I stood beaming into the mirror. I love this dress. I could see myself walking down the aisle in this dress, dancing in this dress, thanking guests in this dress. "So, Mom," I was almost scared to ask, "what do you think?" She stood behind me and squinted, her cheeks sucked in. This is how she always looked when she was about to analyze me. She took a step forward and started from the top.
"Put your arms down and stand normal." I always stood with my hands on my hips when trying on clothes. It made me look slimmer. "The straps are nice." She smoothed her hand down my back and along my waist. I sucked in my stomach a bit more. "The top is a little loose." She tugged at the back zipper, knocking me off balance. "I like the buttons down the back, the way they hide the zipper."
I tried to distract my mom from what I saw coming next.
"Yes, that is nice, but now see what happens here." She pointed to folds of skin under my arm. I put my hands back on my hips. "And it puckers here in the back. Maybe we could fix that with control top pantyhose." I turned so I could see my butt and what she was talking about. She began to fluff the layers of chiffon gathered around my waist. "At least this hides your pooch." I put my hands on my stomach. "The length is good and the material is nice. Let's try on a few more and see what you think."
As my mother left the room to get more dresses I looked at myself in the mirror. The smile was gone and my hands were lost in the layers of chiffon on my stomach. I hate this dress.
The hotel bathroom lighting is terrible. I lean closer to the mirror and cautiously start to line my eyes.
Behind me, Mom sits on the bed, watching me, her face already beautifully made up. She says I wear too little makeup. I think she dons hers much as a knight would his breastplate.
In the reflection, I can see that she's twisting her long, delicate fingers, frowning slightly. The silence is heavy.
Pausing, I meet her eyes in the mirror. Even as I brace myself, I offer her a small encouraging smile.
"I just want you to know that if you can't get pregnant, your father and I won't be upset with you," she says. "So don't worry about that"
The world slows as my mind races. I take a deep breath and turn my attention to the mascara. "Mom, I really wouldn't expect anything less"
"Well, I know you know we've always wanted a grandchild. But we'll understand."
Again, our matching brown eyes meet in the mirror. "No offense, but that's the least of my concerns."
She stares at her hands.
"Listen," I say, trying to lighten my words, not wanting her to feel rejected. "Tom figures you and Dad would be happy to help out with fertility treatment."
Now she stands to peer out the window, looking into the bay.
"Even though I'm not sure I want to do that," I say. The knot in my chest is matched by the lump in my throat. "Look at everything Patti went through. I just don't know if I can do that, physically or mentally. You know?"
"Hey!" she says. "I can see the aircraft carrier from here!"
Turning from the mirror, I can only see her back as she stares raptly at the distant ship.
A criminal defense lawyer in West Palm Beach, who knows my landlord and who's frantically trying to keep the son of a Palm Beach socialite out of jail or from being whacked by sonny's drug dealers, vouched for my honesty. He knows I'm more than brawn, that I go to community college nights learning to write poetry. Labor work's temporary, pays the boarding house where I live with other young guys.
Mrs. Tyson, who lives oceanfront, needs minor repairs at her mansion-twenty-thousand square feet I'd guess. Lawyer says Mrs. T doesn't want contractors on her estate, fearing one of their employees'll do a hit on Thomas Terrance Tyson III (TTTT), who's thirty-five, unemployed, and lives with mama. Every door and window here flaunts security motion sensors that beep constantly as I move from room to room.
These folks are scared.
Two maids give me the scuttlebutt (TTT3 forges prescriptions) as we eat in the huge kitchen. Mrs. T told them fix my lunch daily. Sparkling silverware and dainty dishes like I've never dreamed, but Mrs. T's largess screeches to a halt at the doorway to her fine marble-floored dining room with mahogany paneling filched from the rain forests of Brazil.
So I walk Mrs. T up the staircase to an antique-filled attic bigger than the funeral parlor in Old Hope, Texas. I cover her treasures with several tarps, then clear the lump from my throat as I consider increasing my net worth with a dropcloth, and finally get around to showing her the leaks. I turn off the overhead lights. Beyond the rafters and furring strips on the roof, through cracked cedar shakes, dance pinpoints of light. As we stand in the dark looking up, I say, "Kinda looks like lightning bus on crack."
With a chill that'd frost Tabasco sauce, she says, "Well, Sir, just take care of it!"
