No Sad Songs

by Frank Morelli

  He looks like I punched him in the gut, but I’m not kidding. I really don’t care. It’s bad enough I have to be responsible for the old, crazy guy. At least he has an excuse. But, besides Grandpa, I don’t have room in my life for any other old, crazy guys.

  And then something occurs to me.

  “Nick, where the hell is Grandpa?”

  His brow creases and his eyes lift from their view of my shoes.

  “He’s at home. Why?”

  “At home? At home, Nick? You know he can’t be left on his own!”

  “He can’t?”

  “No! Of course not!”

  “Then I better get back to the house right away, huh?”

  “Yes! You’d better! Before there is no house! Or Grandpa!”

  Uncle Nick turns and paces off down the hall.

  “And, Nick … remember what I said. School is off-limits.”

  He nods and heads for the double doors.

  The idiot. How is any of this ever going to work?

  4

  STITCHES AND SHOCK THERAPY

  “Johnny Cash! Make it louder.” I grab Grandpa’s wrist as he reaches for the knob. The speakers in the Trans-Am can’t take much more of this. Neither can my eardrums.

  “I already told you. It’s too loud!”

  He’s still fighting when the traffic light goes red again. “Quit it! It’s not even Johnny Cash,” I tell him. “It’s freaking Ace of Base.”

  There are simultaneously two things I can’t believe. One: I’m listening to Ace of Base. I quickly tap the dial. WMMR. Classic Rock. You can never go wrong. Two: how is the old guy fighting back like a ninja? He is unbelievable. It reminds me I’m grateful I wasn’t his enemy in a war or anything—like the Germans, those poor bastards.

  “Here. Take this,” I say, and I hand him a green lollipop that’s been in my cup holder forever. I think it came with the car—probably installed at the plant in Detroit. Grandpa takes it and shoves it in his mouth with the wrapper still intact. I want to correct him, but I don’t have the strength or the patience. It keeps him quiet, so I pretend I don’t hear the plastic crinkling back and forth across his teeth.

  The light turns green and I nudge the Trans-Am down Main Street toward Dr. Weston’s office. I should kick Uncle Nick in the groin for sending me on this hell ride. If he hadn’t drowned himself in a bottle of Jack Daniels and left Grandpa alone, none of this would have happened. If he didn’t storm into homeroom this morning wearing garbage bags for underwear, looking like he used a pile of stray cats as a pillow the night before and then say, “Yeah, can I talk to Gabe LoScuda? That’s Gabe. G-A-B-E. I’m his uncle. He’s related to me.”

  Ugh. Every time I think about it I want to puke.

  But I don’t even have time to puke, because the second I get home from school I’m greeted by a trail of blood that starts as a few drops on the doorknob, and ends in shaky, red streaks across most of the living room furniture. I half expected some dude to be standing there in a hockey mask waving a cleaver at me. Instead, it was just Nick sitting between bloodstains on the couch.

  “Pops broke a glass while I was out,” he said without moving his eyes from the television. Some stupid infomercial about the latest and greatest Chia Pet blared from the screen.

  “What’s with all the blood?”

  “Cut himself pretty bad. I washed it off. Put a Band-Aid on it. He’ll live.”

  When I went to check on Grandpa, there was definitely a Band-Aid on his boo-boo. Only it covered less than half of the wound, and there were still a few droplets of watery blood dribbling through his closed fingers.

  I called Dr. Weston.

  If not for old Doc, I don’t know what we’d do. He has an office down at the veteran’s hospital, which is good because it’s the only way Grandpa’s able to afford it—which means it’s the only way I can afford it. It’s sad, though, because as soon as Gramps gets his pension check for being a damn war hero he has to turn it over to Dr. Weston just so he can continue going on surviving as a human being. I guess it could be worse. Doc let me look at some of the medical bills he pays out once Grandpa’s money gets to him and all those pages were filled with very big numbers with lots of little zeroes after them. When I look at it that way, Gramps is getting a bargain for the two cents he’s able to rub together off his pension.

  “Turn up Johnny Cash!” Grandpa shouts about two centimeters away from my eustachian tubes.

