Houses
(Regarding Daniel Denis)
Daniel Denis was in love with the world. Since the day his eyes first fluttered open, he had looked with wide wonder at the dullness of the everyday. He and his parents, Adam and Lara Denis, lived in a modest three-bedroom home at the end of their block, from the roof of which Daniel could look out at the parallel rows of houses stretching north to the street’s end. In the dark of the early morning, while his parents still slept, Daniel would often climb up to the highest point of the roof and scan the dense shadows of his neighborhood, inventing wild fantasies from the shapes his scrunched eyes made out. He imagined many things while perched there, but he most often pictured his neighbors’ homes as the heads of giants, the dark windows their hollow eyes and the garage doors their taught, cold mouths, each one having been beheaded by some Herculean figure of Daniel’s imagining (the particulars of this hero varied based on the story in which Daniel imagined him, but an ability and willingness to decapitate evil-doers was a recurring trait). Houses, Daniel thought, were great.
He was a sweet and enthusiastic boy, well liked by his peers and absolutely adored by the mothers in the neighborhood, who all thought him to be the most polite kid they’d ever met. It was not uncommon to hear one mother say to another, “Isn’t Daniel Denis the most polite kid you’ve ever met?” to which the other would reply, “Yes. He is.” Mothers in general, Daniel thought, were good. His own mother, he thought, was great.
Adam and Lara Denis were proud of their son, although they were occasionally at odds with his creative spirit. While eating dinner, Daniel frequently imagined that he was dining at the home of a great sorcerer, and that each of the foods on his plate could, through their ingestion, bestow unto Daniel unusual and unlikely conditions. Mashed potatoes, for example, changed Daniel into a grizzly bear, necessitating more than a few growling, clawing, and whooping orbits around the dining room table. Chicken, when barbecued, made Daniel levitate as if he were filled with helium, and therefore required that he keep a stack of heavy books in his lap to keep him pinned for the duration of the meal. Broccoli would steal away his hearing for several hours and so was to be avoided at all costs. His parents were tolerant of most of these games, even amused by some, but his mother had to stop serving corn on the cob altogether when Daniel was continually dropped into an immediate and heavy sleep by its consumption. Onions too, had been removed from the menu for the unbearable decibel to which they raised Daniel’s normal speaking voice. Dinner, Daniel thought, was great. Even tomatoes, which sent his body into convulsions, were good.
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In the evenings, Daniel would run at full sprint (most desserts gave him super speed) from his home to a picnic table in a small park at the end of the block, where he would work on his sketches. The park was no more than a nine-foot by nine-foot square of grass with a rusty tether ball pole installed on one side and a picnic table on the other. This plot of left-over land at the mid-point of the cul-de-sac was too small for a home but too big to ignore, and so one of the Denis’ neighbors, a man known to everyone as John The Bachelor, had taken it upon himself to lay down and maintain a bit of grass. He then went on to build, sand and stain a picnic table, and eventually cemented the tether ball pole into an old tire. The home next door to the park, belonging to Martin and Leslie Gomez, a paranoid and childless couple, had been adorned with large motion sensor floodlights that aimed conveniently at Daniel’s workspace on the picnic table. Having always enjoyed an unusual talent for drawing, Daniel liked nothing more than sitting in this pool of yellow light and depicting all the good and great things he encountered in his world. He drafted his sketches in any one of many spiral notebooks, but once an image had been perfected, it would be cut out and installed neatly into a massive photo album, on the cover of which he had stenciled “The Book of the Good and the Great – by Daniel Denis.” This album contained beautiful illustrations of umbrellas, dogs, laughing, dinner, friends, movies, skateboards, dirty jokes, balloons (hot air and birthday), sick days, video games, shoes, stickers, dragons, monkeys, cool scars, swimming, lunch, brunch, jackets, girls, mountaintops, hiccups, Zippo brand lighters, money, pillows, shelves, yelling, sand, throwing stars, sleeping, caves, computers and bras, just to name a few. Daniel would designate his subjects as either Good or Great, depending on his degree of fondness, and then title each drawing accordingly.