Next morning I get on her roof. Tread lightly, Fool, or this steep ten/twelve pitch shall bring thy demise. I plug a few holes. Then I lie about sunning and think about poetry to run up job time, marvel at the Atlantic's blue-green jewel of water. Instructor said metaphors breathe life into an image. Class's tough. First night I stood reading my poetry, snickers unnerved me. Was it my Texas twang? Scruffy clothes? My fly open? I snorted and glared like a street tough. Snickering stopped.
Later, so I won't roll off the roof, I nap behind one of the four chimneys. Not gonna repair these leaks quickly. Neither the snobbish witch driving her white English Bentley nor her lawyer wearing his two-hundred dollar Sears suits will climb this high to rubberneck. Here I've found my place--a bit of poetry and a fragile peace.
Every night at 8 p.m. I check my body all over in the full-length closet mirror before Mother makes me go to bed. Mother usually comes in to check too around 8:15 and together we search for what she calls "imperfections," for things that could cost me my next audition.
"I think they've grown," Mother says to me one day. "It's going to be all over now, you won't be able to act with those!"
I pull my curly, long brown hair into a high ponytail and take a look down at my chest. I hate doing this and wish I were watching American Idol instead, like other sixth-graders do. Tomorrow I won't know who sucked the most and everyone else will.
"Mother, those so aren't boobs," I say as I pull my tank top tight across my chest and stare at my reflection. "They're just … booblets, they aren't even close! I'll still get to do the Harry Potter sequel; I still look like I could be in fourth or fifth grade. They won't get rid of me."
But I'm not so sure. Mother leaves the room and I crawl into bed because I have a Pilates class at 5 a.m. tomorrow before school. As I reach for the light switch near the headboard, my necklace gets caught on my earring. "Friends Forever" it says on my half of a broken heart. My best friend Jamie gave it to me last year for Christmas. I close my eyes tight but thinking about Jamie reminds me that she's a couple months younger than me She's in my class at the performing arts school too, and she was supposed to be in a remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But they dropped her a month ago, right before filming started because they said she was too old.
That's when I got scared and a week later I got worse than that: I got my period. And then there were the booblets. Those were the worst and the best at the same time. Jamie and my other friends went shopping for bras with their moms at Victoria's Secret and I wanted to go too.
But Mother says that's a sin and I should pray not to grow so I won't be one of those "out of work ex-child stars" on the cover of the Enquirer.
It would break her heart, she says.
"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" My once white Reebok tennis shoes shuffle on the busy pavement. I'm wearing fairly new brown corduroy pants that pretty much fit and a black leather jacket that is way too hot for this weather, but it looks nicer than the shirt I have on underneath it. When I looked at my reflection in one of the store fronts this morning, my beard looked pretty good. It has not gotten too long yet. My hair is a flat oily cake smeared tight against my scalp with strong-smelling gel.
"When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh-my adversaries and foes-they shall stumble and fall." A Hispanic-looking woman in heels and shoulder pads, her suit an exotic fruit basket of colors, is rushing off to a meeting or something with no idea what she is missing in her life. "Ma'am … Senorita, if you just spare me a second of your time I know you won't regret it. Please ma'am, your future is at stake." She keeps those dark shadowed eyes fixed on a point a mile away. That is the way these people are, they cannot see what is right in front of them.
I duck around a corner for a quick refresher, just a short draw from a bottle with a paper bag husk. I take a second one because it has been tough this morning. That cop, may he rot in hell, had no right being so rough. The Lord's work is hard, I know that. Me and the Apostle Jack Daniels, it is up to the two of us to spread the word.
"Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident." This guy has no confidence. I bet he has to report to give, somebody he has to impress. I have just one person I have to impress. Just one and he will always be happy with me so long as I am committed to him. "Sir, could you spare a second of your time?" What a rotten look. Who does he think he is? I know who he is. He does not even know who he is, but I do. He is a lost soul like the rest of them.
"One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple." Here he comes. Well, what is he going to do this time? I flood my throat with a comfortable burn, spilling a good amount on my jacket. "Officer, how are you? Let me tell you what the good Lord can do for you, okay?"
Meredith and I had been pushing the stroller round and round the block for forty minutes. The busy sidewalk swelled with office workers finished for the day and hurrying out to drink or to shop or to head home. The baby, four months old, had finally quieted, when a man pushed into my back. I stumbled forward, managed not to push the stroller into the woman in front of me, did a quick two-step and regained my balance. I looked at the baby; she was still asleep.