  “What the hell, Grandpa?! I’m trying to drive!” I look at him for a split second and notice he needs the corner of his mouth cleaned with a wet wipe again. When I turn back to the road, a pair of bright, red lights stare at me from the tail of a car in front of me.

  I jam my foot on the brake pedal. The tires squeal. The rear-end slides left, then swings back to the right like a pendulum. The glowing taillights laugh at me from the Buick’s rear panel. I stomp the brakes so hard I think my feet may hit pavement. And then the friction of rubber on asphalt takes hold. The tires lock down. The car bucks forward and the seatbelt tightens on my chest. Grandpa flails in his seat and I see his hand—the hurt one—smack against the dashboard like a dead trout. There’s a thin spray of blood on the windshield, and a stain darkens the paper towel bandage I’d wrapped around the wound before we left the house.

  We’re safe, but I’m stunned. My heart bounces around in my chest and my head feels all foggy like I just woke up from a dream.

  “You all right, Grandpa?” I ask as the light changes from green to yellow and back to red for the second time. A car pulls up next to us in the right lane. I’m too shell-shocked to turn my head and acknowledge it. “Gramps,” I say when he doesn’t answer. “You okay?”

  But Grandpa isn’t paying attention to me, or the car, or his hand, or the fact that we almost became a pair of June bugs on the windshield. No. The old bastard is too busy trying to pick up girls. I’m serious. Before I can react, he’s half out the window and his stupid, grey mane is blowing in the wind. He makes googly eyes at a couple of cute girls who are probably close to my age.

  Scratch that. They are my age.

  Oh God, oh God … they’re in my class. Justine Klein and Mandy Soand-So. I forget her name, but I know she’s friends with Marlie. I better get control of the old guy before they notice. A kid can only face so much embarrassment in one day, and I think I’ve already surpassed my quota.

  I reach for Grandpa’s arm, careful not to get blood all over the seats. But it’s too late. The door swings open and the dashboard chime rings in my ears—probably the factory-installed warning for “geezer overboard.”

  I burst out of the car and run a Chinese fire drill over to Grandpa just as he plops his bloody paw on the door panel and leans in the window like Danny freaking Zucco in Grease.

  Justine is in the driver’s seat. Her head snaps back in shock. She looks scared to death. And who can blame her? There’s a crazy old guy bleeding all over her car and hanging half in the window.

  “Aaaaah!!! Omigod! Make him stop!” Justine has a knuckle-white grasp on the steering wheel and her shrieking approaches the approximate pitch level required to shatter glass. Mandy So-and-So looks like a rigor mortis case, with her back pressed flat against the passenger seat, her lips pursed in tight against her teeth, and two full moons for eyes staring straight ahead, never blinking. I realize this scene has no casual escape. “Help!! Omigod!! Get him off!!”

  “I’m so sorry,” I start to say as I pull Grandpa out of the car by his shirt. But the old man keeps shouting. “Ladies, cut a rug!” over and over like an insane parrot. Justine can’t hear a word I’m saying and Mandy So-and-So makes this motion with her hands that tells me Grandpa and I better get the hell out of the way. The tires chirp and Justine floors it through the intersection just as the light changes again from green to yellow.

  Great. Looks like school will be a blast again tomorrow.

  I wrestle Grandpa back in the Trans-Am, so we can take this traffic light to round three. I swear, if
I didn’t care about living up to Dad’s wishes I would have thrown in the towel on the whole Grandpa prize fight twenty seconds into the first round. Now it’s up to me to be the last man standing.

  I park the car in the back lot of the VA hospital so no one can see me wrestle with Grandpa again. He’s all tangled up in the seatbelt, which is covered in crusts of dried blood. Thanks, Gramps. When I think about how much grief Dad would have given me for screwing up the car, a familiar sting builds in the corners of my eyes. I take a deep breath and hold back the waterworks. It might sound weird, but I think I’d trade anything to hear Dad hound me about car maintenance one more time—even if it had been Grandpa’s fault.

  “You can’t just wash the damn thing and call it a day,” Dad would grumble. “The interior, Gabe. You can’t forget the interior. It’s top dog.” I didn’t agree. I never did. I wish I could remind him.

