Yeah, I do. Now, let’s get back to work. We were on page seventeen of the rudiment book, right?
Yes, SIR!
Oh, one other thing. Ya might want to spray those things with Lysol or something. Is it me, or do they smell like rotten eggs?
At the end of the lesson, I realized that I couldn’t tell my mom that I had made this deal with Mr. Stoll, so I just ripped up the check she had given me. I knew that in the long run, that was about as useful as duct-taping over your car’s fuel gauge so you won’t run out of gas. But in the short run, delusion was an easier path than truth. And come on—you have to admit the deception was all for a good cause.
That week after school, we were supposed to be having rhythm-section rehearsal for All-City on Tuesday and Thursday. Our concert was only a month away, and we needed the extra tightening-up work. On Tuesday, Annette was absent, so I was the only one in our van on the way to the high school. I walked into the high school band room and started setting up the conga drums next to the drum set. Renee’s boyfriend, Biff, was already plugging in his guitar, the bass player was tuning up, and the senior pianist was warming up with scales. After the usual round of “Hi, Pez,” “Hi, Pez,” “Hi, Pez,” everyone turned toward the band room door, which was slowly creaking open. Biff called out, You can come in. It’s OK—the Peasant is fully housebroken. He almost never bites anymore.
An arm came through the space between the door and the frame. An arm encased in a cast. Annette’s arm. Then we heard her voice: A little help here? Anybody?
The bass player was closest, so he went trotting over and opened the door all the way. Annette came staggering in; she had been trying to carry a huge folder of sheet music in the crook of her injured arm. As Mr. Watras saw what was going on, he walked over, too, just in time to hear Annette’s tale.
Here’s my folder; I won’t be playing in the spring concert. I fell down the stairs at my house last night an broke my arm in three places. They said it won’t be better until at least May. I’m sorry.
Mr. Watras looked pretty perturbed by this news—every teacher in the world has a soft spot for Annette, plus the girl’s a musical dynamo. He was very kind about it, though.
It’s OK, Annette. Why don’t you come on in, make yourself comfortable, and stay for the rehearsal? You can be our critic. Would you dig that? (Yes, he was the last man in America who could say “dig” with a straight face without referring to the process of using a tool to remove dirt from the ground.)
She didn’t look like this was the chance of a lifetime or anything, but she did smile a little then. I had a feeling she would have been crushed to be excluded completely, and this gave her a way to stick around and still feel like she belonged.
Sure. Thanks, Mr. W.
We settled down for practice. It must have been hard for Annette, but she watched us play for the next two hours without a break. Occasionally, she’d whisper something to the senior piano player or Mr. Watras, but other than that, all she did was listen and listen to the music she wouldn’t be able to play.
I, on the other hand, was on fire that day. When I was playing the set, all four limbs just knew what to do without my even having to think. In fact, the less I thought, the better I played. There was this one part of a tune called “Satin Doll” where the band stopped dead and I had a gigantic fill that I typically screwed up at least once per rehearsal. I had tried everything: counting, having Mr. W. conduct me through it, NOT counting, closing my eyes, reading the music, ignoring the music. Things just hadn’t clicked. But that day, I didn’t even blink an eye; the other instruments dropped out and the next thing I knew, they came back in. I hadn’t even noticed I was playing the solo-break part, but I must have nailed it, because Mr. W. was smiling and Annette gave me a little approving nod. It was like one of the Zen-master moments in a movie when the master suddenly figures out the secret of the universe without trying. Well, OK, it was a LITTLE Zen-master moment, like maybe when the master figures out the secret of Phillipsburg, New Jersey. It was still cool, though.
