by Zoe Whittall
Jared and I climb a few metres away from the path, up into where the trees thicken. He ties my arms in my sweatshirt sleeves around a thin tree. “Let’s pretend I found you here,” he whispers. It’s a lovely fantasy to get lost in, until I open my eyes to see, between a break in the leaves, a line of sun across Tom’s stunned face.
“Shit,” I say. “Stop! Tom’s here,” I whisper in his ear.
“He’ll leave,” Jared says, barely pausing. And he does. But now I am out of the moment, out of the magical forest space, and grumpy as Jared finishes. I tell him to continue on ahead, saying I need to be alone for a while. After he comes, Jared is unbearable to look at. As he walks away, he looks like a weird, oversized pink-and-green Muppet. I pee behind a rock, then climb back down to the path, clinging to errant branches to steady myself. Even so, I slip right and my ankle goes left.
I can do nothing but lie on the forest floor, cursing my footwear and looking up at the slice of sky between the trees. My foot screams with pain, as I curse Jared and Tom and every tree in the forest. This will be a verse in the song Tom will insist we write later, the bright white breaking through the trees as I will myself to not pass out. I start to see crows circling, but maybe it’s a hallucination.
I end up in an emergency room in Portland, where I am relieved to find out it’s just a bad sprain, nothing broken. Plus some cuts from the fall, which need stitches. The nurses give me some painkillers, and I sink into an imagined softness.
A kind doctor pulls the curtain around my bed a little tighter, then lowers his voice.
“You told the nurse there was no way this could be true, but we did some routine bloodwork, and you are pregnant, Melissa.”
His face begins to shine. He is half smiling, like this is good news.
“That’s impossible. I’m careful, like so careful. You don’t understand how careful.”
“Well,” he says, “you’ll have to see your family doctor when you get back home. Maybe it will feel like a happier surprise then.”
Loneliness is loud inside my chest. My ankle’s throbbing pain subsides as whatever they’ve given me begins to take hold. The bandages are itchy, but I’m also getting really drowsy. As I drift to sleep, I think, I knew this would happen. I fucking knew it.
Seattle is a blur. Having a team of people insist on taking your photo while all you can think about is hurling yourself down flights of stairs is a real trip. And a bad one at that. Sitting in some giant warehouse getting primped for a shoot, while a journalist pushes a recorder in front of my mouth, barking, “Tell us how the tour is going, Missy Alamo!”
I pull handfuls of decorative parsley off the craft services trays and munch it down, because didn’t some hippie witch once tell me it can cause abortions? I’ll try anything. But what I try most is drinking. I drink and I drink and I drink.
And then I look up and we are in Vancouver. Tom tries to take the drinks away from me—he doesn’t know I’m pregnant; he is just worried in general.
But I hate Vancouver.
I don’t know why, really. It’s objectively beautiful. Maybe because everyone I meet eventually starts talking to me about hiking. Maybe because they don’t get pissy when it rains all the time. Maybe because, for me, the West Coast of Canada takes a puritanical turn, with people wearing windbreakers and eating too many protein bars. Maybe because I’m pregnant.
Billy loves it, though. When we cross the border into British Columbia and stop to get gas, he gets out of the van and humps the ground yelling, “I love Canada!”
Billy grew up in Vancouver, and like most West Coast kids with rich and inattentive parents, he partied too hard. It’s partly why Billy ended up leaving. His father got him out of doing time for heroin possession, got him in rehab, and pulled some strings to get him into McGill in the music program. He dropped out in the first month, but he stayed in Montreal.
Though he’s never gone back to heroin, Billy’s end-of-tour debauchery is legendary. And pretty much everyone joins him, except Tom. There is a big party planned after the show, and everyone except Tom is game. When we get to the hotel, Tom grabs his overnight pack and gives a wave.
“See y’all at sound check! Cory’s parents live in Kitsilano, so I’m going to crash there,” he says.
