Chapter Four #2
“No, it’s…I know,” his mom said, turning back to the gravy. “I’m just happy for you, is all,” she said to the oregano. “Now sitsitsit. Stop lookin’ over my shoulder, you’re making me nervous.”
Danny held his elbows and looked back to his room.
“Actually, I was maybe gonna go do some homework if that’s okay?”
“Sure, sure, whatever you gotta do.” She waved him off, dashing a handful of salt into the pot.
“Oh wait!” his mom called back. “I wanted to tell you, I’ve got an interview tomorrow. I know we were gonna go see Tornado in the afternoon, but we might wanna find another time.”
“It’s Twister, Ma.”
“Al Roker over here!”
He smiled, despite himself.
“That’s good. About the job thing.”
“Home care attendant, so probably a lot of cleaning bedpans, but it’s better hours than the bar,” she said, shrugging. “Pays better, too. We gotta start making more if we wanna keep you in that school next year.”
“Right,” Danny muttered.
For a second, he wondered if this was his moment to tell her about the audition.
That he’d figured out a way to get out from under that looming tuition payment.
Sure, his plan involved riding the subway every morning with serial killers and ditching God to take ballet with a bunch of fruits.
Better not, he thought. He probably wasn’t even gonna get in anyway.
“I’ll call you when the angel hair’s done,” his mom called, lifting the spoon to her lips and slurping.
Danny’s bedroom wasn’t a bedroom, at least not in the way people thought about bedrooms. There was an air mattress and a woodgrain alarm clock, but there were no windows and no desk, and his clothes had to be stacked in milk crates from the deli that he’d tied together with fishing wire.
This room, he had come to learn, had been his Uncle Richie’s “cat closet,” which meant the place where his ancient arthritic tabby would go to shit and cough up hairballs before she died.
It had been four months since they’d moved in, and even though his Ma had promised he would, he still hadn’t gotten used to the piss smell.
But he had a door that closed and a new feather pillow and an old tape deck and his tower of cast recordings, that black metal condominium where all his favorite pals lived.
Mama Rose in 2B needed to borrow some smokes from Adelaide down the hall.
Sally Bowles in 6F left the tub running again and flooded the Von Trapps’ living room.
Tevye in 13G pounded on the ceiling with a broom so his upstairs neighbor, that brat Peggy Sawyer, would shut the Christ up with all that tap dancing.
For all the things his Uncle Richie had left behind, the cigarette butts and the lime shag carpet and the sofa with the springs and the moldy take-out boxes and the leaky faucets and the faucets that didn’t work at all and the telephone/electricity/cable/water/hospital bills stuffed so tight in the mail slot that not even a bedbug could squeeze through, it was worth it to Danny for that collection of tapes.
They had been his friend and parent and shrink and priest since that night he’d first met them, that night when the snow started falling and forgot how to stop.
Danny ran his finger up and down the plastic spines of the cassettes, searching for the perfect album to lift his mood. His finger rested on a cassette that had been removed and put in backward with the title facing in, which was something Danny would never, ever do.
“Okay, Uncle Richie, I can take a hint,” Danny said to the empty room, sliding the backward cassette out of its shelf. “One of your favorites, huh?”
Danny flipped the tape over, looking down at the album cover: Hair. He shrugged, popped the cassette into the stereo, tugged on his headphones, and lay down on his bed.
The track was spare and loose, just a man’s voice over a few lazy strums of guitar. He began naming all the things he had, piece by piece—family and laughs and luck—like a shopping list of reasons to keep on going.
Danny rolled over onto his back and let his head hang off the mattress, dumping out the words to his monologue, the subway map, the ferry timetable, and the stupid things he’d said and done.
The beat quickened, the lyrics ricocheting through his body, bouncing off his insides like echoes in a canyon.
An electric guitar started thrumming and his toes started tapping and the steel strings started vibrating from his ankles to his knees.
The song shouted out a tally of everything he hadn’t lost—his bones and guts and joy and rage.
Danny jumped to his feet and reached for the volume knob and turned it until his head was pounding and his arms were swinging and his hips were swaying and his socks were dancing patterns in the carpet.
And then he was kicking. Kicking with abandon.
Kicking ’til he lost his balance. Kicking ’til his ribs hurt.
Kicking at serpent teachers and parks with the lunatics and concrete buildings choking to death on their own dreams. Kicking at soda cans and liquor bottles and bedroom doors.
Kicking dirty dishes and take-out boxes and uncles who vanished and fathers who lied and mothers who ran.
Kicking doorknobs and sheet music and keyholes and cop cars until he kicked so hard, he forgot how to stop.
I got life.
LIFE!