After You've Gone

by Lori Hahnel

  Although I was worried about the war, and Steve, and about Jake going overseas, I couldn’t help but be excited and amazed at the new life I now had. We had a beautiful home, and Jacob’s mother and his sister Rebecca lived in town and were friendly enough, though not extremely so. They weren’t sure at first about Jacob marrying a musician and adopting a child. But once they got to know us a little better, they were a great help. Sometimes I felt Jacob’s mother might have been happier if I had agreed to convert, but I was reluctant to. Not, as I tried to explain, that I had any objections to Judaism in particular. It was the whole concept of organized religion that didn’t sit well with me.

  “You’re an atheist?”

  “No. Not at all. I just think God speaks to us in many ways. I don’t think one way is better than any other.”

  Mrs. Stone blinked at me for a bit and then changed the subject. Hey, it could have been worse, I thought, imagining my first mother-in-law’s reaction.

  If opposition from his family bothered Jake, or the sudden adjustment from life as a bachelor to life as father to a young daughter, he never mentioned it to me. No doubt people talked, too, not that Jake would ever have mentioned that, either, but I was sure they did. And then the ghost of Bill MacInnes still loomed large, especially in my dreams. Jake knew that, seemed to understand it somehow.

  Keeping track of my dreams helped me gradually come to grips with the memory of Bill. The dreams were sometimes horrible: he’d be alive again, but hiding from me, purposely avoiding me. Or living with Darlene and telling people what an idiot I was. I’d see him around town, always at a distance, but no matter how I’d try, he’d be too far away for me to talk to. Sometimes, I’d be out somewhere, and when I got home, there’d be his white, frozen body on the doorstep.

  I’d dream about him every night for weeks, and then I might not again for months. But I wrote all the dreams down faithfully, remembered what Steve said, that dreams speak to you in ways that sometimes take a long time to understand. Writing them down helped me to see that over a period of years the Bill dreams abated, got less intense. After a while he would mostly be a background figure.

  Jake returned home the afternoon of his army physical looking grey-faced and grim, hung up his coat and hat without a word. I almost hated to ask him how it went. He looked pretty unhappy. Were they shipping him away even sooner than we had thought?

  “So what happened?”

  He dropped his gaze to the floor. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “What? You’re not? Why not?”

  “They’ve classified me as unfit for service. I had a bad bout of rheumatic fever when I was a kid and they say it damaged my heart.”

  I let out a breath. “Oh. I’m so glad to hear that.”

  “Glad? About what?”

  “That they’re not taking you away from us. That you won’t get killed over there. To me, that sounds wonderful.”

  “I’m not so excited about it.”

  He was hurt, I suddenly realized. It never occurred to me before this that Jake actually wanted to go. That he considered it his duty, part of his role as a man, to go and fight. I watched him creep into his study and close the door. I didn’t see him again until dinnertime.

  There was a long stretch where the National sat in its case, in the basement, untouched. At first I blamed this on the baby. It was true for the first six months or so. I had no time then for anything else but Sarah: not for Ma, who was with us nearly all the time, not for myself some days. But once Jake and I were married, and Sarah was a little older, and I didn’t have to work at the music store anymore, life got a lot easier. The idea of playing guitar again had been in the back of my mind, an insistent if not very loud voice, for a long time. So one day I got it out, thought it might please Sarah. She was playing with dolls on a blanket on the living room floor. I sat down beside her and started to strum.

  But it made me too sad. Bringing it out of the case, the faint metallic tang of the strings, the heft of it in my hands, tuning it, the slight squeak now and then of my fingers on the strings — all those things were bad enough. Then I couldn’t think of anything to play but songs the Syncopation Five did, songs I didn’t want to think about. Sarah came over and touched the guitar. She asked me what it was, but seemed a little suspicious, maybe even afraid of it. I sat for a while with it in my lap, rested my cheek on the side, ran my fingers slowly up and down the strings. Then I put it away. What made me sadder, playing it and thinking of the old days, or not playing it, is hard to say. Right then, I was pretty sure playing it made me feel worse.

