No Sad Songs

by Frank Morelli

  I often think about moments like these—the ones that feel so light and carefree at the time, but that carry with them much heavier insights. It’s only in the future, after time has beaten the ever-loving crap out you, that you realize what was actually taking place on a day like that. And it reminds me of one of Roberts Frost’s most famous poems, which also happens to appear in one of my favorite books of all time: The Outsiders. I may have read S.E. Hinton’s most popular book way back in middle school, but I will never forget the sage insight Johnny Cade gives to Ponyboy through Frost’s words. They still ring in my ears:

  Nature’s first green is gold,

  Her hardest hue to hold.

  Her early leaf’s a flower;

  But only so an hour.

  Then leaf subsides to leaf,

  So Eden sank to grief,

  So Dawn goes down to day

  Nothing gold can stay.

  When the ball popped my mitt that day—so many years ago when I could barely see over the shoulders of a cricket—and I squeezed it before it flipped lifelessly to the grass, I had held onto more than just the ball. I had held that gold in my hand—the hardest hue. And Gramps and Dad recognized it immediately, for they had once held the same hue in their own hands. Their appreciation for the gift that had been mysteriously stolen from them—their youth—was the catalyst for all the smiles and laughter these two produced in my honor. But, for them, that first youthful hue was far behind them, just a distant blip that wouldn’t even register on a satellite image. For them, dawn had long ago gone down to day, and the only gold they’d see again would exist within the DNA they had passed along to me.

  These days, I’m not even sure I possess the hue anymore. I’m eighteen years old and, for me, the light is already starting to fade. But I’m lucky. For Gramps and for Dad, men whose youth and energy once injected jolts of electricity into anything they touched, the flame has already been extinguished—and nothing they or I or even God could do would ever change that fact.

  5

  THE CLOSER

  “I honestly don’t know how much longer I can live with him.”

  I cram a full half of my peanut butter sandwich into my mouth. John looks disgusted.

  “Dude, you don’t need to inhale it. She’s not even here yet. Besides, your pops isn’t that bad.”

  “It’s not Grandpa. At least he has an excuse for lying around the house all day and only hitting the toilet with thirty percent accuracy. It’s Nick. I’m gonna kill the guy.”

  I cram the other half of sandwich behind my molars. There’s a cool sweat building under my shirt. It’s almost time.

  “He still out of work?”

  “Again. Held the last job for a new record.”

  “How long?”

  “Three days. Then they shot his ass out of a cannon.”

  “Brutal.”

  “I mean, how hard is it to make a few phone calls and ask people if they like their cable service?”

  “Doesn’t sound like surgery.”

  “But he tells me some crap like, ‘It hurts my feelings when people hang up on me.’ But you’d actually have to show up to work before anyone has a chance to hang up on you. It’s pathetic.”

  “Pa-thet-tic,” John says, but he’s barely paying attention. His eyes are busy trolling for Marlie’s entrance into the cafeteria. His disinterest reminds me I should be pretty damn nervous right now.

  The cafeteria at Schuylkill High smells like a cross between an old subway tunnel and a ballpark, which can only mean one thing: hot dog day. The cavernous, cinderblock walls contain an explosion of laughter and shouting, chairs scraping on linoleum, and plastic utensils tapping on trays. But John and I are stiff and silent—struck by the reality of what we’re about to do.

  “At least you don’t have an Uncle Lily,” John says when our tension starts to itch.

  “What?”

  “My mom. I thought I’d be smart, get a bit of studying in right after school. She told me it doesn’t count if she doesn’t know about it. Had me holed-up in my room identifying pig parts all night.”

  “Pig parts?”

  “We’re dissecting fetal pigs in Honor’s Bio next week.”

  “Wow. Don’t forget that suave one-liner when prom rolls around. How will the girls resist you?”

  “Shut up, Gabe. Besides, shouldn’t you be the one worried about smoothness?”

  John rolls his eyes over my right shoulder and without looking I know Marlie is approaching—probably flanked by her annoying gaggle of giggling girlfriends. “You remember what to do?”

