Em's Awful Good Fortune

by Marcie Maxfield

  The first concert I ever saw was with my mom and my older sister. She went berserk, standing on her seat, tears rolling down her cheeks, pulling at her frosted blond hair, screaming. The roar of thousands of teenage girls was deafening. I held on to my mother’s hand the whole time, taking it all in.

  “Did you like it?” Mom asked afterward.

  “It was all right,” I said. All right, like if my birthday and the Fourth of July collided with walking on the moon, like riding a bike downhill, no hands. I intuitively affected the air of nonchalance that would see me through countless backstage, celebrity-shuffling, coke-snorting years.

  “This is not a test,” the facilitator said, handing out multiple-choice questionnaires. She was wearing a smartly tailored kelly green blazer that had lost at least a decade earlier any style points it might once have had. This was the era of shoulder pads and oversize jackets. I was wearing jeans and a Rock the Vote T-shirt.

  “I think she shopped my mom’s closet,” Andra whispered in my ear.

  “I think she is my mother,” I whispered back.

  “Think of this as an icebreaker,” Blazer continued, shooting us a cease-and-desist glare. “I’m just trying to get to know you, and hopefully we’ll all get to know ourselves better in the process.”

  Here’s who we were, me and Andra: radio promo girls, not party girls. We threw the party—conceived, planned, and executed it. Sound check, backstage, after-parties, and the mother of all parties, the block party. That was our baby—balloons and bands, fortune tellers and street dancers. No mimes.

  “Mimes are not rock ’n’ roll,” Pax said. He was the program director, which meant he was in charge of the music. Ten thousand listeners came, plus Andra and I, standing in front of an eight-foot stage, clipboards, headsets, big hair, and megawatt smiles.

  Two days later, we were in Northern Michigan at a team-building retreat, having breakfast in the lodge under deer antlers.

  “Do I have anything in my teeth?” Andra asked.

  “You’re good,” I told her. Andra was my boss, but it felt more like we were best friends. We worked together all day, and at night we attended events together. When we weren’t working, we were sleeping. And now we were roommates.

  “It’s like living in the dorm,” Andra said, wincing at her half-eaten spinach omelet.

  I was nervous about the seminar, but Andra said not to worry, you can’t embarrass yourself in a room full of radio people.

  “The worst that can happen is that you’ve got spinach in your teeth. And we don’t.” She smiled, showing me her teeth again. “Plus, we’re superstars, Em. We totally rocked the D. Ten thousand listeners came to an event that we threw. We made it into the newspaper!”

  “Yeah, but,” I pointed out, “that article was all about how a car got trashed and someone got stabbed.”

  “Front page, Em,” Andra repeated. “Above the fold. Superstars.”

  First question on Blazer’s questionnaire: How much time each week do you spend at the gym? Circle the best answer: 10 percent? 20 percent? All the way up to 100 percent.

  That was easy; I circled 0 percent because I didn’t need a gym. My job was like running a marathon ’round the clock and holidays—especially holidays: Rockin’ New Year’s Eve Bash, Thanksgiving for the Homeless. The last time I had dinner with the family, it was a Saturday night. My brother and sister were there, and I ordered hamburger in a skillet; it’s like a Coney Island loose burger, only upscale at my parents’ golf club, which means minus the chili and with grilled onions and steamed tomato instead. My dad said how great it was to see me, and my mom agreed, saying it seemed like I was always working. That’s when I realized, Fuck, I am working. Tonight! Ticket winners, the station van, bumper stickers to pass out at Harpos on the East Side. How could I have forgotten?

  “So sorry, gotta run,” I said on the fly. “Rain check.”

  “What about your dinner?” Dad wanted to know.

  “Can you cancel it?” I asked, grabbing my purse.

  “But it’s Saturday,” my mother objected, as if work and weekends were mutually exclusive.

  “Love you,” I shouted over my shoulder, blowing her a kiss.

  And I did. Love my mom. But I loved my job more than anything. That job was everything—my paycheck, my social life, my pride and joy.

  How much time each week do you spend working? I circled 95 percent, because a girl’s got to shower. I was thinking I had this test down solid because I ate, slept, and breathed my job. Then we all stood up and Blazer started to weed us out.

  How much time each week do you devote to community activities? “If your answer is over 20 percent,” Blazer said, “please sit down.” One person took a seat. How much time each week do you devote to family? Friends? Self-care? Volunteer at your kid’s school? Spend time with Grandma? Walk the dog? Read something other than work-related materials? Pursue a hobby? Andra, Pax, Timmer, even the shy girl in traffic and the creepy engineer, they all sat down, dropping like flies. And then came the last question: How much time each week do you spend with your spouse or significant other?

