Being Henry David Page 13

  “I think she means a heart attack,” Mom said to me. “She must be up to M in the World Book.”

  Rosie loved reading an old set of white-and-green bound encyclopedias my parents had, and spouting off the facts she learned. She had an amazing memory. We both did. Not quite photographic memories—my mom had us tested once—but pretty close.

  Dad came down the stairs then, holding that black suitcase he took on business trips. My dad was in sales for a big pharmaceutical company. That’s pretty much all I knew about his job. He didn’t talk about it. I didn’t ask.

  “Morning, Rosie Posey,” he said, giving my sister a kiss on the cheek. “You going to cheer your brother on at the meet tomorrow, loud enough for all three of us?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  Mom placed plates of cheesy eggs, toast, and bacon on the table, and we all sat down to eat breakfast.

  “Oh, by the way, ” I said through a mouthful of toast, like something had just occurred to me. Actually, I’d hoped to catch them in a distracted, generous frame of mind before their trip. “There’s this thing Joey told me about last night, and I’m thinking of going.” Joey was the drummer in my band.

  Mom took a sip of coffee. “What kind of thing? When?”

  “It’s tonight. A concert, actually. And it could be a really great opportunity for, you know, the band.”

  “Tonight?” Dad asked.

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah, see, there’s this band coming to the House of Blues, and Joey got tickets through his Uncle Phil, who works there. I told you about him, remember?”

  Mom and Dad looked at me blankly. Okay, so I never actually told them about Joey’s Uncle Phil, who worked security at the House of Blues in Chicago, but they wouldn’t remember that.

  “He promised we could get backstage after the show to meet the band. And the lead singer is this guy who runs his own recording label, and he’s always looking for fresh talent. And we have that CD we recorded in Matt’s basement last month.”

  “It’s really good,” Rosie set down her glass and wiped off a milk mustache with the back of her hand. “Best band I ever heard.”

  Mom glanced over at Dad. He took his time crunching into a burnt slice of bacon.

  “Danny, I don’t think…”

  “Do you realize what an amazing opportunity this is?” I blurted. “I mean, this could be big for the band. Huge. It could be—”

  “Your big break?”

  “Well. Yeah.”

  “First of all,” Dad said, “you have that big competition tomorrow with a lot riding on it, so you need a good night’s sleep. Second, we need you here to watch Rosie. You have family responsibilities, son.”

  His gray eyes were fixed on me, and I searched them for the good-guy friend version of my dad, the one who took me on camping trips and to Cubs games and shot hoops with me in the driveway on Sunday afternoons. But good-guy Dad had left the building.

  “Matt already asked Jessica if she could baby-sit, and she said yes,” I said. Matt played bass and sang lead in the band, and his girlfriend thinks Rosie is the cutest kid on the planet. “It’ll just be in Chicago so it’s no big deal. Joey’s uncle will be there. The meet isn’t until late afternoon tomorrow, so I’ll have plenty of time to rest up.”

  Dad avoided my eyes. “I’m sorry, Danny,” he said. “The meet is just too important to take that chance. The whole team is counting on you.”

  Figured he’d pull that “whole team counting on you” thing. Like my life wasn’t my own. Like the purpose of my existence was to fulfill the expectations of other people. And usually, that’s exactly what I did.

  Well, almost. There was still that one huge secret I was hiding from Mom and Dad. I never did get around to telling them, not after everything that happened.

  “But—”

  “End of discussion.” Mom got up, gathering plates and silverware, clattering them in the sink like punctuation. Period. Exclamation point.

  After they kissed us good-bye and reminded us to do our homework and lock up the house at night, they left for their trip and Rosie and I went out into the garage. Mom was letting me drive her Toyota for the weekend, and I needed to drop Rosie off at school before I went to Naperville South.

  Rosie peered out the window and grew silent, which was unusual for her. Usually she gabbed away about school and her friends and the solo she was working on for dance class. And maybe this sounds cheesy as hell, but I listened to her too.

