The One-in-a-Million Boy

by Monica Wood

  For years it had tried to make itself known to him, but he’d tucked it away, refusing to see it or feel it or name it. He felt it now. Saw it now. Named it here, now, on the noisy floor of GUMS where Dawna was instructing him on the finer points of copycat marketing.

  Her disquisition had made her looser, almost indulgent. “Shoot, it’s almost three,” she said. “Call it a day, Porter. I kind of shorted you this morning.”

  He made it to the lobby and pulled out his earplugs and took the landscaped pathway that led to the road that led to Lot C and the bus stop beyond. He began to hurry and then to run, and when he reached the road he was out of breath, knees on fire, the misheard words still pinballing through him, bright and electric.

  Look at this guy!

  An easy enough mistake—people misheard words like this all the time. This guy; this sky. Easy for a hearer to mishear. Especially if perceived through the lips of David freakin’ Crosby and filtered through a gabbling outdoor crowd, a billion gallons of ocean smashing against a cliff, and your own grateful chords vibrating through a bank of speakers. Especially if these words were the very words your wishful ears most wanted to hear.

  Look at this guy! Quinn had heard those words. He’d nodded, smiling, eyes on his own flying fingers. But they were not, not exactly, the words that had so giddily exploded from David freakin’ Crosby’s mustachioed lips.

  Look at this sky! This sky’s amazing! As it indeed had been on that magical evening, broad and high and midnight blue and flooded with stars. I love this beautiful place, ol’ Dave had said. Meaning a real, geographical place. Meaning: This water. This cliff. This outrageous house. This amazing sky. This sky’s amazing.

  The bus pulled up and took him in and he sat in the back with his eyes shut, looking inward, surprised to find his mother there, his mother whose memory over the years had dimmed nearly to nothing. I could listen all day, honey, she marveled, as his father snorted into his newspaper.

  He had fast, nimble fingers, an ear for harmony, and spotless timing. You must be quite talented, Ona had said, and he was. But even talented people, sooner or later, cracked their heads against their own personal ceilings, as Quinn did now, and he nearly cried out against the seismic blow. He could improvise in the style of a hundred players, but musical invention, the kind that made listeners stop in their tracks—This guy’s amazing!—was not Quinn’s gift.

  He was not a dreamer, no matter what Ona thought. He was a striver. A striver who loved music. All of it: the sublime inventions of his idols, yes, but also the two-chord folksongs, the hair-band medleys, the Delta blues, the Jesus music, the Gypsy jazz, the big-band horns, the classic rock, the Macarena, the chicken dance, the Electric Slide. He loved it with a sweltering, headlong, irrational affection, as if music—all of it, the best and the worst—were a child given over to his care.

  “You all right, fella?” came a voice from across the aisle. A man in an orange bowling shirt, a regular rider. Small, rabbity, sympathetic eyes, and raging boils the length of his neck. Another regular sat just behind him, a misshapen wretch with shivering limbs. Down front, a young teenager nestled into the tiered misery of his own blubber. A busload of pilgrims today on journeys they never chose, having once believed themselves born for more than this.

  He’d played a hundred songs, five hundred, a thousand songs that made people bite their lips and bob their heads, recalling a place they once lived, a person they once loved, a version of themselves they’d forgotten. “Rock of Ages” and “I Am a Rock” and “Rock Around the Clock.” “The Long and Winding Road” and “Roadhouse Blues” and “Blue Suede Shoes.” “Born to Be Wild” and “Wild Thing” and “Thing Called Love.” Was it really so foolish to have loved it all? The muddy acoustics and pit-stained tuxedos, the flat-footed brides and their chubby husbands, the grannies and uncles-in-law jamming the dance floor? The sun-weary crowds at the county fairs, the kids at the prom in their cheap-shiny clothes, the corporate drones who clapped on the downbeat, the beer-swilling pub crawlers and their ribboning laughter?

  He loved that they loved him. He loved the hollow he filled.

  It was the boy who’d understood this. The boy, whose lists and lists filled his own hollow, the one his father had left behind.

