Imperfect Solo

by Steven Boykey Sidley

  “How sick is he?”

  “Dying.”

  “Shit. What’s your mom going to do? I mean after …”

  “Then she is going to die too.”

  I can’t think of anything more to say. I am desperate for her, but the more selfish part of me notes grimly that this is not the sort of conversation I was hoping to have with her. I am full of dread; the last thing I need is a conversation about death. The words dread and death share enough letters, I don’t need to add to the load. But it is also not lost on me that I am one of the few people that she would share this with.

  “I wish you strength, Grace. It’s going to be tough.”

  She nods grimly, face set. I stare out the window. We are out of the city now, heading toward Santa Barbara, the sea within pebble-throwing distance on our left. This coast is all Beach Boys, Eagles, tanned skin, hazy sky, and soft perfection. The first time I saw it on a college jaunt it held me mute, a cliché made perfect in its skin. Whatever America has become, a set of festering missteps and aging prints of faded grandeur, this stretch of coastline mocks it.

  CHAPTER 18

  WE HEAD INTO Santa Barbara for breakfast, sliding along the harbor looking for a restaurant until we find something pedestrian, or at least pretending to be.

  The waitress brings coffee and then retreats. Grace studies my face intently.

  “Why did you lie about Innocent inviting you?”

  “Moi?”

  “I asked him. You invited yourself.”

  “Guilty. I haven’t spent a weekend with the two of you since we were married.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask me?”

  “Would you have said yes?”

  “No.”

  “There you are, then.”

  “I don’t like lies.”

  “Me neither.”

  “You lied back then.”

  “Only a few times.”

  “Yes, a few times, but about important things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like when I asked you if you were happy. At Innocent’s first birthday party.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You said you were.”

  “Maybe I was.”

  “You left me a week later.”

  “Oh, right. Big mistake that.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I was thinking of leaving you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you weren’t happy. That was obvious. And it rubbed off on me.”

  “How was it obvious?”

  “C’mon, Meyer. I knew you pretty well.”

  I wasn’t happy then, that’s true. But I wasn’t sad. I loved Grace, I loved Innocent. I just wasn’t certain. About anything. And if there is one thing you need in a marriage with kids, it is certainty.

  There is a commotion a couple of tables down. Some shouting. We stop and listen. A large, corpulent man is dressing down the waitress. The nature of the offense is not clear, but his son, who is about eight, is grinning lopsidedly and his wife is staring at the floor.

  My blood rises. Motherfucker. This is my CEO’s territory. And I never do anything because he is my boss. The whole restaurant is staring. I fucking hate people who yell at waitresses. I hate them more than anyone else in the world. And this guy does not have my job in his hands.

  “I DID NOT ORDER THIS. I ORDERED THE CHICKEN. I AM NOT INTERESTED IN TALKING TO YOU. I WANT TO SEE THE MANAGER. NOW!”

  That’s it. I jump up. I can see Grace’s eyes widen, but in three strides I am there.

  “What seems to be the problem, sir? I am the owner of this establishment.”

  “THIS IDIOT BROUGHT ME TUNA. I ORDERED CHICKEN.”

  I look at his wife, her pinched and beaten face still staring at the floor. It is evident she hears this tone of voice a lot. And probably worse.

  The waitress is staring at me in confusion. I glance down at her name badge.

  “Inez, let me see your order ticket, please.”

  She hesitates, looks back at the kitchen and then back at me. She slowly hands it over. I don’t really bother to read it.

  “It’s says tuna here, sir.”

  “I ORDERED CHICKEN, DIPSHIT. ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR?”

  Are you calling me a liar? In any language, this is an invitation to violence. His son has a fat face full of unrestrained glee, his piggy eyes gleaming with the expectation of an ass-whupping handed out by big daddy. He has seen this before and probably knows where it ends. I look at dad more closely. Huge, fat, probably unfit. But then a small flutter of dread intrudes.

  Just seconds ago, I envisaged him taking at swing me, followed by a deft sidestep on my part and watching as he crashes to the floor, followed by outsiders rushing in to end the scene. The new dread-fueled scenario now has his punch connecting hard. I fall back, crash to the floor, but not before striking the side of my neck on a table like that woman boxer in the Clint Eastwood movie with Hilary Swank. My spine gets crushed around C3, and I am consigned to a bed as a quadriplegic for the rest of my life, shitting my diapers and speaking unintelligibly through damaged vocal chords. This would be a great victory for dread.

  But what the fuck. In for a penny. I lay my cards on the table.

  Softly, almost whispering.

  “Listen, you fat fuck. You see that sign over the door? It says Right of admission reserved. I no longer grant you that right. Or your son. If you are not out of here in twenty seconds, the kitchen staff will shove that tuna sandwich up your ass and put it on YouTube. Have I made myself clear? Your wife, however, may stay and finish her lunch.”

  He stares at me in shock, mouth opening and closing like a fish. As does his son. His wife, for the first time, lifts her eyes and locks with mine for a brief instant. His breathing escalates. At this point, two stocky Latino busboys step out of the kitchen, presumably to see what all the fuss is about. The moment stretches. My guy looks at the busboys and then back at me. I can see the fight seep out of him.

