I didn’t know where to look as I sang, so I shut my eyes most of the way and opened them only after I’d turned my face to the right, toward the park. The setting sun was turning it into a leafy world of golden wonders, and I realized through my terror that I’d never seen anything quite so beautiful. Not until I finished the song did I turn to look at Mr. Robinski, who stood staring at me with his arms folded tightly across his chest.
“Once more, please.”
He said it without enthusiasm, but behind him Ronald’s eyes opened wide and he made the A-OK sign with his thumb and forefinger. I shut my eyes and played the song again, and when I opened them this time Mr. Robinski was standing at my shoulder, scowling as if I were a suspect in a police lineup.
“Dis song, you wrote it all by yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wasn’t nobody else helped you?”
“No, sir.”
“All right.” He allowed himself a smile. “All right.” He patted my shoulder. “I give you a call, okay?”
And before I could answer he walked off without a word of good-bye. Ronald put his bony arm across my shoulders as he walked me to the door.
“Hot stuff, huh? What’d I tell you? Didn’t I tell you it was gonna be a hit?”
I arched my back to make his arm fall away. “Your father’s kind of weird, Ronald.”
“Oh, totally. Totally. But he knows what he’s doing. So do I, huh? Guess I can pick ’em, too!”
I nodded, not wanting to dash Ronald’s dreams of Robinski & Son Music Moguls, and suddenly I was out on West Seventy-second Street with no idea of how to get home. I got on a subway going uptown instead of downtown and didn’t catch my mistake until I was past Harlem, and by the time I got back to Little Neck it was eight o’clock, a full two hours past suppertime.
My mother was out of her mind with worry. I hadn’t bothered calling because I’d never really thought about it. I never really thought I was going to follow Ronald home that afternoon in the first place, or that he’d live all the way in Manhattan, or that his father would want to hear the song not only once, but twice.
It was all like a dream, is what I’m trying to say, and who phones home from a dream?
“We thought you were dead,” my mother said.
My father rolled his eyes. “No, we didn’t. Don’t tell him that. You want him to be afraid of the world?”
“I want him to have sense.”
“If he grows up afraid, he won’t have a chance!”
“If he gets killed he won’t have a chance!”
“I didn’t get killed,” I offered, but I don’t think either of them heard me. I was off the radar for a few minutes while they went at each other, and even as they fought, my mother guided me by my shoulders to my place at the kitchen table, where a plate of food awaited me. A clear glass lid covering the chicken croquettes and mashed potatoes was beaded with condensation from the steam that had risen off the food, two hours earlier. See how long you were missing? Long enough for steam to turn into water!
I dug into the food, hungrier than I’d ever been.
“I can reheat it if it’s cold.”
“It’s fine, Mom.”
When I finally looked up from my plate the two of them were seated there, staring at me, waiting to be told.
“I was in Manhattan.”
My mother’s hand went to her throat. Manhattan to her meant sex, narcotics, minorities, crime, and rudeness. “Why were you there?”
“It’s where Ronald Robinski lives. I went to his house to play my song for his father. He’s in the music business.”
My father’s eyes widened as my mother’s narrowed.
“That little song you were playing yesterday?”
“Yeah, Mom, that little song.”
“What are you saying, here? You auditioned?”
“I don’t know what I did, Mom. I played the song on the school piano and Ronald thought it was pretty good, so I went home with him and played it for his father.”
“Where do they live?”
“The Dakota.”
She turned to my father. “That’s where that Beatle got shot.”
“I know that, Donna, I read the papers.”
“You make fun of me for worrying, and meanwhile he’s at the exact spot where bullets were flying!”
“Seven years ago,” I said. “They’ve stopped flying, Mom.”
“Hey.” My father slapped the back of my head. “Watch how you talk to your mother.”
“For Christ’s sake, it’s safe there now! They’ve got security guards all over the place!”
My mother covered her face with her hands. “He talks to me this way all the time,” she said through the forest of her fingers. “Constantly. Never misses a chance to be fresh.”
“Fresh?”
“You heard me—”
My father’s fist came down hard on the table, making my plate jump. It put us into a shocked silence, and then he was almost whispering when he spoke.
“Did he like the song, Mick?”
His face was bright with wonder at the idea of his son coming up with a song that maybe, just maybe, would be made into a record.
I shrugged, still tingling from the impact of his fist on the table. “He said he’d call me.”
“That’s not a good sign,” my mother said.
“No? Jeez, Ronald thought it was.”
My mother held strong and smug, with the patient grin of one who’s been there before. “I used to audition,” she said calmly. “When they want you, they tell you on the spot.”
“Donna, why do you have to discourage him?”
“I’m not. I’m just speaking from experience. It’s a rough business.”
“Every business is a rough business.”
“This one’s rougher than most.” She stroked my hair. “We’ll see what happens.”
“Yes, we will, Mom.”
It was a funny moment. In a way my mother was trying to cushion the blow for the almost certain failure I was facing. But I suspected that in another way, she was hoping I’d fall on my face.
They were staring at me in a new way, as if I were a stranger who’d been dropped into their lives. All these years I’d been an average student and a marginal athlete, a devoted son and garbage-taker-outer, nothing special, nothing terrible, just another tart-tongued teenager growing up on the edge of Queens.
At the same time, I was their only begotten son, their only child. No siblings to pick up the slack, or distract them from me. Embarrassment or pride: It was all riding on my shoulders, and until now the future had seemed foggy, at best. I’d be lucky to get into a state university where the tuition wasn’t ruinous to study to become…what?
That was the big question for me and just about every other kid in the neighborhood. A lawyer? Slim chance. A doctor? No chance at all, with my dismal grades in math and science. Some kind of civil service job was looking more and more likely….
Or maybe