I was so far into the Zone that even Renee’s arrival in her lycra uniform couldn’t throw me off. In fact, for the first time in my life, I didn’t even particularly pay attention to Renee—I was just having too much fun playing. The last thing we practiced was the big show finale, “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop.” I got ready behind the congas, Brian shifted the drums around a bit so they’d be comfortable for him—he’s about a foot taller than me—and Mr. W. and Annette came over. They were both going to do the chanting parts that were usually handled by the saxophone section, and Mr. W. was going to play the screaming trumpet parts, too. This piece had been pretty rough in practice so far, but some days, you just click—we were supertight through the whole tune. Brian was playing the kit so well that I felt like we were telepathic; it was as if my right hand and his right foot were wired to one brain. The bass player was locked in there also, so every walking quarter note he played was pulsing in exact time with Brian’s left foot hi-hat clicks. Meanwhile, Biff played an astounding solo—the notes just seemed to shimmer in the air like floating fire—and Mr. W. was simply incredible. The piano player didn’t know this part as well as Annette did—even though he usually played more than half of the show, this one was rightfully hers—but he rose to the occasion, too. At the end, we all just stopped and looked around with these massive, dumb-looking grins on our faces. Then Renee started clapping, and Mr. W. joined in. Maybe Annette would have clapped, too, if not for the cast, but from the pained look behind her smile, I wasn’t too sure.
On the way home in the van, Annette told me the whole arm story. Then she asked how Jeffrey was doing, which I thought was amazing—here she was, with a limb all mangled and her piano career slammed into reverse gear, worrying about my brother. I swear, sometimes I just really felt like pinning a medal on that girl. Anyway, I told her about the whole money situation, and even about how I had tried to quit drum lessons. She looked impressed that I had been willing to sacrifice my lessons, and thought it was hilarious that the Special Sticks still smelled weird. Naturally, being Annette, she did feel the need to warn me about how ripping up my mom’s checks wasn’t going to work forever, but somewhere in the preceding half year, I had figured out that the lectures were just an Annette thing. In fact, I would nearly have been disappointed if she hadn’t given me the big, fiery speech at that point. When we got to my house, we said a sad little good-bye, but I felt cheerful, in a way. Evidently, you could shatter Annette’s arm, but you couldn’t break her spirit.
CLOSE SHAVES IN AN
UNFAIR WORLD
Here’s a journal entry I wrote in English class the week of Annette’s accident. It was actually on topic, which would have been a nice change of pace for Miss Palma—if I had let her read it. The assignment was “If you could pick one word in the English language to describe the universe, what would it be? Why?”
Here’s my response:
Unfair.
Unfair.
Unfair, unfair, unfair.
What do you call a planet where bad guys stroll through life with success draped around their shoulders like a king’s cloak, while random horrors are visited upon the innocent heads of children? I call it Earth.
You want examples? Just this week, my friend Annette (over there in the third row, by the way) was voluntarily taking groceries downstairs to her basement pantry. Now that right there is a meritorious feat—most of my friends stopped doing volunteer household chores in about fourth grade. But wait, there’s more! She went to step down the first stair and realized her cat was snuggled up there. Rather than trample on the innocent feline, Annette attempted to do a little leap over said animal, while balancing about forty-seven cans of cat food in her arms. Now, this girl has a lot of God-given talents, but the grace of a ballerina is not one of ’em. So she lost her footing and tumbled down the steps amid a clanking metallic hail of small cans. And when her parents responded to her pitiful yelps of pain, (a) her mom stepped right on t
hat darn cat, anyway, and (b) they found Annette’s crumpled form at the foot of the stairs, head stuck to a pile of shopping bags by static cling, right arm twisted unnaturally into some sort of mathematically improbable three-dimensional rhombus shape. And Annette’s right hand is pretty important, because the girl is a piano prodigy. OK, WAS a piano prodigy. Thanks, God.
But wait, there’s STILL more. My little brother, Jeffrey—you know, the one that used to be a happy, healthy, normal kid until he was struck out of the blue by cancer—was making a semi-rare appearance in his kindergarten class yesterday. He’s been absent quite a bit this year, what with the constant trips to the hospital to try and save his life and the total shutdown of his immune system and the frequent bouts of high fever and all. Anyhow, a new kid moved into the class, and he didn’t know about Jeffrey’s condition. So Jeffrey went up to him and said,“Hi. I’m Jeffrey. I’m five. Are you five? My brother is thirteen. Do you want to be friends?” And the new guy replied,“Hi, I’m Adam. You’re bald.”
