Talent Show Big Harry's son stood in the doorway of the kitchen when he first asked if his band could practice in the unfinished apartment above the detached garage. Big Harry said "no"; then he watched for a reaction on Little Harry's inscrutable face. When his eyebrows dropped down even farther over his dark eyes, Big Harry thought that probably the kid was angry, but he couldn't be sure. Big Harry was called "Big" because his son was Harry Junior, or Little Harry. They shared the same name but not much else. Big was handsome in a broken-nosed way; he thought Little looked like a consumptive poet. Little Harry did have Big Harry's red curly hair, although it was much darker, almost purple. "Why?" Little Harry asked now. On its face, the answer made perfect sense. The apartment above the garage wasn't empty; it was where they stored the lawn furniture. And they couldn't put it out this early. Winter was over, but the lawn had only last week melted into green and brown slush, and the regular spring rains kept everything wet. Big Harry pictured the chairs' pointy legs sinking down into the bottomless muck: only the seats remained, floating on the surface like white pathway stones. He imagined his wife accusing him of tampering with her garden, making pathways to nowhere. Celeste was very particular about the bushes and flowery tangles that surrounded the house. When she was home between shifts at the hospital, she planted and clipped and pressed the plots with the same gently determined hands she applied to her patients' broken parts. Harry watched her hands move in gentle patterns from the kitchen window and tried to remember what their touch felt like, telling himself it was only idle curiosity. The house was Harry's domain, but he deferred to Celeste when it came to the garden. Big Harry supposed, in the guessing that passed for knowing, that Little Harry wasn't thinking along those lines at all. His son saw only all the empty available spaces: the barn, the cellar, the attic, the garage. Places where the lawn furniture could be moved. Places he had asked about before. Little wanted him to address all those empty spaces. That "no" hadn't been enough for him. Little viewed the world as if it consisted of nothing but potential practice spaces. But Big Harry knew each of those empty places was empty for a reason -- because the garage was where he kept the cars and stored the snowblower, or he needed to be able to walk through the cellar to get to his workshop. Still, he knew if he talked about it, it might lead the boy to believe that the question was open for discussion, and he didn't want to give him the wrong idea. Big Harry turned away from Little Harry, back to the dishes in the sink. Little didn't leave right away. Big felt him standing there, taller and thinner than he really was, looking at his back. He figured the boy and his pals were using the band as an excuse to get together and smoke pot. Big Harry was not stupid or judgmental, he just thought it was the wrong time for Little to take it easy, now that so many important things were beginning to happen. Of course Big could've asked Little about the pot. But somewhere along the line, they had stopped being truthful with one another. Big accepted this. It was what men did when they grew up. They made silences, hated their fathers. That way they didn't have to hate themselves so much. Big could feel the anger coming from the boy, even with his back turned, and it made him defensive, made him forget all the other decisions that had built up to this. It wasn't as if he had unlimited amounts of free time to be the object of Little's misplaced anger. He had things to do. He hunched his shoulders. "Anything else?" He went downstairs to the basement workshop, with the familiar but abrasive smell of dampness seeping through cement. He switched on the light above the counter that ran along the back wall. He pushed away the scattered wood samples and paint chips to make room for his reference books. He needed to determine the design for the new shutters. Two months in this new house and Big still hadn't come up with anything. The house needed them badly. Big had bought the house because of its potential, but it was only through diligent work and thought that its potential could be exploited. Working usually calmed and soothed him after an irritating exchange with his wife or son. But when he opened a book, he saw his son's eyebrows fold down and pull his pale forehead with them. This band thing was just a diversion anyway, Harry told himself. Saying no to him about this was no different than telling the kid when he was six that he couldn't paint birdhouses in the living room. His son was on the right path and he wanted him to achieve all his potential. After graduation, Little was to go to Italy to intern on an archeological dig Big had pulled some strings to arrange for him. Then he was to have a week home before going off to college -- where they didn't know yet -- although Amherst had already turned the boy down, which made Big Harry mildly nervous. He was still fairly confident about his son's chances at Williams. The boy played sax in the Jazz Ensemble. Wasn't that enough music for him? Jazz Ensemble was a legitimate outfit. Big tried to concentrate on his task. He focused on the numbers. There were twenty-four windows, which meant forty-eight custom made oak shutters. The guys at the woodshop were waiting on the final design. Big played with his previous ideas, marked out on square slips of gridded tracing paper. For a time, he had thought it should be something abstract, maybe even Celtic, or a masculine flower, like a thistle. When he moved the tracing paper over the elevation drawing of the front of the house, he pictured each design, punched out forty-eight times; it never seemed right. He wanted the shutters to be stately, not too folksy or country cute. Such decisions were slow and difficult and could not be rushed. He always had to have a workshop in every house they lived in, a place to be alone and concentrate. Making a home out of a mere house was Harry's job. His wife made the money and Harry spent it, wisely. An old school friend had jokingly accused him once of being a kept man, and Harry feared this partial truth more than anything; he inflated the significance of his projects whenever possible. The amount of insight and physical energy he applied to his responsibilities surely elevated them beyond hobbies. He concentrated fiercely whenever he was in his workshop. His wife had learned never to come down. She called to him from the top of the stairs. But Big had never minded having his son around. In fact, it had been impossible to keep Little Harry away from the workshop when he was younger. Little had practically grown up in the workshop Big had in the barn at last place on Trumansburg Road. Little would twirl around in the filthy kilt his parents couldn't take off him, a present from a trip to Scotland. When he got tired of doing that, he'd hop around and chirp, glad little sounds in his throat. He used his father's tools to dig in the dirt floor and ask to see the paint chips clipped together in a fat fan. Little Harry chose the color of the old kitchen door, a blue so electric it seemed to vibrate. CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE TALENT SHOW
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