Colette hung her spiky black head. “Because of me.” She reached for Louisa’s hand, then decided against it. “Maybe if you got rid of me …”
“No,” Louisa snapped. “Not because of you. I would have done it no matter what. Don’t you get it? I had nothing left. I betrayed my daughter, my husband. I left them to try to get rid of all my ugliness, but instead I’ve become it.”
Colette was crying, one hand still hovering near Louisa’s, the other rubbing her own eyes, smudging dark makeup across her face. “Let’s go to Boston and get clean. Then maybe I can be the mother Nadia deserves and you can feel good enough to go home. Boston,” she begged, likening Louisa’s failures to her own. “Fresh start.”
“Boston,” Louisa repeated, but she added, “Last chance. Supposed to be a good college town. Maybe I can get my act together. But if I can’t—” She was cut off by Nadia’s shrill wail.
“Oh, baaay-beee.” Colette’s voice became a singsong cleared of the tears. She climbed between the seats, settling beside her child. “What’s wrong? Bad dream?”
Louisa glanced back at them guiltily. “Shouldn’t have told you that story with her around. Probably gave her nightmares.”
“No. She was sound asleep. She just has bad dreams sometimes. It’s normal.” Colette lifted Nadia out of her car seat. Nadia didn’t even open her eyes. Her cry simmered down as she turned her head toward her mother’s body, pressing tightly against her breast. “Just drive and I’ll sing to her a little bit. She’ll be out again in no time.”
Louisa started the car, but before she headed for the highway, there was one more place she needed to see.
When she’d left Michael and Emily, she hadn’t gone directly to Detroit. She’d come to Carlisle first, stopping at River’s Edge, then at the Lisbon house, just as she had this time. And lastly, she’d gone to see Molly. She’d crept inside through the unlocked back door and padded upstairs.
Her footsteps woke baby Regan and Louisa hurried to comfort her on instinct. As soon as she picked her up, Regan quieted, but Molly came running into the room anyway. Seeing Louisa there must have alarmed her. Louisa was supposed to be in Chicago with her own child. Louisa set Regan back in her crib and tried to leave without explanation, but Molly stopped her before she reached the back door.
“What the hell are you doing, Lou?” she demanded.
“I just can’t do it anymore,” Louisa said.
Molly knew she was referring to Eric Lisbon. She tried to reason with Louisa, of course, but guilt is the hardest emotion to convince someone to rationalize.
The dawning sun had streaked the sky the purplish color of a bruise and the roosters down the road had started to crow before Molly gave up. Both her and Louisa’s eyelids had puffed to twice their normal size, their eyes a bloodshot mess from crying. Molly squeaked, “If you just write me, I won’t tell anyone where you are. I just have to know you’re still out there. That there’s hope …”
“Okay,” Louisa agreed, but she refused to hug Molly good-bye because she knew if she did, she’d never let go.
The letters from Molly always came addressed to Louisa Carson-Black, the name Louisa continued to use because she, too, held out the hope that one day she could be that person again. Every time she moved, Louisa sent Molly her new address. She wrote little more than that and the names of the bands she’d been seeing. No I miss you’s. No questions about Michael and Emily. Molly sent her updates on them anyway. As far as Louisa knew, Molly had kept her promise and hadn’t told Michael where Louisa was. But Molly made sure Louisa knew where he was. She included his address every time even though it never changed. By this point Louisa had it memorized.
While Colette cooed to Nadia in the backseat, Louisa cut through the middle of Carlisle. She slowed as she reached Laurel Street and stared up at the tall, gray house that sat perched on top of a hill at the end of a gravel drive. Her eyes filled with fresh tears as she studied the motorcycle parked in front of the garage. It wasn’t the same one, of course. Michael insisted on trading that in for a car as soon as he found out Louisa was pregnant, the car that had finally died on Louisa the previous winter in Minneapolis. Louisa almost emitted an audible sob when she saw the large wooden construction next to the house. A ladder led up one side and, across a short bridge, a slide went down the other; two swings hung beneath. Something Michael had built for Emily, she was certain.
