Cool

That March, a pair of Converse All-Stars --

golden-suede, a single black star on the side panel --

carried me to school, like Cinderella’s coach.

I loved them, for two days, unlacing

them each night like Christmas gifts wrapped in tissue paper

and red ribbons, and laying them under my bed

as I now lay flowers I on my parents’ grave.

On the third day, I wore them in the snow and mud, and

that night, I kicked them into a cluttered closet.

For the next six months, my sister argued nightly

from her place at the kitchen table, “We should move to

Pleasant Street or Shore Drive, or Elm Street,”

where her friends, who came back tanned from family vacations,

decorated their own bedrooms with Billy Joel

posters and pink AM/FM radios. Pale and smart,

my sister knew what made cool kids cool.

Nine of us shared four upstairs bedrooms,

one downstairs, and a single bathroom off

the kitchen on Bowman Street. I’ll now admit,

another toilet or a week at the beach

would have been nice, a thought

that did not occur to me then.

One Christmas morning, long after my

sister had given up her petition, and

when I was old enough to know better,

two bicycles stood beside the tree.

I had, in truth, already cracked November’s

kitchen table code. “I want...,” uncoded,

“...something fast, metallic-lime, ten-speed,

white-taped handlebars, curved-forward,

like rams’ horns, rear chrome breaks

on the left, front breaks on the right,

tapered racing saddle,” uncomfortable, maybe.

But cool.

“No. Sturdy,” my father said. Two sentences.

The familiar cold war between sturdy and cool

darkened my December and woke me early on Christmas morning.

Downstairs I met sturdy, a

dark brown frame, practical handlebars with

black plastic grips, angled functionally back,

toward the large padded pancake for a seat.

I met the three reliable speeds of

an old woman’s bike lacking only a wicker basket.

When the snow melted, and bikes broke out of basements,

how long, I worried, would we be teased about our sturdy bikes?

And I wondered if my twin brother would feel what I felt as

I sat alone, by the tree and two sturdy bikes,

waiting for my family to descend on a full year of

agonized parental scrimping arrayed in

candy cane wrapping paper and red bows?

If he did, he was better than I at hiding it.

My mother, I could see, tried to smile at my

“Thanks.” Her eyes moistened at the corners,

and everyone knew.

We never did move from Bowman Street.

My father died fifteen years later.

My mother lived another 25.

I sang to her the night she died,

an apology for, among other sins,

my cool, careless Christmas morning.