“Can I stay with you? Do they have an extra bed or anything?” I ask. We have a free day before tomorrow night’s show, so this means I won’t see him for nearly twenty-four hours. We’ve been together for so many consecutive weeks that the thought of this suddenly terrifies me. Plus, I am more tired than I’ve ever been in my life. I feel as though I won’t be able to even crawl onto the stage.
“I don’t know, Missy. I kind of need solitude right now, like some space,” he says.
“I thought we were supposed to be a group! Regroup!” I come back at him.
“No, we’re good.” He laughs. “It’s just too much, you know, the end of tour. I just need some silence. And if you come with me, it’s like bringing the noise with me.”
“I’m noise?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I won’t party, I swear, I’ll just read quietly, alone, like the beginning of tour. We can do yoga. Or not! You won’t even know I’m there.”
He shakes his head.
“Don’t leave me with them,” I say, motioning to the guys, who are draped across the hotel lobby furniture.
“See you later, Missy,” Tom says, and walks out the revolving doors.
The next morning, I try for a healthy day on my own. Maybe I’m trying to prove something to Tom. I go to a record store and walk to Granville Market and buy fresh fruit, then sit on a bench spearing orange slices with a toothpick.
The day of healthy perspective is short-lived. I’m feeling bored when Billy knocks on my door that night before sound check. He, Jared, and Alan want to get high. I’m all in.
Tom is distant at sound check. I don’t look at him, just grind my jaw, looking at the floor, sawing away. The songs start to blend and blur. Why am I even doing this? I am going through the motions of playing my cello, the most beautiful sidekick in my life, and not even appreciating it. I’m not even hearing the melody, feeling the magical high I get from knowing I am playing well. I can’t get up and dance because of my ankle, and a stagehand has to bring my instruments to me when I switch from cello to guitar. I am phoning it in.
The show isn’t our best, but it’s not our worst either. Tom is pissed, but I don’t care. I keep partying after the show, eventually blacking out.
When I wake up, I’m outside, lying on grass. I can hear an acoustic guitar, and some early-morning birdsongs.
“You waking up? You would not let me move you.”
It’s Tom’s voice.
I try to stand but forget my ankle, and the pain is so intense I fall right over and throw up on the grass.
“Where are we?” I ask, looking around. It is almost dawn, we are in the backyard of a suburban house somewhere.
“Cory’s parents’ place. They’re actually away. I told you this already.”
“Oh, right,” I say, trying to recover. This is my blackout recovery routine, playing along until I start to remember. “Look, I need to lie down.”
“Let’s get you some water.”
Tom walks me inside an immense house that looks like every suburban 1970s house—shag carpet, avocado fridge and stove. He leads me to the bathroom and I drink a cup of water from a paper cup, throw it up, and lean my head against the coolness of a shower stall. Tom occasionally knocks on the door.
“Just fuck off,” I whisper.
When I finally open the door, he is sitting in the hallway outside, looking concerned. He leads me to a guest bed, tucks me in, then crawls in beside me. I feel myself dropping off into sleep as he runs his fingers through my hair until I push away his hand.
The van comes to pick us up a few hours later. No matter what I do I cannot remember anything from the night before.
“You looked like you were
asleep onstage last night,” Alan says as I climb into my spot and pull my sweatshirt into a pillow.
“Well, I can’t stand up, so I’m going to look a little less active than normal.”
I drink a bottle of peach Snapple, close my eyes, put on my headphones. I don’t wake up when everyone else does the pre-border cleanup. I don’t even know where my passport is when Tom shakes me awake and says, “Get out your ID, we’re at the border.” We have a few cars to go, are moving quite slowly, and it takes me a while to find it stuffed in my army bag with crumples of receipts and wrappers. When I hand it up to Billy, who is driving, he gives it to the bored-looking customs agent. When he opens it, a forgotten flap of cocaine falls out.
In my defence, there isn’t actually any cocaine left in it, but it isn’t the world’s smallest bag of flour. The customs agent sighs. Tom mutters, “Fuck you, Missy. Just fuck you.”