  “We’re leaving.” The thunder in his tone has receded. He has surrendered. “The food here is terrible anyway. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”

  He stands up, glares at his wife and son, who also start to get up. I lean in real close, standing on tiptoes to get near his ear and whisper.

  “You mean your lawyer who is fucking your wife?”

  He storms out. His wife catches my eye again. I believe I catch a small smile. I turn to the waitress, who is completely wide-eyed.

  “Inez, would you mind getting me some ketchup?”

  I saunter back to my table and sit down. Grace is looking at me as though I am an alien.

  “Good God. What did you say to him?”

  “Just reasoned with him is all.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You glad I invited myself?”

  She smiles.

  It is a good smile.

  CHAPTER 19

  IN OUR EARLY twenties, Van and I once took a road trip across the US. We had in mind some sort of updated Kerouac journey of discovery, and felt self-important and indestructible as we set off, strains of Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” bouncing around the car. We had met in New York when I had moved there to try to break into the music scene, after the divorce from Grace, and during a period in Van’s life when he was actively looking to flee the wealth of his family. Which contrasts nicely with his current stance, which is to dip in for a top-up when circumstances require, which is not often.

  I had seen him playing solo at a bar in SoHo, came back the next week with my sax and sat in with him. We played the Great American Songbook for tips and willing waitresses. It was a fine time. Playing the Great American Songbook, from Cole Porter all the way to Bacharach, will teach a person a thing or two about song structure and chord progression. Moreover, the lyrics—which we didn’t sing, but which were sometimes caterwauled by a drunk in high spirits—were a good measure of the history of American culture before lyrical poetic talent ceased to be
a requirement of popular music sometime in the ’70s.

  “Van, let’s drive across America.”

  “OK.”

  “That’s it? OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  Man of few words, Van.

  “Don’t you want to know why?”

  “Not really … OK, why?”

  “Mandela got released. You see the connection?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I. But let’s do it anyway. We can stop and busk anytime we need spare change.”

  “I am a trust-fund kid, remember?”

  “I thought you hated your trust fund.”

  “I do. We can busk on the sidewalk if we need change.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “What’s up, why are you so distracted?”

  “Because I’m depressed.”

  “That’s because you will never have to work for your money. You have no mountains to climb.”

  “I’m depressed because we have no Mandela in the US. We need a Mandela.”

  “That’s why we’re going to drive across America. To find our Mandela.”

  We didn’t find Mandela. But I found talk radio. This, surprisingly, was and still is the heartbeat of America. Forget the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and their new media interactive equivalents and competitors and brave new offshoots. Just listen to talk radio. Rush Limbaugh may not have invented the medium, but he perfected it, gathering disciples around him like a fat, sharp-tongued, smart, abrasive, right-wing Jesus, to the point that he now as near as controls the Republican agenda. You want to know what the evolution-hating, abortion-hating, gay-hating, liberal-hating, Muslim-hating, intellectual-hating rump of conservative middle America thinks? Don’t bother with editorials in conservative newspapers, or Newt Gingrich’s comical rants about the end of America, or slick blow-dried captains of industry, or wild-eyed Christian fundamentalists. Just listen to the inarticulate and desperate roars of the prescreened Rush callers, blaming everything on everyone. There lies the enemy within.

  And the other side, to which I reluctantly belong—the brain-dead, all-tolerant liberal apologists—well, sadly, their talk-show hosts just can’t compete, because their stance is defined by why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along homilies and infuriating sanctimony. If you are offended enough by Rush, you could always switch to insult radio, burnished long ago by Stern, but that was always a sideshow of sex and celebrity and self-aggrandizement. Leaving the libertarians, a ragtag group of reasonably smart, reasonably interesting, reasonable people who talk loudly, without a hope in hell of controlling any agenda, ever.

  Grace smacks my hand.

  “Stop fiddling with the radio, Meyer. It’s annoying.”

  “I am looking for Rush Limbaugh.”

  “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “No, I love Rush.”

  “He would have you tarred and feathered.”

  “This’s why I love him. He’s a man who knows what he thinks and says it. Unlike me.”

  “This is my car, and I am not listening to Rush. He makes me want to vomit.”

  “That’s why he’s so good. Name me another talk-show host that makes people want to vomit—one who is listened to by, what is it, 20, 30 million people?”

  “Meyer, this is not a negotiation. Find something else.”

  I switch the radio off.

  “Wanna fool around?”

  She giggles. Which is not an affirmative answer, but it is a signal of some kind. Maybe that she still finds me funny.

  Humor. Giggling, snorting, shrieking. That’s what I had before dread insinuated itself on my good offices. Grace and I—God, we laughed. Perhaps it was because we were young or simply naive, but I suspect it was something more, a gestalt of some kind. How clichéd does that sound? We would pass a cat on the sidewalk with a strangely shaped head and physically collapse, helpless. Yelp and wheeze at Seinfeld. Snigger at bad puns. Laugh quickly and explosively at just about anything.

