Husky (2 page)

The first outfit, the shirt's not right.

The second, the jeans seem a little too long.

“I'll hem them. Or maybe you'll grow. That'd be nice, wouldn't it?”

The third is right, but I hate the color. Even though:

“That green does a wonder on you, Ducks.” She smiles.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth all have pieces that work, but also pieces that don't.
So
there's a lot of tugging and folding and fixing. I go in to try on option seven when she knocks on the door with, “You don't need pants, do you?”

To my Irish grandmother,
pants
means underwear. And to me, underwear is not happening today. Not ever, actually. Not with her.

“No.” I hope that somehow she can see my
Pleaseyouareliterallykillingme
look again through the door.

“'Cause we're here, I can go get you a bundle now.”

“No. I'm fine.”

There's a pause while she figures if she should go and get some anyway, or wait and take me with her to
embarrass me, or just not buy them at all. Underwear would be the worst part of an already terrible day. Underwear shopping in general is pretty gross, but with those guys on the underwear packages, the shirtless smiling guys, with the muscles and the big grins, like, “Look how hot and sexy I look in these briefs. If you bought these, you'd be sexy just like me,” it's terrible. Nice try, jerks, I've learned that lesson on every other outfit in here. And put on a shirt, we're in a store.

The last time I bought underwear with Nanny, it was awful. Aw. Ful.

“Oh, these with the stripes are nice. Do you like them?” she screamed. “What about the ones with the dogs on them? Does that mean something I don't know? Don't tell me if it does.” Then she laughed, thinking I am sure something totally disgusting about people in underwear, or maybe me in underwear, which is so disgusting, it all makes me want to throw up. And then Nanny thought this guy on the package with black hair and a hairy chest was cute, which is gross but totally happens, and said, “Would you look at him. My Word.”

My Word
is Old Irish Lady for Wowza.

And
Wowza
is Me for Barf.

Finally she says through the door, “Fine. But we're here, so if you need pants, it's best to get them now. I won't come back.”

Neither will I, don't worry.

When it's all over, I have two big bags of clothes, none of which make me into anything else but the husky kid, even though one shirt insists that I'm a “Cool Dude.” Nanny's paying, so she wanted to get something she liked. We spent a lot of money, and that part always makes me feel bad. I really don't need any of this. None of it's going to help.

After shopping, Nanny needs to meet the Mrs.—that's Mrs. Ortiz and Mrs. Zhang—for novena, which is a bunch of old ladies praying over necklaces and then going out for cheesecake. I had to go along once, but I fell asleep in the pew twice, so Nanny says I never have to go back if I don't want to, which I know is really a hint that I should, but I ignore it. Tonight I get to go to Sweet Jane and help Mom with the Big Bake.

“I'll texty your mother you're coming, but go right there. Don't dawdle around, making me a nervous wreck, will you?” Nanny asks.

“No, I'll go right over.”

Nanny starts to say something else, but I put on my headphones, which doesn't mean I can't hear her, it just
means I don't have to answer, and I start to walk the eleven blocks down to Sweet Jane, the bakery that my mother owns. Nanny has to “texty” Mom because I don't have a cell phone, which makes me besides being the
Fat
kid also the
Poor
kid and definitely the
Loser
kid. I started saving for one on my own, but even with the phone bought, I don't know how I'll pay to have the thing on. And then, will anyone call me? Or even texty? The whole thing makes me nervous, but with fifty more dollars, I can at least be just the
Husky
kid with a phone.

I did get an iPod last year, which was great, but it was pretty old. I didn't mind, honest. I didn't even notice until Ellen said something. Mean. I was just happy to have music, all my music, in one place and ready for me all the time. Like now. I love music. And all alone in my headphones, there are these times when I think that I know exactly how I am in the world, how people see me, what I look like and how I act and who I am. I can see it all so clearly, I don't care about anybody's adjectives. I can decide on my own. I picture myself walking down the street as I'm doing it. I see my hair swaying, happy, in the
breeze, and my smile big and bright, and the cords to my headphones white against my green shirt in a perfect V just like in the commercial. And everything is good. My adjective right now would be
Good
. Or
Happy
. Or
Perfect
, really, as perfect as I can get.

Everything is perfect because of the music in my ears. It's usually something wonderful, like
Aida
with Leontyne Price or
Lucia di Lammermoor
with Anna Netrebko. Those are operas. I am into opera, which is weird, I guess. I was sort of hoping that this would have at least allowed me to be the weird opera kid. But so far, no go. Operas are like plays where everyone sings whatever they need to say to each other, and everything they need to say is important. So important they can't even speak English, they have to sing in Italian because Italian is the language of important stuff.

