I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  “Johnny?” My dad’s arms straightened, pushing me back in order to stare me down. “That scruffy guy who slept on our couch the last couple of weekends?”

  I sniffed and rubbed my damp eyes. “Yeah. The guy who got us the show. We stayed with him this weekend and—”

  “No.” He let go of my forearm so he could jab a finger in my face. “You are not moving to a strange city with a strange guy.”

  That’s when the yelling commenced. The last time my father raised his voice at me was when I’d lit a cigarette in front of him for the first time at fifteen. This argument ended the same way. The purplish red tone in his cheeks faded as he suddenly realized: “If I say no, you’re just gonna lie to me, aren’t you?”

  So when I left the following weekend, Dad and I were on good terms, but I couldn’t look back at him when I drove off. I knew he stood at the top of the driveway in a gray T-shirt and jeans, his wild waves of hair teased by the humidity. He would be unsure of what to do with his hands, like he always was when nervous. The heat would cause moisture to form along his hairline and shirt collar. Watching me not looking back would bring it to his eyes. He wouldn’t lift his anxious hands to wipe the tears away, though; he’d let the heat and the quickly climbing sun dry them. After ten minutes or so, he’d light a cigarette and go inside, yielding to the idea that just as he and my mother had when they were my age, I’d left with no intention of returning.

  I showed up at Johnny’s with two suitcases and four crates full of music. My guitars and amps had gone in Tom’s van and would be delivered to the practice space we’d share with Johnny’s band. After Johnny helped me lug in my stuff, I announced, “This is only temporary and it sure as hell doesn’t make me your girlfriend.”

  “Whatever,” he said, but he couldn’t fight the smile that danced across his lips.

  After two months, I was still living with Johnny and I’d finally stopped correcting people who called him my boyfriend, but I fought my fuck-and-run instincts every time I woke up and found him beside me. I hated feeling attached. I thought about the wounded expression my father tried to hide when the subject of Louisa came up, or how frail my grandfather looked the day of my grandmother’s memorial service. I didn’t like seeing the two men I admired most so weakened, and I was determined—no matter how fun the person or how good the sex—not to care for someone so much that that could happen to me. My relationship with Johnny was based entirely on music and making out. I kept him at arm’s length emotionally. If he asked me how I felt about something and wasn’t referring to a song or a movie or food, I gave him a hard look and changed the subject.

  And if Johnny had been there on the cold November morning when my dad called to tell me my grandfather was dead, I probably would have found an excuse to storm out of the apartment and never come back.

  Johnny’d left for his record-store job half an hour before the phone rang. My father didn’t like that I was going to be alone after receiving such bad news. He only agreed to hang up if I promised to call Regan, which I did, numbly asking her to bring over two packs of cigarettes and “something strong,” without any explanation. It was eleven in the morning, but she went along with my request, no questions asked.

  I still lay in the fetal position next to the phone when Regan arrived. She knelt beside me, wispy strands of her newly dyed lavender hair falling into her worried eyes. She cupped a hand around my shoulder, and I sat up to give her a hug.

  She’d inherited her mother’s silent power of comfort, her fingers falling over my back like a gentle rain. She smelled like sleep, like I’d just wakened her, which I probably had. It reminded me of the times I’d woken in the middle of the night at her house after having the dream about my mother and gone down to the kitchen for a glass of water. Molly always appeared with a warm embrace that coaxed me into talking.

  I’d been having that dream but with a different twist since we’d moved to Chicago. “I have this dream” were the first words I managed to say to Regan. Tears I hadn’t felt myself crying worked their way into my mouth as I began to tell her about seeing my mother at the far end of a bridge. “I walk toward her and get so close that I can see her arms outstretched. So I start running, but when I get a few feet away from her, I can tell she doesn’t even see me. She’s staring in the distance, and then she whispers, ‘Daddy.’ Over my shoulder, I see my grandfather. They hug, and I scream both of their names, begging them to include me, but they never do.”