"Honey, are you hurt?" asked Meredith. The pedestrians, some throwing irritated glances, began to flow around us. Meredith turned toward the man. She wore a white dress shirt, blue jeans, and black pointed Western boots. Her black hair, pulled back tightly into a ponytail, was gelled to a hard slick helmet. Her tongue darted out and in and her eyes fixed on the man.
"Gosh, I'm sorry. I tripped," he said. He wore a brown suit and tie and had a wireless earpiece for a cell phone hung on his ear. He was at least two decades younger than we were.
"That's okay." I backed up a step and took the stroller's handle and rocked it gently.
"Honey," Meredith's eyes were on the man, "Aren't you hurt? And what about little Bobo?" She glanced at the stroller which I kept rocking. "It's all right, Bobo, the rude man just hit Dada."
"I'm fine, Meredith."
"Well," said the man, "I actually didn't hit him. I stumbled. It was an accident. I'm sorry." The man turned to slide away into the flow by the curb.
Meredith's right hand shot out and her sharp red nails bit into the white underside of his wrist. "You really ought to apologize."
"Really, I already have." The man shook his wrist but her nails bit in deeper. "Let's try one more time," she said.
The man flushed. I rested back on my heels and kept rocking the stroller.
"All right," he said, looking at Meredith, "I'm really sorry I stumbled into you."
"That's better." Meredith slowly released her nails from his wrist. "Watch out from now on." The man quickly joined the crowd.
"You might have said something, Howard." We started pushing the stroller again. "Now, don't wake the baby."
Melanie and I walked around the corner at Blake and Larimer Streets, into full view of Coors Field, and there it was, the treble sound of that jumpy clarinet, darting through the excited murmur of the crowd. It was opening day at Mile High Stadium.
"It looks like Charlie made it through the winter," Melanie said. "I guess it really is spring."
Charlie was an old street musician. We never saw him in the winter, imagining that he moved on to some warmer city. Then, every sprint, when the small leaves were erupting from the locust trees that line the streets in the old part of downtown, Charlie would appear. He was more than just another bum or street performer to us; he was part of the sound of summer.
We didn't know his real name, but we called him Charlie because he had the grumpy look of a retired sailor. In fact, he looked exactly like Uncle Charlie from My Three Sons. We have first seen him five years ago when we moved to Denver.
He had thin white hair, and an aged face with small blue eyes set back in his head. He wore an old cloth cap, a light blue jacket that was usually dirty, and gray pants that were too short for his thin legs. His shoes were polished black wing tips that he tapped on the sidewalk as he played
Charlie sat on a sloppily painted white wooden box with a sign propped up against the side of it. It was a different sign every year. This year it read, "C'mon ladies, it's my 80th birthday today." He would have that same sign all summer.
There were other street performers. Some of them were there year round. There was the robot clown mime, the Indian guitar player with his old collie, and the old black preacher who played blues on his harmonica between Biblical rants. Then there were the young kids, maybe runaways, possibly junkies. Some had a schtick, like contorting themselves for change, or reading palms. A few made poor attempts with cheap guitars they might have received for their last birthday, a guitar they would soon hock. Most of the time they just begged. Sometimes they had a puppy, and we felt bad for the dog.
Charlie was different; he was a professional. He worked the same corners every day, by the office building in the daytime, by the bars at night, and by the stadium for every baseball game. He had become a fixture on the pedestrian mall in the summers, playing his clarinet in front of the Appaloosa Grille every year, the bar that was rumored to have been Maddie's House of Mirrors, a famous speakeasy and whorehouse back in the 1920s.
You could hear Charlie's clarinet a block away. He played all of the old pop songs that you never heard people play anymore, like "When the Saints Go Marching In" or "Yes, I Have No Bananas." His clarinet would echo down the old brick-paved streets, bouncing off the turn-of-the-century three-story buildings surrounding the huge gray Union Pacific railroad station. The buildings had begun life as warehouses, mercantiles, or saloons in Denver's early days. Slowly, these businesses had faded away during the 1950s leaving the buildings abandoned. Then, in the 1990s, when the city built the new baseball stadium, the area came back to life with a whole new generation of hip microbreweries, restaurants and jazz clubs.
Charlie must have seen all of this. He must have seen how the trains stopped coming when the highways were built and how the shops closed when the people moved out to the suburbs. And then, how the neighborhood was brought back to life again with sports and bars and artists galleries. You could hear it in the sound of his clarinet. It was the sound of a new summer, in a very old part of town.
