by Mary McCoy
As I monitor the accounts, I tell myself I’m just doing my job, even though it’s wallowing, self-inflicted torture to read every message, every mention of our breakup. I sign out without responding to any of them.
When I come down from the attic, my dad is home, and he and my mom are sitting on the couch together, closer than I’ve seen them sit in weeks.
“Your mom told me that you know,” Dad says. “And she told me about you and Vincent.”
“Hello to you, too.” I smile to give the remark plausible deniability of being a joke with no real malice in it.
“I’m sorry, Lee. Is there anything you need?” he asks. “Anything I can do to help?”
“I’m fine,” I say. I know this is probably the full extent of my dad’s check-in with me over the Vincent situation. He isn’t going to ask me how my heart is.
“So, I’ll stay in the bedroom, Sage will be in the office with Max. Harold can crash on the air mattress or wherever if he stays over, and Greg will sleep on the couch,” my dad says. He brings it up like these are casual logistics, but when he gets to the last part, he runs all the words together as quickly as possible.
“You invited Greg?” my mom asks. Her head whips around, though she keeps her face in a pose of forced calm. This is the kind of thing that, until recently, she would have been consulted about ahead of time. But when you’re supposedly separated, I guess you lose the right to have an opinion about who your ex invites over when you’re out of town.
And what was my dad thinking, inviting him here? Surely, he knew about Map Room Love Songs, about “For Greg, for everything.” Why would you want that guy around while your wife was leaving you?
Even though he is the least reliable of my parents’ artist friends, Greg is also the most successful. He worked on a Tim Burton movie. He made big, loud art that involved disrupting city council hearings and building roadblocks out of Perrier bottles. All the other artists I know have other jobs to bring in most of their money, and make art on the side. My mom and Maggie teach, my dad and Harold work at a library, and Sage does neck tattoos in Old English script for drunk guys on Saturday nights, but all Greg does is make art. He’s an artist full-time.
“Maya, he’s my friend, and I want him here.”
“He’s not actually coming, though, Arthur. He never comes.”
This was not exactly true. He’d come once, when I was eight, right after Maggie and Sage adopted Max. He spent the whole weekend drawing robots with us, and from then on, he sent me a box of fancy Blackwing pencils every year on my birthday, along with a hand-drawn card. Save those cards, my dad always said. They’ll probably end up funding your college education.
“He says he’s coming.”
“Greg always says he’s coming, and then he never does,” my mom says, then turns to ask me, “Is all of this okay with you, honey?”
Maybe she legitimately cares, or maybe she’s just trying to influence things through me.
My dad, who clearly suspects the latter, asks, “Why wouldn’t it be okay?”
“I only mean, the house will be very crowded with all those people.”
This is not what she meant at all, and we all know it.
“Sure, I don’t care,” I say.
“Sounds like a regular slumber party,” my mom says, barely concealing her disgust. I mean, I guess if their friends had chosen sides, my mom got Maggie, while my dad got Sage and Harold and Greg. Maybe she’s mad because they’re all on his side.
“Anyhow, Lee, let me know if there’s anything you need,” my dad says. “I’m here for you.”
“We both are,” my mom adds.
“But I’ll be here,” my dad points out, and my mom narrows her eyes and draws in a sharp breath.
“I should go,” I say. “I’ll be late for work.”
“I love you, Lee,” my mom says.
“I love you, too,” I say in a perfunctory let’s-end-this-conversation-now kind of way. Still, she looks relieved when I give her a hug, then my dad.
“I’ll see you before I go tomorrow,” she says, and I nod and go out the front door, and I’m not even in the car yet when I hear them yelling at each other in the living room.
