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Shrug

Page 6

by Lisa Braver Moss


  “Now let’s see how your hair looks loose,” Stephanie said.

  I always used a big tortoise-shell barrette to hold back my hair, which I only wore long because that’s what all the other girls did (a shrug being plenty to set me apart). I didn’t think of my hair as any kind of asset. “It’s not great,” I said, taking out the barrette. “See?”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “Wear it loose for now. Okay? Just try it.”

  We went back downstairs, and Stephanie made white popcorn in a huge Revere Ware pan with a pool of safflower oil at the bottom. I loved the reassuring tap-tap-tap of the kernels popping inside. Stephanie melted half a cube of butter in a little white enamel saucepan that fell over on its handle when it was empty. She put the popped kernels in a big bowl and drizzled the butter over it. The butter was still hot when she used the salt shaker, and the puffy kernels gave a tiny sizzle.

  We worked on our history assignment at Stephanie’s kitchen table, licking our greasy fingers so we didn’t stain our textbooks. Fathom rubbed his body against my legs. I could feel the bass line of Brett’s rock music in my chest.

  8

  the “in” crowd

  “Hey, you look nice.”

  That was about the last thing I expected to hear when Brett, having smelled fresh popcorn, came tromping down the stairs. He left the record player on and his door open, which made the music so loud that I thought I’d probably misheard him. Shrug.

  “See? Toldya!” said Stephanie’s eyebrows as she kicked me under the table. Brett grabbed the popcorn from her and used a few kernels to sponge up the extra butter at the bottom of the bowl before tossing them in his mouth.

  “Thanks, Brett,” I managed. Brett was definitely cute, with curly sandy-brown hair and very white teeth and, like Stephanie, a big smile that made his eyes crinkle. He was fourteen, Hildy’s age, and since Hildy had referred to Brett Kenyon as Stephanie’s good-looking older brother, there were probably a thousand other girls who liked him too. Also, he was always talking about books and ideas, and I felt anxious around that type of boy. Get this: he used his allowance for magazine subscriptions so he’d have plenty to read in case he ever ran out of books. Plus, he insisted that Sylvia and Morris let him keep the encyclopedia set in his room so he could read it whenever he wanted.

  “Is this the Beatles again?” Stephanie asked.

  “It’s The Who, dummy!” Brett answered, and then turned to me. “I’m trying to keep myself from listening too much to Yesterday And Today and Revolver. Rubber Soul, too. They’re so cool, I don’t wanna get sick of them.”

  “Funny, you don’t seem to care if I get sick of them,” Stephanie put in. “You’ve played them about a thousand times each.”

  “Yeah? Then why’d you mistake The Who for the Beatles? Huh?” Stephanie was practically as ignorant of pop music as I was. She had a record player in her room but used it for musical soundtracks like Kiss Me, Kate, which she loved to act out in front of her full-length mirror. As for me, I’d taken the portable record player at home into my bedroom, where neither Hildy nor Drew seemed to miss it, and used it primarily for the Bach unaccompanied violin sonatas and partitas, a boxed set that I’d finally gotten my father to bring home, and for Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

  Brett wiped his hands on his jeans and turned to me. “Of course you’re familiar with the whole album cover thing.”

  Apparently I was being given the benefit of the doubt, coolness-wise, because of Smoke and Records. “Album cover?”

  “You know! Where they had those, like, baby dolls on the front? Wait, how come—don’t you get all the records you want for free?”

  “Uh, I guess I’m more the classical type,” I said lamely.

  “Sheesh! Well anyway,” he went on, “so the baby dolls are torn apart—their heads are off, and there are arms and legs and torsos all over the place, and slabs of raw meat draped over the Beatles, with blood everywhere—”

  “Eeew,” Stephanie and I said at the same time.

  “—and the Beatles in these white coats like the ones butchers wear.” He sponged up butter, crunched the kernels.

  “Wait, can we see?” Stephanie asked.