One evening, while coloring an illustration of a garbage truck, which he intended to label great, Daniel was interrupted from his work by the Newman twins from down the street, who were making their way toward a nearby alley with a large bag of illegally acquired fireworks. He wandered toward the boys, leaving his album and sketches to be collected later, and was invited to join them. The twins explained that they had gone on a camping trip with their uncle a week before, and they had purchased the fireworks, almost a hundred dollars worth, from a man their uncle knew who lived in a trailer in the woods.
Daniel marveled at every pop and sparkle, and watched with envy as the lighter was passed ceremoniously from one brother to the other, wishing they might offer him the chance to light one himself. Unfortunately, the fireworks show was brought to an abrupt halt when sirens were heard approaching. None of the three boys remained long enough to find out if they were the cause of the sirens, and in his hurry, Daniel failed to retrieve his sketches from the park before running to the safety of his home, where he went directly to sleep in order to avoid answering any questions from his parents about what he’d been doing.
The following morning, which he normally would have spent skateboarding with friends in front of the local library, as he did most Saturdays, Daniel went instead to the park to make sure his book was unharmed and perhaps to begin work on a sketch that would illustrate the greatness of fireworks. He became nervous upon seeing that a small group of neighborhood kids had gathered themselves around the picnic table. To his surprise, Daniel was greeted with wide smiles and an outpouring of praise. Not only were they impressed by the quality of his artwork, Daniel’s friends and neighbors also offered unanimous support of his judgments, complimenting how perfectly he had labeled each subject.
“It’s true,” said Randy Wilkins, “Blow-pops are great, but cheese graters are only good.”
“And I like jumping,” said Dawn DeFranco, “but it’s not great.”
“I am thinking about putting trampolines in,” stammered Daniel, “and I was gonna call them great.”
“Yeah!” Dawn agreed, “They are great!”
The kids spent most of the morning flipping through the book and discussing the greatness and the goodness of this and that, and not once did a dispute arise over Daniel’s titles.
Following dinner that night, Daniel finished not only his garbage truck picture, but drafted and finalized an awe-inspiring sketch of fireworks. The next morning every kid on the block, and a few from the next street over, came to admire the album. One boy brought with him, as a gift to Daniel, a small folding easel his mother had been using to hold a commemorative platter. The album fit neatly on the stand and allowed the whole group to view its pages with greater ease. After some time spent reiterating the comments of the day before, along with some additional praise of the new pages, the kids began to debate over what sketch Daniel should undertake next. It was a spirited discussion, which escalated quickly to cursing and yelling between a few of the older kids, most notably the Newman twins who felt deeply invested in the project as a result of having inspired the artist’s previous work.
“Those are our fireworks,” they had said, pointing at the sketch, bragging to anyone who would listen. Daniel tried his best to patiently hear all their suggestions, even the more aggressive urging of the twins, but in the end, he told the group that they would just have to wait and see what he was in the mood to draw. The group accepted this with only a spattering of complaints and began to disperse toward their homes or to other activities.
At school the next day, Daniel’s status among his classmates appeared to have been elevated, at least as indicated by the offering of more than a few sugary treats from packed lunches and vending machines. Daniel listened to their unsolicited suggestions once more, everything from kittens to volleyball, as he enjoyed an orange frosted Hostess cupcake and a package of red vines, both of which, Daniel thought, were irrefutably great. As before, Daniel gave no hint of his intended subject, but only promised that a new work would be ready to premier at school the following day.
