As Luck Would Have It by Mark Goldstein Page A

when he went past. I had no close friends, except for Joseph, who stayed even closer to me than before.  If school had become my sanctuary ; he was now my savior.  I could not have fully appreciated it at the time, but I can look back on it easily now and recognize with near certainty that if he hadn’t been there, I would probably not be here now and you would be busy doing something other than listening to me tell this sad story.
    I don’t know how he managed the huge responsibility of attending to me and coaxing me back to something approximating normal.  Maybe it just came to him naturally, or maybe it was out of a kind of love that I had never experienced.  He was with me almost every day after school and on the weekends as well.  It could not have been easy for him ; I was depressed and often irate .  I brooded and sometimes would not speak to him, but he kept at it patiently even when I yelled at him for no reason and told him to leave me alone.  Sometimes I’d refuse to talk to him on the phone or ignore him in school, but I’d still find him waiting at my locker faithfully every single day after class was over.  Are you afraid of what I’ll do if I’m alone Joseph ?  No, I’m not really afraid of anything.  Not even Jamie?  Well, Jamie yeah , I’m afraid of him , he scares the crap out of me.
    Mostly we would just listen to music and talk after school.  No one else could seriously approach the subject of my parents, but it seemed no problem for him.  He never said stuff like things will get better, or just give it more time .  He didn’t bother with such superficial counseling because in truth, he didn’t know for sure that it would get better or if all the time since creation would help.  Instead, he talked about our lives and our parents and our dreams for the future, never with a hint that I might not have one.  We’d pick out albums from his brother’s amazing collection; Jefferson Starship, Grateful Dead, Jethro Tull, and play them for hours.
    How do you feel Clifford?  Like shit, thanks for asking.  I miss going to your parents house like we used to. Remember when your father tried to teach me to play infield? Yeah, you were just like Brooks Robinson at third.  I wanted to both kill him and hug him at the same time.  Did I really need to talk about the days my dad hit them out to us at Bra dford Park?  The therapist said I did, but I never told Joseph that.  I think maybe he needed a little therapy himself; m y parents treated him like a second child they never could have, and he was stricken hard by the accident too.
    I was getting used to living at the Neelson’s house, but I wasn’t exactly thriving there.  My aunt and uncle never had children of their own, so the reality of unexpectedly finding themselves as halfhearted foster parents to a troubled teenager could not have been easy.  T he house was often deserted as my uncle worked insane hou rs as a pharmaceutical salesman, and my aunt would frequently visit her friends or her cousin Mildred as a release and a distraction from the pain she now was forced to cope with somehow.   Uncle Jack often was away for a couple of days at a time, and even when he was not out of town, he would rarely be home before Aunt Doreen and I had finished eating and the dishes were washed and dried.  She would warm up his dinner at 8:00 or so while I would watch TV or make an attempt at my homework.  These days, Joseph did m uch of it for me because I found it nearly impossible to concentrate, and mercifully, he had the compassion to not bring up the ethical considerations.
    Joseph created a problem for Aunt Doreen.  In all honesty, I think she made a fairly sincere effort to like him, but the fact that he was both a Jew and a homosexual was a lot for her to grasp.  I commend him for the effort he made to endear himself to her, but as we have seen, Joseph is a bit on the flaming side and not exactly what you might to refer to as