  “Oh, so now you’re interested,” Brett said through a mouthful. “Can’t, though. Those were the copies that Capitol Records sent out before the actual release date, kind of like as a test. And Capitol got all these negative comments from the record store owners who got the test copies.” He wiped his hands on his jeans again. “So they decided to take back all those records from all the stores. But some of the stores had already sold the album that first day, even though they weren’t s’posed to! Wouldn’t that be cool, to be one of the lucky ones who got the version with the original cover?”

  “But what did they do with the records they took back?” Stephanie was confused, and so was I.

  “They glued new pictures on them and then return them to the stores! And the part that’s really neat is—apparently, you can peel the new picture off by, like, ironing the album, to see what’s underneath!”

  “But—wouldn’t the record get all warped if you ironed it?” Stephanie asked, and I thought of my father’s stern warnings about keeping LPs out of the sun and heat.

  “You take the actual record out first, dodo!” Brett was exasperated. “You just do the cover!”

  “Can we do that? Now?” Stephanie wanted to know. “Iron the cover?”

  “It’s a bummer, man. They didn’t send those glued-on covers everywhere, just to some regions. The other stores got brand-new covers that don’t have the butcher cover underneath. I don’t know anyone who got the original.” He didn’t dwell on his disappointment. “Anyway the point is, is, the music is cool.”

  I hated when people said “the point is, is.” It was like they were trying to sound smarter than they actually were. Also—why didn’t I know more about record stores than other kids did, instead of less? My father hadn’t said anything about having to send Beatles records back to Capitol, or about not having gotten the ones with the original cover. But then, maybe he’d been too busy hitting people to mention it.

  “So anyway, this latest album is called Revolver. I always get my records at your dad’s store, by the way.”

  “Oh!” I pretended I didn’t know this.

  “Revolver! Get it?”

  We didn’t get it.

  “Revolver, man! Like, the record revolves around the turntable! Sheesh, everyone knows that! Plus it’s a type of gun, obviously.” He pronounced it “ov-viously,” like Stephanie. He turned to his sister and displayed the bowl, which was empty except for a few remaining whole kernels that weren’t any fun to crunch on. “Steph. Make some more, wouldja?”

  “You are the laziest person alive,” Stephanie remarked as she got up and started another batch.

  I looked at the kitchen clock. “Oh, God, I better go,” I said. “My mom is gonna have a cow. Plus, Drew—”

  “Stay for dinner!” Stephanie said.

  “You can’t go,” Brett said. “You gotta at least hear Revolver. Okay?” Blush. Shrug.

  “Call your mom!” Stephanie urged.

  Brett’s room had the same high ceiling as Stephanie’s, but was somehow cave-like. He had window shutters, but you had the feeling he never opened them, and that if he did, the whole room would scream and shut its eyes against the unfamiliar invasion of light. Brett had a small lighted fish tank that, in the gloom, looked like a TV that was on without the sound in an otherwise unlit space. A tall, wide bookshelf, painted olive green, was mostly stuffed with books. The encyclopedias took up the whole shelf that was one up from the bottom. On the very bottom sat Brett’s record collection.

  Stephanie turned on the overhead light. Brett’s unmade bed was covered with books and papers and his open backpack. She gave up and flounced down on the huge beanbag chair in the corner, and a yellow flyer announcing a school football game fluttered to the floor next to her. I recognized it, because Hildy had gotten the sa
me flyer. Stephanie snatched it up, surprised. “Brett, you’re going to this?”

  “Hell, no!” Brett answered, rolling his eyes in disgust. “Bunch of bullshit, man. Rah-rah! Go Jackets! School spirit—it’s the hobgoblin of small minds.”

  I turned around and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the records. On the far left, they went straight up and down, and then they leaned more and more diagonally, like a handwritten letter that starts out perfectly horizontal, as if with good intentions, but dips down increasingly on the right as the letter continues. “Hey, you have ‘The “In” Crowd!’” I exclaimed, pulling it out. “This is so great. Did you know there was a recording before Ramsey Lewis did it?”

  “Yeah, Dobie Gray wrote it and sang it, right?”

  “Well, Dobie Gray was the first to record it,” I said. “It was written by Billy Page.”