The border guard hands me a cup of coffee in a paper cup, the kind they have in police stations in the movies. I take a sip. Calling it coffee is generous, more a half-hearted scoop from a lukewarm puddle. He smells like the drugstore cologne a lover of mine in New Mexico used to swipe from CVS. Cheap. The kind you wouldn’t want to light a match around. I imagine his apartment, navy-blue sheets on his bed, never washed enough. Sweat socks bought in bulk with red, black, or blue stripes. First-person-shooter video games, canned pasta, Dave Matthews or Hootie & the Blowfish CDs, a girlfriend he once punched in high school that he still talks about as his true love when he gets wasted with his buddies.
It feels wrong when he speaks with authority, knowing all I know from just looking at him.
“We can’t let you back into the United States, Melissa. That’s the bottom line.”
He drums his fingers on the fake wood desk. I know he isn’t the guy at the top, or even the middle. He has a ruddy glow, too many pimples, to be deciding my fate. I blink. His zits get bigger. I saucer my eyes to keep the zits from taking over his face.
“I have official invitations from music festivals and a live TV taping to attend.” I start rummaging in my backpack and pulling out papers: an itinerary listing our venues, the official invitation to appear on the late-night show, the financial details that management had typed up in case we were asked at the border. I can’t believe Gord went ahead on a plane, and isn’t here to be the business guy, the smooth-things-over guy. Gord makes people do things they don’t want to do. But what would he say? I’m not your babysitter, Gord often sighed, pulling me toward my room some nights.
I can’t convince the agent that the baggie contained traces of aspirin or a crushed-up vitamin C tablet. It is stamped with a juvenile skull-and-bones design on the outside; the dealer felt the need to brand his product in a way. Plus, the agent found a second baggie in a pile of bow resin, loose change, and hair elastics in my cello case. Now agent number two has joined us. Seems like we’ve hit the next level.
“Your band will have to continue their tour without you,” he says, affecting the tone of a child playing the role of vice-principal. He slides some paperwork across the desk and gives me a dismissive look.
“You didn’t actually find any drugs on me. You can’t arrest me for memories of cocaine.”
“I can do a lot of things,” he says, purposely fondling the gun on his hip.
I can’t hold back my scoff.
“Do you want to make your life even harder, Ms. Wood? I can put you in jail. I have that authority.”
I don’t want to be Melissa Wood. I am Missy Alamo. I’ve been Missy Alamo for months. Melissa Wood used to skip social studies class in grade seven and once walked into the police station near her high school and sat across from a lady with a patient smile who said there was no way to find my mom if she didn’t want to be found. That happened more than once.
“Answer me,” says the second agent.
“No, I don’t wish things to be harder,” I say, in a clipped, chirpy tone.
The reality of what this border guard is saying starts to seep in. This isn’t something I’ll be able to talk my way out of and tell as a funny story to the guys later today.
“We were on SNL last month. Did you see us?”
He looks vaguely impressed, but suppresses it.
“Oh, I’ve heard of you guys. Your singer is the faggot with the long hair?”
“Well, Billy gets more pussy than God if you want to get technical, but you’re probably picturing our band, yeah.”
He starts humming the chorus to our most famous song.
I nod because I think he wants confirmation that it’s the right song, but he doesn’t. He hums an entire verse and chorus. It is very uncomfortable to watch and listen to him do this, he holds eye contact the entire time, and it makes me wonder if he’s a sociopath. After the final note, he stands up and they both leave me in the tiny office room. I’m never going to be able to play that song again.
After what feels like an hour, but is probably only about ten minutes, he returns.
“You can go, we aren’t going to hold you. But you can’t cross the border. You have to go home.”
“Right,” I say,
As I leave the office, I see his coworkers gathered around a screen.
Outside, the van has been thoroughly dismantled, doors off the hinges. It looks torn open, bleeding out with opened suitcases, cracked CD and cassette tapes, packets of guitar strings. I run to my cello case as though it is sentient and possibly bruised, but because it’s mine they’d carefully searched it, it isn’t as banged up as the rest.