Louisa accelerated suddenly, wheeling the car around in a U-turn.
“Lost?” Colette questioned.
“For a second.”
For ten years, her brain echoed.
Back on the highway, pointed in the direction of Boston, Louisa fingered the most recent letter from Molly, the one Colette had rescued from her mailbox before they left. She’d give it one more shot, send Molly one more change of address. If she couldn’t find the strength she needed to get over the things she’d done—all of them—in Boston, she’d give herself over completely to this sleepwalk dance that took her from place to place. No more writing Molly. No more using Michael’s last name. No more false hope.
BRIDGE
I had this dream. About my mother. A really simple dream, but I’d been having it for as long as I could remember. I see her on the other side of a long, foggy bridge. She looks just like this picture my dad took of her a couple months before she left, bright eyes, blond hair blowing in the wind—except she’s in the shadows, so the color of her eyes and hair are muted, and her skin’s washed out. I run to her, but the distance keeps growing between us and time’s passing, years speeding by. When I finally reach her, she’s an old woman who looks like she’s lived a harsh life. Her face is covered in wrinkles, her flesh is sagging off her bones, and her hair has mostly fallen out, so all that’s left are these pathetic, stringy tufts.
I thought about that dream while I stood in Johnny’s tiny studio apartment, gazing down eight stories at the Kennedy Expressway, reveling in the sheer number of people in Chicago. I could stand there for fifteen minutes and see more people in their cars racing in and out of downtown than lived in all of Carlisle. And I wondered if my mother had driven away from my father and me on that very expressway.
I jumped when Johnny came up behind me and placed his hand, cold from the beer he was carrying, on my shoulder. “You realize you sold out that show.” He referred to our first gig with his band, which we’d finally agreed to do after he hounded us for a month.
“Seriously?” I spun around, snapping back into reality. Still dripping with sweat from the intensity of the show and the hot summer night, I pressed the icy bottle against my forehead before opening it. “I saw it was packed in there, but sold out?”
Regan accepted a beer from Johnny and asked, “How’d that happen? I mean, a few kids from Chicago used to come up and see us, but we never really had much of a reputation down here. Your band must have been the draw.” It was a flattering comment, seeing as the audience had obviously been most enthusiastic about our set. The great show we played must have lightened Regan’s mood, because she had never been so kind to Johnny before. She still acted incredibly wary of him for some reason. But if he kept plying her with booze, he might win her over. She downed half the beer in one gulp and had been eyeing a bottle of tequila on his kitchen counter since we’d come in.
“Well, actually, I didn’t give this to you guys yesterday because I didn’t want to freak you out, but I wrote a review of your last show at River’s Edge, so tonight was pretty well advertised.” Johnny grabbed a newspaper from the countertop that separated his living/sleeping space from his kitchen.
I lunged across the room and snatched it from him. “What page?” I demanded, plopping down between Tom and Regan on the futon that doubled as Johnny’s bed so they could read along with me.
“Fifteen. Normally they have a picture, but I didn’t have one, so …” His voice faded out as I started to read. It was the first article I’d ever seen on my band.
Like most people outside of southern Wisc
onsin, I’d never heard of She Laughs, a three-piece punk band from a tiny town just north of the Illinois state line. I first caught wind of the buzz around them in Madison, Wisconsin, where my band was meeting with some people from Fist Fight Records. [Ed. Note: Look out for the first EP by My Gorgeous Letdown, on Fist Fight, in the early months of 1995.] She Laughs was the topic among several kids on State Street. When I asked one girl about them, she declared them to be “the best band in the Midwest,” a sentiment I immediately dismissed as gross hyperbole. But they were playing a show that night, so I decided to take a detour on my way back to Chicago and check them out at River’s Edge, a warehouse just outside of their hometown, Carlisle.
Both River’s Edge and the area around Carlisle were dubbed a “burgeoning musical mecca” by several of the big rock rags in the spring of 1993 when July Lies came barreling out of that region with their major label debut. Unfortunately, July Lies never got the mainstream status they deserved, and none of their rural Wisconsin contemporaries registered on the radar. But the members of She Laughs were still in high school then. Now singer/guitarist Emily Black, drummer Regan Parker (her older sister is Marissa of July Lies), and bassist Tom Fawcett may be poised to do what July Lies couldn’t.
