Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,52

and soup cans. Every week, I counted the empty wine bottles. More than three meant that Mom had a bad week.

After I showered and got dressed for school, I came downstairs and found my mother standing at the kitchen stove, cooking us cheesy scrambled eggs and bacon. I remember the bacon crackling in the pan, how it smelled, how Mom looked at me with her eyes all soft, and the warmth of the kitchen. I remember home.

“Okay, Danny, here’s the info,” she said, pointing to a sheet of paper stuck to the fridge with magnets. “This is the hotel where we’ll be and here’s Aunt June’s number in Evanston. Call her if you need help anytime with anything.” She turned to me like she still saw a five-year-old standing there. Never mind that I was going to turn eighteen in a month and was six inches taller than her.

“Mom, we’re going to be fine,” I said. “It’s just one weekend, and it’s only Galena.”

“I know, but it just feels strange to leave the two of you alone,” she said, running fingers through her wavy blond hair like she did when she was nervous, which was basically most of the time.

The main reason they wanted to go to Galena this particular weekend was because they got engaged there, exactly twenty years ago. They were obviously trying to bring some magic back to their marriage. I wished them luck on that. Seriously.

“Relax, Mom,” Rosie called from the family room, where she was practicing leaps across the carpet in her pink sneakers. “You’ll give yourself a myocardial infarction.”

Rosie. My sister. Age nine, crazy smart, always dressed in pink. She had this weird habit of throwing big words into normal conversations.

“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