  A few months later I brought it out again. Sarah insisted I let her try to play it, but soon grew frustrated when she realized she was too small to reach both the neck and the strings at once. Then she was content to play with her dolls while I played.

  That was a great day for me. I played for the better part of an hour, and the fingertips of my left hand were sore and tender that night, my calluses having worn away in three years of domestic life. But I knew I was better that day. There was a lightening in my heart as I played the old songs, with some sadness still, to be sure. But there was the considerable joy of playing mixed with hearing the songs again. I could play and not cry, I could play the songs, period. That amazed me.

  Soon I was playing again on a regular basis. Before long, I played every minute I could cram in. I’d plan my day around Sarah and playing. I didn’t do it because of any anticipation of performing, any intention of seeking out other musicians. As far as I could see at that point, my life as a musician was over. Yet my creativity soared, possibly because of the freedom of not being in a working band, the absence of pressure. I wrote more of my own material than ever before, started to play other things as well as my own inventions, like some traditional Gypsy tunes I’d picked up records of. Steve would be glad to hear them, I knew, when he got back.

  As it turned out, though, he never did hear my renditions of Gypsy songs. Ma got the notification that he’d been killed in December 1941 in the Battle of Hong Kong, which started just after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. It was rough on me. Steve had been the only member of the family I was always close to. He was there for me in those early days of Sarah’s life when I was trying to deal with widowhood and motherhood all at once. He was there whenever I needed him, and I knew without question that he would do whatever he could to help me. He didn’t leave much behind, and I decided that all his worldly possessions should be stored in our basement. Had Jake been a cynical man, he would have remarked that our basement was rapidly becoming a storehouse for the belongings of dead men. There wasn’t much there: a wool coat, a suit, his books, some thick file folders full of research that he’d gathered for the Gypsy Lore Society.

  After that I was grateful, even more than before, that Jake had been spared from going overseas. For him, though, it just seemed to get harder as the war went on.

  One day he came home from work and told me about a woman he’d seen in one of the hotel’s restaurants who made a not-quite-under-the-breath remark when she saw him.

  “She said, ‘I wonder if he’s yellow.’”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that. That was an ignorant thing to say. She doesn’t even know you.”

  “That’s what people think when they see an apparently healthy young man. Why isn’t he overseas? Is he yellow? Is he a shirker?”

  “Look, Jake. You can’t let it bother you. You know it’s not your fault that you can’t be over there. And as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter what other people think. It’s nobody else’s business.”

  “I know you’re right. But it’s hard listening to little remarks and getting those looks.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  I wished I could think of something else to say, something to make him feel better. But I just couldn’t think of anything else.

  Twenty-One

  Elsa

  Seattle, 1990

  THE LATE 80S / EARLY 90S were the best of time
s for Curse Records. The Green Lanterns and Speed Queen were the first bands we signed, of course, and both bands put out several singles that sold fairly well. But soon we were swamped with bands giving us demo tapes to listen to, and before long we had fifteen other bands on the label. To my surprise, we paid back Dave and our other creditors pretty quickly. That was in the days when people were really starting to become aware of the Seattle scene. New indie labels had started to pop up all the time. Sub Pop was the best known of them. Not only did they record Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney in their early careers, they were also amazingly good at getting publicity. They sent copies of Mudhoney’s single “Touch Me I’m Sick” to the big British music magazines, NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds. Mark and I laughed when we heard that, thought it would just end up being a waste of postage. Incredibly, though, not only did they all review “Touch Me I’m Sick,” they loved it. Not wasting any time, Mudhoney were then sent on a tour of England with Sonic Youth, which put “Touch Me I’m Sick” onto the British indie charts. Then Sub Pop offered to pay for a reporter from Melody Maker to come to Seattle and check out the scene. By this time, we’d stopped laughing at their publicity schemes and weren’t really surprised when Mudhoney ended up on the cover of the March 1989 Melody Maker. Although the reporter called Seattle a “small, insignificant” city (I kept thinking he should see Regina), he said we had “the most vibrant, kicking scene, encompassed in one city.”

