by Mary McCoy
* * *
Correspondence from People I Don’t Want to Talk to, Three a.m. Edition:
Voicemail from my mother: Lee, I’m sorry. I should have told you that in person, not over the phone. I’m sorry I’m not there right now. I miss you. Call me when you’re ready.
And then another: Actually, call me even if you’re not ready.
And a text from Vincent: I wish you’d write back instead of sitting outside my house. I know you need time, but your silence is becoming very loud.
CHAPTER 23 Conspiracy Theory
I don’t call my mom. I don’t text Vincent. I sleep until two in the afternoon, eat a bowl of potato salad and a hot dog, and once I realize there’s no remaining trace of Risa’s scent on my skin, I shower. It seems like days since I was in her bed, even though it’s only been hours. Between the conversation with my dad and the messages from my mom and Vincent, all my human communication between the hours of three and three fifteen was sufficiently unpleasant to snuff out the good feelings I’d been carrying around. And then there was the fact that I’d texted her this when I got home:
I had such a good time with you. Thank you for my song, and my kisses, and for being you.
It’s been fourteen hours, and she still hasn’t written back.
I go back up to the attic and play back the rough mix of Objects of Destruction with her song layered in. I make a note of the transitions that need work, gaps in the story, the places where my attention starts to wander. I’ve been at it for a couple of hours when Max comes up the stairs.
“Where’ve you been?” I ask.
“I could ask you the same question,” he says. “I thought you were going to bed early last night.”
“I exercised some questionable judgment,” I say.
“You got back together with Vincent?”
My mouth drops open in mock outrage.
“I did not,” I say, neglecting to mention that I’d merely been apprehended lurking outside his house. I wonder what would have happened if Vincent had come outside instead of his parents’ friends? What if Risa hadn’t texted and invited me over? It’s not the wildest thing in the world for Max to suggest. He knows me. He knows what I’m capable of.
“Risa found me a VCR,” I say. “And she wrote us a song.”
I offer the headphones to Max, but before he takes them, he pauses, scrutinizing my face.
“And?” he asks with an impish grin.
“And what?”
“You’re glowing.”
“Because I just got out of the shower.”
“Because you’re happy.”
Max takes the headphones from me and puts them on.
“I’m glad you had a good date, Lee,” he says.
He closes his eyes as the music starts. Five minutes later, he hasn’t opened them, hasn’t moved. He listens to the song by itself, then listens to our intro with the music layered in. When it’s over, he slips the headphones off and says, “This is too good not to finish.”
His words give me goose bumps, the kind of creative shiver that tells you to follow it like a divining rod, not to stop, not to wander off course, but to keep going, keep moving, keep following that feeling.
I haven’t felt like this since the very beginning of Artists in Love, when Vincent told me I was his muse and his inspiration, and I believed he was mine too.
“So then let’s finish it,” I say.
Max stands up and reaches out his hand to help me up. “I’m one step ahead of you there. Harold’s expecting us at his apartment in half an hour for an interview, so let’s get in the car and you can tell me everything about the tape on the way there.”
“Why are we going to interview Harold again?”
“Because Harold’s the key to all of this.”
Max doesn’t understand why I look so surprised when he says this. He hasn’t seen the video for himself. He doesn’t know what I know, and yet still, somehow he knows.
“It’s my conspiracy theory,” he says.
* * *
I’ve only been to Harold’s apartment a few times before, usually when my dad is stopping by to return a record or a casserole dish. It’s in a building that used to be a warehouse, and all the apartments are big open rooms with concrete floors and exposed brick walls. Harold has lived here for as long as I can remember, even though it’s sometimes seemed more like he lived with us.
On the way there, I tell Max what Risa and I saw on the Dirty South Literati VHS cassette. I pepper in all the little contemptible details about Greg’s goatee and indoor sunglasses. Max slaps the dashboard and cackles when I tell him how my mom flipped the coffee table and told him off. But when I get to the part about Harold and my mom, his face turns serious.
“You said you wanted to know whether your parents were doomed from the start,” he says as we pull into the underground parking structure for Harold’s warehouse apartment building. “I guess you have your answer.”
“I do,” I say. “Turns out, if you have a choice between the life you’ll regret and the life you won’t, you can’t trust love to help you pick. It’s like my dad said. It ends. It always ends, and no matter what you choose, you end up regretting it.”
“That’s a depressing answer.”
I take the key out of the ignition, but neither of us unbuckles our seat belt. After a moment, I say, “What about your conspiracy theory? You said Harold was the key to all of it.”
“When lions are hunting wildebeest, they don’t take on the whole herd. They separate one out. They get him alone,” Max says. “Not that I’m calling Harold the weak member of the herd.”
I know what he means. Harold doesn’t have Sage’s protective streak. He won’t dismiss us as nosy kids like Greg did. He doesn’t have my dad’s stubborn will. If we get him alone, Harold will crack. He will tell us anything we ask him.
