Chapter Five #2
“I don’t know.” Danny stuffed his hands into his pockets. “It was just an example. Alls I’m sayin’ is, I know cleaning bedpans and stuff doesn’t pay the kind of money that we’re used to, but it’s all right, ’cause now you don’t have to worry. I got it figured out.”
His mother’s face flashed with a familiar look. It was one he’d seen as she gave the eulogy to an empty room at his uncle’s funeral, and again when his father called her “stupid bitch” in front of the whole family after she overcooked the Thanksgiving turkey.
“Well, I’m sorry you’ve been worrying so much about my paycheck,” his mother said in a low, measured voice, her hands shuffling the junk mail into a neat pile. “But the truth is, we’re actually doing fine.”
She stacked the coupons on top of the catalogs. “We’re doing just fine.”
She stacked the bills on top of the coupons.
“Ma, that’s not what I meant.”
“I’m the mother, Danny. It’s my job to worry about this stuff, not yours.”
“Ma—”
“And it’s my job to take care of your tuition,” she said, standing up and walking to her room. “And I’m telling you, it’s fine.”
“Ma,” Danny called after her.
“MA!” he yelled, as yet another door in his life slammed shut.
Danny spent the night in restless fits, jolted awake by flashes of what St. Pete’s had in store for him—secret notes, whispered names, shoves in the hallway played off like mistakes.
When those nightmares ran dry, his mind turned to matters at home—how he’d blown his shot at freedom and bombed one last monologue.
By five a.m., the air had seeped from his mattress. Danny lay on the floor, motionless, until the light creeping under the door announced that the world was waking up. Danny opened his bedroom, or closet, or whatever, to find his mom already up, standing at the kitchen table, car keys in hand.
“Ma,” Danny said, but after nine hours, he still hadn’t found the right lines.
“Don’t,” she said, looking down at his feet. “Getcha shoes on and put on some pants. You can’t go outside like that.”
Danny shook his head. “Where?”
“Shoes on, Danny,” his mom said, walking to the door.
Danny and his mother drove wordlessly, the cluck-cluck of the turn signal only occasionally breaking the silence. They passed bail bond stores and discount liquor shops until strip malls gave way to the parks and manicured lawns of Todt Hill.
“Ma, where are we going?” Danny asked, his heart kicking in his ribs. “We’re not going to Dad’s, are we?”
No answer.
“Please,” he said quietly. “Please don’t take me back to Dad’s.”
They drove past guido town houses and mafioso mansions until finally, his mother rolled to a stop at a crosswalk, exhaling a slow breath.
“We’re not going to your father’s,” she said. “I need you to hear something, Danny. I really need you to hear it, okay?”
Danny paused for a second, then nodded. “Okay.”
“This life…it wasn’t what I had in mind either. Changing sheets and doing other people’s dishes.”
Her fingers gripped the steering wheel like a cliff’s edge.
“I had plans, too. Big ones. Before…well.” An embarrassed look crossed her face. “But just because this isn’t what I wanted, don’t think I don’t see how things are. I’m not blind.”
“I don’t think that, Ma.”
“I just keep goin’ because that’s what you do,” she said, as if to herself.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the road ahead, but her grip on the steering wheel loosened, just slightly, as if releasing something she’d forgotten was there.
“But we’ve got a shot now. You do, at least,” she said, turning to face him, a faint, almost imperceptible smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “And maybe that’s enough to change things for both of us.”
His mother’s hand reached for the side of his face, and it took every muscle in Danny’s body not to flinch. He let it stay there, holding his cheek until the muscles in her chin un-tensed and the car behind them leaned hard on its horn.
“Oh, fuck a duck!” She gave a bird to the rearview mirror. Both of them let out a surprised, merciful laugh.
“So,” he said. “Where are we going?”
“It’s just up here.”
The Pontiac hung a left and pulled up to a gray cinder-block building with a sign above the door that made Danny’s heart sing like Bobby Darin: “On Your Toes Dance Supply Store.”
His mother shifted into Park and then reached for the keys, but stopped short of releasing them.
“I need to know this isn’t just some escape ’cause things are tough,” she said, her eyes steady on his. “I need to know you want this, for real—”
But Danny didn’t even let her finish.
“I want it!” he blurted out. “I want it more than anything. I promise.”
“Well, then.” Danny’s mother let out a sigh so long and full that it fogged up the windshield.
“We don’t quit, Danny.” She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door. “Not you. Not me.”
Danny and his mom stepped out of the car that Saturday morning. A new scene of a new play that neither of them knew the lines to.
“Now, in that very impressive admissions packet,” his mother said, tucking her keys in her purse, “they sent a checklist of all the things you’ll need for the fall, and it looks like we don’t have any of ’em. You’re gonna need ballet shoes and black tights and something called a dance belt.”
And even though he’d never taken a dance class in his life, Danny grabbed his mother’s hand and spun her in close.
And even though she was afraid of heights, and even though he wasn’t as strong as the guys from the beach, or as solid as his father, Danny lifted her high above his head, above the streetlights and cigarette billboards and telephone wires, where she could taste the morning sky and breathe in the cool rush of summer clouds.