The night after she spilled her guts to Colette, Louisa threw open the door to her room, retrieved the money that she kept hidden in a cigarette pack in her suitcase, and spread it out on her sagging bed. She combined it with the two hundred dollars she’d made that night, counting out a total of fourteen hundred dollars. She mulled over where to head next.
Initially, Louisa had had great plans for each new city. In Detroit, she wanted to meet Iggy Pop. In New York, she wanted to drink with the Ramones. She went to Los Angeles to open a club with a woman she met in New York. All of these ventures failed. After a couple years of traveling, her stays in the major cities got shorter and shorter. She kept ending up in places that she never intended to visit, like Toledo and Oklahoma City. And deep down, Louisa knew that it was because more than anything she just wanted to go home.
Denying that thought, as she had for almost five years, Louisa swept the money off the bed and into her purse with one hand. She didn’t have to glance around to figure out what to pack next. There was no closet. Louisa kept all of the costumes that she wore to work in a black duffel bag. She dumped the cosmetics lining the sink into that. She’d only half unpacked her regular clothes into the dresser, so emptying the three drawers back into the suitcase was easy. After fifteen minutes, Louisa left room 310 as she’d found it when she checked in: the bedsheets rumpled, a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray, and long blond hairs stuck to the basin of the sink. She just added the one touch she left in every place she stayed. Kneeling on the dirty yellow carpet, she pulled the middle drawer out of the dresser, and using a bottle of red nail polish she’d kept aside while packing, she inked her initials and the date in the back corner of the drawer.
While tossing her bags in the dented trunk of her Impala, Louisa glanced at her long-expired Illinois plates and wondered if she would ever stay someplace long enough to replace them.
She decided to go west, see more of California. An acquaintance of Colette’s had just come from there. He’d talked up bands like Social Distortion and the Circle Jerks and said that the hardcore scene had reached a boiling point when the not-so-beloved former governor, Ronald Reagan, had taken office as president earlier that year. After Louisa had driven for a mile, the windows rolled down to let the humid green air that snaked off the Mississippi River kiss her farewell, Louisa looked in the rearview mirror and said, “Bye, Colette.” Startled by the sound of her own voice, she completed her apology silently. I really would have taken you with me, but last night you let me tell you about them, and I can’t be around someone who knows.
On Labor Day weekend, the official end of my summer and beginning of my sophomore year, I picked the last River’s Edge guy using the same methods I always had. He was to be conquest number eight, and of course, I didn’t foresee him as being the last at the time. I watched all three bands that played River’s Edge each night carefully, knowing that sometimes the first was better than the last, and sometimes none of them were good enough at all.
Number Eight’s band was the second to grace the stage. The chorus of their first song was so catchy that I left my beer with Marissa so I could use both hands to push my way up front. I danced with my eyes closed to pick out the instrument that carried the song. I’d learned from my first experience that the singer was not necessarily the most talented individual in the band even though he was assumed to be the leader. I wasn’t a groupie, so I had no interest in screwing for status. The guitar riff definitely dominated the first song. I noticed during the second that the guitarist had an impeccable instinct about when to use the distortion pedal, which was often overused by newly formed bands in the early nineties. I opened my eyes and scanned the stage. I had standards. I only chose guys whose looks were equaled by their musical abilities.
“He’s cute!” Regan proclaimed, bouncing up beside me and indicating the guitarist. His bleached hair fell into his face as he leaned into a powerful riff, hiding everything but his strong jawline and the curve of a wan lower lip. While the singer jumped around the stage in nothing but baggy camouflage shorts to show off his toned abs and pierced nipples, the guitarist was fully clothed. The long sleeves of his shirt were tattered, presumably because of the ferocity with which he played his instrument. The only skin visible was on his hands and through the small hole in the left knee of his jeans. An unassuming rock god. A rare breed. One that I had yet to find.
“Number eight!” I shouted, turning to Regan and sarcastically licking my lips. “He’s mine!”