  “You okay?” I finally asked her. “You’re not worried about Mom and Dad, are you?”

  “Nah.” She loosened the light blue scarf around her chin. “Not more than usual anyway.”

  Sometimes she sounded more like a sixteen-year-old than a kid who was nine. It made me a little sad, like she was growing up too fast. “I know what you mean.”

  When I stopped the car at the curb in front of the school, Rosie just sat there, face nestled into her pink parka, not getting out.

  “I want you to go to that concert tonight,” she said at last, turning to look at me.

  “What?”

  “I want you to go to that Blues House place. I like your band. And I really like Jessica too.” Her face was solemn, determined. “And I won’t tell.”

  I guess it’s pretty clear that Rosie and I were not your typical seventeen-year-old guy and his bratty nine-year-old sister. We’d been through a lot together and were the only people in the world who really understood what it was like to be inside our screwed-up family.

  “You mean it?”

  “I mean it.”

  Rosie gave me this huge smile as she grabbed her backpack from the floor, got out of the car, and twirled around once, twice, three times on the grass, before skipping up the front steps to school.

  As it turns out, the guys and I never did get to meet the band backstage at the House of Blues that night. I have a vague memory of the concert itself—a head-banger of the first degree—but Joey’s stupid Uncle Phil was full of shit.

  “I never promised I could get you backstage,” Uncle Phil told us after the concert, standing at the stage door with his arms crossed like he was made of stone. “All I said was that I could try and deliver your CD if you wanted.”

  “That’s not what you said yesterday,” Joey shot back. “Are you serious, Uncle Phil? Man, I should’ve just listened to Mom.”

  “Why? What’s she saying about me now?”

  “Forget about it.” Matt grabbed Joey’s shirtsleeve. “Let’s just go.” He nodded politely at Joey’s Uncle Phil. “Thanks for getting us the tickets. It was a great show.”

  When a defeated Joey handed Phil our CD, I was embarrassed by how amateurish our cover art looked—some guitar in flames that Joey’s sister painted for us in art class. But whatever, our sound was good, and that’s all that mattered. Phil accepted the CD and nodded at us, purposely avoiding Joey’s blazing expression.

  “I’ll make sure this gets to the right people,” he promised us, like he was this amazingly generous guy instead of a total douchebag.

  Matt thanked him profusely, I managed a non-committal-shrug, then we all turned and walked in silence to my mom’s car. We got in and started the drive back to Naperville.

  The thing that happened with the car, now that was just stupid. I’m not sure who was to blame, but it was probably all our faults because we were being loud, yelling stuff out the windows. We weren’t hurting anybody, just letting off steam like guys do. Sure, they were drinking rum or whatever Joey stole from his parents’ liquor cabinet and put in his dad’s flask. He made us laugh all night because he kept taking sneaky sips from it, like a sketchy 1920s guy during Prohibition. Not that I’m a saint or anything, but I wasn’t drinking that night. Not just because I was driving, but because I was driving my mom’s car. The guys weren’t really drunk, just buzzed, but in Joey’s case it made him even more obnoxious than usual, which was saying a lot.

  “We should just turn around and start pounding on that backstage
door until they have to let us in.” He grabbed my shoulders from the backseat and shook me. “C’mon, Danny, let’s go back and demand they let us talk to the band. I know how to handle my loser Uncle Phil.”

  “Quit it, Joey, I’m trying to drive.” I pushed his hands away.

  Matt reached back to smack Joey on the back of the head, and Joey smacked him back, like some Three Stooges routine. I watched in the rearview mirror, laughing and not watching where I was going.

  In my defense, there’s no way I could’ve anticipated there would be a huge snow bank at the side of the exit ramp, right where the road curved. No way I could’ve realized that if a car veered ever so slightly off its correct path because the driver was distracted, it could go plowing right into that freaky April snow bank, parts of which were solid ice after melting and freezing, and cause a scraping sound on the undercarriage of the car that was a sickening combination of crunching snow and metal.

