‘Alright, that’s enough moping around in there,’ said his dad. ‘Come on out. Let’s sit on the couch.’
Danny comes out meekly and sits on the couch, facing his mom.
‘Now your mom’s got something she wants to say to you. Are you ready to hear it?’
‘Whatever.’
‘Where’d you learn that attitude? That’s your mom.’
‘Okay. I want to hear it.’
She sighed. ‘Okay. Look, Danny, I’m sorry for yelling at you and for getting all worked up about it. But I love you, you know. And how about we have some macaroni casserole for dinner, hmm? I know you like that.’
The thought of macaroni casserole made him perk up. ‘Really? No way!’
‘Mm-hmm,’ she said, smiling. ‘Oh, come here.’
She came over right next to him and squeezed him in her arms, then gave him a sloppy kiss on his forehead, much to his displeasure. ‘C’mon, that’s gross, mom—don’t do that—’
‘Hey, what’s gross about that, huh?’ said his dad. ‘Let your mom love you a little bit. God knows you let her scream at you all the time. You want this or that? It’s your choice.’
Danny grimaced. ‘Alright, alright.’
‘Oh, don’t cry,’ said his mom. ‘Man up a little, will you? What’s that thing they say in the movies? “There’s no crying in football?”’
Danny rolled his eyes. ‘It’s “baseball,” mom. “There’s no crying in baseball.”’
‘Whatever,’ she replied, mimicking his tone, and they both laughed.
His father sat down next to them. ‘Now, how about you and me have a little father-son time, huh? I hear that you had the worst day ever. Let’s drive out and you can tell me all about it, and I’ll give you a little bit about my day, and we’ll have some ice cream. When was the last time we went for ice cream?’
‘On my birthday,’ said Danny. ‘Which was FIVE months ago. I’m counting.’
‘You do that,’ he said, before turning to his mom. ‘What do you say, Rebecca? Want to join?’
‘I’m good,’ she sighed, and her eyes were all red. ‘I’m too tired to go, and besides, I don’t want to change. Also, I need to clean up the lamp.’
‘Well, I mean, it’s just ice cream—you can go as-is—’
‘Yeah, that’s a fine lesson you’re teaching your son, aren’t you?’ she said, chuckling. ‘That it’s okay to go out in joggers, heavens. Go on, Danny, get changed. Put your jeans on.’
‘Okay,’ he said, grinning, and went over to the next room.
‘Hey, and where’s your sister?’ his mom yelled behind him. ‘You know, that Jodie—never, ever home, God knows she hates this family, and what, it’s after sunset—’
‘Last day of school, Becky,’ said his dad. ‘Let her have her fun for a little bit, I’m sure she’s fine. Danny’s going to go back next year, but it’s really over for her.’
‘Why don’t you just call her?’ asked Danny from the other room. ‘She always has her phone on her. Now that she has a new one, and all.’
‘My stupid phone’s stopped working,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know, I never get service on that thing, and you know—today my alarm didn’t go off, I forgot to take my medication—’
‘Hmm,’ said the dad, frowning. ‘Don’t we have that old phone I got from Wilson a while ago—I think it’s in the third drawer on the bedside table—?’
She snorted. ‘You mean that ridiculous one with the screen guard on it?’
‘Yeah, I mean, just for a week or so. How about you switch to that one tonight so we don’t have any of these emergencies, and maybe—I don’t know, Tuesday we go buy a new one?’
‘Yeah that works,’ she said. ‘Although I don’t know how to switch the sim cards around—Danny, you know how to move the sim cards around on a cell phone?’
‘Yeah, mom,’ he said, emerging from his room. ‘You need like a little pin, you have one?’
‘I’ll find one by the time you’re back,’ she said, nodding.
‘Hey,’ said Danny. ‘If you’re using this old phone, then, you know—can I have the one you’re getting rid of—?’
For a second everyone was silent, and his mom turned to his dad with an eyebrow raised, then they both started laughing at once. ‘Nice try, kid,’ said his dad. ‘That’s a good one.’
His mom laughed for a while then turned back to his dad. ‘You know, speaking of Jodie—I’ve been getting all these emails about these forms, you know, and I read her financial aid letter—we’ll have to support her for the first term out of pocket, and they’re not going to cover moving. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, we might have to drive out all the way to California and that’s a week I’m going to have to take off, we’ll have to start planning—’
‘Okay,’ he said, nodding. ‘Let’s discuss it with her tomorrow after lunch, once we’re all back and rested?’
