No Sad Songs

by Frank Morelli

I read to Grandpa from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. We had studied a few passages in Mrs. Alonzo’s eleventh grade English class. Everyone thought it sucked, but they don’t appreciate good poetry like I do. Call me weird. My classmates did.

  Grandpa’s eyelids drooped shut as I read.

  “I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end. But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.”

  John had told his parents he’d probably spend the night, so he was in the basement playing more video games. Kid was an addict.

  Hours had passed between our Madden marathon and fumigation time. It had to be maybe two or three in the morning at that point.

  And the phone rang.

  At two or three in the morning.

  Nothing good ever comes from a phone ringing at that hour.

  There’s never a crazy radio host on the other end offering a cash prize out of the blue. There’s never one of your teachers just getting in touch to cancel the homework assignment you forgot was due the next day. It’s never, ever good. So my heart did little flip-flops in my chest. And Grandpa’s eyes fluttered open. “Urrrgh. Whaaaa?” I placed my hand on his forehead to keep him calm. Maybe to keep me calm.

  “John?” I shouted as the shrill bell vibrated through my stomach. “Can you get that?” He either heard me or it was a wrong number because the ringing stopped at once. I continued reading from Whitman: “Will never be any perfection than there is now, nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”

  And then I heard footsteps on the stairs. In the hall. Slowly shuffling. Holding back.

  “Gabe?” John said with a waver in his voice. “It’s the police.”

  A jolt of electricity shot up from my feet, through my spine, and burned in my ears. I felt the blood in my face. Every red cell. Each tiny molecule bubbling and brewing. I saw a hand reach for the phone. Was it mine? I couldn’t tell. I heard the voice on the other end. Very official. Deep. Monotone.

  Gambling.

  Left early.

  Atlantic City Expressway.

  Fell asleep.

  They were gone.

  Not coming back.

  Forever?

  Yes, forever.

  No … surely … can’t be right. This only happens to other people.

  Please come to identify the bodies.

  Yes, sir.

  John’s hand on my shoulder.

  Warm tears on my cheek.

  Alone.

  Just me and Gramps.

  And no one could protect me. Not even John.

  2

  THE END OF THE BEGINNING

  The next few days are like staring into a kaleidoscope. Only I’m not the one holding it. It’s strapped to my face and I don’t want it there. An invisible hand squeezes the colors in my eyes until they burn. The brilliant triangles of pink, yellow, and purple—the mosaics of childhood—are replaced by blacks and greys.

  Twist. The morgue.

  Twist, twist. Lawyers. A will hearing. “You’re in charge now, Gabriel. Executor.”

  Twist. The phone rings. A funeral director. “We’ll take care of everything according to the will.”

  Twist, Twist, Twist.

  A knock at the door. It’s Mrs. Chen. “Wonton soup, Gabe. You have to eat.” Not hungry. Never hungry again. The soup spoils on the counter.

  I don’t remember sliding into my confirmation suit. Kind of short around the ankles, a little too much wrist hangs from each sleeve. Somehow I get Grandpa dressed and now, somehow, he’s in the Trans Am with me; and somehow we show up at St. Theresa’s to say our goodbyes. Mom and Dad were never all that strict about us going to church. We were always more like satellite Catholics. We did our worship from afar and showed up for major events. Like my confirmation. Or my communion, where I almost gagged on one of those super-dry wafers. I guess today also qualifies as one of those big events.

  Most people look around the pews at a funeral and see the faces of their family—people who’d help them through the most drastic situations. There are no faces like that for me. Mom and Dad had met “later in life” as they liked to say. It was basically code for “we’re, like, forty years older than our son.”

  I had never really thought much about it. Most of my relatives had passed on when I was too young to understand or even feel sad about it. I didn’t know them. Never had the chance. But, as I sit in a church filled with random neighbors and coworkers, I find myself pining for those same lost relatives I never knew. I have John sitting in the pew behind me, but my own flesh and blood? Didn’t I deserve that? And Grandpa didn’t count. For all he knew, he could have been sitting in a laundromat waiting for his underwear to dry.

