by Maddy Wells
“On my dad’s side,” she said.
“Oh.”
“When I was little I would sit on his lap on holidays while he and my uncles argued about the meaning of life and whose wife made the best borsht and which one of them was the alpha mensch.”
I wasn’t sure what to ask. Is your dad dead? “Sounds cool,” I said.
“My dad’s a pretty big deal television producer. Like mom’s Vanna White gig was one of his shows. He walked out on us when he realized mom was mental.”
“Do you ever see him?” I asked.
“Not if I can help it, yeh sometimes, you know how it is, he’s my dad,” she said and laughed. “But a mensch means a stand-up guy which my dad definitely isn’t.”
We had come into the barn. Half unpacked suitcases and clothes were draped over all the cots. “Which one did you take?” I asked.
“Over there,” Kirby said.
“Let’s drag it next to me and Tim.” Which we did. We tucked the mosquito netting under our mattresses and lay down on our backs looking up through the holes in the barn roof.
“It was my idea that we leave California,” Captain Kirby said. “After my mom was fired.”
“By Vanna White,” I said.
“Yeah, Vanna White. What a bitch. After mom was fired she was done for. It’s the same for makeup artists as it is for movie stars. You get a bum reputation and all of a sudden no one knows you. At least my dad had nothing to do with her being fired. Mom managed that on her own. My dad’s remarried. His fourth. Mom’s still pretending they’re just taking a time out.”
“You picked a swell place to start over.”
“We were on our way to New York. Milltown was a stop off. Mom said she had friends here.”
“Do you?”
“I haven’t met them yet.”
One day, I knew, I was going to hear The Entire True Life Story of Captain Janet Kirby—when Have Mercy was a famous band and I could take charge of my life the way Kirby took charge of hers. Like making sure her mom didn’t walk in front of a truck, or something worse. A sour taste came up my throat. I had actually been feeling sorry for Captain Kirby. I was projecting.
The other students were trickling into the barn. Tim was walking with Clarisse, heads together. He broke away when he felt me staring.
“Jonah is so awesome,” Tim said.
“I knew you would like him,” Captain Kirby said. “Did he tell you that he and Zina are going to let me be like the sous chef when they put together his pilot for the Food Network? Talk about getting creds!”
I nodded approvingly while I wondered if Captain Kirby’s television producer father had anything to do with it. I was being cynical, one of the things Mr. Dow had told us to be on the lookout for in ourselves. “You’re not thinking for yourself when you’re cynical. You’re at the mercy of what someone else is making you think.” Mr. Dow. I wondered what he would say if he could see me now.
“Jonah has the most incredible sound set-up,” Tim said. “I want to use his amps tomorrow and jam. We’ll sound awesome. You guys up for it?”
“Hey,” Captain Kirby said, “Maybe we can convince them to use Have Mercy as the official band of their television show. You know, Jonah can banter with us and we can play his theme song before commercials.”
“It can totally work,” Tim said.
“We can’t think about that until after I see The Griffin,” I said.
“Yeah, of course,” Captain Kirby said.
“No question,” Tim said.
I felt kind of ashamed turning a jet of cold air on them. I could see they felt it. But I couldn’t help myself. What I’d been for almost 16 years was over and all I was left with was me and that didn’t feel like much of anything.
“I have to get some things squared away first. You know what I mean, right? Then we’ll do it, okay?”
“Not a problem,” Captain Kirby said.
“We got your back,” Tim said. “Listen to this.” He bowed his head to his guitar and picked out a tune. “It’s more jazz than rock, but I think it will fit the show.”
Clarisse had been sitting a few cots away. She came over and touched Tim’s arm. “You’re very good,” she said to him. “Think about what I told you.”
“I will,” he said and smiled.
I made a face at Kirby that she didn’t seem to notice.
“We’ll need a signature drum roll for when Jonah wants to take a break,” Tim said to Kirby. She pulled out her sticks and banged out a riff on the metal frame of the cot.
I pulled the blanket over my head. Tim and Kirby were sprouting wings and I wanted to feel good for them. But I didn’t.
Chapter 39
The rooster woke everyone up at four thirty. Nobody complained, though. They just picked up big metal cage-like baskets that had appeared by everyone’s cots during the night and headed to the chicken coop like in a zombie movie.
Tim and I followed, thinking we had missed some key programming somewhere along the way. No sign of Captain Kirby.
“So that’s what these baskets are for,” Tim said. “I thought they were weird hats or something.” He put one in front of his face like a catchers’ mask.
Everyone put on long suede work gloves that were hanging on pegs at the entrance of the chicken coop and immediately began confronting the yellow-eyed devil birds sitting on the shelves. I watched as one girl moved a hen aside with one gloved hand while gathering the eggs beneath the hen and gently placing them in her cage basket with the other. The hen was pecking her the entire time, but she couldn’t feel it through the suede.
“So that’s how they do it,” I said.
“Look,” Captain Kirby came running up to me holding her basket which was already full.
“I didn’t even see you,” I said.
“I was up for a while and got a head start. This is so cool.”
I stood in front of a chicken who I swear to God was glaring at me.
“Do you want some help?” Captain Kirby asked.