  “Of course,” I say. “Wait for Marlie to get her lunch and then it’s go-time. Operation: The Closer.”

  “Worst name ever,” John says under his breath.

  “Not the worst name ever. I’m trying to keep the closer mentality. Shut her down and don’t let her say ‘no.’ Close the deal at all costs.”

  “Did you graduate business school last night? Cause you sound like my father’s stockbroker. And I doubt Marlie wants to be seen with a bald guy named Barry.”

  “Shut up, John. Here she comes. Do your thing and take care of the peanut gallery.”

  “Peanut gallery? Do you hear yourself, Gabe? You sound like the devil child that’d be born if James Bond married Betty Crocker.”

  “Would you shut up already? I need to concentrate. Got my line picked out and everything. Sonnet 116. William Shakespeare. No chance any girl can resist it. Not even Marlie.”

  “Great. You’re a poet. Only three and a half years at Schuylkill High and you might make it to an actual dance. Impressive stuff, Gabe. Will you be wearing an ascot to the affair?”

  I’m about to slug him from across the table when I’m stopped by a shock of blond hair.

  “Here she comes,” I whisper. “Let’s move.”

  We leave what’s left of our lunches in two half-eaten piles and follow Marlie’s trail. John and I know her path well by now. I mean, it’s not like we’ve been secretly analyzing her every move for the past two weeks, or anything.

  She sits at the big, round table near the snack machine every day. Justine Klein and Mandy So-and-So walk half a step behind her like bodyguards and then they giggle and make small talk for a few seconds before sitting. That’s our cue.

  I motion to John and he breaks off around the long table usually reserved for the band geeks. Today, it appears to be somewhat abandoned. I’m worried it might not provide enough cover for John to complete his mission. But my friend is stealthy from living with the ever-omniscient Lily Chen all these years and he slips around the table with super-ninja speed and swings in behind Marlie’s table unnoticed.

  I reach down and check my pockets. Full of paper towels, just like we’d planned. I give John a soft nod, and he taps the bridge of his nose to acknowledge the signal. “Operation: The Closer” is a full go.

  Marlie rests her tray against the table, and John springs into action. He moonwalks a few steps in her direction, does a quick Michael Jackson spin, and finishes off with a low kick that flips Marlie’s tray no less than four times. A cloud of French fries, mangled hot dog bun, and Jell-O hangs in the air for a single, weightless second before the whole mess splatters on the floor in a chunky heap.

  The cafeteria goes silent and Marlie’s hands start to shake. Her eyes bulge like when you put a candy Peep in the microwave. John moonwalks a few more steps over to Justine and Mandy So-and-So, and it looks like Marlie’s about to have a melt down.

  “You … hey, you!”

  But suddenly I’m there.

  Her knight in shining armor. Totally by chance. No signs of a plot afoot at all. And I’m here to save the date. I mean, the day.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell her, pulling the wads of paper towel I’d stolen from the bathroom earlier out of my pockets. They’re all wrinkled. One’s a little wet for some reason, but I swoop down and wipe a few beads of green Jell-O off her shoes before she can object. I hear John spouting off a bunch of crap
to Justine and Mandy So-and-So. Something about “kinetics is what the King of Pop relies on and that’s what makes him a scientist …” Blah. Blah. Blah. Attaboy, John. Keep them busy.

  All at once our classmates lose interest, and the hush of silence in the cafeteria erupts into the usual obnoxious symphony.

  “Let me give you a hand,” I tell Marlie like a guy who just happened to stumble across her at that very moment with the requisite amount of toilet tissue stuffed in his pants. Man, that doesn’t sound right.

  “Ok, thanks,” she says. She’s not shaking and her head doesn’t seem to be on the verge of explosion anymore. I figure it’s the perfect time to put the final phase of Operation: The Closer in motion.

  “You know, we have to stop running into each other this way,” I say as I scoop a pile of French fries back on the tray.

  Come on, Gabe. Lame line. Don’t let this plan unravel. You’ve come so far.