She lit up. ‘Yes, let’s do that. Hey, Danny, get me some ice cream back, will you?’
‘Okay,’ he replied.
‘You know what flavor?’
‘Cheesecake?’ he said.
‘That’s the one,’ she smiled.
‘Here,’ said his dad, fishing a pair of keys out of his pocket and tossing them to Danny. ‘Let’s get in the car.’
‘Aww, no way,’ said Danny. ‘We’re taking your car?’
‘Yup,’ he replied, grinning.
‘Can I sit shotgun?’
‘I don’t see anyone else who’s coming with us,’ he replied.
‘Yeah!’ he skipped out to the garage and got into the passenger’s seat of his dad’s Camry, who emerged from behind a few moments later and started the engine.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Hmm,’ said Danny. ‘What are the options?’
‘Whatever you like,’ he replied. ‘Wait, before that—what’s that thing I told you about making eye contact? Look people straight in the eye. It shows character. You want to be like that kid—what’s his name, Mitch? One eye here, one eye there?’
‘Hey, what’d Mitch ever do to you? He’s my friend.’
‘I know he’s your friend, so you must know no one takes him seriously, right? Look at people in the eye when you’re talking to them. Now then, where are we going?’
‘Rocky’s…?’ said Danny.
His dad looked at him for a full minute. ‘I love you, kid, but I’m not spending 30 bucks on one scoop.’
‘Pfft,’ said Danny. ‘Then you pick whatever you want.’
‘Alright,’ he said, backing over the driveway. ‘7-11 it is. We’ll get us both big gulps.’
‘A big gulp?’ said Danny. ‘That’s not even ice cream!’
‘Well, then, you said I can pick whatever I want,’ he replied. ‘You need to make quick decisions. Where are we going?’
‘Ben and Jerry’s,’ he said.
‘Ben and Jerry’s it is,’ said the dad. They said nothing until he was on the main road, then he turned to Danny.
‘So. I hear you had a bad day.’
‘It was the worst,’ he said. Then before he knew it the whole thing came flooding out—how he got a B on his math test, how Mitch found out that Susie liked Aaron Harper instead, how even though he got a hit he ended up getting forced out, and how he’d reached Charlie’s birthday super late, after the cake was all over.
‘Uh-huh,’ said his Dad. ‘Let’s start with the math test. Why’d you get a B?’
‘It was the word problems,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do the word problems.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ he said. ‘Then you know what to work on—the word problems. Hey, you’ve got a whole summer to work on those. Why don’t you ever ask your mother for help? You know how smart she is, I bet she could do the word problems.’
‘Yeah, but she gets unhappy so easily,’ he muttered. ‘She’ll start crying if I can’t do one after the first try.’
‘Hey!’ said his dad. ‘Your mother loves you, don’t you forget that.’
‘Well, she’s got a funny way of showing it,’ Danny replied.
‘That’s true, but she still loves you, and she will help you if you ask her. She taught you how to read. She taught you how to walk. And it’s because of her that Jodie’s going to California, you know. She did all the research, and everything, and she’s the one who helped her write her college essays. You don’t appreciate your mother enough, and yeah sometimes she doesn’t make much sense, but she wants more than anything in the world for you to get an A on that test, and for you to hit a home run every game. You need to be nicer to her. You ever notice how nice Jodie is to her? Mom’s going to call her, and she’s going to be annoyed, but Jodie’s going to leave the party and tell her that everything’s alright, because she knows that Mom loves her.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking out the window.
‘Look,’ said his Dad. ‘I know it hurts. But tell me this—do you think you didn’t work hard enough for the test?’
‘I did,’ said Danny. ‘I worked for a week. I wanted to get an A so bad, and you know I can do it.’
‘Did you work hard for the game?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I practiced every day. And I even got a hit.’
‘And your friend Susie—you gathered up the courage, didn’t you? You walked up to her?’
‘Pfft, I made a fool of myself, that’s what.’
‘But you still did it,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘That’s all it is, Danny. Sometimes good things just don’t happen. You can’t do anything about that. Sometimes things suck. That’s just how it goes.’
‘Dad,’ said Danny suddenly. ‘What if nothing good ever happens to me?’
‘Well,’ he replied. ‘You think I was passing math tests when I was a kid? You're worrying about a B. I never got more than a D.’
‘That's not true!’