  A loosening in his chest, like sliding rocks, took him so abruptly that he doubled over, trying to hold it in.

  The boy, of all people.

  The boy, who listened to music in puzzlement and pain. The boy, with his razored clippings and neat beads of glue, dogged and watchful, arranging his father’s story, preserving and tending it, page after page after page.

  SUCCESS

  Highest rank achieved by law-enforcement camel. Reserve Deputy Sheriff. Bert. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Country of USA.

  Highest jump by a rabbit. 18 inches. Golden Flame. Owned by Sam Lawrie. Country of UK.

  Tallest snowman. 113 feet and 7 inches. Country of USA.

  First father and son to finish first and second in the Daytona 500. Bobby and Davey Allison. Country of USA.

  Last surviving giant tortoise. Lonesome George. Country of Ecuador.

  Biggest snowflake. 15 inches by 8 inches. Year of 1887. Country of USA.

  Oldest billionaire. John Simplot. Age 95. Country of USA.

  First father and son to become president of the United States. John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Country of USA.

  Farthest distance eyeballs popped out of head. 0.43 inches. Kim Goodman. Country of USA.

  Most merit badges earned by one Boy Scout. 142. John Stanford. Country of USA.

  * * *

  This is Miss Ona Vitkus. This is her life memories and shards on tape. This is Part Ten.

  How’s the cake?

  . . .

  I knew you would. You and Louise.

  . . .

  I can’t tell you that story. I don’t like to dwell on it.

  . . .

  Did I not just now say I don’t like to dwell on it?

  . . .

  She was fired. That’s all you need to know.

  . . .

  Not a boy carrying tales. This time it was Mr. Finn, the librarian, who told a lie. Ugly, ugly man.

  . . .

  Imagine all his features snugged into the dead middle of a stupendously large face. He was one percent eyes-nose-mouth and ninety-nine percent face. If you turned a blown-up balloon on end, so that the knot was facing you? That would be a reliable facsimile.

  . . .

  A hateful troll, that’s what. A rat in the weeds. He barreled into the office once or twice a day with some complaint or other.

  . . .

  Tardy book order. Chatty boys. Bottle of floor cleaner left behind by the janitor.

  . . .

  I didn’t mean that librarians in general are rats in the weeds. I’m sure your mother is very nice. Most librarians are.

  . . .

  All of them, then. I’m a patron of that little branch over on Stevens, do you know it? They’re all helpful. But Mr. Finn was another story. He kept his books clean-clean-clean. It killed him to lend them out.

  . . .

  The boys called him “the Kaiser” behind his back. They had names for all of us.

  . . .

  Sharpie. Now finish your cake.

  . . .

  Because they thought I was a card sharp.

  . . .

  Somebody who’s good at cards. I did tricks for the boys who were waiting. Same ones I do for you. It took the sting out of the wait. They were good boys, most of them.

  . . .

  Now that you mention it, they do remind me of you. Not all of them. Some of them. One or two. One, maybe.

  . . .

  Good listener.

  . . .

  You’re welcome. So. The troll. With the face. Our first dustup came on my thirty-ninth day of employment.

  . . .

  I did count! Before I ever knew you! It gave me a sense of accomplishment. I was so thri
lled to be working. Anyway, the library was empty, except for Mr. Finn himself, perched on a ladder checking the shelves for fingerprints or God knows what.

  . . .

  What I wanted couldn’t have been simpler: to borrow a book.

  . . .

  Bleak House, by Mr. Charles Dickens. I hadn’t read it since Maud-Lucy, and I was looking for something sizable because I had a winter’s worth of long evenings ahead.

  . . .

  Indeed he did not ask, “May I help you?” Far from it.

  . . .

  “Who are you!” Like that.

  . . .

  I know! The rudeness! Like a booming god: “Who are you!”

  . . .

  More flummoxed than surprised, I’d say. I could just make out his face above that balloony middle of his, and the bright bottoms of his shoes.

  . . .

  That gassy old weasel had seen me a hundred times at my desk. We’d spoken directly on at least two dozen occasions. And yet, in his precious library, he didn’t recognize me.