“Now I feel like a dick for taking advantage of him,” Max says.
“We’re not predators, Max,” I say, and I unbuckle my seat belt. Max does the same, and we get out of the car, walk through the parking garage to the elevator. It’s the same one that was there when it was still a warehouse, big enough to transport a grand piano. We take it up to the third floor, and I walk down the long concrete hallway with purpose.
I don’t want to pry out Harold’s secrets. I don’t need him to solve any mysteries.
I want to ask him what he regrets.
Harold answers the door still in his work clothes: jeans, a button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves and untucked, and a pair of Doc Martens boots. The only other clothes Harold owns are T-shirts with band names on them.
“Come in,” he says, peering into the hallway with some furtiveness, like Max and I are drug dealers or something.
Inside Harold’s apartment, it looks like he never finished moving in, or like he didn’t intend to stay. The television and stereo are set up on milk crates, and the rest of the furniture is minimal—bed in the corner, one table, two chairs, a sofa. You could never have a cookout here. I can’t even imagine Harold inviting someone over to dinner.
The one thing that looks cared for, that makes it look like Harold has lived here for more than two months, is the home studio built into the corner.
It reminds me of Risa’s, and I wish she was here to see it. She’d flip out. In addition to the rack of guitars, Harold has a mandolin, a banjo, a dulcimer. He has an amp that he built himself, a bass guitar rig, a small drum kit. This is why Harold lives in this space. The concrete walls are two feet thick already, and he’s soundproofed everything. He plays in pit orchestras for a lot of local theater productions and records local bands, usually the ones who can’t afford to record anywhere else. About once every three years, Harold puts out a record of his own, and once or twice a decade, he plays a show.
“What did you want to ask me about?” he asks.
Max unzips his backpack and pulls out the VHS tape labeled The Dirty South Literati: Maya & Arthur’s Engagement Party and hands
it to Harold.
“Where did you get this?”
“We found it in Mom and Dad’s office,” I say.
“Why would they still have this?” he asks, turning it over in his hands. “Have you watched it?”
I nod. Harold’s face turns ashen, and I can tell he already knows what’s on the tape, knows what I’ve seen. Still, he offers us the chairs at his kitchen table and takes a seat on the arm of the sofa.
“I thought your parents would have thrown it away by now,” he says.
“Have they watched it?” I ask.
Harold gives me a stricken look and nods. “What do you want to know?” he asks.
Don’t start with the big questions, I think. Work up to them. Put him at ease.
LEE SWAN:
Why did you call yourselves “literati”?
HAROLD WASSERMAN:
It was your mom’s idea. We were always talking about these famous groups of artists like the Algonquin Round Table, and your mom said, “They didn’t know they were famous and historical. They were just friends, talking about interesting stuff and showing off for each other.” She said, “Let’s call ourselves something, and then someday, when people talk about famous literary circles, they’ll talk about ours.”
MAX LOZADA:
Did you really just sit around talking about art?
HAROLD:
We didn’t just talk about it. We made it. Music, poetry, theater, paintings.
LEE:
Do you think my parents should have gotten married?
HAROLD:
Uh…
LEE:
Did they love each other?
HAROLD:
Where did you find the VCR?
LEE:
The Black Lodge.
HAROLD:
Love that place. I mean, you think you can watch anything you want to, but you can’t. Pink Flamingos, Better Off Dead, Wild at Heart. A lot of those classics you can’t even get online…
LEE:
Uncle Harold.
HAROLD:
I’ve had a long time to think about those questions, Lee, and here’s what I’ve come up with.
About fifteen years ago, my music career kind of blew up in my face. My band got dropped by our record label while we were on tour; then we had a fight and broke up on the drive back to Memphis. When we got home, I was having some pretty dark thoughts about wasting my life and having nothing to show for it.
But the next night, your mom and dad had me over for dinner. You were probably about four, and your parents grilled steaks and baked a pie, and after dinner, your mom gave me this scrapbook that your family had made for me. In it was every article, every blog post, all the photographs where we looked famous and cool, all the nicest things everyone ever said about us. You colored in the borders and put stickers on all the pages.
And when I saw all that stuff together in one place, I thought, this is what family does. What they’re supposed to do, when it’s all working the way it’s supposed to.
I know it’s a mess, Lee, but when I think of your parents together, that’s the part I think about. There was always a lot of love in your house. Your parents knew how to make other people feel loved.
LEE:
Then why couldn’t they make each other feel that way?
LEE: (studio)
Harold knows my parents better than anyone else in the world, but when he tells me that he doesn’t know, he looks so sad that I don’t want to ask him anything else. Besides, I already know the answer.
He made his choice. He chose both of them. He chose their friendship, their house full of love. He chose them as his family. And now that was over.
Harold looks like he regrets everything.