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Adam Denis was picking up some groceries on his way home from work when he ran into Laura Klein, who quickly cornered him near the coffee and tea aisle to tell him, without bothering to say hello, that grocery stores are good, but that toy stores are great. Mr. Denis’ confusion was confusing to Mrs. Klein, who was unaware that he was unaware of his son’s album and its sudden popularity. Mrs. Klein’s son had come home the night before and listed off to his parents almost the entire contents of the album, complete with categorical labels. Mr. and Mrs. Klein had then enjoyed their own lively discussion of what other good and great things deserved to be in such a book. After relaying all this to Mr. Denis, Mrs. Klein asked if he might do her the favor of suggesting dancing to his son as something great. Mr. Denis assured her he would, knowing he very likely would not, then said goodbye and rushed home to speak with his son.
Mrs. Denis, who had also heard about her son’s book from a neighbor, was holding the cumbersome album on her lap and questioning Daniel about it when Mr. Denis arrived home.
“What is it you were trying to do?” she asked. Daniel noted his mother’s flat tone, neither angry nor consoling, but one from which he knew she could spring to either of these.
“I was just drawing pictures. People liked them, I guess.”
“People are talking to me about this thing in the grocery store,” his father said.
“I don’t know what else to say. I was just drawing pictures,” he said. Daniel’s parents looked at each other.
“Let’s see ‘em, I guess,” his father decided. Daniel waited anxiously as his parents flipped through the book. He didn’t understand his nervousness. While he wasn’t crazy about the idea of his mom and dad looking at his depictions of cheerleaders (good), bikinis (great), or kissing (the only picture in the bunch that was yet to be labeled), he knew that he had done nothing wrong. When they had reached the book’s end, his parents looked first to each other and then at their boy. For a long time they stared at him without speaking.
“You know what’re good?” his father finally said, “quesadillas.”
“What about whirlpool bathtubs?” his mother offered. As his parents began to argue, Daniel took up the book and slipped out the front door, unnoticed.
He sat that night in the comfort of his private pool of light, finding no less enjoyment in his work, but also experiencing the pressure of his task. Hunched over the table with his teeth clamped tightly on his lower lip, Daniel set to work creating a scratchy, nervous drawing of an ice cream sandwich.
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With held breath, Daniel propped the book up on its stand inside a temporarily teacherless classroom where he and a group of students had gathered. He pulled open the cover and flipped to the new image. Although this motley gang of school kids hardly qualified as a crowd, their applause was no less thunderous.
Daniel sat with renewed confidence at his picnic table every night that week, and with sharp, deft strokes he invoked the likenesses of Kit-Kats, baseball gloves, dogs, skulls-and-crossbones, really big cars, echoes, friends and neighbors, funny movies, pizza, games (video and board), stilts, exclamation points and really small cars. And each day he and his classmates would find a place to convene where all would ooh and aah over Daniel’s aptly labeled drawings. His new friends continued to offer him their desserts and his old friends told the new ones stories about how great the drawings that Daniel used to make before they knew him were, and Daniel knew that the new friends were attracted only to the momentary popularity and the old friends weren’t behaving at all like they used to, but for many days he enjoyed the attention without concern for its spuriousness. Lara Denis, an avid craftswoman, gave her son a small crate of supplies – decorative stamps, photo mattes, and card stock – with the hope that they might work together to spice up the book a little. They made modern, textured borders for each of the pictures and re-stenciled the title in high-gloss, silver puffy paint on the album cover. Adam Denis, who remained a little uncomfortable with the attention of the whole neighborhood being aimed at his son, nonetheless decided to finally hang a sketch Daniel had given him some time before on his office wall.
The following Saturday, when the kids gathered around the picnic table in the park, Daniel earned himself his first kiss, followed soon after by his second and third, after premiering a very flattering sketch of Kathryn Miller, curly red hair and all. The image depicted her on an expansive stage in a beautiful gown, standing on her tiptoes and singing into a microphone, just as he had watched her do at the school talent show that fall. It was labeled great. Dawn DeFranco, who had had a secret crush on Daniel since long before his book had gone public, agreed with everyone there that her classmate Kathryn was great, but later told another friend that she actually thought she was only good. At best.