  . . .

  Nothing. I was too startled to speak. The way Mr. Finn glared down from his book ladder, all those rungs, the soles of his shoes so shiny and judging. Did he think I was somebody off the street?

  . . .

  I’ll tell you how I felt. Like a girl from the Kimball pulp mill, sorting rags in a room lit by windows so filthy you could hardly tell day from night. Maud-Lucy’s tutelage counted for a big fat nothing—that’s how he made me feel: uneducated.

  . . .

  I’ll tell you what I felt like saying: “I can read, you egg-eyed bully! I am a professional secretary, you puffy old targer!” That’s what I felt like saying.

  . . .

  Don’t get the idea I was anything like Louise, despite that one notable whoopsie in my girlhood. I was Louise’s opposite. I scampered away from Mr. Finn like a baby chipmunk on my little chipmunk shoes.

  . . .

  I didn’t care for thundering exits. Louise would have pulled the ladder out from under him.

  . . .

  Me, too! I’d have bought a ticket to see that. Oh, and guess what? That night I dug out a carpetbag full of books I’d taken with me from the house on Woodford and guess what I found?

  . . .

  Bingo. In perfect shape. The very copy Maud-Lucy had given me.

  . . .

  It’s about an orphan with a scandalous birth. And her mother, a great society lady who disgraced herself and pretended otherwise all her life.

  . . .

  You might. There’s a cartload of dramatic deaths. One fellow bursts into flame for no reason whatsoever. Where was I?

  . . .

  Oh. The boy in question this time was the Morton boy. Another senior, a lovable redhead who grew into his looks too soon. And this time there was no talking the parents out of it.

  . . .

  Because Mr. Finn, for all his unthinkably bad qualities, was every bit as silver-tongued as Louise, and didn’t he ever match her, word for word.

  . . .

  The parents, you never saw such people. Two doctors. “It’s Doctor Morton,” the wife says. She had this cultured, icy way of speaking. I thought my eyelashes might freeze clear off my face.

  . . .

  I was taking notes, trying to make myself invisible—as I was trained to do—while the most unseemly ruckus commenced.

  . . .

  It didn’t matter one whit that the Morton boy denied everything, or that Louise explained to the trustees that Mr. Finn hated her guts and that his accusations took advantage of the previous incident, from which she had been thoroughly exonerated. Two of the trustees were there, prosperous men who loved Lester Academy more than they loved God.

  . . .

  One was a railroad man and the other one ran the bank.

  . . .

  I don’t recall. Mr. Shiny Shoes and Mr. Silk Tie. One of them had overly large teeth. Dr. Valentine was there, of course, and Mr. Finn, looking thrilled with himself, and the Morton boy with his big green eyes, and the formidable Doctors Morton. Big donors, of course, which made a difference.

  . . .

  “We know what we know.” That’s what they said, over and over. I finally stopped writing it down.

  . . .

  Well over an hour. I thought I’d die of exhaustion.

  . . .

  At some point—I forget just when—everybody agreed that if Louise quit Lester Academy that very afternoon, her employment record could remain unblemished. That’s the word I wrote down: unblemished.

  . . .

  Of course not. Can you imagine making a deal like that with a woman like Louise?

  . . .

  She—this is the part I don’t like to . . .

  . . .

  Well, she grabbed me by the wrist, yanked me to my feet, and announced, “I think we can all agree on the unimpeachable character of Miss Vitkus. Miss Vitkus has attended my Monday seminar every week without fail for three years. Surely she can offer a word in my favor.”

  . . .

  More than shocked. I was all bollixed up. In case you haven’t figured this out on your own—you’re a bright boy, I’m sure you have—everybody at Lester Academy regarded me as a piece of furniture. A well-constructed wooden chair that no person had ever sat in.

  . . .

  Thank you. But a nice chair is still a chair. Nobody but Louise knew a thing about me.

  . . .

  For example, on Lester’s main lawn we had a granite slab engraved with the names of war-killed Maine boys, but nobody knew one of those boys was my Frankie.