  I mop some gunk from the corners of his mouth and I’m careful not to fight him too hard. I don’t want him to go into freakout mode, but I figure his face should look somewhat presentable at his son’s funeral. And at least Grandpa’s was a face I could recognize, even if I was all but a stranger to him. For all I cared, the rest of their faces could have been swallowed by that weird blur effect you see on Maury Povich or Montell Williams or any of the other idiotic afternoon talk shows.

  Just a bunch of outstretched hands and pats on the shoulder and prayers pledged in my honor. Like they’d say some stupid prayer and Mom and Dad would burst out of their caskets, dust off, and head out for an early lunch. Of course, they all mean well. I know that. But it simply makes me hate them and I don’t know why. I want to scream as loud as I can. I want to thrash my arms like Grandpa and run through the church and tell them how stupid they all are to have their cozy, normal lives with their families and their suits that fit and their stupid kids who could go to school and come home and never worry.

  I hate them all and I want to scream it. Just scream in their stupid faces that I didn’t even recognize and would never remember, and then spit at their feet when they got all surprised about what I was telling them. And then I’d ask them why? Why me? And what am I going to do now? What the hell am I supposed to do now? I want to, but I don’t. I simply smile an empty smile and say thank you. Over and over and over again.

  I can feel the tears singe the corners of my eyes, and I stare through the blurriness at my mom and dad. They are reduced to shiny, rectangular boxes. On display, but closed to the world. Too lifeless for living eyes to bear. And I can feel the muscles in my calves and the backs of my thighs contract, ready to heave me up out of the pew and run me out the doors. But tears always seem to extinguish action. So I just sit there like a good little boy and listen to Grandpa mouth-breath his own nasally melodies. And I try hard—as hard as I can—to wake up from the nightmare.

  That’s when I feel a heavy paw drop down on my shoulder. The smell of aftershave and last night’s whiskey smolders in my nose hairs. I think, nobody better let this dude near the candle offering.

  I turn to meet his eyes. They are soft, brown. In them I see the spirit of a boy with skinned knees and fireflies in a mason jar. His face tells a different story. The eyelids are wrinkled and puffy. The lips thin and cracked. Blotches of patchy, dry skin border his hairline from the temples down past his sideburns. The hair had once been dark chocolate, but is now mixed with broad sections of shredded coconut.

  “Hey, Gabe. It’s me,” he whispers as a few last-minute tributeers file into pews. I squint my eyes and try to place him. There’s something familiar in the way he tips his chin to the left as he speaks, but I can’t quite make the connection.

  “Don’t you remember me?” His eyes meet the floor when I don’t respond. I can tell he’s disappointed.

  “No, sir,” I whisper back a moment later. “I don’t. But thanks for coming and—”

  “You don’t you remember your own godfather? I used to bounce you around on my knee when you were the size of a basketball.”

  “Uncle Nick!?”

  I can’t believe it. Nobody has seen the guy in years. I was so young the last time he came around I barely remember meeting him at all. He n
ever called. Never visited. Never once sent a birthday card. He was like a ghost. The closest thing I had to a relationship with the man was listening to Dad make snide remarks about that “drunken, good-for-nothing loser kid brother of mine.”

  And now he’s plopped himself down between Grandpa and me and he’s squeezing my bicep like we’ve been pals all along.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “Whaddya mean what am I doing here? Sal was my brother, wasn’t he?”

  I want to call him a liar right there on the spot. In front of everyone in the church and the priests and the altar boys. In front of God.

  A brother?

  A brother is someone you can count on. Someone who doesn’t run off at age seventeen in search of some asinine destiny that doesn’t exist. Someone who picks up the damn telephone once in a while to say hello. I didn’t even have a brother and I knew that much. Uncle Nick was no brother.

  But I can’t say all of that in a whisper so what comes out is, “Yeah. I guess.”

  The choir director punches a few chords on the pipe organ and the parishioners rise to their feet like toy soldiers. Grandpa’s chin is plastered against his chest in the pew next to Uncle Nick. His eyes are closed and a thin string of drool rolls down his chin. Nobody cares that he stays seated. The service is about to begin.