Billy rages.
“They broke my guitar!”
Most of the instruments were with the gear in the van with the road crew, but some of us travel with what’s most precious to us. I hold my cello case and my army bag and backpack as I stand there, watching Billy lose it over his guitar.
I sit down on the curb. The band gathers around me for an explanation.
“I have to stay here, in Canada,” I say, as I start to cry.
Billy punches the side of the van, even though the border guards are eyeing us warily.
“This is going to fuck up our LA gig and it’s the most important one!” he yells. “Our appearance on the late show! I can’t believe it. We need a girl onstage, people want someone to look at.”
“Fuck off, Billy,” says Tom.
“Oh, what? You just hate that anyone else stares at her.”
“Now you can really fuck off.” Tom goes after Billy then, so quick I don’t see it start, he suddenly has Billy pinned with one arm against the van. They huff at each other, then Tom drops him and storms off.
“Where the fuck is Alan?” Billy says, turning back to the shards of his broken Les Paul. I shrug, shoulders like wet towels, face hot with regret.
Finally, Alan emerges from the screening area, scowling. It happens every time we cross a border—he always gets pulled away from the group for extra screening. He had not wanted to go to Vancouver for this reason alone. Customs agents always act as if it’s a big favour, letting him in the country, even though he’s been a citizen since he was a toddler.
Billy quickly fills him in. Alan starts laughing. “I’m sorry, but it’s funny. I can’t believe it’s happening to you, you’re the whitest girl on the planet. Was there someone you couldn’t flirt with to get out of it? You must have like, tried to get banned. Did you punch a guard? Come on.”
I can’t laugh about it. If I fly back to Montreal, I have nowhere to go. My room in my apartment with Amita is sublet until the end of the tour. I could go to my grandmother’s house in the suburbs, but that feels incredibly depressing, like those dreams where you have to go back to high school.
I stand beside Billy at the pay phone, on a call with our management office to ask if they can do anything, but no one is answering. Rows of cars line up at the border, families on vacation in minivans. They look so normal. Their lives make sense. It’s like I’m watching my possible unwanted futures whiz by.
“No luck,” says Billy
.
“Could you call your dad?” I ask.
Billy frowns, but shrugs. “Couldn’t hurt to ask, but he’s an asshole.” He dials a number. His dad is a judge, and he always gets Billy out of jams. But I hear him laughing through the phone, saying, “Look, son, I don’t even know this girl.”
“Dad, this is my career! Did you even watch us on SNL?”
“If you were in trouble it would be a different story.”
They exchange a few more heated words and Billy hangs up the phone, resting his head against the receiver for a moment. Then he straightens up, pulls out a cigarette. “Sorry, I told you. He sucks.”
I follow him back to the van, where the guys are trying to salvage the scene, pack everything up, and it dawns on me that I am going to be left behind. The show will go on without me. Jared offers a “Sorry dude, that really sucks,” and I can’t believe I ever had sex with him. Or that I might be knocked up by him, that I didn’t watch him put on the condom every single time.
I approach Tom, who pulls me into a hug and lets me cry. He finds me a power bar and a lemon Snapple from his stash. I desperately want him to stay with me, not let me be left behind.
“What do you need?” Tom asks. It is such a simple question, but I can’t answer him. It feels too vulnerable to say.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I’m just so shocked and disappointed.” And I start crying into his flannel shirt that mysteriously smells freshly laundered.
I look at him, trying to beam my thoughts into his mind. Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me. Don’t leave me here.
“I wish I could stay with you,” he says. “But you’ll be okay. We’ll call management again, see if they can’t book you a hotel and a plane ticket home. We’ll meet up in a month to start recording. It will be okay.”
“What if you stayed and flew to LA tomorrow?”
“Oh man, sorry. I can’t do that. You know, because of Cory.”
I give him a look and he follows with, “It was your mistake, Missy. You’re lucky he’s letting us go ahead. You’re lucky we’re not all arrested and having cavity searches right now.”