  “Ahhh, shit.” The car jerked to a stop and a stunned silence settled over the three of us. After a few paralyzed moments of okay, now what do we do, we all scrambled out to stare at the car. Fortunately, it was safely off the road and had no visible damage. Unfortunately, it looked like the car was stuck. Really stuck.

  It took us a good half-hour to get the car out. We took turns standing in the snow in our sneakers with our shoulders against the bumper, pushing and rocking the car back and forth over the ice, until finally it roared free and we shouted our relief and joy into the icy night. Never mind that the muffler was making a strange growling, clattering sound all the way home. I’d worry about that later. At least the car worked, and that’s all that mattered.

  I got home around two a.m., paid Jessica almost an entire month’s allowance for baby-sitting Rosie, and then slept in till noon on Saturday. That’s when I woke up to Rosie standing by my bed, staring down at me with her hands on her hips. I must have felt those huge blue eyes boring into my skull, demanding that I wake up. Of course, she was already dressed in her white tights and pink leotard.

  “I made you lunch,” she told me.

  “You can cook?” I asked with a yawn.

  “I know how to make a baloney sandwich.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  After lunch, we got in the car to go to Rosie’s ballet lessons. When I turned the key in the ignition, the car growled like it was complaining, but at least it started, at least it ran.

  “The car smells weird. And what’s that funny sound?” Rosie asked me.

  “Something going on with the muffler, I think. No big deal.”

  I shrugged at her, and she shrugged back. I figured I’d stop at the service station on the corner to get it fixed after I dropped off Rosie. Crap, what was that going to cost? After the baby-sitting and car repairs, last night was becoming way more expensive than it was worth.

  “Are you coming to my recital next month, Danny?” Rosie asked over the muffler sounds as we pulled out of the driveway. “It’s going to be really amazing.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said. “Have I ever missed one?”

  Sure, three hours of little girls in tutus is a strange form of torture. But she came to my meets—which were also really long—and I went to her recitals. It was only fair.

  “Okay, so my solo goes something like this,” she said. Rosie pointed one of her pink sneakered feet at the windshield and swooped her arms around. “I’m this pretty white bird like a dove or something, who escapes from its cage and has to learn how to fly all over again because she forgot how, get it?”

  “Got it.”

  The dance school was only about ten minutes away by car. All you needed to do was take a left turn out of our neighborhood, drive to the light at a major intersection, and go straight through it and over the hill into downtown Naperville.

  The light turned red just as we approached the intersection. I pressed down on the brake, like I’d done hundreds of times. Only this time, nothing happened. My foot on the brake met no resistance, and the pedal went straight to the floor. The car didn’t even slow down. It barreled into the intersection, way too fast, after the crossing traffic had already begun to accelerate. A big gray truck headed straight for us.

  Icy snow had scraped the hell out of the bottom of the car the night before. Metal on ice. Sharp smell in the garage—brake fluid draining. The twirling ballerina from the music box broke off, a terrible red wave crashed before my eyes, behind my eyes, everywhere.

  No more, says the beast now at Walden Pond, the beast who has become my friend in spite of myself. My protector. Enough, he says.

  Red turns to black, total eclipse, and I collapse behind a lichen-covered rock, far from home in the silent forest of Concord, Massachusetts.

  13

  Thomas is sitting on the front landing of the library, waiting for me. I’m sure I look like crap, with dirt on my clothes, a sweat-stained shirt, and red eyes, but Thomas doesn’t say a word about my appearance. Slowly, I climb the stairs to the concrete landing and collapse next to him, every muscle in my body on fire. We sit in silence, just watching the residents of Concord walk or jog by, generally enjoying the day. I envy them. So much.

  “So, I suppose this is where you tell me you’re not actually Thoreau reincarnated.” Thomas says at last.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” I say.

  “It’s okay. It was a crazy idea anyway. Would’ve been cool though.”

  “Yeah. Cool.”

  Thomas offers his water bottle to me, and I take a deep swig. The water is cold and feels good going down my dry throat.