  But Uncle Nick hasn’t finished his piece. “Your father’s not the only reason I’m here. We’re family. All that’s left.”

  I stare at him. Not because I’m interested in what he has to say, but because he actually has the balls to pretend he cares about family.

  “What’s your point?”

  “I’m staying,” he says. “With you.”

  My brain almost explodes and spews a shower of grey bits out of my ears like a cognitive fireplug.

  “I’m sure you could use the extra help with my father and I’m not tied down to anything at the moment.”

  Was he ever tied down to anything? What a joke.

  “I can stay at the house.”

  No. No. No. No. No. NO!. This is not happening. I am not opening the doors of my parents’ house—scratch that, my house—to this loser. This ingrate. This absentee uncle.

  But it dawns on me that the keyword, after all, is “uncle.” A face that I recognize. It may have taken a bit of prodding on Nick’s part, but I recognize it. And that means he is family. Maybe Uncle Nick doesn’t understand what it truly means to be a part of a family, but that doesn’t give me the right to abandon him the same way he did us. Does it?

  And so, I simply nod my head and whisper, “Thank you. When do you think you might be able to move in?”

  “Today. After the service.”

  Great. Now I have to take care of two sniveling toddlers.

  The future looks bright, Gabe. You schmuck.

  3

  HALF IN THE BAG, NO CRUST

  There’s no worse sound than the crackle of electricity that surges through the circuits of my clock radio right before the alarm goes off. I’m still half asleep but totally aware of the machinery moving. Then it blares Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning” like a six a.m. bugle call—talk about “freedom from the frightening dream”—and I’m forced to swallow my heart before breakfast. Only I haven’t eaten breakfast since Mom and Dad deserted me.

  It’s funny. They left me with a place to live, a small sum of cash to pay bills (a really small sum), and even a pre-paid law guy to help me sign the assorted court orders and powers of attorney and whatever other nonsense lay heaped and awaiting my John Hancock in that towering mound of paperwork. Mom and Dad had spelled it all out for me in their will, like they’d been planning to die all along. And yet they never thought to leave me a box of toaster pastries or some frozen waffles. Maybe that’s why I hate wills, because they can never provide you with the most important meal of the day. At least not the way Mom did.

  The truth is it’s mostly my fault for going hungry every morning. I mean, I do slug the snooze button like I have narcolepsy. I don’t even remember doing it half the time. Then I finally wake up and the numeric eyes of the clock glare at me and say, “dude, you have, like, twenty minutes.”

  I have to run a marathon’s-worth of chores through the house, pick up John and break through the prison-camp walls of Schuylkill High before homeroom starts. It’s kind of fitting that if you want to pronounce the name of my school in perfect English you’d say, “School – Kill”, which in Philadelphianese sounds more like “scookle.” Either way something seems to get “kill”ed by the time you reach the end of it.

  My bare feet hit the shaggy carpet. It’s the color of the creepy moss that bubbles up between cracks in the pavement. I stand on a patch that looks like a putting green floating in a sea of dirty clothes, soda cans, and other assorted crap.

  I take the plunge.

  Something crinkles under my right foot—a plastic cup—and a sticky stream of flat root beer washes over my left. I’ll clean it up later. No time now. If Mom were around she would have said something like, “No son of mine will live in a landfill.” But she’s not around, and I have bigger things to worry about.

  I’m in and out of the shower so fast I barely get wet. Then I pull my daily brush-your-teeth, shave-with-Dad’s-disposable-razor combo. You might not think that sounds impressive, but give it a try. It’s dexterity at a whole new level. And it’s high risk. I mean, who wants to lose an ear lobe getting ready for school?

  It’s still a little weird using Dad’s razor. The first time I did I washed out the blade and a couple flecks of his old salt and pepper were still left in there. I brushed them out completely. I don’t know what I’ll do when the thing gets dull. Good thing I only have one or two patches of actual hair on my face—one on my chin and another random one on my cheek. Not exactly the kind of mane that’ll tear through a razor. That’ll give me some time to forget about them. The hairs. Not my parents.

