Talent Show

...continued

Although Big tried to concentrate on the shutters, he kept seeing Little in the old workshop's triangles of yellow light. Big decided to drive out to that old place on the other side of the lake. He told himself it was to get inspiration. He had painstakingly renovated every inch of that old farmhouse, until its red floorboards gleamed and its leaded-glass windows marched in wavering rows up the walls.

They had lived there longer than anywhere else, ten years, and by the time they sold it, it had been almost perfect. It was sold the same way all of the other houses had been. None of their houses were ever for sale, but eventually someone looking would see the house from the road and practically insist on buying it.

When he pulled up he noticed something wasn't right. The lilac bushes were still all out front, but the fence had been re-painted a sunny yellow that was too -- quaint. That was a minor problem, really just a matter of personality. But there was something else, something more fundamental. He walked around the house's perimeter, getting mud on his socks. Past the kitchen and around the back, along the "L" that was the dining and sitting rooms. He stepped back and stopped against the thicket of blackberry bushes Celeste had planted along the property line, which scratched his legs through his pants. He intently scanned the house's form, trying to pinpoint the change.

He felt unnecessarily guilty when James Magee called to him from an upstairs window.

"Oh Hello, James," he said, and put his hand on the bush behind him as a distraction, patting it back into shape.
"Have a coffee? Meet me at the kitchen door,"

The kitchen looked the same except that the Magees had strung their copper cooking pots above the middle island. Harry tapped one and it clanged dully in response.

"Let's take it into the breakfast room." James held up the two cups and gestured with his head.

Harry trailed after James, glancing at the rooms they walked through. They passed by the living room's new seating arrangement, pale freckled chairs crowded together with their backs to the windows. Big had never been back to one of his old places before, and was unprepared for the emotions he felt. It was as if he had built a nest, using feathers from his own tail, and someone else was keeping their egg warm in it. He tried to remind himself that houses, after all, were only setting and scenery.

Harry's jaw tightened reflexively when he saw James' so-called breakfast room. His hands clenched into fists inside his pockets. They had glassed in the screened breakfast porch. Clumsy black rubber squeezed the edges of the panes in place.

"Why on earth did you put these windows in?" Big could not help himself from saying.

James looked up in surprise at Harry's question, at the unmistakable edge in his voice. He responded coolly.

"Why on earth . . . so we could use it all year round. It was uninsulated. We're installing carpet next week."
"Carpet?" The word filled Big Harry with despair.
James put down his cup.
"Are you feeling okay?" There was anger in his voice.
"I guess not. I should go."

Harry took a different road home. His stomach was churning from the coffee that he rarely drank. He had accepted the invitation solely to be able to see the inside the house. He felt queasy. The bumpy road didn't help. He couldn't get the Magees' breakfast room out of his mind.

When Harry and his wife and son had first moved into that house, the breakfast porch had leaned sideways, pulling nails out of the house's siding. The contractor wanted to tear it down, but Harry felt the house was meant to have that mesh square, a giant butterfly cage. He had taken the planer from the workman's hands to show him precisely how to smooth the wooden frame, making it as thin and delicate as balsa airplane parts. He wanted the screen panels; fine as gossamer, to hang suspended in the air as if they were invisible.

When the porch was finished, it was the house's light and airy outstretched hand. Walking home across the field at night, Big Harry would set his course by the yellow light from that lantern of a room.

Big tried to picture the house that way, but all he saw was black rubber and nubby carpet. Maybe all of his perfect houses had vanished, disappearing as soon as he stepped out of them.

Big jammed into a lower gear and took the corner too fast, yanking the steering wheel to settle the car's fishtailing back end. Flashes of white from approaching headlights lit him up from behind. He adjusted his rear-view mirror and noticed the moon, criss-crossed with moving cracks of flying geese. He remembered the reason why he had gone out to the house in the first place. He pulled over to the side of the road and sketched out a rough design on the back of a paper placemat rummaged from the back seat of the car.

He called the woodshop in the morning and told them to turn on their fax machine. He said he was sending them the design for the shutters. They said they would be ready in forty-eight hours if nobody got sick.

Harry went up into the kitchen to get a big slice of walnut Danish. Little came down the stairs, his hair hanging in his face like a dare. He told his dad he'd be home late that night. Practice again.

"You've been practicing an awful lot."
"Yeah well, we don't want to make asses of ourselves."
"Are you guys any good?"

