Page 24 Winter 1994 - 95
Juggling Tales
The
Juggler BY
ANDREA GOLLIN Previously
Published in The Virginia Quarterly Review
Hang
around - buy a rocket pop, lick it before it drips on your new suit,
grab a seat on the dark green bench, smell the oozing grass, check out
the rubbery tulips, feel the sun on your fingers, listen, because birds
may be singing. And watch the juggler. He's a member of a select tribe
of the lucky ones. He's got the hands. Most don't. This may be your only
chance to catch his act. He, his ilk, move often, move quickly. Sp
you're the lucky one.
This
man, this juggler, is not my brother. Danny can do all of this. More,
even. He has the hands. He practices, practices, the hours stacked end
to end form a huge heart, wide as years, long as life. He looks only at
the swirling, twirling objects, his tongue pushed to the corner and a
bit out of his mouth. The cords of muscles, tendons, veins in his neck
and arms are clearly visible, straining the skin, flowing past the
marbles that are the bones of his wrists, ending in the polished oak of
He
just got kicked out of a new place, one he liked - it was a five-minute
walk from the orange and pink Dunkin' Donuts that punctuates the
grayness of Route 7 in Troy, N.Y., the Dunkin' Donuts where my brother
is the 3 p.m. to midnight fryer and froster. When he got the job he told
me he'd be working donuts into his act, the act no one's seen, the act
he was perfecting. "I'm almost ready," he told me, not three
weeks ago. He likes his job. He likes any job, almost, so long as the
hours are good. Before this he was the bean masher in a Mexican
restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before that he painted firecracker
stands in Missoula, Montana, but quit due
He
called today, from a pay phone. His roommate of only one month, a guy
named Otto, told him, "Screwing, I can take. Moans, groans, no
problem. But one more thud and I'll beat the hell out of you-and I kind
of like you. But I'll break your fingers. I swear it." So Danny
left. He always goes quietly, leaving a wake of chipped paint behind
him. But he usually lasts longer than one month. As he spoke, feeding
quarters to the mechanical demand, I wondered whether the world is
losing patience with my movie-star handsome brother, whose cheeks flash
with dimples when he smiles, and who is pushing 30-years-old and who
says he is a damn good fryer and froster, but complains that the grease
is starting to get to him, that in his dreams he can see it invading the
cells of his lungs, one cell at a time. And then the voice said
"Please deposit $2.70," the line went dead, and Danny called a
few minutes later, person-to-person collect, from Dunkin' Donuts in
Troy, N.Y. to the law firm on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, that
is the site of my job, my career, my life. "I just thought you
should know," he said. "It's over, I'm through with
juggling," and he hung up.
So
what could I do? I went to the airport and got on a plane headed for
Albany, N.Y., neighbor of Troy.
He
slipped the noose, flew the coop, cut the ties that bind, dive bombed
from the nest early, or maybe he was just different from the start, the
words, "It's a phase, it's just a phase he's going through,"
echoing and reechoing through the halls of our house like a mantra while
our parents had his room painted, and repainted, and painted again, to
cover the chips. A juggling club, thrown against a wall over and over
again, can do considerable damage. Danny's bedroom was on the third
floor of the house, the converted attic, and when he practiced, bouncing
things off walls for the fun of it, dropping them to the floor when he
was done with that particular trick, the vibrations trembled down
through the house. The thuds and
shudders were like white noise, the hum of an air conditioner.
Every now and then that hum was broken by a truly majestic crash or
thud, one that always made me feel like laughing as I wondered what
trick he was trying to master. In later years, when I became aware of
such things, I wondered whether Danny's juggling affected our parents'
sex life if, indeed, they had one. Was it disconcerting, at certain
crucial moments, to |