  “Really?” He grabbed the album from me and flipped it over to look on the back cover. “Hey, you’re right! How did you—”

  “My violin teacher. She shows me stuff about jazz sometimes.”

  “Wait. She teaches you how to play jazz?” Brett took the record out of its sleeve and put it on the turntable.

  “Not to play, no. Just to learn the music theory behind it.”

  “What do you mean, music theory?” Stephanie asked from the bed.

  I swung around on my butt to face them as the music started. Then I was worried that my new skirt was too short, so I put my legs straight out in front of me and leaned back on the shelf in the kind of modesty that Hildy had to teach me about because my mother didn’t. “Isn’t it great?” I said, and they both nodded and grinned. After a few bars, I started explaining. “Theory. Well, like, in this case, you have regular blues in D. What I mean is, the chords go in the standard blues sequence. But then, in the last few bars of the progression, instead of the chords being 3, 6, 2, 5, 1, which is standard, it goes up to flat 7 after the 5 chord. Wait, here—it’s coming up!”

  They both gaped, but didn’t seem to notice the quirky flat 7 chord. Maybe I wasn’t explaining it clearly.

  “I mean, like, you’re expecting the 5 to lead to the 1, so it’s a surprise. Get it? That flat 7 chord in the turnaround is what’s unusual.”

  Stephanie said, “Brett, Martha can tell you what any note is.”

  “What do you mean?” Brett asked.

  “I can hear what key things are in,” I explained. “It’s called perfect pitch. Like, if I’ve heard a piece, I can sing what note it’s going to start on before it starts. Or, if you ask me to sing an E-flat, or whatever note you want, I can do it.”

  “But—how?” The song was over, and Brett took the needle off.

  I gave a real shrug. “I just hear it.” This was one thing in my life that I was confident about. “Try me. Here, you have Beethoven’s 8th Symphony, which is in F major. If you put it on, I’ll sing it to you before it starts.” I handed Brett the record and started singing before he’d put the needle down. When the first movement started, his eyes went wide, but oddly, he seemed more impressed by my voice than by my having gotten the right note. “You sing really well,” he said.

  Afterwards, I squished in next to Stephanie on the beanbag chair and listened to a few of Brett’s favorite Beatles songs, like “Dizzy Miss Lizzie” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” I hated both of them—still do. Then he played “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl,” which is great, even though it’s horribly out of tune in a few places.

  I just let myself have a break from my stupid family for a few more minutes because I’d had such a shitty day. Then I really, really had to get going.

  9

  al-blum

  Eventually, my father did bring home a Beatles record. It was the following year, when I was in eighth grade.

  He’d moved back home a few months into seventh grade, but my mother kicked him out again a couple of weeks later. The same thing happened over the summer between seventh and eighth grade. Now he and my mother were getting along again, and it looked like he might be moving back in. I guess he brought the record in a show of hope that we could be a happy family.

  Believe it or not, I was constantly wishing my parents would get back together. As disruptive as it was to have my father moving out, and back in, and out, and back in again, to me this seesawing meant reconciliation was possible. Stephanie kept saying I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but I figured she might be jealous because her parents were already in the middle of their divorce. Besides, I couldn’t help it. I wanted my parents to change how they acted so they could be together. Maybe I wanted them to love each other so that I wouldn’t have to love them.

  In retrospect, it’s a little strange that Yesterday And Today was the album my father chose to bring us. There’d been several records since then—Revolver, and then the new one, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Maybe he was worried that the more recent albums were too psychedelic to be appropriate for kids. Maybe he figured that if Capitol had already sanitized the Yesterday And Today album cover, its contents were probably fine, too. Maybe he was overstocked with the earlier album, or maybe someone had returned this one. Or maybe he just grabbed whatever album was handy, figuring it didn’t matter, dreck being dreck.

  It was a Saturday afternoon, and my father was getting a ride home from Terry Lamb, who worked for my father, and Terry’s wife, Trish. My mother was making dinner. She’d even invited Terry and Trish to stay. When I came downstairs to check on her, she was stirring some gamey-smelling stew with a big wooden spoon. I grimaced. No doubt there was some reason why things like roasted chicken and buttered noodles weren’t good for you.

