I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  Louisa didn’t dare rub her own damp eyes because she didn’t want to take them off of Emily for a second. With Emily’s hair bleached to nearly the same color as her own, she felt as though she faced herself from over twenty years ago. Addressing that mirage more than Emily, she managed her first complete sentence. “I didn’t imagine it happening this way either.”

  A million questions converged on Emily’s tongue, but the one that spilled out was, “Where are you going?” As soon as she asked it, Emily knew the response she craved.

  “Oh … I’m just moving on to the next place.”

  That was not what Emily wanted to hear. Chicago. Wisconsin. Home. She wanted Louisa to say that she’d heard Emily calling her home with her songs. Louisa hadn’t named a specific destination, but Emily knew that home wasn’t it.

  Neither of them could figure out what to do or say next. Emily didn’t sit down, and Louisa didn’t stand up. Emily stared at the back of the pay television attached to Louisa’s chair, and Louisa looked at the flashing arcade game behind Emily. Finally, Louisa asked, “What about you? You’re kind of a big deal now, what are you doing at a Greyhound station?”

  Feeling a surge of hopefulness, Emily clung to her mother’s acknowledgment of her success. “You’ve heard of my band?”

  “Who hasn’t?” Louisa let pride spill into her smile. “You’re good. Really good.”

  “Not that show a few nights ago,” Emily tested, needing to know if Louisa had been there.

  “It was hard to watch,” Louisa murmured, without thinking that she shouldn’t let on that she’d seen it.

  “You were there?”

  “That wasn’t really you, though. I mean—”

  Emily cut her off, demanding feverishly, “Have you seen any of my other shows?”

  “No.” Louisa saw disappointment flicker in Emily’s eyes. Thinking that Emily was concerned about her seeing a bad performance, she quickly stammered, “I know that you’re better than that. I mean, you had your reasons to be upset that night. What people do when they’re upset—it’s not really them.”

  “My reasons,” Emily snorted. “You heard about that crap, too?”

  Louisa thought about her encounter with Johnny just hours ago. How he would probably continue to pursue her daughter relentlessly. How Emily didn’t need to be anywhere near that kind of bad love. “It doesn’t matter. You can rise above it. You’ve got to,” Louisa urged. “You’re amazing. I’ve got both your albums. They’re better than anything I’ve heard in years, probably since before you were born. And I’m not just saying that because you’re my daughter.”

  Louisa’s eyes landed on Emily and darted away. Both women went pale. The word “daughter” hung in the air between them. Louisa had almost choked on it, and it stung Emily, reminding her of how she felt after drunkenly flinging herself into the crowd at that last show. Was it a release from pain or was it something more painful?

  She couldn’t help it—she responded with a barbed remark. “I guess you would know, since you’ve followed rock ’n’ roll all these years, right?”

  Louisa blinked slowly at hearing her decades-old words to Michael thrown back at her. “Yeah,” she mumbled, “that’s what I do.”

  Emily wanted to scream at her, So, why didn’t my music bring you home? But she couldn’t even look at Louisa. She glanced at the clock near the ticketing area. Her father’s bus would arrive soon. When she turned back to Louisa, she found herself answering Louisa’s earlier question. “I’m here to meet my dad,” Emily said carefully, training her eyes on her mother. “He heard about what happened the other night and couldn’t reach me, so he went all the way to Vancouver, where I was supposed to play last night. Now he’s on his way here. To take care of me.”

  Louisa flinched and swallowed hard, her voice small. “He’s taken good care of you. I knew he would.” Panic exploded in her stomach at the mention of Michael. She couldn’t face him. She bent down to retrieve her suitcases, saying, “I gotta go.” But when she stood, Emily blocked her way.

  “No.” Emily shook her head, tears welling up. Louisa had a glimpse of how she’d looked as a little girl, the childhood Louisa had missed. “You can’t just go. It’s not fair,” Emily insisted, a whimper lurking behind her strong words. “You can just pick up a magazine and know all about me. You knew why I freaked out the other night, knew my reasons. I need to know your reasons, too!”