  For a smart girl, I could be pretty thick sometimes. I thought sitting down meant you were out of the game. But no, it meant those people had lives outside work. Salsa lessons. Dinner for two. Kids. Even Andra was married. It wasn’t as if that came as a surprise; it’s just that I never gave it much thought until they were all sitting down staring at me, the last one standing. Alone. My cheeks started to flame. It was like that nightmare, the one where you show up naked at a party, only worse. Naked, I could handle. Naked, I looked okay. But feeling this kind of exposed, married to my job, unloved, unfucked, unbalanced—that hurt. My fridge was empty, and now everyone knew. “I have a cat,” I said defensively. I had a mad crush on the sax player in the Urbations; he passed out on my bed fully clothed after a show once. Maybe he took off his bandanna. What percent of your time is spent in pursuit of unrequited love? How come Blazer didn’t ask that?

  Plus, there was a guy, a roadie in LA; he called me in between gigs and girlfriends. He was geographically undesirable, but other than that, we got along great. Once every year or so, we spent 100 percent of ten perfect days together. Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard, Venice Beach, margaritas at El Coyote. It was a long-distance relationship; that should count for something. Sweat pooling under my arms, my shirt starting to stink, my eggs moldy, I could smell myself, and it wasn’t pretty. Turns out you could embarrass yourself, even in a room full of rockdogs. There was something worse than having spinach in your teeth: You could be twenty-nine, without a hobby. And when Blazer talked hobbies, she really meant a normal life. Minivan and a man. I hadn’t realized what I was missing before, but now I wanted it so bad.

  All of a sudden, everyone was trying to fix me up. Andra’s husband had a best friend named Hal, toothpick skinny, with bad skin.

  “He likes you,” she said.

  “I’d marry you if I was into girls,” Timmer said, trying to make me feel better. He had this amazing head of hair: bleached, almost pure white curls; dark roots. And great taste in music—old soul, like the Delfonics and the Dramatics.

  “Please,” I begged, “can’t you reconsider the whole being-gay thing?”

  Pax threw me a bone and offered to send me, in his place, to Los Angeles to interview a headbanger band on satellite radio.

  “Isn’t that your job?” I asked. “You’re the PD, the on-air dude; I don’t know anything about heavy metal.” It was a total mental pass—Ozzy came on the radio, and I punched out.

  “You go, Em,” he insisted. “LA’s not my thang.”

  “How can LA not be your thing?” I joked. “We’re in the music industry; it’s everybody’s thing.” Pax’s scheme had all the markings of Andra playing matchmaker again.

  You told him, didn’t you? I asked Andra. She was sitting at her desk, surrounded by stacks of bumper stickers and T-shirts. Photos of her with rock legends lined the walls. Her office was a fangirl
fantasy.

  A: What? Who?

  E: Pax. You told Pax about the roadie in LA.

  A: Go to LA, Em. Have some fun, get laid, and come home with a tan, girl.

  E: You know if this plan of yours works, if true love awaits, you may need to get a new assistant.

  A: Em, I say this as your best friend and not your boss—if you’re in love with this guy, you should be with him; this is just a job. Really.

  E. It’s the best job ever, though. Us. We’re a team.

  A: It’s still just a job, Em, and it’s not like you won’t find work in the biz in Los Angeles.

  E: You sound like my mother.

  “You girls can have it all, Emma,” my mom always said. Everything she had, plus everything she wanted. “You girls are lucky.” She didn’t mean Andra and me; she meant our whole generation. She made it sound so easy.

  A month later, the roadie and I were sitting on the edge of the pool at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood, dangling our feet in the water. I was still in the dress I’d worn to the radio station: inky, with a raw-edged hem, kind of cool, kind of hip vibe. I was the only girl in the press photo. Everyone else was either a program director or with the band. There were no girl PDs; girls ran promotions, we threw the party, but we didn’t program the show. The roadie had his jeans rolled up, and he was wearing an X T-shirt.

  “You’re so LA now,” I joked. I told him about my day: interview with the band; group photo for the trades; drinks in the back room of an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica; car and driver; and this hotel, the Sunset Marquis, hush and lush.

  “I think Mötley Crüe is staying here,” I whispered. This was a hot-shit rock ’n’ roll day for me, and I told the roadie everything, every little detail, even that my voice had been shaky on-air and my interview questions were lame.

  Who are your musical influences? How did you come up with the name for your band?

  All day long, I had been worried I’d say something (else) stupid and they’d figure out I didn’t know anything about heavy metal. Sitting next to the lead singer, who seemed much taller in person—his pants striped the long way, black and white—I’d been too nervous to eat pasta, worried I’d get spinach in my teeth.

  “This is the most relaxed I’ve felt all day,” I admitted, as we leaned back on the concrete, just me and the roadie, night-sky gazing, the air balmy.

  I guess I should come clean about the fact that the roadie was Gee, and Gee’s not really a roadie, not anymore. He was a roadie when we first met, but after he moved to Los Angeles he started running lights and sound for fashion and auto shows. I teased him about being a weekend punk. He didn’t cut his hair, though, so I could still twist his rat tail around my fingers when we lay down. I liked how safe I felt with him, even riding on the back of his motorcycle in the rain, as if nothing bad could happen to me when we were together. Gee liked being with me, too, although he had a hard time articulating feelings.

