Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (17 page)

M
y parents’ best friends were the Edwardses, a couple they had met in the place where all true, rock-solid friendships are born: the Baptist Church. Only a couple of years older than Mother and Dad, they had three kids close in age to Val and me, and from the moment we moved to St. Louis, we socialized frequently. We attended church together, threw dinner parties for one another and, as with all longtime friendships, occasionally wished each other were dead.

Harvey and Florence “Flo” Edwards seemed to believe that their children could not only walk on water, but tap-dance on it as well. Flo, a cherubic housewife with a prematurely gray bouffant, was a thoughtful and generous woman who kept this notion to herself, but Harvey, her brilliant, intellectual husband, felt that this kind of information required wide and indiscriminate dissemination.

“What can I say,” he would declare, leaning back in his dining room chair and nudging Dad after a recounting of his kids’ most recent accomplishments, “when you’re starting out with genes like mine . . .”

“Stop,” Flo would admonish him, digging her nails into his forearm in an effort to rein him in. “I think it’s high time we hear what Valerie and Eric have been up to.”

This was usually the moment that stopped a dinner party cold. Ray and Elaine Poole had long since come to the conclusion that their children were far more likely to contract cancer than cure it. Although they relentlessly cheered Val and me on to the B grade averages they knew we had in us, our parents realized that when it came to bragging about their children, the Edwardses had it over them in spades.

Donny, their eldest child, was already, at age fifteen, a scientific genius who studied chemistry tables with all the fervor that I studied
TV Guide
. He was a tall, meticulous, dark-haired boy with thick Coke-bottle glasses, whose bookish personality lent the term “nerd” its rainbow of meaning.

Frances, their thirteen-year-old middle child, was a brilliant and tortured actress. Wildly creative, she hadn’t yet “grown into her looks” (as the adults around me explained it), resembling a teenage Miss Hathaway from
The Beverly Hillbillies
.

On the other hand, the youngest, Theresa, the most attractive of the three, seemed to come from somewhere else—perhaps the product of Flo’s assignation with a hot but stupid repairman, given that she possessed few of the scientific or creative abilities of her siblings, and in fact found
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
frightening and difficult to follow. At age twelve, she was, to Val and me, the saving grace.

I actually enjoyed spending time with Frances, who was closest to my own age and with whom I could discuss such important issues as what the “stars” on
Tattletales
did the rest of the time, and why Jermaine was the Jackson brother to watch; but Mother and Dad pressed me to spend more time with both Frances
and
Donny, a duo that sent my self-esteem plummeting to spectacular new lows. The combination of Donny’s analytical brilliance and Frances’s creative genius seemed to leave no territory uncharted.

This was easily ignored when we were younger and the five of us spent the afternoon snorkeling in the Edwardses’ plastic pool while Mrs. Edwards made us grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade pie. But now that Frances and I were in junior high, and Donny and Val were in high school, the gap between brilliance and stupefying ordinariness was, for Val and me, becoming all too clear.

In a desperate attempt to bridge the competitive gap, I took up the trumpet and, miraculously and quite out of nowhere, began to exhibit a fairly high level of skill. I immediately began to pound out the hit songs of the day with effusive energy and a complete lack of style. This newfound talent filled my sister with fear and loathing, since her inadequacies were now pointed out right in her own house. Yet we were both excited at the prospect of anything that would help level the playing field, since we were, at every turn, bested by the Edwards clan.

Perhaps the moment that crystallized our competition was when the Edwardses decided to enroll Donny and Frances in private schools. Not just parochial schools, which were the low-rent method of privatizing a child’s education, but prestigious prep schools that routinely sent their graduates on to the finest Ivy League institutions.

The announcement came over dinner at our house.

“The public school system is a shambles,” Harvey announced, evidently forgetting that his less exceptional daughter was still enrolled in it. “And the best thing you can do for gifted progeny is give them the proper tools to excel,” he declared, as he gazed lovingly at two of his three kids.

“Of course, we’re proud of all our children,” Flo chimed in, in an attempt to include Theresa, who was busy staring at a tin bas-relief on the wall, certain that the John the Baptist’s eyes were following her. Flo motioned to Val and me. “Just like you’re proud of these two wonderful kids.”

“Yeah, long as they don’t end up in jail,” Dad replied as he winked at us. Mother kicked him under the table so hard that his eyes began to water.

For reasons that completely eluded Val and me, Mother could be not only friendly but downright delightful to people she liked, and her friendship with Flo was long-standing and supportive. Her feelings about Harvey, however, were slightly less congenial, and Mother, although rarely complimentary to our faces, was not about to take Harvey’s arrogance lying down.

“Well, I think Valerie and Eric are doing just
fine
in public school.”

“True,” Harvey replied. “That Eric’s turning into quite the trumpet player. I’ll bet one day he might even make first chair, like Donny did last year with the trombone.” Harvey paused to offer me the sympathetic smile of the truly superior. We waited for him to compliment Val, but he had obviously reached his quota.

“Yeah,” he continued, “we’re enrolling them this fall. I think private school will really send the right message.” He turned to Donny and Frances. “My kids want to be more than just big fish in a small pond, don’t you?” Donny and Frances nodded with Pavlovian enthusiasm.

“I don’t know where he gets off,” Mother declared a couple hours later, as she slammed open the velvet-lined flatware case and replaced the silver forks, which, although only two years old, had been polished down to their core metal. “Flo is a doll, but Harvey just
lives
to lord those kids over us.”

“Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by it,” Dad said loudly, as he flipped on the Hoover canister to vacuum the kitchen carpeting.