  . . .

  I just said my Frankie prayer each day as I passed the names and walked inside on my chipmunk feet. Now all of a sudden here I was, center stage, Louise showing me off like a prize pig. “Miss Vitkus,” she says, “persuade these people that I’m an upright woman and that Mr. Finn is a lying you-know-what. Persuade them, please!”

  . . .

  I noticed exactly the same thing! Ridiculous thing to notice, under the circumstances; but there I was, facing a wall of worked-up people who paid my salary, my spilled notebook all which ways, and the thought that sprang to my brain was that Louise Grady used persuade in place of convince. It was the best hint I had that beneath the bluster she was thoroughly undone.

  . . .

  First, Mr. Shiny Shoes looked down his snoopy nose at me. “Have you anything to add?” he asks me. I was supposed to say no. What on earth would a chair have to add?

  . . .

  They waited. Dr. Valentine and Mr. Finn and Mr. Shiny Shoes and Mr. Silk Tie and Doctor Morton and Lady Doctor Morton and the Morton boy. And Louise, of course. They waited and waited, while I stood there, dumb as a paving stone.

  . . .

  Because I was thinking of the day Louise read several suggestive poems by John Donne—that’s a dead English poet—while sitting on her desk with her legs crossed like Lauren Bacall asking Humphrey Bogart for a light.

  . . .

  Movie actors from the forties.

  . . .

  To Have and Have Not, that was the first one, I think. And Confidential Agent. That’s two. I saw them all. The Big Sleep, of course. Key Largo.

  . . .

  Well, that’s four. You’ll have to content yourself with four.

  . . .

  They just kept waiting. Especially Dr. Valentine.

  . . .

  I wasn’t fast on my feet. I was turning over that Lauren Bacall image in my mind.

  . . .

  Nothing. My mind was racing, but not one word came out of my mouth. Not a word on behalf of my friend.

  . . .

  She left in a lather, as you might imagine. She steamed out of there for good and ever. Ding-bang, just like that.

  . . .

  What I wish—? I wish I’d told those men, “You listen to me! Mr. Finn is a big fat liar!” But I couldn’t do it.

  . . .

  She came to my door th
at night. I thought I was in for a tirade, but instead she sailed into my parlor without a word and dropped a pretty box of chocolates on the chair. She’d been saving them for me from a shop she liked in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

  . . .

  Then she pointed to her cheek.

  . . .

  Well, I kissed it. It was very soft. We’d been talking in class just that week about biblical imagery, and the subject of Jesus and Judas came up.

  . . .

  The one who kissed Jesus on the cheek.

  . . .

  So the Romans would know which man to grab away. You don’t know that story? It makes my hair stand on end. I kissed Louise like Judas kissed Jesus.

  . . .

  “I did nothing wrong,” she said. “Don’t you see what has happened here, Miss Vitkus? I have been hunted down by a posse of frightened men, and you helped them burn me at the stake.”

  . . .

  She did have a flair for the dramatic, but I nearly died of grief. It was the “Miss Vitkus” that did it. I’d lost her, my only friend.

  . . .

  “You chose your secret valentine over me,” she said. Those were her parting words.

  . . .

  I cried for days. I stayed out of work for a week. Which ruined my record of perfect attendance, you’ll be interested to know. I cried and cried. For weeks. For years.

  . . .

  Because my secret valentine wasn’t the headmaster. Oh, I should have stood up for my friend! I should have said something, and I didn’t.

  . . .

  Because I was afraid.

  . . .

  Of Dr. Valentine. Afraid to lose his kind regard. He had hired me, respected me, relied on me. He made me feel indispensable, a feeling that trumped everything. I had never in my life felt indispensable. I loved that job too much.

  . . .

  But I do blame myself.

  . . .

  But I wasn’t young. I was nearly sixty years old.

  . . .

  Oh. Maybe. I wasn’t very practiced in the art of friendship. I might have been young in that one respect.

  . . .

  Just Maud-Lucy. Who turned out to be a not-very-good friend.