CHAPTER 4 Unhelpful Neural Messages
Claire is the barista on duty when I arrive at Java Cabana. She can tell I’m in a bad mood and leaves me alone, cleaning the espresso machine while I haul gear out from the storage closet. Claire is one of those coworkers who’s also sort of my friend, although it’s more complicated than that. We went to high school together, but we weren’t really friends there. It was more like we were just friends here. I wasn’t sure how to feel when she didn’t acknowledge me in the hallways at school, even though I never said hi to her either. Mostly these days, we just treat each other like coworkers, which I think feels like a relief to both of us.
I finish setting up the monitor and the mic stand, and have just gotten settled behind the soundboard when Claire wordlessly delivers an iced mocha with a shot of peppermint in it, my favorite, and a day-old ginger cookie from the half-price bakery case. Coming from her, it’s such undeserved kindness that I nearly burst into tears on the spot.
“Vincent came by a little bit ago,” Claire explains. “He told me. I’m sorry, Lee.”
“He was here?” I ask. I try to make the question sound casual, but inside I’m panicking. “What did he want? What did you say to him?”
Claire gives me a weary look. “I told him I was sorry. That’s all I said, Lee.”
“He can’t just come by here while I’m at work and disrupt my life.”
“Well, technically he didn’t. You weren’t here.”
“But I might have been,” I say before I realize how irrational I sound. I do not sound like an evolved, cool person who is calmly moving forward from a breakup.
It would have to take something serious for Vincent to come to Java Cabana. Suspicious as his parents were of the internet, even they could admit it had educational and possibly even religious applications. Java Cabana, on the other hand, attracted people who played secular music, read poetry, and said provocative things just to get a rise out of nice people. And even though Vincent didn’t necessarily feel the same way, he never set foot in the place. It was almost like he knew they’d be able to smell it on him when he came home, and he didn’t feel like explaining to them that it was just the coffee shop where his girlfriend worked, not a den of iniquity.
School, the podcast, every other part of my life had Vincent in it, but Java Cabana was this walled-off place he never visited. There were places in his life I’d never been either. He’d never invited me to his church, or introduced me to any of his friends from there. I’d never been in his bedroom. We never talked about why that was—it just was.
Although now that we’re broken up, none of those unspoken rules apply anymore.
Just then, there’s a tap on my shoulder, and before I can turn around, I hear my least favorite voice on the planet asking me, “Have you started the sign-up sheet yet?”
“Give me five minutes, Brent,” I say.
“I don’t want to go first. I want a good spot. I want to go fourth.”
“If you’re the fourth person who signs up, you’ll go fourth, Brent.”
“You always give me a shit spot.”
“She doesn’t,” Claire says in a voice that shuts Brent up for half a second. Java Cabana doesn’t have a bouncer or a door guy on staff, but Claire is so punk and disaffected, it’s almost like she could kick your ass with nothing more than her poor opinion of you.
“You’re on Java Cabana parole,” I say to Brent. “And if you play the donkey-jism-squirt-gun song again, or anything like it, I will ban you.”
“You can’t ban me. You’re, like, twelve.”
He says it like he’s joking, but underneath I detect the outrage that I am preventing him from doing whatever he wants. Maybe if a sound guy told him not to play the donkey-jism-squirt-gun song, he would have been more agreeab
le, or at least had the decency to feel ashamed of himself.
And I’m still being civil to him! I’m still giving him a chance! A sound guy probably would have told him to go away and inflict himself on some other open mic. That’s probably how we ended up with him at Java Cabana in the first place.
Eventually, Brent leaves me alone and orders a drink, and I set up my tabletop mic stand in the back so I can introduce the acts from the soundboard.
As people start approaching me to sign up, it occurs to me that I shouldn’t be so hard on the scene at Java Cabana open mic. For example, I don’t hate Desmond, who had been in a semi-famous band about ten years earlier and now worked as a teacher’s aide at an elementary school. I don’t hate Laura, who played folksy feminist anthems that sounded like they’d been written by Dolly Parton, if Dolly Parton was a Memphis hippie who made her own kombucha. Ian hasn’t gotten here yet, but I like him because he looks like one of the shirtless Bachelorette suitors, and I like looking at him. This could not have been a secret to anyone, because I was all easy chitchat with Desmond and Laura, and I usually told Brent to go to hell, but every time Ian came to sign up for his open mic spot, I’d get tongue-tied and my hands would start to shake. Even when I was dating Vincent, this still happened.