  Of course it didn’t take long before someone came up with a label for this new music coming out of Seattle. We all knew punk was dead, and the term ‘alternative’ had been so overused it had ceased to mean anything. That June, Sub Pop held a big show at the Moore Theatre in the wake of all this press, featuring Nirvana, Mudhoney, and TAD, that drew over a thousand people, the biggest indie show held yet. And while the show got covered by the local mainstream media, it didn’t exactly result in good press. Although I guess that old maxim about there being no such thing as bad publicity is true. For some reason The Seattle Times decided to send out a jazz critic to cover it. He wrote that “the whole point of this show seemed to be based on the perverse, reverse notion that grungy, foul-mouthed, self-despising meatheads who grind out undifferentiated noise and swing around their long hair are good — and ‘honest’ — by virtue of their not being rock stars . . . If this is the future of rock ‘n’ roll, I hope I die before I get much older.” Well, well. Someone was having a bad day, weren’t they? In any case, the “grunge” thing stuck. People do love labels.

  So okay, maybe Curse Records didn’t do anywhere near as well as Sub Pop. Few indie labels did. Sub Pop had chutzpah and luck and incredible savvy. And impeccable timing. But we did pretty well, too — we were happy with it for quite a while. Our bands played lots of shows, cut a single or two or three with us and then either broke up or got picked up by bigger labels — the usual thing. It kept us busy, and as Curse began to take up more and more of our time, The Green Lanterns and Speed Queen slowly but surely became defunct.

  Part of it was Bill, of course. My focus had changed when he arrived, though I was slow to figure it out. I eventually realized I had to stay safe, so I would be around to take care of him. Some of those shows could be a little iffy, what with the out-of-control mosh pits, the druggies, the bikers. The late-night lifestyle itself wasn’t really compatible with child raising, to say the least. So by this time, when Bill was almost eight, in the third grade, the band thing had sort of faded out of my life. Not that I didn’t miss it, but it was what it was. Bill was my sweet, sandy-haired, freckled first priority. Mark still had a day job, still with his brother-in-law Dave’s courier firm, although by now he was dispatch supervisor. Much as he would have loved to quit and do Curse Records full time, there just wasn’t quite enough money in it, not for a man with a family. We both dedicated a lot of time to Curse, but both loved what we got out of it.

  By the height of the grunge era we got to the point where we were renting a little office not far from our place in Fremont, on the second floor of an old stone flatiron building on Fremont Avenue. The office had a tall window that looked east onto the street, a couple of chairs on either side of the window, and a desk across from that. There was a backroom where we kept our stock, publicity materials, files, and a washroom almost big enough to turn around in. We didn’t do any actual recording on site, of course; we’d rent time at one of the recording studios in town for that. The office was upstairs from a vintage clothes shop and always smelled a little of the sandalwood incense they used in the store to mask the old clothes smell. I liked to think it added a little counterculture feel to Curse’s operations. I was really happy with the location because it was close to home, and close to Bill’s school. Once he was in school full-time in Grade One, Curse became my day job. It pretty much cut out time for my own music, but since Speed Queen was no longer a going concern, having a job was more important. That’s how it goes with bands most of the time, unless you have some compelling reason to stay together for seventy years, or whatever it is for The Rolling Stones. I guess all that money is a good enough reason to go on comeback tour after Depends-sponsored comeback tour. Anyway, I always told myself I’d ease back into my own music soon. As soon as we made enough money that we could hire someone to do all the Curse phone calls, correspondence, orders, shipping, filing, books. All that stuff that I did. Right.