Little shrugged. His bony shoulders rose up under the thin skin of his worn out shirt. Worn out because he liked it that way. Big couldn't get him near new clothes.

Big thought about telling his son what the Magees had done to the old house. Instead, he shrugged back in mincing imitation and stared. Maybe challenging him. Little grabbed his backpack and loped out of the room, his shoulderblades pulled together like stunted wings.

His son wouldn't understand why the desecration of the old house mattered so much. Little didn't know about the years his father had worked the graveyard shift at the gas station and how he could never get his hands clean. How he'd walked the Malibu beach when he got off work at six in the morning and couldn't sleep, looking in the windows of the big houses, watching families eat breakfast together. The couple with the three blond boys and the paintings that filled the walls from floor to ceiling, the family with the dog that sat under the table and vases filled with flowers, always in the fullest moment of bloom. It would have been futile to attempt to explain the power that a beautiful space has over the lives lived in it.

"He'll appreciate me one day," he said aloud in his most fatherly voice. Then he went down into his workshop to research the right way to plaster over brick. He would need to know when the time came to re-do the fireplaces. Then he would do his wife's laundry. These days, it was by the smell caught in the wrinkles of her clothes that he knew her best.

The next morning Little came down to his workshop.

"Dad, can I borrow one of the cars tonight?"
"You have a car."
"But I want to drive one of the other ones, just tonight."
"Which one?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Like which one?"
"I don't know. Maybe the Alfa."
"No." Big had known all along he was going to say no. He turned back to his workbench and could sense his son waiting silently, hating.
"Why do we even have all of them if no one ever drives them?"
"They're investments," Big said firmly. He thought about the row of cars, luminous beneath their cloth covers, and the detailers and mechanics who came twice a year to maintain them. How their wheels were shining and black. Still, something about the answer wasn't right. He looked up at the ceiling pipes tangled through each other like copper snakes.
"Why tonight?" he asked his son after a moment.
"It's the talent show."
"Talent show?"
"The band's playing," Little said, as if Big was supposed to know that.
"I didn't know." They were both silent for a moment.
"Forget it," his son finally replied.

His steps clumped upstairs, a man's feet carrying the boy's body away. Big turned back to the workbench, plotting out the brick patio he would lay when the ground firmed up. He drew a thousand little squares but they wouldn't come together into a pattern.

He welcomed the distraction of when the doorbell buzzed upstairs. The deliveryman waited on the front step with a clipboard in his puffy, dirty hands. Harry scribbled on it and peered at the back of the truck. His beloved shutters.

The red sunlight of late afternoon made the wet blackness of the driveway pavement shimmer. Across its rough surface the low angle of the sun sent rippling gleams. The man got into the truck and backed up, pushing the red brake lights closer to the garage. Harry paced with excitement.

The side door banged and Little came out lugging his guitar case. He threw it into the back seat of his car, parked at the top of the driveway, and closed the door on it. He turned and the slanting red sunlight hit him too, made his purple velvet blazer and bottle green corduroy pants glow. His belt dangled its too long end down his thigh and his scraggly beard looked drawn on. Big Harry's throat tightened. In the thin light of late day, his scrawny kid was curiously beautiful.

"Why didn't you tell me about the show?" The boy didn't answer.
"What time are you going on?"
The boy stopped with one foot still on the driveway.
"Why?"

Big wanted to watch his son drive away but he had to move out of the way of the truck. The driver came around the side and started untying the rope. He pulled two shutters out from under the burlap and leaned them up against the side of the garage for Big's inspection.

Big Harry had faxed a sketch of a goose. A goose climbing, its wings curling "M"s, its long neck stretched out, straining for altitude in front of the round, punched-out circle of the moon. But what he saw on the moss green shutter was a duck. A clumsy round duck with a big head and an open beak. He tried in vain to remember his sketch on that placemat. He could picture it where it lay wrinkled on his workbench in the basement. He had a vision of the geese cracking the moon in his rearview mirror. He saw James Magee moving through the rooms of his house, Harry's house. Then he remembered his son standing at the top of the driveway in the red light. Harry grabbed one of the shutters near him and heaved it against the truck's bumper. The dense wooden shutter just bounced out of his hands.

When Big Harry got to the high school, it was obvious where the talent show was. Paper streamers blocked out a path to the cafeteria. It was decorated to resemble a bistro. The lights were dim and the tables were covered with red and white checked paper tablecloths. Candles flickered on them. Students dressed as waiters and waitresses sold overpriced brownies. A student mime was onstage, climbing into and out of an imaginary box.