  Louisa anxiously surveyed her surroundings. No one paid attention to her and Emily. A call for the bus to Spokane came over the loudspeaker, and people shuffled into a line next to one that had already been formed for the bus to Portland. A bedraggled young mother just a few feet behind Emily shushed her small daughter, who was clamoring for vending machine candy. “For the millionth time, no. I told you no!” The child’s wail increased in volume.

  Louisa bent back down, slid one suitcase onto its side, and unlatched it. Four black notebooks were stacked neatly in the left corner.

  “I wrote you letters.” Louisa kept her eyes on the notebooks instead of on Emily. “Letter after letter, trying to explain. And I think I finally did in the last letter, which I wrote on your sixteenth birthday. So, umm …” Louisa gathered the notebooks with trembling hands and rose. “You can read about me, too.”

  Emily stared at the stack of notebooks in her mother’s outstretched arms. This was not enough. Louisa owed her a conversation. After all this time. After all she’d put Emily through. She gritted her teeth and said, “I spent a year of my life looking for you. Did you know that?”

  Louisa fidgeted uncomfortably. “You did?”

  Emily nodded. “When my relationship—which you clearly already know all about—ended, I asked Dad to tell me why you really left, but he couldn’t. You mean so much to him. So I went hunting for the truth.”

  Louisa took a deep breath. “What did you find out?”

  Sympathy melted Emily’s cold, jade eyes and filed the razor’s edge from her tone. “I know about Eric Lisbon.”

  The notebooks cascaded out of Louisa’s arms. Two landed in the suitcase, one on the floor, and the other teetered in between, pages ruffled and bent.

  “I’ve been there. Sort of,” Emily said. “I’ve been trapped by someone I thought I loved, threatened. And I know it was worse for you. He raped you. You defended yourself. You felt guilty, but—”

  “I guess you know why I had to leave, then,” Louisa interrupted with a strained whisper. Her eyes returned to the notebooks. “The whole story is in—”

  Emily snatched Louisa’s hand before she could reach for them again. “No, Mom.” Emily’s voice shook on the last word. “I don’t understand why you had to leave me. I understand why you did what you did, and I understand that you felt really guilty about it, but no, I don’t understand how you or anyone could willingly walk away from her child.”

  Louisa stared at Emily’s hand wrapped around her arm. Something about her touch differed from everyone else’s. And then that word. Mom. Louisa felt faint. Emily’s grip was the only thing holding her up. She dangled, a fish on the end of Emily’s thin but sturdy line. “The whole story … ,” she repeated. “The notebooks …”

  “But is the real reason why you left me in those books? I don’t want those books if they can’t tell me that.”

  “You’ve already figured it out. The reason. Eric. Guilt.”

  “No.” Emily shook her head adamantly. “That’s not good enough. Dad loved you. I … I needed you. There’s got to be more.”

  She studied her mother’s face, the little lines around the corners of Louisa’s eyes and mouth. Did they map out all the places she’d been? Emily lowered her gaze, trying to catch her mother’s, but then she noticed something else. The ring on Louisa’s finger. The tiny diamond set in white gold glistened. It was not the wedding ring that matched the simple gold band Michael had worn for years. Emily thrust Louisa’s arm away from her like it was diseased.

  The fingers on Louisa’s right hand flutter
ed like the wings of an uneasy bird and landed protectively over her left hand as she realized what Emily had seen.

  “Guilt?” Emily ranted. “If guilt kept you away from us, then why didn’t it keep you from moving right on into a whole new life without us? If you wanted a family, you should have come back. Dad waited for you. He’s still waiting for you! And I searched for you. Did I really give up? No, I disguised it as something more productive, touring with my band. And you married someone else? Do you have kids? Did you replace me, too?” Emily spat the questions rapid-fire, but felt her throat close around the last.

  “Emily, no.” Louisa shook her head so furiously it seemed like it could come undone from her neck, fly to the floor, and rattle around like one of the balls in the pinball machine behind Emily.