  Regan continued to stroke my back and tried to make sense of my outburst. “Your grandfather went searching for Louisa, right? Do you think he knows where she is?”

  “Regan, my grandpa’s dead. My dad just called me and I called you and he’s dead. He died all alone and I’ll never see him again.” I choked out the words, sobbing.

  Regan’s chin trembled as if she was going to cry, too. She held me tighter, repeating, “I’m so sorry, Em.”

  Then Regan introduced a method of comfort that her mother never had. “Tequila?” she offered, extracting the bottle of glittering gold liquid from a paper bag.

  I daubed my eyes and allowed a smile. “That’s exactly what I need.”

  Soon we had a nice spread going: saltshaker, lime slices laid out on a plate, ashtray, cigarettes, matches. All we could possibly need. I sat on the floor, Regan across from me, leaning against Johnny’s bed. I was supposed to consider it my bed, too. He’d told me, “Everything here is yours now.” Not that there was much, but the only things I considered mine were the CDs, records, clothes, books, and guitars I’d brought with me. The apartment itself was part mine since I paid rent on it, but that was it. I’d chosen to live with Johnny because it was convenient and I liked the view, but I wasn’t about to get into sharing possession of stuff. I couldn’t go from avoiding any possible romantic relationship to acting like we were married.

  After we’d done several shots, Regan ventured, “Maybe your grandfather didn’t die alone. Maybe Louisa was with him. Maybe that’s what the dream meant.”

  “No, she wasn’t.” I snapped acidly. “Like I told him years ago, she didn’t want to be found.”

  Regan bit her lip. “Emily, why have you always been so convinced of that?”

  My face hardened with indignation. “Convinced? I’m not convinced, I know.”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to make you angry.” She put her hand on mine. “I just mean how do you know?”

  I ripped my arm away from her. “Because …” Fortunately, I didn’t have to go any further. The door opened, and Johnny sauntered in.

  He tossed his hoodie on a chair and gestured at the half-empty tequila bottle. “This is what you do on your days off, huh? How did you get to be ‘the best band in the Midwest’ without even rehearsing?”

  He was joking, but I wasn’t in the mood for it. “Since when did you become our keeper?” I snarled, getting up and stalking past him toward the bathroom.

  “What the hell, Emily?” He reached for me, looking genuinely confused, but I dodged his grasp.

  In the bathroom I scrubbed my face, trying to pull myself together. I could hear Regan’s murmured voice explaining the situation to him, but her question rang in my ears. I knew exactly why it made me so defensive. The idea that my mother was running away from everyone and everything was the thin shield that protected me from the thought that she was running away from me.

  “Em,” Johnny called softly through the bathroom door. “I’m really sorry about your grandfather.”

  I opened the door to face him. “I’ll be fine,” I said curtly, shrugging off his attempt to hug me and moving toward the closet to shove some clothes in a bag. “I’m going to the practice space now. I won’t be back till late, and I’m leaving early tomorrow for St. Louis.”

  Some people decide to profess their love for you at the most inappropriate time. Johnny was exactly that type. At the last rest stop before St. Louis, I dug into my bag for my Loreena Campbell tape. Knowing I would listen to it at some point, Johnny had t
ucked the article he wrote about She Laughs and a note inside of it.

  Emily— Regan was right. This was my love letter to you. I hope this doesn’t scare you but rather provides the comfort you wouldn’t let me give by coming with you: I love you. And when you come home, I hope you won’t be so distant. Believe me, caring about someone terrifies me just as much as it terrifies you. Yet another reason we’re perfect together. So please let me in. I promise not to hurt you. Love, Johnny.

  I shredded the note, sprinkling it out the window as I drove over the Mississippi, thinking he had me all wrong. I wasn’t terrified. I was irritated by his attempts to understand me when there was nothing to understand. I slept with him, we lived together, that was all I had to give. Why couldn’t he just leave it at that?

  The next afternoon, my father and I scattered my grandfather’s ashes at the base of my grandmother’s tree. The day was as damp and gray as it had been for her memorial service.