I know it sounds weird. Jeffrey has certainly noticed the total lack of hair coverage on his head. But hearing it from another kid devastated him. Evidently, he had thought other people somehow couldn’t tell he was bald or something. Whatever. When this one kid said,“You’re bald,” Jeffrey just burst out crying. He barely spoke all night at home, and at about 10 p.m., two hours after his bedtime, I walked by his bedroom and heard him sobbing in his bed. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me about the incident at school. Then I asked him why he hadn’t told us earlier what was wrong, and he said the saddest thing:“I didn’t want you to find out I was bald, too.”
So now my baby brother who has leukemia has the added curse of self-conscious humiliation, too.
Unfair, unfair, unfair. Really, if that were the only word in the English language, the only word in all the world, the sum and total of all human expression across the long millennia, it would essentially cover all the bases. Everything else we say is pretty much irrelevant.
Maybe if Miss Palma had been allowed to read the journal entry, she would have understood why I shaved my entire head the next night. I was standing in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, and this little Gap Kids baseball hat was sitting on the ledge by the sink. I was thinking about how Jeffrey had worn the hat everywhere he went that day. And I was wondering whether he’d be keeping it on his head every minute for months, just because of one innocent comment some kid had made. And I was thinking, “Who cares whether the little rug rat meant to hurt Jeffrey? He did, and now there’s no way to take it back.” But then I heard Mrs. Galley’s voice saying, “Instead of agonizing about the things you can’t change, why don’t you try working on the things you can change?” And I realized that no, I couldn’t grow Jeffrey’s hair back overnight like he was some kind of mammalian Chia Pet, and no, I couldn’t retroactively sew shut the mouth of the new kid who had unintentionally broken the news to my brother. But I could show support for Jeffrey. I could be bald, too.
I took out my dad’s electric clipper and buzzed off my whole head of hair to shorter and shorter lengths until I thought it would be easy to shave with an electric razor. Then I started in on the actual shaving portion of the festivities. Now, OK, I’ve never even shaved my face before, so perhaps I should have figured out this wouldn’t be a quick or painless procedure. But the same inexperience that made me cocky also made me unskilled. And it hurts using an electric razor on your head hair! Every few seconds, the razor would either get jammed with hair and need to be cleaned out or catch a chunk of hair and rip it out of my scalp.
When I was about three-quarters of the way done with my gruesome task of charitable self-mutilation, my mother barged into the bathroom.
I heard a strange buzzing noise in here. What are you…OH! Steven!!!
Surprise! I’m running away to become a Buddhist monk. You like the do?
Steven Richard Alper! What are you DOING?
I just told you: I’m…
Steven, SHUT UP!
Holy cow. Now THERE’S something you don’t hear every day at our house.
You are going to tell me the truth RIGHT NOW. Do you understand me? I’m tired. We’re all tired. We can’t be putting up with any of your teenage…
I did this for Jeffrey, Mom. So he wouldn’t have to be bald alone.
Oh, Stevie.
All of a sudden, Mom understood; I think she was probably even impressed. She stepped through the mounds of hair all over the bathroom tiles and put her arms around me for a long, long time. Then she pushed back from me, held me at arm’s length, and turned me around, like I was a side of beef and she was a chef sizing me up for a barbecue.
Give me the razor. I’ll finish this job. If I’m going to have two bald sons, at least they’ll both be PRESENTABLE-looking bald sons.
In the morning, I went down to breakfast with a baseball cap on. My whole family was already down there, which was not the norm—but my mom had rushed everyone down so I could make a grand entrance, and I had dragged my feet for the same reason. I poured myself a bowl of delightfully sugar-encrusted cereal, and sat down at the table. I could tell from the look on my dad’s face that he knew the deal and was dying to see my newly cleared scalp. Jeffrey had no clue, of course, and didn’t even look up from his toaster pastry and juice. After a few minutes during which the only sounds were our little mini-symphony of slurping and crunching, I guess my dad couldn’t take the suspense anymore. He told me to “Take off that hat at the table, young man.” So, just as Jeffrey looked up—there’s nothing he enjoys more than watching me get a good lecture—I whipped off the cap. I wish you could have seen his face. It went from puzzlement to alarm to puzzlement, and then finally to a shy little grin.