‘No, it is. I never got anything more than a D. Didn't I ever tell you where I grew up? I didn't move to Missouri until I was twenty-eight. Your mother and I grew up in Pennsylvania. Your great-grandpa Miller, who's buried in the cemetery in Pittsburgh—he was a coal miner. Every day he would wake up before sunrise and head to the mines, and by the time he was back his lungs would be so full of coal dust that he would cough all night long. It killed him, it did. That's why they needed so many miners—because it broke your hands and your legs, and you'd be dead before you could get off the ground. He died when he was fifty-one years old. That seems a long time to you, of course, but fifty-one isn't anything. Most people today die when they're eighty. Your grandpa worked as a miner first, then a roofer. When he died you could break his bones with a flick. That's how I grew up. I wasn't supposed to fix computers, not always. When you get older, you're going to go to college, but I never went to college. I didn't have the grades for it. I never wanted to be a roofer—I ran away from home and went to Pittsburgh when I was eighteen, and my uncle gave me a job as a pawnbroker. One of his clients used to pawn off old computer parts. This was, I don't know, early '90s, something like that. He taught me how to put together a computer, and I got a job fixing computers at the Hewlett-Packard plant. They paid me 80 dollars a week. I never got Bs. I couldn't even get Cs. In the end all I got was a lousy job as a computer technician, and after a while I made enough money to open a computer-fixing service, and I was on call with a couple other guys, and we contracted for a lot of people back then. I even was in New York City for a bit. They gave me 30 dollars a day and housing. That's when I picked up how to use the internet. It was all the rage at the time.’
‘That doesn't sound that bad.’
‘It wasn't, but it wasn't good, either. I used to play baseball when I was in school. I never scored any home runs. I wasn't good at it. I was always a bit of a weak kid. I'd get into fights, all the time. And I didn't get any of the girls, either.’
‘But what about mom?’
‘Your grandpa decided that I was getting on in age and found your mom at Church. They didn't like her back in Pennsylvania. They thought she was mopey and hysterical. She was always a bit weird, you know. Depressive, all that. She was unhappy with everything, and she decided that maybe getting married would fix it. So we got married. I knew her for a few months. She was alright. I thought she was very nice and very pretty and she was willing to marry me, and that was that. So we got married, and we moved to Missouri because her aunt had a house here and because the computers in Missouri were all old and rusty, and they needed someone to fix them. Your mom got a job at the supermarket. We weren't happy for a long time. It was hard work. She had her problems, and being pregnant made them worse. Then eventually she gave birth to you, and then we were happy.’
‘Oh.’
‘What I'm trying to say is that you don't have to think about what if nothing good ever happens to you. Nothing good ever happened to me. But here I am, and it's alright, isn't it? I used to think like you did, and I would be unhappy. But then you came along and then I wasn't. All of a sudden everything made sense. You and I—we're not too different, just like your grandpa Miller and I weren't very different. We're all the same. That's just how it is. All I'm saying, Danny, that if you want to wait for good things to happen to you, then you're going to be waiting for a long, long time.’
‘But good things happen to Aaron Harper. He hits all the home runs. He got an A. All the girls like him.’
‘That's true.’
‘How come that happens to him?’
‘That's just how things are. And guess what? There's not a thing you can do about it.’
‘I hate life.’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘It's not life that you hate. What you hate is injustice. But things aren't just, Danny. We try to make them just. But they aren't. There's a kid out there right now in Pennsylvania whose dad is a miner and next summer he's going to go start working in the mines, as well, and he's out there thinking that Danny Miller gets everything. He gets Bs, he gets to play little league, he gets to eat ice cream with his dad and when he gets home his mom is going to give him macaroni casserole for dinner, while all I get is some lousy beans my sister baked in the microwave.’
‘That doesn't make me feel any better.’
‘It doesn't make me feel any better, either. But it's still true. I used to be like you, you know. I used to complain. My dad used to beat me up if I complained too much, but that's alright—that's just how it used to be, that's just how he was. It wasn't his fault. But sometimes he'd agree with me that things weren't fair. It happened to me, too. I went to school and got a thrashing for being late when the bus broke down. It wasn't my fault. I told him that it wasn't my fault. So he took me out and lit up a cigarette and bought me a popsicle. And this is what he said to me: “You win some, you lose most. That's not your fault. That's just life, and that's how it goes.” That's all there is. You win some, you lose most. It's not great. It doesn't make you happy. But one day you'll have a kid just like you, and then you'll know, and then you won't care. That's just how it goes.’