The warehouse was packed with nearly four hundred people, all of their eyes on Emily Black as soon as she walked onstage. Her long, raven hair emphasized her snow-white skin, but she was no porcelain doll. The bloodred lipstick and tattered vintage dress she wore made her as rock ’n’ roll as the shiny blue guitar she played.
The band’s energy really exploded when Regan clicked her sticks together three times to start the second song, a new one called “Two Miles Down.” The guitar and bass built like a wave, Emily’s voice the crest. “The phone rings two miles away. It’s not over. It’s not over,” she began, soft and angelic. As the music drove faster into the chorus, her voice scratched into a scream. When the song came to its furious end, her darkly lined eyes squeezed shut as she wailed the last “It’s not over.” As she struck the final chord, her eyelids snapped up, revealing eyes as green as all-consuming envy—the envy every musician will feel in their gut when they hear this song and realize that She Laughs truly is the best band in the Midwest. The teenage girl on that bench on State Street was not exaggerating; in fact, she might not be giving them enough credit.
She Laughs has the ability to become one of the best bands period. They play solid, catchy, honest rock ’n’ roll. While the influence of punk is most obvious in their raw, loudhardfast songs, the melodies that lie beneath reveal that they were raised on the Beatles, and a lot of Emily’s guitar work and throaty singing style pay homage to her love of the blues, her voice particularly reminiscent of Chicago blues songstress Loreena Campbell.
She Laughs roared through a thirteen-song set, Regan and Tom laying a hard-hitting backdrop for Emily’s guitar and vocals, her lyrics a perfectly woven web of growled threats and whispered pleas. The crowd sung along with “Temper Tantrum,” “Skin,” and “Hollow Mirror,” some of the oldest She Laughs songs, all of which appear on a well-circulated demo. Spectacular new songs like “Vacancy” and “Two Miles Down” had the audience joining in by the last chorus.
Catch She Laughs’ first Chicago show Thursday, August 25, at Fireside Bowl.
“I’m not that … I mean, I don’t really …” I didn’t know what to say. He’d painted me as an established rock star, an image you would see on a poster or a T-shirt. I felt a surge of pride, but at the same time I didn’t know if I deserved that kind of attention.
Regan was more succinct. “Nice love letter, Johnny.” She smirked, swilling the last of her beer.
He blushed. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked defensively.
Regan laughed. “It’s a great review, don’t get me wrong. And I’m thrilled about the publicity, but it’s all about Emily. The obsession is kind of obvious.”
It was my turn to blush. In an attempt to cover up for it, I shoved Regan playfully as I rose and stalked back to the window. “I’m the singer, dude. People are going to focus on me. Unfortunately,” I added with a slight snarl.
“I really didn’t mean to do that. Maybe it’s just ’cause I’m a singer, too.” Johnny shook off his embarrassment and changed the subject. “Listen, article aside, you guys could really build a reputation down here. There are so many more places to play than up in Carlisle. Would you consider moving down here?”
“Consider it?” Tom exclaimed, coming out of his usual postshow jitters and speaking for the first time that night. “We’ve been planning to leave Carlisle since we were born!” He joined me at the window. Together, we silently plotted how to make the city beneath us clamor at our feet.
Other than daylong excursions to Minneapolis and Chicago, I’d only been outside of Wisconsin twice. People from Carlisle didn’t travel much. I think it was a combination of not having the money to do so and not wanting to deal with what might lie outside their little community. My father, who’d bucked tradition in so many other ways, clung to the unspoken no-travel policy. It was as if that three-year jaunt to Chicago with Louisa had been enough for him. The only two trips we took—in the spring and the fall of 1986, practically ten years after Louisa had left us—were to her parents’ house in St. Louis.