  “What I mean is … you know, homecoming is just around the …”

  She’s smiling, Gabe. But is it because you’re stuttering and holding a chicken finger in front of your face? Do something, genius!

  “What I mean to say is ‘If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man has ever loved.’”

  She watches me wipe up the last bit of green sludge from the floor. I hand her the tray and wait for that one, tiny word. The word that would make the whole damn operation a success. The one word that—

  “Later, Gary,” she says. And she pats me on the shoulder like some stupid kid brother. Then she walks away. Again.

  A second later, that idiot, jock-strap sniffer Brent Corcoran says something and she hands him her tray. I can read the words as they come off her lips. “Thank you Brent. You’re so sweet.”

  The bastard.

  6

  GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

  “I’ll go to the doc with you and Gramps,” he says over the top of his newspaper—the classifieds, no less. “It’s a Saturday. Not the best day for jobs.” He’s on such a roll I don’t mention that it seems, for Nick, no day is a good day for jobs.

  “Okay,” I say.

  Trust me. This was a big deal. Nick was making me think he might have a soul after all. But I didn’t want to sound all needy because, in reality, I didn’t need him. Like Dad always said, “it was the principle of the matter.” Don’t ask me which principle I was sticking to here, because Nick had already smashed most of them under his boot like so many of his cigarette butts. But I felt like I was sticking to something.

  Still, it was nice escorting the old man across the hospital parking lot with a little back up. Made the whole chore feel a little less like a carnival act. So, when Gramps somehow kicked off one of his shoes and started hobbling across the asphalt like some kind of malfunctioning robot, I didn’t have to worry. Nick was there to corral him before he stomped a limp and baggy sock down on a busted-up pile of old Heineken bottles. And I was there to ratchet the flat tire back on the old man’s foot. We were like a damn pit crew for demented people, Nick and me.

  We’re the first appointment of the day. I planned it that way. Got up at the butt crack of dawn to get Grandpa ready. Time to remove the old stitches. The waiting room is empty at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. Good. The last thing I need is for a studio audience to witness a repeat of what happened when Gramps got laced up the first time.

  It’s all still a bit of a blur. All I can say is the process started with a lot of screaming. Real high-pitched, blood curdling stuff like you hear in slasher films. There was a whole lot of pulling an old geezer out of his foxhole—the underside of Dr. Weston’s examination table. A cascade of tongue depressors washing over the doctor, his nurses, and, of course, the patient, marked the climax of the piece. The scene ended with a dozen stunned faces staring at the red-faced teen and his babbling, and somehow freshly-stitched grandfather as they made a quick escape to the safety of a dark parking lot.

  That’s why I want to kiss Nick on the lips when he tells the receptionist, “I’ll take him back today.” Really Nick? You’ll take the crazy circus clown back to his clown car? You will? Well, you’re a sucker, buddy, and I love you for it. I snap a look over at Danielle sitting in her ergonomic receptionist’s chair. Her chin hangs a bit slack on her jawline, like she just witnessed some kind of miracle. Good old Uncle Nick—number double-zero on the list of world wonders. I smile and she averts her eyes, pretending to copy a case number off one of the many cardboard file boxes stacked in the narrow cubicle.

  Of course, just when I’m about to thank Uncle Nick for pitching in with his own father, he goes and ruins everything. “Yeah, I’ll take him back,” he says to the nurse, “I don’t want it to be like last time.”

  Like last time? Are you serious, Nick? You think I wanted Grandpa to have the National Guard called in because he got four stitches? You think I wanted to sprint out of the waiting room like I just tied up Dr. Weston and all of his nurses in a back closet and was leaving with their jewels? Like freaking last time?

  “You know what? Thanks, Nick. But I usually take him—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know.” And he has this smug look on his face all of a sudden. I want to punch him.

  “I’ll take him back,” I say, and I grab Grandpa by one of his sleeves.

  Nick shuffles to his left to block our way. One of his flabby arms brushes against a basket full of lollipops on the reception desk and they cascade over the edge like a candy waterfall. Nick drops to one knee and scoops up a pile of them in one of his bear claws. The cellophane crinkles between his fingers as he drops them back in the basket. “He’s my father, Gabe. I can handle it.”