  After Grandpa is free from his seatbelt web, I grab his hand and lead him to the entrance. He hums some off-key tune that sounds like the “Star-Spangled Banner” and a New Kids on the Block song mixed together and spun backwards on an Alvin and the Chipmunks record player. But it keeps him occupied. We even look like normal people for a few seconds as I usher him through the elevator doors and up to the third floor. Dr. Weston’s office—the only general physician in a building full of ER nurses, orderlies, and cut-rate surgeons. But I trust him, and so does Grandpa’s military insurance.

  I check-in with the receptionist. “Make your grandfather comfortable in the waiting room,” she says, “The doctor will be with you shortly.” I’ve heard that phrase before—it’s code for “have fun keeping the old man in check for the next twenty minutes.”

  I sweep a still-humming Grandpa into the crowded room and we sit down on a pair of rusty folding chairs in the corner. There’s a table full of last year’s magazines beside us. I scoop up a copy of Highlights for Children and skim through a “Goofus and Gallant” comic. I used to love this crap when I was a kid, waiting for the doctor or dentist with Mom, and I can’t lie—I still love the stuff. Plus, it provides cover. I can duck behind the wrinkled pages and pretend no one is staring at Grandpa as he continues to hum his tune and dig for earwax.

  I’m doing a good job of blending in with the grey walls when something—or rather someone—catches my eyes. But not in the way you’re thinking. Not really. More like if you’re walking down the street and a man-eating lizard crosses the sidewalk in front of you; like, in a weirded-out, scared, but still kind of fascinated sort of way.

  There’s at least a dozen metal hoops hanging from her ears and a thick, painful-looking stud pushed through the corner of her eyebrow. Her tight, black jeans are torn to shreds on each thigh. Patches of olive-colored skin and tattoo ink shine through. Her black t-shirt reads “Shock-Therapist” in lime-green, block letters, and there’s a cartoony drawing of what looks like Joey Ramone dead center. Her hair is dark and straight, and it hangs in thin wisps over her ears and sections of her forehead. There’s a thick, leather bracelet tied around her wrist with a skull and crossbones woven through the basket pattern. A pair of raggedy headphones hangs upside-down from her face. The cord is a tangled mass of frayed rubber and coppery wires that snakes down to a bright yellow Walkman clipped to her pocket. The volume is turned up admirably loud—so loud that I can almost hear the lyrics from across the waiting room. Something hard, fast, and mindless.

  Punk music.

  I don’t know how long I stare at her before she reanimates from a lifeless trance and our eyes meet. I’m so startled I can’t even look away real fast and pretend I’d been stretching my neck or something. Her eyes are a deep brown. Almost scary brown. Like swamp water. Or a mud puddle. But there’s something inviting about them, too. I can’t explain it.

  Grandpa’s tune suddenly stops and he finishes the digital excavation of his ear canal. He throws his arm around me and shouts, “My grandson!” He then sags back in the folding chair and nods off on his own shoulder. It’s annoying, but I’m used to it. At least he knows my identity for once.

  The girl seems both surprised and amused. She lifts an eyebrow and raises her pinky finger to her lip like she’s simultaneously filthy rich and drinking tea—just like the stuffed shirt in the chair across from me who happened to bear a striking resemblance to the guy on the front of the Monopoly game box. I smile. Then I look around for another mark. There are plenty of weirdoes sitting around us, so I take my pick. An older lady with skin so pale she must sleep in a coffin. She’s paging through a magazine super hard like the paper itself murdered her children—probably paper cuts. I motion over to the lady with my chin and watch Punk Girl steal a quick glance. Then, I curl my hands up like claws and bare my fangs like a vampire. I let out a little hiss and everyone raises their heads from their reading to stare at me, the psycho. I hear Punk Girl let out a laugh that she tries to stifle. Grandpa starts snoring and drooling a little bit on his own shoulder. I pull out an old tissue and wipe the corner of his mouth without waking him. When I look up, Punk Girl is puckering her lips and making this dainty motion, all proper-like, with her hand as if she’s some old nursemaid cleaning gunk off a kid’s face. I shake my head, but I can’t hold back the smile.

  The nurse shuffles in with a bunch of clipboards. She’s kind of squatty around the middle and her scalp explodes in a million wiry curls. “Gabe,” she says. “You can bring him back now if you can wake him.”