  I spit my toothpaste in the sink and rush downstairs to the kitchen to pack a lunch. I know. It’s pretty lame. But cafeteria food sucks. I’d rather sidecar up to a gang of vultures and eat road kill on the interstate than endure one of those creepy, greenish hot dogs they serve. Just the smell makes me ill. And the burgers? I caught a puck at a Flyers game that was juicier than one of those things. I’ll bet you could skip a few of those burgers off the glassy surface of the Schuylkill River and, like flattened projectiles, they’d sink at least one or two crew teams trying to paddle past the Victorians on Boathouse Row.

  There’s not much food in my house these days. Only things that won’t go bad or you can cook in two minutes or less. It’s like Mom’s kitchen has been reduced to a fifties-era bomb shelter within the space of a couple of weeks. Not like when she was around and would have both mine and Dad’s lunches packed neatly in brown bags and waiting on the kitchen table by 7:30 so we could sweep past, peck her on the cheek, and rush off to our respective schools—Dad to teach and me to learn. Of course, then Mom would pack her own lunch and head to Dr. Harrison’s orthodontics office where she’d been the sitting receptionist for the past fifteen years. She never took a vacation day.

  I slather some peanut butter and some jelly between the dried-up end pieces of Wonder Bread and toss it and a bruised banana in a plastic shopping bag. We’re out of lunch bags too. I add it to the running list of items we constantly need but never have, and then charge back up the steps to Grandpa’s room. I put the glass of water down on his nightstand and pop various pills out of their containers. By now, I don’t even need to look at my hands as I dispense. I’m like one of those rip-off artists you see flipping cards on street corners. And there’s no more pudding. Grandpa and I have reached an understanding: he understands it makes his grandson happy when he takes the pills; I understand that he’s a crazy, old fool that’s taken the place of my real grandfather.

  I shake him and pop most of the pills in his mouth before he realizes he’s awake. Then I hand him the glass of water and pray to God he doesn’t soak
me down with it. I really don’t have time to change clothes. I’m lucky I got myself together enough to be wearing the same wrinkled t-shirt and jeans I wore on Monday.

  The pills usually put Grandpa back to sleep for a while, so I don’t need to count on Uncle Nick for more than a few hours each day. Trust me, I wish he did more to help, but the time he does put in is scary enough. The dude can barely take care of himself. Scratch that. He’s basically an infant. Just yesterday I had to throw a freaking load of laundry in for the guy. I got tired of smelling him. He’s like a thousand years old and he doesn’t even have a job. But he’s always out looking. Yes, he’ll constantly remind me of that.

  “I’ve been out seeking gainful employment,” he says each time I ask him where the hell he’s been all night. But how many people go out job hunting after dinner and come home stinking of booze close to breakfast? Seeking employment my ass. So excuse me for slipping past the couch and out the door without saying a word to Uncle Nick, who happened to be sprawled across the cushions like an obese leech—a leech that’s sucking every last bit of patience out of me.

  I’m left with about five minutes to pick up John and storm to school, which is eight minutes away. These are times when it’s good to have an old Trans-Am you can beat the crap out of. The fuel gauge hovers only a few ticks above empty, but I pound the accelerator anyway and ignore the brake the whole six blocks to John’s house. John is already bounding off his front porch as I pull in the driveway. He’s run this bizarre relay race so many times over the past few weeks he might as well be carrying a baton.

  “Looks like we’re running on LoScuda time,” he blurts out as he slams the door shut. “If I get detention again, you owe me.”

  “Get a car and then we’ll talk about who owes who,” I say as I back down the driveway. Then I notice a tiny flash from the window of John’s house. I can see the outline of Mrs. Chen silhouetted behind the blinds. Even her shadow looks pissed.

  “She hates me, doesn’t she?”

  “Not hate. Her actual words were ‘If Gabe is late today, he’ll be early to his own funeral.’”