Nanny calls my opera the Ohs and Aahs, because everything is so dramatic. But that's just why I like it. It's always huge. It's something gigantic, with violins, so many violins, in big swirls, and horns and drums that move the story and the world and all these people from
Scotland or Japan or Anywhere the opera is set to sing in even bigger booming voices. And when they sing, they only sing about important stuff, like Love or Death or Betrayal. It's like life, but every decision is life or death. It's all important, so important it needs to be sung. I just love that.

As I walk, I feel lost in it. I swing my arms, not conducting, but following the motion of the music. These are the moments when I'm the happiest, I think. The happiest I get when I'm alone. It's only me and this humongous music. There's no room for anything else. And I feel safe in it.
Safe
is totally the wrong word, I guess, but only kind of. Safe because I don't care about anything else. The whole world is this music. And I'm part of it, and I'm pounding my arms with the trumpets or stepping with the kettle drums, and nothing else matters, not even that old lady who sits outside her wineshop staring at me, hard, and probably thinking to herself,
I may be old and crazy, but that fat kid is just nuts
.

It's just me and the music, and we're alone. And safe.

It doesn't happen all the time. But today I'm listening
to “Casta Diva” from the opera
Norma
by Bellini. This one always gets me. Mostly because it's Maria Callas. She's Great. In the opera, Norma is a druid priestess in Gaul, which is France before the French, and she is calling down the moon goddess to bring peace to the land. I know Norma is a silly name for a druid, it sounds more like a Lunch Lady or Nurse, but this Norma is a priestess, and she has a secret husband who has fallen in love with one of her handmaidens. It all gets really messed up by the end, and Norma goes crazy too and sets herself on fire, but that's all later. Right now, she's just asking for peace in one of the best ways I've ever heard. The song—they call them arias—“Casta Diva,” starts with this little flute solo that plays most of the melody, but then Norma sings, and it's so beautiful. It's this winding song that curls around itself and builds into these big notes that just get higher and higher until the chorus when the other druids join, and you have to give her peace. You have to. You have no other choice. It's one of my favorites, and it almost always takes me away a few times. But my bag is heavy, so I start counting the blocks to Mom's bakery to distract myself.

Mom likes to tell the story of how I got into opera, because she thinks it's funny. She leaves out a lot of parts, because she wants it to be cute. But it wasn't all cute. It was sort of sucky too.

It started because Mom wanted to get rid of my dad's records. My grandfather, Jock, had put them in the living room, because he always knew the right place for everything. So that's where they went. But it was still sort of strange. My dad had already been gone a long time, I didn't even remember him, so why was there still his stuff around the house? It was because of Mom. Every once in a while you would pick up something that didn't belong to you and you couldn't figure out who it did belong to, and it would be his. Then Mom would get real quiet about it, and it would be gone. No one ever mentioned it again.

All of his stuff slowly disappeared like this, everything except for the records in the living room. They were the last to go. Records are pretty awesome, they're big squares and the pictures are great. You can almost see what the music is about. Other records are cool, my
dad's weren't. They were just a pile of brown junk with a bunch of bearded dirty guys sitting around and smoking cigarettes. I
thought
they were all brown. They all looked brown in a dirty way. So I just left them alone. And then one day when I was nine, Mom, out of nowhere, said, “I need to get rid of those records.”

Nanny and Jock didn't say anything but looked at each other and waited.

“They're not bothering anybody, love,” Nanny said first.

“I know, but they need to go,” Mom said.

“Well, there's that shop on Fifth. You could sell them there,” Jock said slowly, seeing if it was okay to offer help. We all were really careful when talking about my dad, or even his stuff, with Mom. Mentioning him or that he had ever been a person was always a scary thing to do. You never knew what she was going to say or how she was going to take it.

“I'll take them now.” Mom smiled.

And I sort of don't know why, but I asked, “Can I come?”

And she said, “Sure, we'll take them in the schlepper.”

Maybe it's because when you're nine, getting to go anywhere is awesome, but also getting to do something when you get there is pretty major. So I raced around getting ready while Mom packed the records in a big pile in the grocery cart. I totally forgot that getting rid of the records was a big deal. That was sort of sucky right off the bat.