CHAPTER 24 Memphis May Not Always Love You Back
Risa still hasn’t texted when we leave Harold’s apartment. It’s early evening now. Twenty hours since I texted her. Immediately, my mind leaps to the most dire conclusions: last night meant nothing to her, or worse, she already regrets it. I shouldn’t have texted her so quickly, and I definitely shouldn’t have been so cheesy. She probably thinks I’m needy or clingy, or one of those people who says “I love you” creepily early in relationships.
Max is quiet too, in the elevator down to the lobby. When we’re back in the car, I ask him, “Is everything okay? You seem like you have something on your mind.”
“I’m just thinking about Harold. He looked so sad,” Max says.
We pull out of the parking garage, and soon the riverfront loft apartments and touristy pedestrian malls fall away, and we’re in the neighborhood between Downtown and Midtown. I don’t know its name, only that everybody says you shouldn’t walk in it, and if you ask why, they say “Because of the crime” in this sort of nebulous way that probably means something else.
There’s no one on the sidewalks, though, so I guess it’s just one of those rules of Memphis that people follow whether there’s any truth to it or not.
Max looks out the window at the empty storefronts, the parks without a single person in them.
“Why do you want to stay here?” he asks.
I can feel the judgment in his question, and suddenly want to rush to the defense of my city.
“It’s not like anyplace else,” I say. “It feels right to me. It has good energy.”
“Does it?” Max gestures out the window toward a row of cinder-block storefronts: a liquor store, a check-cashing place, and a bail bondsman.
“Like you don’t have that in Chicago.”
“Have you ever noticed how much poverty there is here?” he asks.
“There’s poverty in Chicago.”
Max sighs. “I’m not trying to defend Chicago. I’m asking you why you want to live in a city with this much crime and poverty and segregation and backward-ass Southern nonsense.”
“Because that’s not all Memphis is,” I say. “Every time I see anything about Memphis on TV, it’s about police and gangs and guns, like those are the only stories people want to tell. What about the art and music? What about the fact that a city this weird and wonderful is stuffed into a corner of Tennessee? Those are good stories too.”
“And what about Vincent?” Max continues. “How does he feel about living in a city that’s mostly Black, but white people run most of the shit in it?”
In that moment, I feel a little less idealistic about my inclusive artsy vision of Memphis. I know that what Max is talking about is true. But at the same time, I don’t want to concede all the good things about my city, the things that feel different than any other place in the South, the parts that fight back when anyone tries to push their backward-ass Southern nonsense on us.
“What about Stax Records? Sun Studios? The Vollintine-Evergreen neighborhood?” I say. “What about all the places in my city where Black and white people stood together and refused to let segregation get a foothold?”
“Good for them,” Max says. “What’d you have to do with it?”
“That’s what I care about doing too,” I say. “I mean, my family lives in Midtown. Vincent was my boyfriend for two years. I went to public school with, like, six other white kids.”
Max’s sigh stops me from going any further. While we’re stopped at the red light at Union and McLean, he takes off his sunglasses and puts his hand on my shoulder.
“I say this with love, Lee Swan, but there are no white girl merit badges for attending public school. Or falling in love with a brown boy. Or living in an integrated neighborhood. You’re going to have to try a little harder than that.”
“How?” I ask.
“For starters, you could understand that just because you know the situation is messed up doesn’t mean you know what any of this is like for Vincent.”
“The other day, Vincent told me he felt like he was the wrong kind of Black for Memphis,” I say.
“How can you be the wrong kind of Black for anywhere?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe you sh
ould have asked him what he meant when he said that instead of nodding your head like you already understood what he was talking about.”
I think about my defense of Memphis, how thin and insufficient it seems. I hadn’t even answered Max’s question: How does Vincent feel about living here? Two years we’d been together, and I didn’t know.
We’d expressed broadly progressive ideas to each other, almost like we were trying to signal some sort of reassurance: I’m not that kind of Christian. I’m not that kind of white person.
I knew what he believed and how he felt about art, love, and the universe, but the real-life things—how he felt about having a white mom and a Kenyan dad, and how he felt moving through the halls of our school as a biracial person, or when he filled out that application to Howard University—never seemed to come up between us. Or at least I never asked, and he never volunteered. It was like we wanted to prove that the differences between us didn’t matter, so we started to act like they didn’t exist.
Max and I both go quiet as we drive down Cooper Avenue, past the antique shops and diners, but when we drive under the train tracks, the semiofficial beginning of my neighborhood, he turns to me and says,
“Another thing…” Like he’s been thinking about it this whole time.
“Another thing?”
“Another thing.”
“Give it to me,” I say.
“You haven’t really lived as an out queer person here. You don’t know what that’s like.”
“So?”
“So you may love Memphis, but Memphis may not always love you back.”
I know the rules of Memphis enough to know he’s right, but still, I can’t help thinking, What if it could?
I don’t say this out loud. It would sound as naive and clueless as the ways I’d tried to defend Memphis on our drive from Downtown.
But I know I’m onto something, maybe something from the appendix to the rules of Memphis, the revised edition. Something that’s worth defending.