  Behind the desk, Mark had hung a framed quote from his hero Greg Shaw, who with his wife / ex-wife and business partner Suzy, ran the legendary indie label BOMP Records in Burbank, California, which is still around today. The quote read:

  When you contemplate the monstrous weight under which rock & roll has struggled, the multi-billion dollar music industry dedicated to keeping it down, the superstar system and its complete negation of new talent, the stranglehold of radio, the closed doors of the record and concert industries, the obscene wealth concentrated in the mechanisms of disco, arena-rock, etc., and the self protective instincts of the Mafioso types who run it all — the fact is that all this is being swept aside by a few kids with nothing more going for them but an insane commitment to raw energy and a total contempt for everything.

  I mean, how could a struggling record label not be inspired by those words? At the very least I hoped it would provide some validation to the band members who were forever showing up at the office demanding their royalties. Or stall them for a little bit while they read it, anyway. The worst was a band called Stupid Bloody Tuesday. I swear I saw Dennis, their gap-toothed bleached-blond guitarist, every few weeks or so.

  “Elsa. Good afternoon,” he said, flopping down in one of the chairs across from my desk. He looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. Grunge musician, indeed.

  I sighed inwardly, knowing what was coming. “Thanks for stopping in, Dennis. How are you?”

  “Not bad, thanks. So I’m here to see you about our royalties.”

  “Did you not get the cheque we mailed out in February?”

  “Yes. But don’t you send those out quarterly?”

  “Dennis. We’ve been through this before. You know we send your royalties out once a year.”

  “Yeah, but that was it?”

  “Ten percent of each record you sell. If your record’s selling for four bucks, you get forty cents on each one.”

  “Okay. But man, I need some money now. Look, didn’t you sell some records for us at that festival we played a few weeks ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. So can’t you pay me out in cash for the royalties on those and deduct it from my next cheque?”

  “Well, there’s a couple of problems with that. First off, you guys sold thirty-seven records. So the royalties on that would be a little under fifteen bucks. Divided by the three of you, that’s not quite five bucks. Besides, you know I can’t just pay you out in cash, Dennis. I’m sorry.”

  He looked so dejected as he left. I felt sorry for him. And I wondered if we had to have this conversation over and over because he was that despe
rate, or because he really couldn’t remember. Part of me wanted to shake him by the shoulders. Part of me wanted to tell him: listen, you want to make money? Get out of the music business. You could make more money picking bottles. And you’d get some fresh air and exercise, too.

  Don’t get me wrong, though. For the most part I loved meeting the musicians, listening to their demo tapes, seeing the thrill on their faces when we’d offer them a record contract. We were helping them make their dreams come true. Money doesn’t seem like such a big deal when you get to do things like that. That’s a pretty cool thing to be able to help people with.

  Part Three

  Twenty-Two

  Lita

  1961

  I WAS NEVER SO TIRED AS I was after Sarah’s wedding. Until then I had no idea what work weddings could be. Mine had both been simple affairs. An elopement with Bill; with Jake, another justice of the peace ceremony with Steve and Henry as witnesses. With Sarah, it was completely different. Ma had died of a heart attack the year before, and in the months leading up to the wedding I thought many times of how flabbergasted she would have been at the elaborateness of the thing.

  I suppose a big part of the difference between our weddings was that Sarah’s dad had money. Jake, that is. Jake adopted Sarah shortly after we married, and she became Sarah Stone instead of Sarah MacInnes. Which naturally scandalized Bill’s mother, but by then I surely didn’t give a damn what she thought. And Jake was a good father to Sarah. He was a good provider. In fact, as the years went by Jake became more and more preoccupied with money. Or with his hotel, anyway.

  In the late 50s, the potash industry in Saskatchewan was in a boom phase. American companies started moving into southern Saskatchewan and mining for the mineral salts, mostly used for fertilizer and other industrial applications. When the Saskatchewan government started granting these companies subsidies to encourage growth in the industry, Jake saw it as a perfect time to open his own hotel. He bought the old Dinsmore Hotel downtown and it became The Hotel Regina. Although I had complete confidence in his ability to run his own hotel (he’d basically been running the Saskatchewan for more than twenty years), it worried me. Working for someone else was one thing; I was afraid that being a business owner would consume him entirely. But he was so excited about it, I said nothing to discourage him. Looking back, maybe I should have.