  Emily’s eyes flew to the suitcase. “I get it. You’re still running. How many families have you started and left? Is that what you’ve really been doing? Find the music, start a family, feel guilty, leave them behind?”

  “No! You are my only baby.” But when she said it, Louisa immediately remembered Nadia, who’d been like another daughter. She’d followed the life of that child for thirteen years, first word, first step, every phase she’d missed with Emily. She was never a replacement for Emily, though, and Finn didn’t replace Michael. “I still love your dad—”

  “Then why are you married to someone else?” Emily shrieked. Her words were muffled by the announcement about the bus to Vancouver. Louisa thought, If the bus going to Vancouver is ready to board, then the bus coming from—

  “Louisa?” Michael choked. Both Emily and Louisa whipped their heads around, as startled as Michael sounded.

  Louisa met brown eyes gashed with pain. He’d clearly heard his daughter’s question. Aside from the sorrow, his face was exactly the way Louisa had imagined it would be at forty-four. The same swooping cheekbones, little laugh lines pressed into his skin with all the smiles Emily had conjured, his curls flecked with gray, and the lips she once thought she would kiss every day of her life.

  Emily’s arms instinctively extended to her father, both protecting him and asking his protection from Louisa’s betrayal.

  “I couldn’t be alone anymore,” Louisa sputtered, tears coursing down her pale face.

  “Then why didn’t you just come home?” Michael asked, keeping his words soft and even somehow, forcing his mouth into a straight line to avoid crying, an outburst of rage, or both.

  He and Emily stood entwined in front of Louisa. With no one to lean against, Louisa slumped into her chair. “I thought you understood, Michael. I know you understand. You can explain it to her, since she knows about … Eric … how afraid I was to hurt her, hurt both of you.”

  “No.” Emily wept, rivulets of mascara streaking her cheeks. “There has to be more of a reason than that.”

  Michael smoothed his daughter’s unruly hair. “Emily, there isn’t. That’s the reason.”

  Emily angrily wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Eric Lisbon raped you. He would have killed you. You did what you had to do. You survived. You had a husband who loved you. A daughter who loved you.” Each sentence came out staccato, no emotion behind the words, but then Emily’s voice shot through with hysteria. “And you left us for twenty-three years? And it’s not like you intended to run into me today. You would have left us forever because of your guilt. You should have fucking faced it! Feeling guilty is not a good enough reason to abandon your husband and child!”

  Hearing Emily’s version of her own life story in such simple terms made Louisa’s whole body quake. “It has to be good enough,” she pleaded softly.

  Michael looked slowly from the gold band on his finger to the ring on Louisa’s hand, then up to her desperate green eyes. “It’s not. God, Louisa”—he sucked air through his teeth, containing his own tears momentarily—“it never has been.” Michael turned to Emily. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

  “I gotta go,” Emily murmured.

  Louisa wanted to rise, to stop her daughter with the same imposing force Emily had used on her moments ago, but she didn’t have the strength to move.

  Michael gripped Emily’s shoulder. “Don’t you leave me,” he whispered uneasily.

  “I’m not. You can come with me, but I’m going. Right now.”

  Michael glanced back at Louisa and she forced herself to address him. “Michael, please wait. Just talk to me for a second.”

  He deferred to Emily, who ducked out of his grasp but squeezed his hand before walking away. He deserved his moment with Louisa, too. “I’ll wait outside,” she told him.

  Louisa watched her daughter go, kept her eyes on Emily’s blond head until she felt Michael’s stare weighing heavily on her. He didn’t speak. His chocolate eyes read plainly, I didn’t ask for this. Any of it. She’d requested to talk to him and she’d have to do the talking. Finally, she managed to say, “She’s perfect. You did such a good job with her.”

  Michael sniffed, cleared his throat. “I did the best I could. She needed you.”

  Louisa sobbed soundlessly, chest heaving. “Now she doesn’t want anything to do with me. She’ll never understand.”