“Do they make us do this every day?”
“There’s no better thing to wake up to than fresh eggs,” she said.
She expertly maneuvered my chicken then the three chickens next to it off their broods, making a clucking sound that made them seem to like her, and put their eggs in my basket. Across the coop, Tim held up his full basket and headed outside.
“I find this soothing, don’t you?” Captain Kirby asked as we joined the parade to the mill’s kitchen.
Jonah had already made coffee in a giant samovar, which I had to admit smelled pretty good, and there were six cast iron frying pans on his six-burner stove.
“Who’s up?” Jonah asked cheerfully.
A couple of people jumped to claim a frying pan.
“Not you?” I asked Captain Kirby.
“Nah, I’ve made a zillion omelets. Let someone else have a chance.”
“Did you get the wild chives, Janet?” Jonah asked. Kirby pulled out a fistful of pungent smelling greens from her overall’s pocket and put them on the chopping block table. “Here you go, kids,” she said.
“Someone chop those,” Jonah commanded and six knives came out of sheathes and people got to work on the spring bulbs.
Jonah gave a short demo on making a fool-proof omelet, cracking three eggs into a big clay bowl and tossing away the shells with one hand. He was wearing a white chef’s jacket and a white cap. He tossed a big glob of butter into a pan, turned the gas up to the max, fast stirred his eggs, poured them into his pan while with his free hand he cracked three more eggs into the bowl. I was looking at a born performer.
“Lots and lots of butter in the very hot pan, eggs ferociously whipped, and… ” He sprinkled some of Captain Kirby’s chopped chives in the middle of the eggs, wiggled the pan while scraping the egg from the sides with a wooden spatula. “Hurry up, fold it, fold it, and voilà!” He slid the omelet onto my plate. Kirby slapped two fat slices of olive bread she’d toasted on a four sided ti
n contraption that fit over one of the burners next to my omelet and slapped hands with Jonah.
Everyone applauded and one of the students stepped up to the stove to try to replicate Jonah’s performance.
“Great, huh?” Captain Kirby said, taking a bite of my toast.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clarisse talking earnestly to Tim. “Unbelievable when you think about it,” I said.
“I called my dad this morning,” Captain Kirby said. “On Jonah’s phone. I woke him up. About the pilot. I think my dad’s going to go for it. This is a huge opportunity for me. For us, if Zina decides to include Have Mercy. Which I haven’t told her about yet. But I think she’ll dig the idea.”
“They know about your dad?” I asked. “Who he is?”
“Of course they know. How do you think things happen?”
“They happen because you’re good at what you do. Cream rises to the top, etcetera, right?”
Captain Kirby looked at me as if I were an alien. “My dad and what he can do for Jonah and Zina is a big bargaining chip to get me included. That doesn’t mean I’m not good at what I do. You think Have Mercy would get a shot if your dad wasn’t The Griffin? There are thousands of good garage bands out there.”
“Eight million,” I said.
“Okay, eight million. You wouldn’t even be thinking about it. And you know it. You’re his kid. His name gives you creds. It opens doors. ”
“That’s not true!” I said and then realized everyone was looking at me because I’d shouted.
Captain Kirby pulled me by the shirt out of the kitchen, down the stairs and outside. “Then why,” she asked me, “are you in such a big hurry to get to Houston to see him?”
“Because he’s my father. I have a right to see my father.”
“Excuse me for noticing this, but you don’t even know the guy.”
“I know enough. We’re both musicians.” I thought for a second. “We both know Jane.”
“Yeah, Jane has a lot of influence with The Griffin. As soon as he hears Jane is in trouble he pulls up stakes and moves the wagon train out of town.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“You don’t even know if he thinks you’re a good musician.”
I stared at her, horrified.
“But, he’s still willing to help you, isn’t he? That’s what dads do. They have no choice. Especially if they’ve been pricks.”
“The Griffin is not a prick,” I said.
“Yeah, right,” Captain Kirby said. “He knows he’s been a bastard and deserted his little girl, and like my dad he’ll jump at the chance to make it right, professionally anyway, because he can’t do what you really want him to do.”
“And what do you think I really want The Griffin to do?” I asked
“You want him to be a part of your life. Not be a drive-by father.”
I thought of The Griffin’s home in Texas which I was allowed to visit only on Google Earth and the Wikipedia entry where I wasn’t even a link, no matter how talented and special our family was.
“All this pure stuff, all this authentic stuff, it’s all just bullshit, isn’t it?” I asked. “It’s just a way to get on a television show.”
“So what? Getting on a television show would be a way out for me and my mom. It could restart her career and give me one. Can’t you see that?”
“But what about your real self? Are you a chef or are you a TV wannabe?”
“What does it matter? Whichever one works.”
“Don’t you have to find yourself? Isn’t that what Jonah’s always harping on? Finding your authentic self.”
“You don’t find yourself. You create yourself. And you can put anything in the stew you please. What? You think you can keep all the different parts of your life closed up in like little boxes or something?”
As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I thought.
