which is like a big xylophone thing with wooden bars instead of the metal kind. I hadn’t even known he played anything other than drums—I hadn’t even known our school had a marimba—but I guess that’s why he and Annette were music gods while I was sitting on my tuchis in math class. I poked my head in the door, feeling a bit weird about breaking in on the musical dance they had going, especially when Steven suddenly started embellishing the melody with all sorts of fast little grace notes that I wouldn’t have been able to pull off on the guitar, much less on a second instrument.

  Annette was talking and playing at the same time, just in case her powers hadn’t already been awesome enough. “Okay, Steven, that sounds great for the melody. Now, do you think you can add in the harmony line?”

  I was thinking, Duh. How can he play extra harmony notes when he only has two mallets? But then he did this amazing thing: He picked up an extra mallet for each hand, without even missing a beat, and kind of spread the mallets between different fingers, so now it was like he was holding upside-down chopsticks or something. And sure enough, he started playing the melody and a harmony part at the same time. Finally, just when the insane skill level of these people was nearly too depressing to contemplate, he reached behind him to a xylophone that was set up there, and finished his solo with one hand jamming away on each instrument.

  Annette and Steven gave each other a little grin at the last note of the solo, and then—in perfect unison—burst into the little coda that ends the Fiddler on the Roof medley. When they stopped, I applauded. Annette turned to Steven and said, “Show-off!”

  “Wait, he wasn’t showing off THAT much. I kept waiting for him to light his mallets on fire and start juggling them during the solo, or play bass drum with his foot or something.”

  They both just kind of stared at me like they had caught me beating a baby seal or something. I had forgotten that the Cha-KINGS are SERIOUS ABOUT MUSIC. “Oh, well. Maybe next time.” More staring. “Hi, guys. You’re probably wondering why I’m here. I mean, why I’m here now, instead of after the bell rings. I mean, instead of in math. Because that’s what I have now. Math. Precalc. Uh…” Still more staring.

  “Would the two of you like to help some elderly people in need?”

  Their eyes lit up. For a babbling idiot, I’m a pretty good salesman.

  HOME AGAIN

  I walked into Sol’s room that evening with good news and sweaty palms. I know Laurie had said Sol wasn’t mad at me, but she was only ALMOST always right. He wasn’t around, so I sat down in the chair and thought about the afternoon. Steven and Annette had surprised me a little bit; they didn’t think we could pull off a successful benefit concert without months of lead time, so we had agreed on just practicing for a few weeks and doing an informal, free concert at the home. They had also gotten me to commit to practicing every Monday and Wednesday afternoon until 4:30, which they apparently did anyway just for fun like the mutants they were. So now I REALLY had no life, even if having no life with two other people and my guitar was better than having no life alone in my house.

  Although it occurred to me that HAVING a life would beat both of my options.

  Just when I might have started to get depressed about the sorry state of my social status, I heard a resonant “HOO-hah!” from the elevator area. A few seconds later, Sol came in and the fun began.

  “Hey, look! It’s Mr. Um, my compulsory volunteer. Happy new year. Did you have a nice New Year’s Eve after you abandoned me to
the lonely fate of the forgotten and the elderly?”

  “Listen, Sol, I’m sorry I ran out, and I’m sorry I never explained why I was here. But I thought you KNEW.”

  “Alex, Alex. You’ll learn one day that real apologies don’t come with a BUT in the middle. In the meantime, thank you. Are you going to maybe play for me today?”

  “No, but I’ve got big news. In a few weeks, I’m putting on a jazz concert here, for everyone who wants to come.”

  “YOU’RE putting on a concert? With what musicians?”

  “Well, there are these two kids at my school who are like prodigies or something. There’s a drummer named Steven and a piano player named Annette. And I’ll play guitar. I think it will be great.”

  “Great, I don’t know about. But it should be more entertaining than sitting around waiting for my breathing treatment, and wondering whether anybody pished in the hydrotherapy pool.”

  “Wow, thanks for your enthusiasm.”

  Sol is either totally immune to sarcasm, or so good at counter-sarcasm that I can never even tell whether he’s making fun of me. “Don’t mention it, boychik. But I hope you know how much work it is putting on a show.”

  “What do you mean? I’ve played in shows before. We’ll practice, we’ll show up, and we’ll play, right?”

  “Well, maybe. If you have the room reserved. And if you have permission to get your event put on the schedule. And if the cheap bastards who run this place are willing to pay all the overtime for the orderlies to get us all down there and back up. AND if you have all the power you need, and microphones, and extension cords, speakers, lights…”

  Perhaps it would have been a good idea to ask how he knew so much about this stuff. But I had already used up my good idea for the day. “I get the point, Sol. Don’t worry, I’ll get it all done. Trust me.”