Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,54

silence to my mom’s car. We got in and started the drive back to Naperville.

The thing that happened with the car, now that was just stupid. I’m not sure who was to blame, but it was probably all our faults because we were being loud, yelling stuff out the windows. We weren’t hurting anybody, just letting off steam like guys do. Sure, they were drinking rum or whatever Joey stole from his parents’ liquor cabinet and put in his dad’s flask. He made us laugh all night because he kept taking sneaky sips from it, like a sketchy 1920s guy during Prohibition. Not that I’m a saint or anything, but I wasn’t drinking that night. Not just because I was driving, but because I was driving my mom’s car. The guys weren’t really drunk, just buzzed, but in Joey’s case it made him even more obnoxious than usual, which was saying a lot.

“We should just turn around and start pounding on that backstage door until they have to let us in.” He grabbed my shoulders from the backseat and shook me. “C’mon, Danny, let’s go back and demand they let us talk to the band. I know how to handle my loser Uncle Phil.”

“Quit it, Joey, I’m trying to drive.” I pushed his hands away.

Matt reached back to smack Joey on the back of the head, and Joey smacked him back, like some Three Stooges routine. I watched in the rearview mirror, laughing and not watching where I was going.

In my defense, there’s no way I could’ve anticipated there would be a huge snow bank at the side of the exit ramp, right where the road curved. No way I could’ve realized that if a car veered ever so slightly off its correct path because the driver was distracted, it could go plowing right into that freaky April snow bank, parts of which were solid ice after melting and freezing, and cause a scraping sound on the undercarriage of the car that was a sickening combination of crunching snow and metal.

“Ahhh, shit.” The car jerked to a stop and a stunned silence settled over the three of us. After a few paralyzed moments of okay, now what do we do, we all scrambled out to stare at the car. Fortunately, it was safely off the road and had no visible damage. Unfortunately, it looked like the car was stuck. Really stuck.

It took us a good half-hour to get the car out. We took turns standing in the snow in our sneakers with our shoulders against the bumper, pushing and rocking the car back and forth over the ice, until finally it roared free and we shouted our relief and joy into the icy night. Never mind that the muffler was making a strange growling, clattering sound all the way home. I’d worry about that later. At least the car worked, and that’s all that mattered.

I got home around two a.m., paid Jessica almost an entire month’s allowance for baby-sitting Rosie, and then slept in till noon on Saturday. That’s when I woke up to Rosie standing by my bed, staring down at me with her hands on her hips. I must have felt those huge blue eyes boring into my skull, demanding that I wake up. Of course, she was already dressed in her white tights and pink leotard.

“I made you lunch,” she told me.

“You can cook?” I asked with a yawn.

“I know how to make a baloney sandwich.”

“Perfect,” I said.

After lunch, we got in the car to go to Rosie’s ballet lessons. When I turned the key in the ignition, the car growled like it was complaining, but at least it started, at least it ran.

“The car smells weird. And what’s that funny sound?” Rosie asked me.

“Something going on with the muffler, I think. No big deal.”

I shrugged at her, and she shrugged back. I figured I’d stop at the service station on the corner to get it fixed after I dropped off Rosie. Crap, what was that going to cost? After the baby-sitting and car repairs, last night was becoming way more expensive than it was worth.

“Are you coming to my recital next month, Danny?” Rosie asked over the muffler sounds as we pulled out of the driveway. “It’s going to be really amazing.”

“Yeah, of course,” I said. “Have I ever missed one?”

Sure, three hours of little girls in tutus is a strange form of torture. But she came to my meets—which were also really long—and I went