Chapter 7: What Could Be
It took fourteen months.
Not because Danny was slow.
Because the world is not built to move quickly for people like Danny, and every door that should have opened easily had at least one extra latch on it that nobody had mentioned.
There was the business license, which required a physical address, which required a space, which required money they didn't have yet.
There was the insurance question, which turned out to be three separate insurance questions.
There was the bank, which was polite and unhelpful in the specific way that banks are polite and unhelpful when they've already decided the answer is no.
I was in my second year of college when Danny called me on a Wednesday — which meant something had happened.
"The grant came through," he said.
I sat up straight.
"Which one?"
"The small business one.
The disability entrepreneurship one." He said it carefully, like he'd been practicing the full name.
"Eleven thousand dollars."
"Danny."
"Mom cried," he said.
"Dad didn't cry but he made a noise."
"What kind of noise?"
"The kind he makes at the end of movies." A pause.
"The good ones."
I pressed my hand flat against my desk.
The hinge was in the dish two inches from my fingers.
"What are you going to do first?"
"Rent the space on Clement Street.
The one above the dry cleaner.
Mr.
Okafor said he'd hold it." Another pause.
"I told him about the grant in February.
In case."
In case.
He'd told the landlord in February, before the grant was confirmed, so the space would still be there if it came through.
He'd been planning for the yes while everyone else was still worried about the no.
"You didn't tell me about Mr.
Okafor," I said.
"I didn't want you to worry if it didn't work."
I looked at the shelf on my wall.
At the bird with the open wings.
"Danny," I said.
"You have to stop protecting me from things."
"No I don't," he said, completely pleasantly.
"You worry too much.
I worry the right amount."
I laughed.
I couldn't help it.
"What are you going to call it?" I said.
He didn't hesitate.
He'd had this answer for a while.
"Two Birds Workshop."
The hinge caught the light from my desk lamp.
"Yeah," I said.
"That's exactly right."
The space on Clement Street was small — one room above the dry cleaner, with two windows that faced the street and a freight elevator that worked three days out of five.
Danny didn't care about the elevator.
He cared about the light.
Dad built the workbenches.
Danny designed them — drew them out on graph paper with a ruler, measured the room four times, accounted for the way the light moved through the afternoon — and Dad built them because Dad is an engineer and building things from a precise drawing is his version of love.
Mom handled the paperwork.
She'd been handling paperwork for Danny his entire life and she was very good at it and she did not make it look like a burden because it wasn't one.
I came home the weekend they moved the tools in.
Danny was standing in the middle of the room when I got there, just standing, looking at the windows and the benches and the pegboard he'd already mounted on the east wall.
"Well?" I said from the doorway.
He turned around.
His glasses were clean.
He was wearing his good flannel — the dark green one he saves for things that matter.
"It smells like sawdust already," he said.
"Is that good?"
"It means it's mine," he said.
He crossed to the workbench and ran his hand along the surface Dad had built.
Then he opened the bag he'd brought and took out the first tool — a hand plane, old, the handle worn smooth from years of use — and set it on the bench.
Then he looked at me.
"You want to see what I'm making first?"
"Obviously," I said.
He reached into the bag again and pulled out a piece of oak.
Raw, rough-edged, not yet anything.
He set it on the bench and put both hands flat on it, the way you steady something before you begin.
"I don't know yet," he said.
"But it'll tell me."
That was three years ago.
Two Birds Workshop is still on Clement Street.
The freight elevator still works three days out of five.
The pegboard has more tools on it now.
May you like
There's a small sign on the door that Danny painted himself — two birds, wings open, mid-flight — and a waiting list that runs six weeks out for custom pieces.
He still uses oak whenever he can.