  “He’s used to me, Nick. It’s better if—”

  “I said I’ll take care of it. Hey, don’t forget your place.”

  My place? Did he really think I wanted my place to be under the drool rag of an old man who barely remembered me? Get serious, Nick.

  “Ok, have it your way,” I grumble just as Dr. Weston approaches with his clipboard.

  “Everything all right this morning, gentlemen?

  “Fine,” I tell him.

  “Just fine,” Nick parrots. Then he leads Grandpa back to the examining room with the doctor a few steps behind. Out of the corner of my eye I see Gramps peel a laminated poster depicting the Heimlich maneuver off the wall. It had been stuck up there with that weird, blue putty-looking stuff they use in classrooms. Nick grabs it from him and reapplies the adhesive to the cold cinderblock. I look away before he notices I’m watching. This is his battle now.

  I pull my English notebook out of my backpack and sit on a folding chair in the empty waiting room. I’m happy I can get a little homework done while I wait. It’s pretty sad when homework is the most entertaining thing you do all day. At least we’re not memorizing a bunch of presidents or dates or crap like that. All that stuff only sticks in my brain until I take the test. Then, I guess, my brain pukes it all up and refills with more important stuff, like song lyrics and pizza toppings and baseball statistics—stuff that matters. Or, at least they used to matter before my brain became Grandpa’s brain and Uncle Nick’s brain, and gets filled up with crap from the prescription bottles, child safety instructions, and dead-end leads to non-existent jobs.

  At least in Mastro’s class we’re looking at how literature made an impact on our nation’s beginnings. So we’re talking about guys like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. I love that stuff—how these guys were so important they had to have three names instead of two. I’m gonna have that one day, if I ever get my life back for a few seconds. They’ll call me Gabe Freaking LoScuda, or something of that sort, and everything I say or write will swing the course of human history like the tides to a ship. And Uncle Nick and Grandpa won’t bother me for a second because they’ll be dead and—

  It startles me. The thought. You know, of them being … gone. And I look down at my notebook. And a line or two of Thoreau stares back at me through all the other scribb
les on the page. They’re from a piece called “I am the Autumnal Sun,” a poem Bernard Tiller in my class called “I am the Hemmorhoidal Bum.” He’s British, but mostly he’s obnoxious, and he spends every spare moment between classes in the bathroom puffing a one-hitter. But I can’t think about Tiller right now. I can only think about Grandpa and Nick and the lines from the poem: “And the rattling of the withered leaf/is the constant music of my grief.” And I’m not sure why.

  Then the doorknob rattles and a bell rings. It startles me half way to hell. She walks in by herself. Her eyes are black buttons set against heavy blotches of dark eye shadow. Her hair reaches down to her waist in silky, black snakes. A heavy stream of shouting and some recognizable guitar chords leak from her headphones and pollute the air. She brushes past me like I’m a piece of office furniture and she parks herself in front of the receptionist. They exchange a few words I can’t make out, but I do hear her say something like, “She’s not awake? Then I’ll wait.”

  She spins around and heads for a chair facing mine. My eyes instantly shoot down onto my notebook. She smells kind of nice when she walks past. Kind of like warm tortillas and lavender. I keep my eyes on the notebook, jotting fake notes in the margins and underlining things like a madman just to make myself look scholarly. Before I know it, there’s a border so thick and black around the lines of Thoreau’s poem that it looks like a picture frame, and the notebook paper is flimsy and full of all these tiny holes that make it look perforated. I try to cover it up with my hand but she’s already turning down the volume on her Walkman. She’s already pulling one earpiece and then the other from her ears. She’s already taking a deep breath and getting ready to say something.

  “So … I bet you think you’re pretty deep,” she says.

  She speaks like a statue, her eyes still and her lips thin and barely moving. I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or if she’s just floating her words out there on the stale hospital air—maybe to get trapped in the thumb of a latex glove or under the plunger of a syringe.