What do you think, Jeff? I did it last night after you were in bed. You look so handsome this way, I thought I could get the Jeffrey look, too. Do you think maybe now all the babes will love me the way they love you?
Jeffrey’s smile got larger and larger, until it was as big as Christmas. He jumped up and hugged me. Then he pushed away, looked at me appraisingly for a long time. When he finally switched off the X-ray eyes, he said very solemnly, I don’t know, Steven. You look OK, I guess. But it will take more than just a haircut to turn you into a handsome babe magnet like me.
Honestly, where does the child GET this stuff?
At school, my plan was to do the “hat trick” again until some teacher made me take the cap off. That would have been a swell strategy, too, if it hadn’t been the windiest day of the whole year. As I was standing at the bus stop with Renee, a massive gust whipped that sucker right off my head and down the sidewalk. I’m sure I have looked more suave at other moments than I did right then, running up the street in a crouch, trying to jump on the flying headgear while carrying all my books, my pate shining in the glare of the strong morning sun. I finally got the hat pinned under my foot and looked up in momentary triumph—just as the bus pulled up.
Well, at least I finally stole the show from Renee Albert for a minute. I was the talk of the bus. Annette wasn’t on board—it turned out she was late because of an orthopedist appointment—so I sat next to Renee.
She looked at me in an awed kind of silence usually only seen on three-year-olds who are meeting Barney for the first time. Then she shook her head, as if to clear it, and spoke.
Wow, you must really love your brother.
Nah, I just really hate my hair. OK, once in a rare while, I do come up with a decent line under pressure!
When I got to school, word raced around the building, and I was like king of the island for a day. A couple of my friends thought I was nuts, but everyone else, especially girls and female teachers, thought I was…ummm…“soooooo sweet!”
I was pretty pleased with the outcome, overall, although I did have a complaint: The top of my head was freezing.
THE QUADRUPLE UH-OH
A couple of days later, at All-City rehearsal, Mr. Watras made a startling announcement to the group: The
school district had just put a new policy in place. Evidently, every high school student would now have to perform community-service hours every semester in order to graduate, effective immediately. Everybody around me started mumbling and grumbling right away, but I didn’t see what the big deal was. I asked Brian.
Well, Pez, here’s the problem: A lot of us are already busy every day after school and Saturdays with this, our regular school bands, sports, jobs, relationships, and just generally trying to have a life and get decent grades. So…
Yeah?
So, some of us may have to drop out of All-City in order to do the service hours. That’s the “big deal.”
Oh.
About an hour into the rehearsal, I noticed that Annette and Renee were in their usual spots, watching the proceedings. But they weren’t just watching—they were whispering back and forth at top speed. Now you know I don’t know much about the inner workings of girl-folk—but I did realize that anything that could bring those two together had to have some pretty powerful voodoo to it.
By the time we were done playing, Annette and Renee were writing frantically. And not just notes. They were writing paragraphs, lists, charts, and graphs. Annette had a calculator; Renee was wielding—I swear to God—a compass (or possibly a protractor. I never could remember which is which). It was like they were planning a space mission or something.
The band stopped, and Annette strode over to the podium. She grabbed Mr. Watras’s conducting baton and tapped it on the music stand just like he always does. Everyone looked over, and Annette started talking.
How many of you are going to have trouble meeting the service requirement and staying in All-City? Come on, raise your hands.
About three-quarters of the band did.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could somehow get service credit for BEING in All-City?
People were looking interested now.
Because I think that Renee over there (Renee waved) and I have a way. Listen, guys. I’m sure you all know that there are families in this town who have dire financial situations, families that are trying their hardest but just can’t seem to make ends meet, families that could use a helping hand. Am I right?