Daniel arrived at the picnic table after dinner the next night, and was surprised to find a small group of fans waiting for him. Having discovered his favorite place to work, they had decided to gather together to witness the creation of the next entry. At first, Daniel did not feel at all comfortable with them watching, and if Kathryn Miller hadn’t been among them, he might have insisted they leave, but he recognized that there are few chances in this world for a boy to do the thing he does best in front of the girl he likes. So with a cool nod to Kathryn, Daniel sat down in his spot and opened up to a fresh page.
His pencil moved with a haunting swiftness, and his audience spoke only in hushed whispers as the artist worked. Daniel Denis was surprised to find that having his every move examined somehow made him less self-conscious, and he felt wonderfully free, his small hands looping and striking, giving just the right curvature to the round little body of a baby penguin, the greatness of which, Daniel was not surprised to find out, was agreed upon by all.
Kathryn Miller stayed with Daniel on the bench that night, waiting for him to hold her hand, as the rest of the kids dispersed, and he, in turn, was greatly anticipating his fourth-ever kiss, when he overheard a short but startling interaction between Dawn DeFranco and one of the Newman twins. Just as they had turned to go, Daniel was almost certain he had heard Dawn say, “I don’t know. I think penguins are good. At best.” Kevin Newman’s response, if Daniel had heard it correctly, was, “Well… yeah. Some penguins are great though, right?” Kathryn took hold of Daniel’s hand and he tried to ignore what he’d heard, but even as her Strawberry Swirl lacquered lips met his, Dawn DeFranco’s words were all he could think about.
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“Dad!” Daniel pleaded, as he tried to shake his sleeping father awake. “Dad! Wake up. Do you think waterfalls are great, or just good?” Daniel’s father peered at him with one eye, for opening both would be risking full conciousness.
“What? I thought you were supposed to decide these things,” he said, and then closed the eye again.
“Yeah, but I need to make sure. Dad? Dad?” Adam Denis, having decided his son’s emergency was, in fact, not one, fell back asleep. Daniel had tried asking his mother first, but she had only made his indecision worse.
“I think waterfalls are good and great!” she had said, thinking herself helpful.
That afternoon, encircled by a large group of his fellow students, in a temporarily teacherless classroom, Daniel Denis placed his book on its stand, wiped the nervous sweat from his brow, and then quickly pushed his way out of the room before he could hear his new sketch being either lauded or ridiculed. Pacing outside the classroom until the kids emerged, Daniel watched as they filed out and made their way down the hall in small groups of two or three. They all appeared pleased, he observed, if unenthusiastic. Most were smiling, and many offered those smiles to Daniel, a clear sign of approval, but he couldn’t help but notice that almost as soon as the kids had left the room they began to discuss other things. Just moments after seeing Daniel’s depiction of a great white shark, a work into which he had put more effort than any other, and which he had confidently labeled, in thick, capital block letters, GREAT, they were already discussing homework and substitute teachers and new sneakers. Daniel was standing alone in the hallway, his mind reeling, desperate for some explanation, some clear, concise expression of his audience’s reaction to the latest work, when Dawn DeFranco walked right up to him and said, “It was a good picture, Daniel. But come on? Of course a great white shark is great, that’s why it’s called a great white shark.”