  Some time passed before my father broke the silence. “Ready to go, Em?”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. As we started walking, I glanced over, noticing he’d saved some of the ashes in a small silver box. “What’s that for?”

  “Louisa.”

  “Louisa? How are you going to give them to her?” I snorted as we reached the edge of the bridge that led into the Japanese Garden, koi rioting beneath it.

  “Dunno.” He shrugged and slid the box into the pocket of his leather jacket, then pulled out two quarters. He nodded toward the fish-food machine. I held out my hands beneath the spout as he put his money in. “Figured maybe she’d want it someday.”

  “You’re never going to see her again,” I said viciously, in order to disguise my hopefulness when I added, “unless Grandpa found her and told you where she is.”

  “He didn’t. He told me that you were right, she didn’t want to be found,” my father stated simply, fighting hard to keep sorrow out of his voice and his dark eyes.

  “Oh.” I felt betrayed by my dream. For a second I’d thought maybe Regan was right and it meant something even though I’d been telling myself for years that believing Louisa would come back was as naive as believing in Santa Claus. Worse, because when you found out that Santa Claus didn’t exist, you felt foolish, but being reminded that you’d never known your mother and never would? That made your heart ache, even if you’d tried to build concrete walls around it like I had.

  “I know he was telling the truth, too. He said if he tracked her down, he wouldn’t let her go without seeing her kid.”

  “Why?” I ambled toward the center of the bridge, hands full of brown pellets. “I wasn’t the one who needed to see her so badly. He was.”

  My dad used the other quarter, food emptying into his big palm. “I think he needed to bring her back to us. So we could all be a family.”

  There was that word again. To everyone else, it was like a puzzle, and they needed Louisa as the connecting piece between generations. Not me, though. I’d grown up fine without her. Whole. At least that’s what I told myself.

  I stared down at the fish that clamored for the food I held. When my dad joined me in the center of the bridge, I told him, “Well, he didn’t find her, and you won’t either, so there’s no point in saving those ashes.”

  After a moment of silence, he whispered, “Your mother loved both of us.”

  I glared at him. I was already aching from the loss of my grandfather; why was he trying to make it worse by making me long for her? I felt my defenses go up and my words came out harsher than I intended. “So what? You think that means she’ll come back? Whatever gets you through the night.”

  Stoically, he shook a few pellets of food down to the waiting fish. “There’s always the chance she’ll come back.”

  “No, she won’t. Love leaves.” I opened my hands, releasing all the food in a rain down upon the koi.

  Dad took my hands and pressed the rest of his fish food into them. I saw the tears glistening in his eyes and felt incredibly guilty. “I want you to know she loves you and I want you to love her.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why, Emily?” he pleaded.

  I cast my hands up, showering fish food all over the wooden bridge. “You know why!” I roared, tears burning down my face. “Because you’re here and she’s not. And I hate myself for wanting her, because she clearly didn’t want me!”

  He threw his arms around me, kept me pinned even though I squirmed and pounded my fists against his chest. “Your mom wanted you as much as I did. She loved you so much that she thought she wasn’t a good enough mother for you. That’s part of the reason she left.”

  “What?” Adrenaline surged, giving me the strength to break out of his embrace. My boots crunched fish food pellets into dust as I backed away. “That’s the good-mother thing to do? Leave? Didn’t she realize that would screw me up worse?”

  “You’re not screwed up, Emily!”

  “Yes, I am, Dad! I wouldn’t even let Johnny console me about Grandpa. He wrote me this love note and I threw it in the Mississippi River. And you know why?” I continued to stagger backward over the wooden bridge as Dad lurched forward, reaching for me. “Not because I don’t like him. He’s smart. He’s gorgeous. He loves music the way I do. He challenges me. He’s exactly my type. But I think that one day he’ll get up in the middle of the night and leave me like Louisa left you. And I won’t let anyone hurt me like she hurt you.”

  “Like she hurt us.”

  His fingers fell around my wrist, but I recoiled sharply, screeching, “No!”