  “Thanks, Danielle.”

  I give Grandpa a quick elbow jab, nothing to hurt him, and he snorts a bit. His eyelids flap open and he’s back in motion—like a freaking robot with a bunch of blown-out circuits. Makes me want to cry a little sometimes. But I won’t, because that’s not what Dad would do. And I’d look like a punk—and not in a good way—in front of the only girl in the world who doesn’t yet know I’m a moron, even if she’s weird as hell and I don’t know her name.

  Somehow, after all of the insanity of the day, Grandpa is in good spirits. There’s never really any pattern to it. He could be humming some wacked-out tune one minute and then be trying to kick me in the groin the next. You never know. So, I’m quick to hustle him past the front desk and into the far recesses of Dr. Weston’s offices before his mood changes.

  Grandpa’s humming away by the time I have him seated at the doctor’s table with his shoes tucked underneath and his shirt unbuttoned half way. I wonder if he’ll be this happy when the doctor tries to lace him up with a row of stitches?

  Gabe LoScuda

  English 4A – Personal Essay #2

  Mr. Mastrocola

  October 3

  Leather and Pipe Tobacco

  “Put your face in it, Gabe. Really get your nose in there.”

  Grandpa slid the glove off his weathered hand and dropped down to one knee. There was a twinkle in his eye. The sun sparkled off grey strands that poked out from beneath his brown mane. It was the first time I ever saw him smile. Even then, I had to look pretty hard as he fought to banish it from his face.

  Dad stood a few steps behind, silent, a goofy grin plastered on his face. It was like they’d already shared this moment and relished in their chance to relive it. Like they’d been waiting for it to happen every day since the last.

  “Go ahead, Gabe. Give it your best stuff.”

  He pushed the heavy piece of rawhide against my frail chest. I took hold and slipped my left hand inside. It felt slick with Grandpa’s sweat. My fingers barely reached the holes they were destined to fill one day. Gramps and Dad had spent most of the morning pounding their fists into the pocket, slathering it with oil, and contorting it into all sorts of painful-looking shapes.

  Grandpa pushed the glove up toward my face.

  “Go ahead, son. She’s yours now.”

  I inhaled, and my lungs were filled with the rich scent of tanned leather—the defining moment that lures a youngster to the game from the very first time his hand reaches inside a mitt.

  My eyes bulged and my mouth puckered into a t
iny, three-year-old “O.”

  “There it is, Dad! You see that?”

  Gramps and Dad burst out into proud and joyous laughter.

  Grandpa tussled my hair with his aging hand, and the scent of pipe tobacco mingled with the lingering glove leather. He pinched my nose between his knuckles and said, “Don’t forget to keep it clean now, kid.” It was the first time I ever heard him utter the phrase. “Let’s toss the old ball around,” Grandpa said once the moment had been thoroughly savored.

  Dad and Grandpa pulled their gloves, cracked and scuffed by decades of use, out from the backs of their waistbands. They slipped them on and popped the pockets a few times with clenched fists. “Watch and learn, Gabe,” Grandpa said as he flipped a side-arm toss over to Dad, who squeezed it in the pocket and covered it up with his throwing hand. “Always use two hands. Your father learned that lesson a few times.” Dad shook his head and kept throwing. “Look the ball into the glove. And, for Pete’s sake, stay in front of the damn thing. It’s a ball, not a bomb.”

  Dad shook his head again, but kept throwing and catching.

  “Now it’s your turn.”

  Grandpa knelt down and put his hands on my shoulders. He jostled me around a bit until I was in the right position and then he took a few steps back and held the ball out in front of his chest.

  “You ready?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded and held my glove in front of my face. My eyes barely peaked over the webbing.

  “Here goes.”

  And Grandpa wound back and tossed the ball. The top half caught the sun and gleamed in white. The bottom half was the dark side of the moon. The laces flipped and twirled, and I fought hard to keep myself from jumping out of the way and disappointing Grandpa.

  Then I felt leather make contact with leather. The weight gathered in the pocket. There was a soft SNAP! as my bare hand clamped over the front of the glove.

  “Would you look at that?! My grandson’s a friggin’ natural!”

  “The next Willie Mays,” Dad said. “The next Willie Mays.”