  I look at her handsome profile and wonder. Was there ever a time I was as happy as when I was with her? And why did I choose to sabotage it? Is it possible for life to be truly that funny again?

  “You can’t recreate the past, Meyer.”

  She’s like a fucking clairvoyant.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Us.”

  “I thought the expression was—you can’t go home again.”

  She doesn’t respond. Looks at me ambiguously and then back at the road ahead. We have joined the 101, and are on the inland stretch, a gentle drive of easy views and small towns.

  “How is the PhD going?”

  “Well.”

  “What is your thesis about?”

  “The great North American urban intellectual novelists of the second half of the twentieth century, and to what extent their books were great stories for a literate audience or solipsistic rants by arrogant misogynists. The title is a little more restrained than that. It is Story or Soapbox: Late 20th Century Male North American Novelists—Advertisements for Themselves?”

  “Huh. Who?”

  “Roth, Mailer, Heller, Updike, Ford, Bellow, Richler, DeLillo, Pynchon, the usual suspects.”

  “And?”

  “You can read the thesis when I’m done.”

  “Just a hint?”

  “Arrogant narcissists, mostly. But that’s why they were so good, I suspect. At least that’s what I am going to argue. In order to write books that influential, that perceptive, that incisive, that enthralling, you—through your characters—have to be able to rant without fear or favor. Without the rant, the story loses its color, its import, its weight. Herzog, perhaps the best novel to ever come out of the US, was thin on plot and fat on rant. The wonder of some of these novels is how secondary plot is to the characters and their views on, well, everything. Not all, of course, but definitely Roth and Bellow and Updike and Mailer and Heller.”

  “The only difference between them and the rest of us is that they wrote well enough to have a platform on which to stand and opine.”

  “No, that’s not it. There are great writers who steer clear of personalizing the opinions of their characters, of using them as loudspeakers. And there are plenty of nonwriters who either don’t have anything interesting to say about the world or choose not to say it. And I suppose there are plenty of people who use other platforms of opinion effectively—nonfiction writers, bloggers, public speakers, politicians, filmmakers, teachers. But with these novelists there is an earsplitting confluence of art and opinion that is both shining and wondrous. The novel and the narcissistic novelist is a perfect merging of medium and message and Mesmer.”

  And this is the woman I dumped for superficial pleasures.

  “How are you getting by while you do this?”

  “I have stepped up my teaching. A few private students of rich foreign parents who wish them to become exceptional Americans. And an ex-husband who helps out.”

  “Least I can do.”

  “No, it’s enough; you don’t have to do anymore.”

  It is not nearly enough.

  CHAPTER 20

  RECURRING DREAMS. REPOSITORY of the dread. Farzad assures me that we all have them. He considers these dreams unpleasant, but generally healthy, giving anxieties a platform to kvetch. He gently explained this to me once.

  “I didn’t say kvetch. That word belongs to your tribe, brought to life in the fetid gutters of Germany before they got nasty with you. I said dreaming gave anxieties a platform to have their complaints aired.”

  “OK, so what do they mean, exactly? These dreams, I mean.”

  “Mean? How the hell should I know? I’m a psychologist. Go consult a soothsayer.”

  “I thought psychologists knew all about dreams.”

  “You mean because Freud wrote a book about it? He was mistaken about that and a lot of other things.”

  “The father of psychology? Mistaken
?”

  “Yes. He may have wanted to fuck his mother. I did not want to fuck mine. You should have seen her. Even for Tehran, she lacked sex appeal. However, I do want to fuck your mother.”

  “My mother’s not around anymore, Farzad.”

  “Even so.”

  To enumerate, past and present. Gone are the tumbling-through-the-air-in-the-nude dreams. Gone are the not-prepared-for-the-exam dreams. There is the one where I am called on to play a solo on a song that has chords that I don’t know. But this one doesn’t count, because I usually end up blowing the audience away anyway. There is the one where I seek drugs, and they’re always out of reach, and the police are on every corner. Me and an unnamed young lady looking for an empty room in which to do it, but never finding one. Thereafter the big guns. Cancer. Choking. Car accidents. My dead children, sometimes both children in the same dream. Dead Grace. Dead Bunny. Dead Krystal. Looking in the mirror and seeing an ancient troll. House burning down. Waking up paralyzed. Pursued by Mexican cartel torturers, trying to explain to Isobel that everything will be OK, when I know it won’t. Being spilled off a boat into a dark cold sea in the middle of the Atlantic. An error in my code crashing the World Wide Web. Getting stuck in some Israel-hating Arab country and being thrown in prison as an Israeli spy. Forgetting my address, missing planes, losing passports, eating poisoned food, forgetting the punch line of the joke, leaving the stove on, leaving the kettle on, leaving the car on.

  The list is endless.

  “Do you have bad dreams, Grace? Recurring ones.”

  “No, I don’t think so—not that I can remember anyway. At least not for a long time. Why? Do you?”

  We are in the final stretch now after a scenic detour to see Carmel, hoping to see Clint Eastwood sitting in a coffee bar. We’re not even sure if he still lives here.

  “Farzad says dreams have an important function. Says they are anxiety podiums or something.”

  “What kind of dreams?”