  Then I stumbled over an uneven board and he jumped to catch me. His arms enveloped me and I beat my fists against his leather coat again, but weakly this time. Suddenly, I was crying too hard to fight him.

  Dad just let me sob, my entire body quaking, but he didn’t let me collapse. When I quieted, he said, “Emily, no one will ever break your heart like she did, I can promise you that much.”

  For the first time in my life, I didn’t deny the words, didn’t tell him that she had hurt him and her parents but not me. I took a longing glance at the foggy far end of the bridge and buried my face against his chest in an attempt to stop searching for her.

  He smoothed my hair. “I can’t tell you that love isn’t scary, though. You can’t control what other people are gonna do. Like I couldn’t control it when my eighteen-year-old daughter told me she was moving to Chicago and planned to live with some guy she’d only known for a month.”

  I craned my neck to look up at him. “Dad, I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head, smiling. “No, like I told you, I always knew you’d leave Carlisle as soon as you could. And, yeah, I was concerned about Johnny, but it makes me feel better to know that he loves you. It should make you feel good, too.”

  I nodded and hugged him tighter. Listening to his heartbeat like I always had for comfort as a child, I felt my own heart crack open a little bit. Maybe I could let Johnny in, tell him about my missing mother, admit she was the driving force behind my music and who I’d grown to be. After all, my father was right. There was no way Johnny could hurt me worse than Louisa had.

  SOURED

  After a few months in Chicago, I didn’t recognize my life. And it wasn’t just because when I went outside, I found myself surrounded by towering skyscrapers instead of unending cornfields.

  There was the boyfriend that I never knew I wanted. I grew closer to him every day. He dropped the L bomb again upon my return from St. Louis and I actually said it back. I kept saying it until I meant it. And when his lease went up for renewal in December, I summoned all my courage to sign my name alongside his on the new one. Admittedly, I had to do it with my eyes closed, my signature coming out even more illegible than usual.

  Then there was the success with She Laughs, which was happening the way I’d always dreamt it would. At first it seemed like we’d simply traded our regular shows at an abandoned warehouse for shows at a bowling alley that doubled as a punk club. But when I gazed out
at this new audience (from a much smaller and lower stage than I was used to), I remembered that this was a crowd who had a bunch of other options. There were plenty of other shows, parties, and clubs they could go to, but they chose to see us, and they kept coming back and bringing their friends. When you generated a buzz like that in Chicago, you attracted real attention pretty quickly.

  I’ll never forget the night Johnny busted into the women’s bathroom at the Fireside. We’d just gotten offstage and Regan and I were trying to restore sweat-streaked makeup before the headlining band went on. Johnny shoved through the line of girls waiting for the one functioning stall and nearly crashed into the graffitied wall when he slipped on the slush that people had been tracking everywhere.

  “You have to get out here now!” he demanded, grabbing us both by the wrist.

  No one was particularly fazed by seeing a guy in the girls’ bathroom, but a chick with blue liberty spikes snapped, “Chill, dude, we all want a good spot up front.”

  Johnny was not headed toward the stage, but he did take her advice and collected himself before marching us straight into the back bar, a separate room near the entrance where Regan and I were not technically allowed. He ignored our shouted questions, shushing us as we approached the bouncer, who let us pass when he said, “They’re with me.” When we reached a very flustered-looking Tom and a lanky guy with stars tattooed on his fingers and an unruly, ginger goatee, Johnny pushed us in front of him. “Emily and Regan, meet—”

  “Frank from Capone Records,” I whispered in awe.

  Capone was the biggest punk label in Chicago. Frank warmly shook my hand and said, “I was just telling Tom that I’d love to put out your first seven-inch.”

  It came out just in time for my dad’s fortieth birthday in March. He marveled over that three-dollar record, studying the sleeve, weighing it in his palms.

  “It’s not gold, Dad,” I told him, rolling my eyes, even though I’d done the same thing in private.

  He grinned as he lowered it onto the turntable. “One day it might be. Especially since it’s on the radio now.”