A white girl I’ve seen before in the audience comes up to me carrying a guitar case and asks if she can play. I remember her because she always sits by herself, sipping a cup of tea, nibbling a scone, and studying every performer intently. Most people at open mic come to listen to themselves play, and only stick around for anyone else’s set out of etiquette, so a legitimate audience member stands out.
“It’s your first time, right?” I ask.
She nods nervously, tucking a strand of thick black hair behind her ear, so it curves around and grazes her jawline.
Okay, I’ve also noticed her before because she is very, very pretty. It’s not just Ian who does this to me. I don’t talk about it because it makes me feel like a weirdo or a perv, how often I notice people and find myself admiring their faces, their voices, the way their hair curls around their earlobes. It’s one of the great things about people, how there’s something shimmery about nearly all of them, something that gets my attention and draws me closer.
The girl nods and tells me her name is Risa, and I say, “I’m going to have you go first.”
Risa’s eyes widen in terror, but I say, “Trust me on this. You’re going to do great.”
At seven thirty, people start to come in. Brent waits until he sees a few other people sign up. I take his name and put him fourth even though I know there’s a decent chance he’ll clear the room with his “songs.” Then I call Risa’s name and go up to the front to help as she checks the mic and tunes her guitar, to give her a reassuring nod and let her know it sounds good. Once I can tell she’s comfortable, I go back to the soundboard and introduce her.
Someone like Brent would see going first as a shit spot, and it seems like a scary thing to do to a new person, but I know this open mic, and I know it will be the perfect spot for Risa. The crowd isn’t intimidatingly big, and she doesn’t have time to get in her own head and panic.
Risa has a beautiful voice, even though it trembles during the first verse, like she’s not quite used to the sound of it. Maybe this is the first time she’s played a song outside her own bedroom, but even so, it’s clear she can play. The way she holds the guitar is assured, her fingers attacking the strings, hammering out one inventive lick after another. She sings with her eyes closed, and she doesn’t look at her hands once.
I look over at Desmond and Laura, and see them nodding their heads along to the music, grinning the way real musicians do when they recognize one of their own, when they hear something fresh that makes them sit up and take notice.
I clap extra hard when she’s done, as do Desmond and Laura, who play next.
And then it’s Brent’s turn. I call him up, but instead of worrying about what he’s going to play this time—hopefully not the one about his balls, or the one called “Title of Your Sex Tape”—I find myself wondering why Vincent had come by the coffee shop. Had he wanted to see me? Was there some message he’d come to deliver, only to lose heart at the last minute? Claire said he’d told her what happened. How had he told her? Like, what exact words had he used to describe what had happened between us, and what exact words had Claire said back? I wish she was the kind of friend I could have interrogated a little more thoroughly without being terrified it would backfire.
I obsess over this through Brent’s set, through the girl with the pink hair and the red Gibson 335, through the guy who plays bluegrass mandolin. I’m about to announce a fifteen-minute break when Ian comes in, carrying his acoustic twelve-string in its giant case. He glides up to me, smiles, and asks if I can put his name on the list.
“Can you go on after the break?” I ask. I look away while I talk to him, because I know if I look into his smoky gray eyes, I’ll start stammering like an idiot.
He must think I’m annoyed with him rather than nervous because he says, “No, it’s cool. I can go after.”
And then he sits there next to me while the bluegrassmandolin player finishes up, and I call for everyone to give him a hand, remind the crowd to tip their barista, and say we’ll be back shortly. Just when I’ve managed to get through that without hyperventilating, Ian draws his chair up close to mine and says, “I wanted to ask you something about guitars.”