  The kitchen table was barely visible, with items strewn everywhere, and I quietly got to work. There was a rickety wooden fruit bowl with two sad brown bananas in it. I took it and put it next to the dish drain. I fished pieces of mail out from in between a stack of folded paper bags and newspapers. Some of the mail was opened, some wasn’t. I separated out the newspapers and bags and gathered the mail into one pile, which I wedged into the crowded corner of the counter. “Mom? Is Dad moving back in with us?” I asked as casually as I could, picking up a pile of clean socks and putting them to the side on the staircase.

  “I don’t know yet.” My mother dipped a clean stainless steel teaspoon into the stew for a taste. She didn’t believe in putting her germs on the cooking spoon.

  “Well, when do you think—?”

  “Martha, stop being so rigid.”

  “I’m not! I just—”

  “Jesus, you’re like a little old lady!” My mother put the lid back on and turned down the flame. “Now set the table.”

  “I am! I had to clear it first.”

  “I’m hungry,” Drew whined, trotting down the stairs.

  “No snacks! I’m making dinner,” my mother said.

  I made Drew help me finish the table and then took him into the living room, where we peeked out from behind the dusty dark brown curtains and waited for my father. Drew counted the cars as they drove by, multiplying by four each time to keep track of how many tires had rolled along the street.

  Soon, a white Buick pulled up in front of our house and the driver’s side door opened. Terry Lamb climbed out and opened the back door for his wife Trish, a bubbly, dimpled brunette who was as tall as her husband and expecting a baby soon. My father climbed out the passenger side. “Dad’s home!” Drew squealed. “With a fat lady!”

  There was a gleaming square under my father’s arm, a record. I remember thinking: Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony, finally? Drew and I scrambled to the door and opened it, waving from the porch. “Dad, I can multiply by four! Wanna hear?” Drew shouted. “Four, eight, twelve—”

  My father was smiling broadly all the way up the stairs. He handed the record to me without a word.

  “. . . sixteen, twenty, twenty-four—”

  “Dad!” I shrieked. “You brought it!”

  “What? What is it?” Drew craned his neck.

  “The Beatle
s! The Beatles! Hildy!” I shouted, running inside. Shrug.

  Terry and Trish Lamb were grinning, and my mother appeared in the hallway, drying her hands on the bottom of her apron. Her nylon headband was a little crooked, and she looked like she was about to smile. I wondered whether she’d known beforehand about my father’s surprise.

  “Hildy! Hildy!” shouted Drew as Hildy came running down the stairs. “A Beatle al-blum!”

  “It’s Beatles,” Hildy corrected, grabbing the LP out of my hands. “And it’s album, not al-blum.”

  “I wanna see Ringo and John,” Drew demanded as the adults filed into the kitchen, Trish’s pointy flats sliding along the hardwood floor.

  “It’s John, Paul, George, and Ringo,” Hildy corrected.

  “Paul, John—” Drew repeated.

  “Come on, let’s sit down on the couch and I’ll show you,” Hildy said. “Here, look at the picture. See? There’s John, then Paul, then George, and then Ringo.”

  “They have only one order?” Drew asked.

  “Well, not exactly, but John is the leader. See? This is John,” she pointed. “He’s kind of an—iconoclast.”

  “Don’t use sophisticated words!” Drew cried.

  “You are so cute!” Hildy laughed, pulling Drew onto her lap. “Iconoclast means he, like, breaks the rules in a way that’s really cool. Anyway, Ringo is the last one, ‘cause he’s the drummer, plus, he’s not as cute as the others. Paul is second, I guess,” she said, tapping at the picture of the one sitting inside the open trunk. “Yes. Definitely. So that’s why George is third.”

  Brett had never said anything that definitive about the Beatles’ “order,” even though he’d been tutoring me and Stephanie for months by playing songs for us, saying he wanted to make sure we weren’t the least “in” girls in junior high. Whenever he’d introduce a new song, he’d make me say what key it was in. Brett never seemed to get tired of that trick, even though I could tell he didn’t quite understand my odd ability—maybe because he himself couldn’t hold a tune.

 

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