I was a few months shy of ten on our first journey. Though it had been planned for weeks, I was still irritated when my father woke me up at five in the morning and forced me into a flowery dress, white tights, and Mary Janes I didn’t even know I owned. “Where did all this stuff come from?” I yawned grumpily as he laid out what looked to me like doll clothes. I pulled the covers over my head.
He yanked them off. His wakeful cocoa eyes glistened. His face was closely shaven, curls still damp from the shower, and he smelled clean, like Ivory soap. “Molly picked it out when I told her we were going to see your grandparents. We both thought you should look presentable. Put these tights on.”
“Tights are itchy!” I objected, mentally cursing Molly. I’d known my father couldn’t have come up with such a costume alone. It suited him just fine that I dressed like a tomboy. I wrested my blankets back.
“Emily, don’t make me dress you. Put the clothes on and let’s go. It’s going to be a long drive.”
When I emerged into the kitchen, rubbing angrily at my sleep-crusted eyes, Dad was seated at the table, armed and ready for further torture. Standing me in front of him, he brushed my hair thoroughly, spraying detangler, which buried the coffee smell that filled the room beneath its baby-shampoo scent.
“That hurts!” I howled as he attacked my snarls.
“I’m sorry, honey. I just want you to look nice when you meet your grandparents.” He slid his left hand down my long hair. I felt the cold metal of his wedding band against the nape of my neck as he pressed firmly at the roots of my hair.
“Why the hell do they want to see me now, anyway?”
“Emily, do not swear!” He raised his voice, sounding unusually formidable.
I whirled around, causing the comb to tear through the last tangle, and stared at him. Not only was he forcing me to look different, he looked different. His face, with the bow-shaped lips and dramatically arched cheekbones that we shared, was the same, but he wore a serious expression. He’d attempted to tame his wild, espresso-colored waves. He sported slacks instead of jeans, a button-down shirt instead of a flannel, and had even polished the dress shoes I’d only seen him wear to my school conferences. I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at him and repeated my question. “Why do they want to see us now?”
He tried to force his mouth into his usual easy grin and joked, “Maybe they want to meet their hundred-dollar-a-year investment,” but it came out stiffly.
“They don’t have to send me fifty bucks for every Christmas and birthday,” I scowled. “They can’t pay me to look this way, or you either.” I tried to muss his slicked-back hair.
He caught my hand gently, holding it between his palms. His soft br
own eyes met mine. “Emily, I want you to have a family. And since mine’s never forgiven me for running off with your mother—”
“I have a family. It’s you!” I snapped. I had a hard enough time defending that to my peers and teachers. He was supposed to be on my side.
“I know, baby.” He ran one hand halfway down my hair, then cupped my chin. “Of course, you and I are family, but I want you to have more than just me.”
“I don’t want or need anybody but you!”
He smiled sadly. “Your mother’s parents love you—”
“Then why haven’t they ever come to visit? Why don’t they call?” I yanked my hand away from his and folded my arms across my ugly, floral chest, the material much more slippery than the comfortable Tshirts I was used to.
My father sighed. “It’s complicated, Emily. When your mother left, they—”
“What? They blamed her?”
He rubbed his forehead the way he always did when he got frustrated. “No. Emily, will you listen for a second?” he asked in a low, rumbling, serious voice, the only tone of authority I ever responded to. I nodded quietly. “Your grandparents, they felt guilty. They were the ones who came to Chicago and helped me pull myself together. They tried to convince me to move down to St. Louis, which was where they’d gone after your mother and I left Carlisle.”
Even though this was something I hadn’t heard before, I wouldn’t let curiosity stop me from pouting. I squeezed my folded arms tighter. “Why didn’t we move there?” It sounded a hell of a lot better than Carlisle to me.
“Because I knew if I was going to raise a child by myself, there was no way I could do it in a city. I’m not from the city, Emily. I went with your mother to Chicago because that’s where she wanted to go, but it’s not in me. This is where I’m from, this is what I know, and I didn’t know nothing about raising a little girl, so I figured I better do it in a familiar place.” The expression on his face was indecipherable, like he couldn’t decide if he was going to smile or weep.
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