“Everything that’s ever happened to me, and everything that’s been done to me that I didn’t have a say in, and every stupid thing I’ve ever done to myself, I know it will all keep happening, all of it, and I don’t give a shit because that’s who I am. I’ll keep on being me and walk through any door that’s open to find out what’s on the other side.”
I felt like crying. Keeping everything separate was the only thing that let me keep me under control. ”Listen,” I told Captain Kirby, barely able to talk. “I’m not like you. You can be in my band, but from now on I want you to keep your nose out of my business.”
Chapter 40
Captain Kirby spent the rest of the day chopping and dicing with the paying students, the students with full knife sets, while I was sent to milk goats with Tim in the far barn. Milking goats wasn’t as hard as milking cows—something I actually did once at a county fair when I was 10—mostly because goats are smaller. I filled a pail with milk then dumped it into a huge stainless vat, over and over, feeling like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet.
“So,” Tim said, “Clarisse thinks we should go to Nashville to make a demo. So we don’t go empty-handed to The Griffin. And then, if Jonah and Zina decide they want a band for the show, we have it for that too.”
Ever since Tim started talking to Clarisse all he could talk about was making a demo. I looked on-line, and even a bargain basement studio setup in Nashville—where all the demos in America seemed to be made —cost at least two thousand dollars.
“Well, maybe Clarisse would like to chip in,” I said snidely. “You can’t just go to Nashville and announce you’re here and expect people to just do it for nothing.”
“Actually, she says she knows people there who would do it for her as a favor. She says she can arrange it so they wait for their money till we hit something.”
“If we make a demo don’t we want it to be ours? We buy the studio time and the mix. Nothing owed later. No one else involved.” Was that wanting to keep everything in little boxes? I asked Captain Kirby in my head. I knew the answer of course.
“Anyway, how does Clarisse know so much about it?” I asked. “Is she like a musician or a groupie or what? What is she?”
“She has money, that’s all I know,” Tim said. “I think she’s a trust fund kid. She said she was backing Jonah’s show, too. Part of it anyway.”
No wonder Zina didn’t kick Clarisse out for having the hots for teacher. “And I guess she’s planning to back you, too.”
“Not me,” Tim said. “Us. Have Mercy.”
“Well, why isn’t she talking to me, then? Have Mercy is my band.” I laughed sarcastically and peered under my goat’s belly at Tim, who stopped pulling on his goat’s udder and looked back at me thoughtfully.
“I think we should play tonight,” he said. “We need to play. When a band doesn’t play together for a while it falls apart.”
Captain Kirby wasn’t at lunch, which was kind of a relief. I didn’t know what to say to her. She wasn’t at dinner either, which was five fabulous courses. I had never tasted food so delicious and I was sorry she missed it. One of the other students served everyone—including Jonah and Zina. We were sitting on hard benches at a long wooden slab table. Jonah kept up a running commentary on each course, how it was prepared, how he tasted little adjustments the chef had made in the recipes, and he was raving about the strawberry puree with chocolate sauce and whipped cream when Captain Kirby came out of the kitchen, took off her apron and took a bow to enthusiastic applause.
“Captain Kirby’s an amazing person,” Clarisse said to Tim. She was sitting on the other side of him. “I don’t know why she doesn’t like me.”
“You know,” Tim turned to me. “Kirby told me she only drummed one time with a cousin before the night she auditioned with us in the Trap.”
I didn’t know any such thing but kept quiet.
“She says you have to try everything when you get the chance because you never know how it’s going to end up,” Tim said. “That’s really cool, don’t you thi
nk?”
“Where’s it gotten her so far?” I snorted.
“Are you kidding? She’s Have Mercy’s drummer. She’s going to be in a cable network food show. She’s captain of a champion hockey team. And she’s only going to be a senior. I think you can learn a lot from her.”
“I can learn a lot from her?”
“No, not just you. I mean, anyone can. I can.”
The other students were clearing the table to get ready for an evening of music. Jonah was putting a record on the turntable when Tim said, “JW, can we plug our guitars in? Can we?”
Jonah shrugged. “Why not?”
“Wanna?” he said to me.
“That would be awesome,” Captain Kirby said, appearing out of nowhere and looking around for something to drum on while Tim ran to the barn to get our guitars.
“You guys are a band?” Jonah said to me. “That’s cool. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Can I use these?” Kirby asked Jonah, fingering a row of glass tubes suspended from the ceiling by wires that I guess were supposed to be a sculpture.
Clarisse saw me looking at them and whispered, “Bertoia.”
“Bertoia? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Bertoia is the artist who made them. B-e-r-t-o-i-a,” she whispered again, pronouncing each letter like she was helping me cheat on an exam.
Captain Kirby went into the kitchen and came back with two oversized wooden spatulas. She tapped the tubes. “This will work. We just need mikes.”
Which Jonah had, of course. While he was setting that up and Captain Kirby was plinking the glass tubes, Tim brought up our guitars, hooked them up to the speakers and we started going through our repertoire.
It’s a funny thing about music. Once we started playing I didn’t feel down anymore. Captain Kirby made the glass tubes sing like bells and I was thinking that she’d invented a whole new vocabulary in sound that we could take on the road that would make us famous and was for real and not a gimmick. Tim was answering Kirby’s vibes and I was following Tim.