She shook her fist at me with a smile. “Dammit! You always call them first,” she complained. Then she lifted her thumb from the fist, giving me a sign of approval. “Good luck,” she yelled solemnly before bouncing away. Those were our rules. She who calls him first gets him. I’d lost a few with great potential to her that summer, but on all occasions was informed that I hadn’t missed much.
Number Eight was from Rockford. That’s all I heard over the din of the Edge. As we walked outside to his van, I contemplated asking him to clarify the name of his band, even his own name, but I could procure that information if he proved himself worthy. He wasn’t. That didn’t surprise me, but what happened afterward did.
He pulled on his boxers. I was already dressed and had my hand on the door handle when he said, “So, who do you want next?”
I whipped around, my arms banging against the passenger seat and the sliding door. “What?” I asked incredulously.
His hair obscured a self-assured smirk. “Well, we’ve heard about you, of course.”
I blinked. Regan and I had not recorded a tape. We weren’t even thinking of playing the Edge yet. I quickly realized that he couldn’t have heard about my band because no one except the adoring fans in my daydreams had. What he meant hit me faster than six consecutive shots of whiskey and made me feel sicker than any alcohol could. “What have you heard about me?”
“Well, we heard that you set the standard at this place. You pick the best band.” He ran his hand from his right nipple down to his stomach as if seductively stroking his own ego. “And you do the best band.”
My vision swam. “What?” I raged. “Who the hell do you think you are—Slash? Do you think I screwed a series of roadies and the drummer to get to you and now I want Axl?” I gestured angrily out the front windshield toward River’s Edge. “This is not some cock-rock joint! I am not some groupie! I have a band too, you know. You should be honored …”
I stopped because he was laughing at me. Not just giggling at my foolish indignation, but red-in-the-face, slapping-his-bare-thigh, hysterically laughing at me. I shrunk back, defensively crossing my arms over my chest as ugly reality set in. I hadn’t been considering the consequences of my actions. What I was doing wasn’t just a little bit slutty. I’d put my future reputation as a musician in jeopardy. In my mind, I was already a rock star. I’d convinced myself of it. And I’d deluded myself into thinking I was making some sort of equal rights statement by using guys the way rock gods used chicks. But to the rest of the world, I looked like a groupie. Who was I kidding?
Number Eight abandoned his modest rock-god act, pouting his lips to mock me. “Awwww, you’re in a band, huh? Do you play an instrument? Do you sing as good as you suck dick? Do you— Ahhhh! Jesus Christ!” he wailed after my fist slammed into his face. Blood gushed from his formerly pretty nose. Hitting him felt like I had wanted sex to feel.
“I have yet to meet a guy who knows more about music than me. In fact, I have yet to meet one who knows how to fuck!” I sneered, reaching behind me to open the van door, satisfied by the tears mixing with the dark blood that dripped into his once superior mouth. I could feel my eyes growing as black as my hair when the words for the final blow came to me. “Maybe one day I’ll let you open for my band,” I spat, slamming the door on the skinny boy who suddenly seemed so much smaller than me.
But I never felt as tough as I acted. I stalked away from Number Eight’s van and looked helplessly at River’s Edge, knowing I couldn’t go back in the
re without having a tantrum. I wanted to climb up onstage and scream that I wasn’t a groupie, but I knew that that would only make things worse. When I mounted that stage for the first time, staring out at the audience instead of up from it, it would be with dignity. So I did the only thing I could think of. I trudged three miles back to Regan’s house, trying not to cry.
By the time I arrived, Marissa’s car was already parked in the driveway and both her and Regan’s bedroom lights were off. When they hadn’t found me at the end of the night, they’d simply left, assuming that I’d gone off with some guy—because that’s what I did and everyone knew it. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I slunk behind the house, sat on top of the picnic table, and bawled. I paused momentarily to take the joint that Regan and I had rolled earlier out of my cigarette pack. Between sobs, I inhaled lungfuls of smoke that did nothing but burn my throat and make my head pound. I tossed the joint away. Nothing tasted good anymore. Nothing felt good anymore. I was bad from skin to bone, and everything I did or thought about was as horrible as me. Tears ran all the way down my neck, soaking my shirt.