  “My name is Daniel,” I tell him. “I live in Naperville, Illinois.”

  “Illinois? Wow, you’re a long way from home.” Thomas nods, salutes me with his water. “Pleased to meet you, Daniel.”

  I shake my head, and a dead maple leaf falls into my lap. “Well, you shouldn’t be. I’m a really horrible person as it turns out.”

  Thomas considers this. “Try me.”

  I run my fingers through my hair, pull out pine needles, a dead moth. Then I turn to Thomas. My face is heavy and I feel about a hundred years old.

  “My name is Daniel,” I repeat. “I live in Illinois. And I think I killed my little sister.”

  Thomas pulls hard on his water bottle to mask his shock and swallows. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me what you found out.”

  But I can’t speak. My head slumps forward and I’m afraid I’m going to start blubbering, right in front of Thomas.

  “Hank,” Thomas says. “Come on, let’s find someplace more private to talk.” He takes me to the side of the library, to a park bench partly hidden from the street by shrubs. We sit on the bench, and I lean over, stare at the ground, watch an ant carry off a breadcrumb. I wish I were an ant…or a breadcrumb.

  “Hank, look at me,” Thomas says.

  So I do.

  “Tell me about Daniel, but do me a favor, and tell me as Hank. Daniel is some kid I don’t know, who had something bad happen to him, far away from here. I’d like to hear my friend Hank tell the story. Okay?”

  I nod, wipe my stupid drippy nose with the palm of my hand.

  “So there was this kid, Danny Henderson,” I begin. My voice comes out all wobbly, so I clear my throat, take a deep breath, then continue. “He was one of those kids who just did what he was supposed to do, you know? He did his homework, ran track, pretty much did what his parents said and tried not to make trouble for anybody. I mean, sure, he partied with his friends and all, but I don’t know, he just never got too crazy. Just a typical kid, trying to get by.”

  I tell him how Daniel went to the House of Blues in Chicago that night with Matt and Joey. How they crashed into a stupid snowbank and damaged the undercarriage of the car without even knowing it. How he and Rosie plowed into that intersection and couldn’t stop. A big gray truck was coming, too fast.

  Blood. Pink shoe.

  A wave of dizziness breaks over me and without any warning, I barf right into the
bushes next to the park bench. This is as far as the beast will let me go. Everything that happened up to the accident is clear, but I can’t remember the actual accident or the days after, except for a few sickening flashes. My memory goes straight from a gray truck bearing down on Mom’s Toyota, to me sitting on the floor at Penn Station in New York City with Frankie staring into my face, saying, “You gonna eat that?”

  Wiping my mouth miserably with the back of my hand, I choke out, “I don’t even know if Rosie is alive or dead.”

  I’m afraid to see Thomas’s response, expecting to see anger maybe or disgust. And I would deserve it. But instead, I see something that looks a whole lot like sadness. And even more amazing, sympathy.

  “Hank,” he says in a gentle voice. “You need to call your parents. No matter what happened that day, you have to call them and let them know you’re okay.”

  “But I’m not okay!” I shout at Thomas.

  “Of course you’re not,” he says quietly.

  “God, Thomas. Why would they want anything to do with me ever again?”

  Call your mother, Sophie said. I guarantee she would sacrifice her own life just to have you home.

  How can I believe Thomas or Sophie? If I had one kid who killed or hurt another, I could never forgive that. There is not enough love and forgiveness in this world to make up for such a thing. Especially not after all my family has been through in the past five years. But I definitely can’t talk about that.

  “They’re your parents. They love you.”

  “They love Rosie too,” I argue back.

  “Hank, they need to know where you are,” Thomas says softly. “Facing up to this is better than running away.”

  No. Can’t face it, not yet. What if I call and they tell me Rosie is dead? I almost puke into the bushes again, empty stomach seizing, and I just want to die. The beast still lives inside me, razor teeth and claws, resolute in protecting me from these final truths. I’m not ready yet. Threatening to swallow me into permanent forgetfulness, the beast insists that I run from this last horrible thing. For now.