“Are you kidding?” Mother shouted. “Any day now I fully expect one of those kids to turn water into wine. And Harvey will serve it to us as the Blood of Donny.”

LATE THAT NIGHT, I sat alone in my faux-fur rocking chair in the basement (a perhaps not surprisingly discontinued design from Mother’s employer), fingering the old chenille bedspread that had served as my connection to the mystical realms.

I no longer envisioned my magical ability as supernatural, of course, since I had learned that the power emanated from God. And in fact, I was no longer convinced that I still possessed any such power, since God’s granting of my magical requests had become sporadic and devoid of reason. Yet whether out of habit or some perverse hope, I persisted, closing my eyes and attempting to inhale the power of this once-mighty costume, desperate to prove that with his help, I could still change the course of events.

As I buried my face in the dusty fabric, I closed my eyes and began to listen intently. Slowly, in the distance, I could hear the roar of people cheering. Gradually, the sound became closer, and louder, enveloping everything around me. Thousands of people were stomping their feet and screaming applause. I felt the heat of lighters as I magically floated through the darkness into an arena. I settled on a stage before a crowd of fifteen thousand, holding my trumpet and taking bows with the superstar band Chicago.

I peered past the footlights to see the Edwards family in the front row. They formed a sliding scale of approval, from Flo, Frances and Theresa’s wild cheering to Donny’s restrained clapping to Harvey’s stone face. I grabbed one of the heavy metal mouthpieces for my trumpet and tossed it to Frances as a souvenir. My aim was bad and she didn’t see it, and when it slammed into her head and she began to bleed from a large gash, Harvey rounded up the family and stomped out. Fans dove for the mouthpiece, scratching and clawing one another in a desperate attempt to snatch a piece of history.

A woman held up the slightly red-stained mouthpiece with a broad smile. I gave her a thumbs-up and the crowd went wild.

 

 

GIVEN THE now tenuous nature of my connection to magic, I had little confidence that this request would be granted. So it was with shock and elation that I greeted my promotion from third to second chair in band class that fall. God seemed to be listening once again! Why he had chosen to grant this request and not others remained a mystery, but somehow, my magical connection had been at least momentarily restored.

With his help, my talents as a trumpeter began to sky-rocket; and no one took more note of this than Mother, who viewed this accomplishment as ammunition for the next Edwards dinner party.

Harvey, however, apparently foresaw this turn of events and decided to kick things up a notch. Over buttermilk fried chicken and mashed potatoes at the Edwards home, he announced their latest first.

Donny, having mastered the scientific frontier, had now ventured into the creative realms and written a play. His professors at the snotty Chadwick School were, according to Harvey, practically wetting themselves,

“The director wants to produce it as is,” Donny noted, glancing at his father, who was practically mouthing the words along with him, “but I feel like I should at least attempt a rewrite. I mean, I only did the one draft. It just doesn’t seem like it should be this easy.”

I had some conjuring to do.

 

 

OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS, I redoubled my basement efforts at both music and magic. Val was routinely annoyed by my loud and emotionally overwrought renditions of “Time in a Bottle” and “Touch Me in the Morning”; she nonetheless cheered me on, since we both realized that my musical ability represented our only real hope of deliverance from the oppression of Harvey Edwards.

My musical improvement was complicated by the arrival of braces on my teeth, which made it painfully difficult to play, since the sharp metal tore open the inner tissue of my lips with such regularity that I kept a large wad of tissue in my jeans to sop up the blood.

But I could not and would not be distracted from my goal, and finally, that spring, having won the admiration of the band director, I was rewarded with a promotion to first chair.

This extraordinary (for the Pooles) accomplishment was debuted at a church potluck when the Edwards kids were absent, chosen specifically by Mother for its larger audience and potential for Harvey humiliation.

“I don’t know where he gets his musical talent,” Mother declared in as modest a tone as she could muster under these extraordinary circumstances, as she signaled me to open my trumpet case.

“Yeah,” Dad added before Mother could take aim at his perpetually bandaged shin, “it’s not like prodigies are falling off
our
family tree.”

Flo turned to me and clapped her hands. “Play something for us.”

Surprisingly willing to display my only marketable talent, and thrilled to have the attention of adults for any reason other than pity, I let loose with a swinging rendition of “Rock of Ages,” to the considerable horror of our pastor, who stopped me midway through and asked that I never play a hymn that way again. God was apparently aghast, but the crowd clapped appreciatively, especially Flo.

Harvey dutifully joined in the applause, then paused a moment before leaning forward to my parents to bark, “Guess what?”

“What’s that?” Mother replied as she took a sip of coffee, still basking in this rare moment of glory. I wondered if she would actually stand and curtsy.

“Donny’s gonna graduate early! An entire year early, can you believe that?” His voice boomed as he turned to acknowledge the looks of wild admiration from those around us.

Mother nearly choked on her Taster’s Choice as Dad shot her a pleading “Don’t say anything” look. Parents at nearby tables smiled the teeth-baring sneer of the freshly one-upped. Harvey acknowledged their jealousy with a tastefully modest “Smell me!” grin.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Flo interjected quietly, smiling at Val and me. “I’m sure Eric and Valerie could do it, too. I just worry about a boy his age being in college.”

“Nothing?” Harvey replied. “My son is gonna be the first sixteen-year-old from St. Louis in the Ivy League!”

We had no idea where he had come up with this college statistic—surely a city with a million-plus population had, over the course of the past century, produced one genius who had managed to get sprung from high school early. But without hard facts, we couldn’t dispute him.