When I felt her arms on my shoulders and remembered that touch could be affectionate instead of just empty, I thought my sadness had made my secret wish come true. “Louisa?” I asked hopefully, but I found myself staring into Molly’s worried brown eyes.
“What’s wrong, baby?” she asked, like I was one of her real daughters. She was tuned in to me in the same way she was to them. She sensed my tears in her dreams, knew exactly where I was, and came running, dressed in a wrinkled T-shirt, her russet hair in the messy braid she slept in. But it wasn’t enough.
I threw myself against her and cried pathetically, “I want my mom.”
Molly’s delicate hands rubbed my back in circles the way my father did when I was sick. “It’s about damn time,” she sighed.
I let myself sob hard, chest heaving until I was exhausted. When I finally stopped, Molly held me at arm’s length, staring into my eyes, her face wrought with guilt. I knew then that she knew what had happened to my mother. I had probably known subconsciously since the first day of third grade when our teacher had forced Regan and me to sit on opposite sides of the room. “I’ve heard about you two girls,” she clucked, and it was a couple years too soon for her to have heard something bad. “I know that you’re inseparable.” And we were. Sisters in every sense except blood. Just as Molly and Louisa had been. And that kind of bond runs deeper than marriage ties, maybe even deeper than maternal instinct. If I refused to talk to anyone in the world, I would still talk to Regan. I knew that for Louisa and Molly it was the same way.
Molly had the permanent expression of a mischievous sixteen-year-old, like she hadn’t aged a day since she’d had Marissa, but in the dim moonlight, remorse bruised circles under her dark eyes and traced lines around them. “I don’t know where she is anymore, Emily.” Tears rode the wrinkles like riverbeds. “She hasn’t written me in four years. The last address was in Boston and it’s no good anymore. I should have told you about it earlier, but …”
“I never asked,” I concluded woodenly. I’d asked Molly to tell me stories about what Louisa was like when they were growing up. I asked my dad what their time in Chicago together was like. I never asked either of them anything about Louisa leaving. I blindly accepted the vague story my father told me about Louisa needing to follow the music, because I liked that legend.
Molly bit her lip, her hand grasping mine. “I shouldn’t have waited for you to ask. Baby …”
She continued, but I wasn’t really listening. She talked about my mother showing up in the middle of a cold November night—the night she left us. Molly’s words sketched an image of Louisa as tear-streaked and red-eyed and confused as me. And I didn’t want to hear it. My mother was a woman of myth. Her shoulders had never been shaken by sobs. Her commanding, verdant eyes had never shed a tear. She was not randomly wandering because she was in pain. She followed her ears. She consumed the rumble of the drums, ferocious guitar riffs, throbbing bass lines, throaty voices, angelic voices, claw-your-eyes-out yowls. She hunted music. Lived it. Knew it better than anyone.
“The idea of never being able to talk to her again … So when she said she’d write me if I didn’t tell …” Molly gulped in air and pulled her hand away from mine to desperately rake it through her hair.
“She made you promise, didn’t she? If Regan made me promise, I would have kept the promise,” I murmured, needing to comfort Molly and, even more, needing to make her stop acting broken, stop talking like Louisa had been broken.
“Yeah.” Molly went silent for a moment. Then her eyes snapped up to meet mine. She looked startled, like she’d suddenly awakened from a hypnotic trance. “You need to know why your mother left.”
I panicked. I did not need to know why my mother left. Not then. I couldn’t handle it. That night, my image of myself—rock goddess, totally in control, making little wannabe boys play her game—had been shattered. I was not ready to have my vision of my mother demolished as well. “Louisa was a free spirit. She left to follow the music. I was born when punk rock was dawning in America and she wanted to be there.” I told Molly what my father had said almost word for word.
Yeah, I didn’t just like that legend, I needed it. I drew my strength from it. That’s why I’d never questioned it. My mother wasn’t there to hug me and comfort me and bandage my wounds when I fell down, but at least I knew she was beautiful, fierce, and driven by rock ’n’ roll, and that gave me something to aspire to.