I nod because I’m still too tongue-tied to speak. Ian never talks to me during open mic, not more than to say hello and sign up. He never sits next to me, and he certainly never asks me about guitars.
“I’m thinking about getting a new guitar, and I wondered which ones you thought had the best sound.”
This I could do on autopilot—the virtues of Telecasters, Rickenbackers, and Les Pauls come reeling out of my mouth, and I’m grateful to have accumulated so much information over the years. I play a little, but most of what I know comes from watching musicians struggle with floating bridges or guitars that refuse to stay in tune. I’ve had dozens of conversations about action and hot pickups. I tell Ian that the guitar is only one variable. I tell him the amp matters; the pedals matter; what he plays on it and how he plays matter.
Something I admire about my namesake, Lee Miller, is that before she was a surrealist photographer, she was a theater geek. Light crew, to be precise. She could have acted or written or directed, but what really got her excited was playing with gels and amassing a team of electricians to carry out her brilliant visions.
This is how I feel about doing sound production. It takes away the pressure you might sometimes feel to insist upon your own personality. I find the spotlight somewhat distressing, though I’m willing to aid and abet those who seek it out and make them sound as good as they deserve to sound.
While I’m telling Ian about guitars I love and hate, my throat finally loosens, my heartbeat returns to a normal rate, and I notice that he keeps looking away while I’m talking. At first, I’m a little bit annoyed—like, am I that boring? And then I realize that occasionally he does make eye contact with me, and that every time he does, something like panic registers on his face. His cheeks are flushed and he’s talking too fast, and one of his knees is bouncing up and down, periodically jostling the table leg, and I think, Oh You’re into me.
Why does this happen? Why does the desire to be attractive to another person make you completely incapable of doing that very thing? I’m sure it’s hormones, your body sending out all sorts of unhelpful neural messages. But also, when you want someone cute to like you, there’s this thing where you start being YOU as hard as you can, like you’re trying to push your essential being at this person, but cramming it through a pinhole of human interaction, and it builds and builds, until suddenly, it comes exploding out in a messy, unexpected spray.
It would be completely understandable, maybe even charming, to tell a person, “I’m sorry. I’m very twitchy because you’re pre
tty and I like you.”
Reasonable people would do this; evolved people in touch with their own brain chemistry and emotional states would do this. A person like that would acknowledge that a recent heartbreak, followed by her parents’ clumsy announcement of their long-overdue yet still-upsetting separation, might have caused her to be a little bit more volatile than usual. She would make corrections for the variables: less caffeine, no unnecessary eye contact, no knee touches and arm brushes, no flirting.
One day post-breakup, two hours post–family tumult, a reasonable, evolved person would not abandon her post at the open mic, then lean over and whisper into the ear of a boy she barely knows, “Enough about guitars. Meet me outside in five minutes.”
CHAPTER 5 Just Let the Kissing Be Enough
I don’t drink, but there is a kind of hangover I know about. You get it when you wake up the morning after you’ve made a stupid mistake, and it comes with a headache of regret and a churning stomach full of shame, as you realize that what happened the night before wasn’t a dream, but something you now have to fold into your waking day.
It hits me as soon as I open my eyes and makes me want to put my head under the covers and stay like that forever. Only, as soon as I do that, all the events of the previous night play back in my mind, starting from the moment I snuck out the back door of Java Cabana and met Ian in the alley. We didn’t speak. I put my arms around his neck and he pressed me up against the brick wall, and we started kissing, which was where things began to go wrong.
Something I had forgotten in two years of kissing one guy exclusively was that many guys are bad kissers. It’s so sad, because they never get any better, and there’s no language in place to correct them without hurting their feelings, though that’s probably the fault of humans, not language.
I should have called it off right there, said, Hey, shouldn’t we go back inside? Instead I motioned for Ian to come with me to the lot where my car was parked, following some kind of stupid horny logic that insisted a guy who was a sloppy kisser might do a better job given access to other body parts.