  When Michael dropped his head and shoved his hands into his pockets, it caused Louisa to cry harder. She knew she didn’t deserve comfort from him, but she missed his embrace so much. Gradually, she gained control over her breathing. She and Michael both stared at the ground, at the four notebooks of unsatisfactory explanations that lay between them. Louisa knelt to gather the books and wobbled to her feet, offering them to Michael. “Please give them to her when she’s ready.”

  He nodded, slowly raising trembling hands.

  Louisa cocked her head, trying to coax him into looking at her. “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’d like to write you when I get there. So you and Emily can reach me if you want to.”

  Michael nodded again. His voice shook like his hands. “That’s good. I have twenty-three years’ worth of things to say to you. But my daughter needs me now.”

  Their eyes didn’t meet, but their fingertips touched briefly as Michael took the notebooks. Louisa shivered, treasuring the contact and aching at the way he claimed Emily as his alone. But she couldn’t change that, not for the moment anyway, so she simply said, “Thank you.”

  He exited through the same door Emily had and Louisa dropped into her seat, where she remained until the last call for the bus to Vancouver came over the gravelly intercom. Then she numbly got in line to board.

  “We’re just about out of Iowa. We’ll be flying over southwestern Wisconsin and will begin to make our descent right around Janesville,” the pilot announced.

  Emily lifted her eyes from the brown squares of land carved up by rivers and roads and asked her father, “Will we fly over Carlisle?” They were the first words she’d spoken since finagling a later flight and a ticket for him, and giving up the first-class seat that had been booked for her so they could sit together.

  “Emily … ,” he began, but she stopped him.

  “I can’t talk about it now. I just have to play my show this weekend. I have to do that and do it well because if I don’t …”

  “Emily, if your label is pressuring you …”

  “No!” she bristled. “This isn’t about business or Johnny or … her. It’s about me. This is the thing I have to do right now, ’cause it’s the only thing I know how to do.”

  “I know how that is.” He leaned forward to look out the window with her. “Carlisle should be coming up.”

  Emily studied the patched-together land. “Will you know when we go over it? ’Cause it’s all the same to me. It still looks like Iowa.”

  “No, I won’t know any better than you.”

  She stared contemplatively for a couple minutes. “I think that’s it. I sort of feel like down there’s home.”

  “I thought Chicago was home,” Michael said stiffly.

  Emily turned to him, her green eyes glinting with tears. “I don’t want to be like
her, Dad. I’m not gonna be selfish and stay away from my family just because I have certain feelings that are tough to face. I don’t want to hurt you like she did.”

  Michael bit his lip. “But I helped her hurt you.”

  “You didn’t mean to, though.”

  “Neither did she.”

  Emily resumed gazing out the window. “I think I’ll come home with you after the show this weekend. For Christmas. Maybe if Ian doesn’t hate me, he’ll come. He did call me a couple times in Seattle. Hopefully he’ll forgive me for not calling back. You’ll like those pictures he took of us. And I’ll stay awhile if that’s okay. I need a quiet place to work on the songs for the next record. Maybe we could renovate the basement, make it a home studio. I’ve got money …”

  “Emily, did you hear what I just said?” Michael interjected. “Your mother did not mean to hurt you.”

  “Yes,” Emily hissed begrudgingly. “I heard you, but it’s going to take a long time before I can believe that.”

  After a few more minutes of focusing on the land below, she addressed Michael again but didn’t look at him. “I saw that you took those notebooks.”

  Michael sighed. “She asked me to.”

  Emily accepted his answer with a curt nod. She fell silent momentarily, but curiosity beat out her stubborn desire not to care. “What else did she say to you?”

  “She wanted to write to us, let us know where she goes. I said she could.”

  Hope rose inside of Emily for the first time since she’d stormed out of the bus station, but she couldn’t allow it to pierce her tough exterior just yet. “Does she know that we’re not searching or waiting for her anymore? That she has to come to us?”

  “I think she knows that.” Michael fumbled for his daughter’s hand and she let him take it.

  Emily finally faced her father, holding his gaze with her clear, emerald eyes. The tears that had almost spilled had completely dried. “Okay, then,” she replied with a sense of release, the same feeling she got after belting out her favorite song.