Daniel endured a long, restless night, kept awake by a persistent stream of thought that alternated between the quiet humiliation of that morning’s showing and the delight of the afternoon with Kathryn Miller that followed, during which Daniel was happy to have lost count of the number of kisses they’d shared. Just before the sun appeared, having given up on sleep, Daniel climbed to the highest point of his roof and looked out at his neighbor’s homes. He imagined once more the cold, dead faces of the fallen giants grafted onto the two-tone facade of each suburban home, and he tried to picture the hero that had slain them, wishing he could sketch the figure and share his greatness with everyone, but also doubting that any picture could express that greatness, no matter how carefully illustrated. As the sun rose, exposing the houses for the simple structures they were, peeling away the monstrous features Daniel had affixed to them, he surveyed his neighborhood for the first signs of waking life. He watched the Holders’ dog being let out to relieve himself on the tires of a neighbors’ car, and he saw Laura Klein sliding open her son’s window shade with sadistic, motherly delight, ensuring he get up in time to make it to his driver’s ed course. Daniel watched Ron Thompson from next door shuffling out onto the front lawn in his wife’s bathrobe to raise and then salute a massive American flag, a daily ceremony that Daniel had many times offered to do for him, but one that Mr. Thompson had not yet been willing to entrust to some kid. Daniel tinkered with each of these images for a moment, imagining Mr. Thompson in his wife’s wig, and maybe her underwear too, then chuckling to himself. He pictured Mr. Holder standing beside his dog, lifting his leg on the same car tire. This caused him to laugh even harder. But as soon as each game was finished, he was struck by the simple beauty of the scenes and wished he could sketch them all, capture them in graphite and enjoy the comfort of knowing he could keep them forever, imperfect and unchanging. When he thought he heard his parents stirring below, he tiptoed off the roof and returned to his bedroom to gather his things before making his way to the park, ready to try again.
There was a light mist in the air and the clouds were becoming dense and swollen as they lumped together, but Daniel sat down at his picnic table nonetheless and began to calmly outline his newest sketch. He worked for more than an hour in the quiet of the morning. He finished what he thought might be his masterpiece just as the thick droplets of rain began to fall. He gathered his things together and rushed home.
The following day, just after third period as had become their routine, the kids waited for Daniel to arrive. He kept them waiting much longer than usual, and when he finally showed up, he made his way very slowly toward the teacher’s desk. He was still arranging the easel when the bell signaling the start of the new period rang, and Jack Newman grabbed the book from Daniel’s hands, flipped it open to the last page and slammed it flat onto the desk, causing the stand to snap closed and fall to the floor like an echo.
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One of the boys had cursed upon seeing it, and at least two of the girls gasped audibly. Daniel had circled around behind the desk and taken a seat in the teacher’s tall-backed chair, inviting their judgment, watching the group as they passed expressions around like masks; stunned exchanged for disappointed and terrified growing into angry. Kathryn Miller, Daniel had noted, held a fixed expression of shock, and only the Newman twins had shown signs of anything resembling amusement. Daniel had chosen what he thought would be the most striking of the heads, one whose features could be expressed brilliantly with thick, charcoal strokes. He had then taken the time to color it in with oil pastels, everything from the dark, monstrous eyes to the torn, bloody skin of the neck, giving an elegant hue to every gruesome detail. He had finished it off with a title, written in a lovely, looping script, of great.
“You’re horrible, Daniel Denis,” Dawn DeFranco had shouted before leading a rapid egress from the classroom.
The rain continued that day and into the night, forcing Daniel to work in his bedroom on what he decided would be his last sketch. He did not spend long on it, and it did not meet the standard to which he had held his previous works, but that didn’t seem to matter much. With a medium grade charcoal pencil, Daniel quickly hashed out a rough self-portrait, an image of him standing on the picnic table with his arms outstretched, a large, melodramatic smile on his face, as the rain poured down on him. As soon as he had finished, Daniel pasted the sketch into the album, grabbed the small easel, and walked out of his home and into the rain.
“Where do you think you’re going?” his mother shouted after him, but he did not stop to explain. He walked to the park and carefully set up the stand in the center of the picnic table. The rain was already soaking into the pages of the book before he opened it to the last page and set it to rest on the easel. Daniel Denis watched with delight as the droplets clawed at his image, pulling long, pulpy streaks of gray down the page. After only a couple minutes, Daniel could no longer read the title he had given the self-portrait. Horrible.