Pity spread across Molly’s face. “Emily …”
“No!”
Louisa did not leave my father and me in tears or too numb to cry. She had smiled at us and kissed us good-bye and said that it was time for her to go meet Iggy and Joey and Patti, and my dad had held the door open for her because everyone knows that goddesses come and go as they please. I had to believe that. That legend protected me from my deepest, darkest secret fear: that I was the reason my mother left. I’d ruined her fun, drained her life of joy, and she had to run away to get that back. She had to run away because she didn’t love me.
“No!” I snapped viciously at Molly, leaping off the table. “I don’t need to know. Not tonight. Not after everything …”
Images of my long-legged, smiling mother vanished, replaced by Number Eight’s smirk. Molly rose and guided me back to the picnic bench. “What happened tonight, Emily?”
“I did something stupid. In fact, I’ve done a lot of stupid things lately.” I hesitated. She looked like a bigger version of Regan, but even in my distressed state, I wasn’t going to mistake the two.
Molly broke the ice with laughter like she always did. “You think I don’t know what kind of stupid things you’ve been doing? Your dad and Luke are blind to what their little girls become when they hit fourteen. But I was you once. Not to mention I went through this a few years ago with Marissa. Please, tell me what hurt you so bad that it made you ask for your mother for the first time in your life.”
I couldn’t tell her the whole story, so I summarized. “This guy called me a slut. But I guess I kind of deserved it.”
“Oh, Emily, that’s crap. You’ve got to think about your actions, but no guy ever, ever,” she emphasized, “has the right to degrade you. There isn’t one man in this world who’s any better than you. Obviously that guy wanted you to think that what he does is fine, but when you do it, it’s wrong. And a lot of them will try to make you think that about a whole bunch of different things. You can’t ever take it to heart.”
“Well, I punched him,” I informed her, deadpan, studying my knuckles, still inflamed and throbbing from the blow.
Molly cackled so loud that dogs across the street barked. “That’s my girl,” she managed between chuckles.
I remained angry with myself, thinking of all the greedy boy-hands that had grabbed at every inch of me that summer. “I should call my band Tainted Skin.”
Molly shook her head. “Did you crack him g
ood?”
“There was blood.” My lips twitched into a smile. “And then I told him that someday he could open for my band.”
Molly put her hand over her mouth to suppress hysterics. “I’m sorry. Please don’t tell your dad that I laughed. He’ll think I encouraged you to be violent.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I really don’t intend to tell him any of this.”
“You shouldn’t do things that you can’t tell your daddy about. If you can’t tell him, you can be damn sure it’s gonna end badly. That’s what I told Marissa. Straightened her right up,” Molly said, maintaining a serious tone and her grin at the same time. “You’re cheering up now, aren’t you? Laughing is good for a girl. I think you should call your band She Laughs. And make music that people can dance to.”
She gazed into the distance, fingering my disheveled hair. “You should’ve seen the way your mother danced. That’s the way I remember her. Dancing at River’s Edge. Nothin’ that happened and nothin’ nobody says about her will ever take that image away from me.” Molly’s eyes flickered trancelike again, but she smiled wistfully. “She found the secret rhythm in the song. People would be jumping around, pushing each other, and your mom’d be standing a little farther back, just swaying. No one went near her, not even accidentally. Tainted skin, my ass—you got untouchable skin just like your mama. People would watch her, sometimes pay more attention to her than the band. The song would end, she’d stop, applaud like crazy, and look at me and crack up. I’m sure she’s still out there dancing, but I bet she don’t laugh like that, not without you and your daddy.”
“And you,” I whispered, the ache in my chest and the echo of Number Eight’s words disappearing. My entire view of River’s Edge had changed. Despite the grimy floors, the stale air, and the onslaught of feedback that filled it, it was a temple. My mother hadn’t gone there in search of boys like I’d always thought, like I’d mimicked. She’d danced on long legs, lifting her bleached hair off of her sweaty neck, closing her sage eyes, and drinking in the music. Her laughter still lived there, waiting to be awakened by a really good song, maybe a song that I would write.
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone Page 5