Harry saw his son sitting along the wall with his friends. It didn't seem like he was waiting to perform. He didn't look at all nervous. He watched his kid's face move, react to what people said. He saw friends all around his son, and knew that he was well liked. Girls circled; Harry didn't know why that surprised him. Of course there would be girls. And of course the yokels at the local high school would like his son. Little was meant for better places.

Little didn't notice his father. Big was glad. He didn't want to watch his son's face change when he saw him.

The mime folded up his big invisible box until it was very small, put it in his imaginary breast pocket and left the stage to scattered applause. The emcee announced the next act.

"And now, Honeysuckle!"

Harry looked over at his son, who didn't move. He realized he didn't know the name of his son's band. Two girls in matching long, shapeless gingham dresses, sidestepped onto the stage and huddled around the microphone. They crooned tunelessly, but the friendly crowd of parents didn't seem to mind. After a while, Harry figured out that they were singing "Body and Soul." But as soon as he deciphered it, it was over. They wavered and shuffled and Harry assumed they were finished, but they were merely uncomfortable. They re-adjusted and again assaulted the microphone.

Harry waited patiently through the noise. His son would be performing soon. He felt a thrill of fear run through him. Harry wondered if Little would be any good, and if that mattered.

"And now, the final act of the evening, the moment you've all been waiting for, give it up for Ned's Basement!"

His kid's best friend's name was Ned Newbaum. Ned was also the drummer. Big Harry guessed that Ned's parents had been more accommodating when the subject of practice space came up.

Big's son came onstage and tuned his guitar, grinning at the few wild whoops. Little looked at Ned, who clicked off the rhythm on his sticks.

The cafeteria filled with sound. At first it just sounded like noise and Big Harry's mind raced to make sense of it, hear it, turn it into something. But then it crashed into him. And it wasn't necessary to struggle, the noise was music and they were covering Janis Joplin and it was a patchwork of folk picking and guitar fuzz and beating hearts and animals breathing. A vise squeezed around Big Harry as he watched his son dip into the pool of sound with the neck of his guitar and fling stars everywhere.

The crowd erupted. Everyone was on their feet and Big Harry was too. He kept looking at his son's purple head glowing under the stage lights, his face tight with concentration. Everyone was looking at his son. Couldn't take their eyes off him. Big was certain that everyone felt just as he did, that his son was drowning them and it was what they wanted. Big didn't know his son was capable of making this kind of music. His son rubbed his fingers against the strings, and the sound filled Big's chest and his knees and the shadows of sadness crowded in.

He waited around by the pistachio green double metal doors that separated the cafeteria from the hall. He heard his son's friends call out to him as they left, where they were going, where they would meet. Finally his kid lifted his guitar case. When he got closer, Harry was surprised at how sweaty he was. His hair was so wet now it looked black, and he could smell him.

His son looked at him, not surprised. Big felt he should say something, wanted to say something. Wanted to apologize. But where would he start?

"Give me your keys," he finally said. His son looked at him. His face was blank, but Harry could tell he was tired.
"Here," he tried again. He threw his keys at his son. "We're switching."

It was raining outside. Night rain, when it just seems like the sky is moving. Big found his son's car in the almost empty lot and got in fast, wishing he wasn't making the seat wet. He turned the ignition and loud music blasted out of the speakers. He turned it down and thought about his son seeing not the Cadillac, not the Alfa, but the cream Aston Martin, waiting in the parking lot for him like a sleeping goose. The most beautiful car ever made. Each piece of chrome was a sculpture, a moving tribute to the highest missions of craftsmanship. Exhaltation on wheels. He laughed, giddy, and pushed the scan button on the radio.

He kept the radio on scan. Nothing fit his mood, but he liked the changing songs mixing with the sound of the wipers furiously scraping the windshield glass, batting away the black raindrops.

Giving him the car was just the beginning. He wouldn't have to say anything at all. There wouldn't need to be a discussion. Things would just be different. He could see how it would be. He passed dark houses; lights trained to illuminate a specific bush or light up a walkway. He thought how he would light the new shutters and realized that shutters, even perfect ones, were not going to help this new plain block of a house. It needed a much more fundamental addition, like a wrap-around porch.

White light flashed behind him, and then red and blue, and he adjusted the rearview mirror. He pulled over carefully onto the shoulder and waited for the police car to pass. The colored lights glittered and the sirens blended with the windshield wipers and the idly changing stations on the radio.


Contributor: Erica Beeney