The record shop was this cramped little store that was filthy and smelled like kitty litter, dried up for exactly the wrong reasons. Mom showed the records to the tiny old man behind the counter, and I got to look around. At first I thought it was going to be a store filled with the dirty brown things like my dad's we brought from home, but no way. No. Way. This shop, this gross little shop, had Amazing records in every color you could think of. Pink smiling faces, and girls in Bright Green dresses. Some of them dancing in Blue or singing in Orange. And even one lady was on fire, Bright Red. They were awesome, and I loved looking at the pictures and trying to figure out what the music must be like.

And then I saw her. Leontyne Price. Well, I didn't know her yet. But there she was. This lady dressed in a beautiful long green cape, looking right at me with this stare—it was half-mean and half-excited, it was lots of things—and I couldn't stop looking back at her. She had this huge fro, which I just thought was so cool. She was looking right at me almost like she was daring me to do something. Right At Me. I thought she was the greatest person I had ever seen. Honest. I would have done anything she asked. I didn't even care what the music was, I just wanted to look at this lady and find out everything about her. So I picked up the record—it was thicker than I thought, like a big book, a big important book—and took it over to Mom. The old man behind the counter saw me and said to my mom, “Your boy's into opera?”

Mom turned around and saw me with it, with the lady. “Now put that back before you break it.”

How could I break it? I wasn't going to break it. I wouldn't ever, it was Too Good to break. I needed to know what it was.

“Who is it?” I asked.

The old man said, “It's an opera called
Aida
.”

“A-EE-da,” I said back, repeating it over and over again in my head thinking that that was the lady's name before I even knew what or who an Aida was.

The old man took the record and opened the front to show me and Mom that it was three records and a book. “It's six dollars,” he said. Mom told me to put it down. But I couldn't. I knew I had to have it. I had to. How could I leave this Aida? I didn't even know what she was yet.

“Please, can I have this? Please?”

“You won't like it. It's for grown-ups,” Mom shot back.

Even I know that is a dumb thing to say. Why do adults never get it? Never. When they tell us this stuff is not for you or too hard for you to understand, it just makes you want it more. Honest. Everything Mom has ever told me I wouldn't like, I have loved. Everything except soccer camp and chai tea, those are the only two times she's been right. Everything Else. Loved. Including
Aida
.

But because she said No and I didn't know what else to do, I started to cry. It was really a baby move for being nine,
but I couldn't think of what else to do and I didn't want to leave Aida here in this smelly store. So I didn't just cry a little, I went full tears. Huge. Ugly-Face Crying. Breathing Hard. I couldn't or wouldn't imagine leaving the store without this lady, Aida, never finding out who she was and what she sounded like. She was daring me to take her home.

“It's three records, that's so much more than one,” I huffed out at Mom, wet.

“No.”

“It's a good thing, opera. I bet Nanny would like it.”

“Davis, no. You won't like it. It's in Italian,” she said.

“So what?” I asked.

“You won't understand it.”

“I will, I promise. I promise.”

Now, how I thought that I would instantly understand Italian, I don't know, but I would have said anything to take home
Aida
. Even after all this time, I still don't know Italian, I've picked up a few words, but that doesn't matter. I wasn't giving up, and Mom was getting angry. She had to come in close. Coming in close is this thing Mom does when she wants you to know just how serious she is. It's
the last warning before she goes ballistic, which she's never really done, but she's warning you she might. She gets in real close, so close that our foreheads touch, and she speaks really slowly and safely, saying my full name and everything else with this little growl in her voice. If the voice doesn't give you the message, I think she thinks that maybe the touching heads will pass the thought from one brain to the other and tell you to really Knock It Off.

“Now, Davis Anthony O'Brien, that's an opera. It's loud and in a foreign language and even though you like the pretty lady on the cover, it doesn't mean you will like or understand the music or the story. Please put it back now. I do not want to argue with you anymore.”

At any other time, coming in close like this would have shut me right up, but this time, that was impossible. So I did something really sucky. It's the only way I can say it. Just sucky. I looked right at her and I said, “You don't want me to have this record, and you're selling my
dad's
records too? That's not fair. I never get to have anything. Not Even A
Dad
.”

Sucky.

I had never mentioned my dad to my mom. I knew I shouldn't, and I knew it would just hurt her. I had never really even called him “my” dad before. I never met him or couldn't remember him if I did. But I knew it was a mean and rotten thing to say, and I said it anyway just to get what I wanted. I knew how much she missed him, I guess, or was upset he wasn't around. But in that moment, it didn't matter. I did a sucky, mean, and totally selfish thing. My mom never tells that part of the story. It would embarrass me or hurt my feelings, like I did to her that day, and she's too nice to do that. My mom is too nice for a lot. I wish I was.