  Once, we were walking down Melrose and this wildly awesome woman passed us, tall and thin, with a mess of dreads, yellow blond, piled high on her head like a pineapple. She was pierced and tattooed, ripped and torn. Fierce looking. I was looking at her, thinking, I don’t know if I can compete in LA. It seems like a lot of work just to get dressed in the morning. That’s when Gee said, like he was reading my mind, “You know why I love you, Em?” When I asked why, thinking he was gonna say that I made him laugh or that he felt comfortable with me, this is what he said—he said he loved me because I was normal. He said “normal,” but I heard “average.” He said “normal,” and he meant it as a compliment. He said “normal,” but I’m pretty sure what he meant to say was that he felt comfortable with me. I punched his arm playfully and acted all insulted. He fumbled over his words, trying to walk it back. I made him squirm too. Let him twist on that word choice all day. But I knew what he meant: I wasn’t that girl with a pineapple on her head, wearing a costume, living life like live theater. I wasn’t the girl with the band; I was the girl working the phones behind the scenes, making sure the band had a crowd to play to.

  “I’m starved,” I said. Gee suggested Tommy’s (the original, on Beverly and Rampart) since it was open twenty-four hours, because I am the kind of girl you take to Tommy’s for a burger with everything. At the end of the day, even a pinch-me day like that one, you want to come home to something real. Something grounded. Me and Gee, we grounded each other, we lived in each other’s back pockets like touchstones. A few months later, I moved to LA.

  Nah. That’s not what happened, not even close. That’s the feel-good, book club version of Gee and me. In real life, we were sitting on the edge of the pool at the Sunset Marquis, our legs dangling in the water.

  “A girl could get used to this,” I said, rubbing my foot against his.

  “You should come to LA, Em; you could totally get a gig in the music biz, easy.”

  When I asked if this was his way of inviting me to move in with him, he didn’t say yes. He said, “Sure, why not? You could live with me and Armin.”

  “As what?” I asked.

  I wanted clarification, because I had a roommate in Detroit, named Lulu. She was an artist—she made strangely compelling soft sculptures out of beads and found materials—and we got along really well. I wasn’t looking for a roommate situation, and I already had a great gig. I was looking for something I didn’t have: a life partner. We’d been dancing around this idea of my moving to LA for years; usually it was me on the fence, and mostly because I had a job that I didn’t want to give up, but this time it was Gee who had cold feet, giving me the ‘ex’ girlfriend needs a place to crash treatment.

  The rest of the trip was pretty much a disaster. As bad as it gets. I checked out of the fancy hotel the radio station put me up in and moved into Gee’s apartment in Koreatown, the one with cockroaches of all sizes, babies and big fat mamas—whole communities of roaches—living in their bathroom. I jumped up and down, screaming eeewww so loud the boys thought there was a dead body.

  “Don’t be a girl,” Gee sniped at me.

  Then he disappeared, poof, into the wind, saying he was working, even though it was the weekend, and his roommate, Armin, babysat me, taking me to breakfast at Dukes on Sunset and later to the Hollywood Bowl to watch the orchestra rehearse for free. At night it was the three of us, me and Gee and Armin, at Coconut Teaszer on the strip, for catfish and live music. We stayed up late, the three of us talking music and drinking beer. Then we crashed, in our clothes, the three of us. The next morning, Armin offered to drive me to the airport, the three of us again, and by the time I landed back in Detroit, I was pretty sure Gee and I were stuck in the just-friends bin. When Armin wrote me a love letter saying that Gee was a fool for not appreciating me, it was official: me and the roadie were over, kaput. I grabbed my address book and crossed his name out with a black felt-tip pen.

  A few months later (after he broke up with the girlfriend he hadn’t admitted to having when I was in town), Gee called and said, “Hey, Em, I’ve been thinking about you…”

  And that’s when I told him I was getting married. I don’t know where this came from—perhaps a fierceness that reflected a deeper sense of my own value than I consciously knew myself to possess, my inner pineapple headdress. “This is the year I’m getting married,” I informed Gee, like it was my New Year’s resolution and if I said it out loud, I could make it happen.

  I hope it will be to you, but if it isn’t, it’ll be to someone else.

  I didn’t tell him I had options, didn’t mention the Paper Bag Man, the guy my mom was rooting for, a proper suitor, wooing the hand of his intended by enchanting her mother like a character in a turn-of-the-century romance novel.

  “That man is in love with you,” my mom said, not to mention (but she did, lots of times) paper bags are big business, Emma.

  I liked the Paper Bag Man, but I wasn’t in love with him and I didn’t want to marry him. He scared me. When he said I was the one, I worried he meant I’d
be the one, the only one of us, to fix dinner, or, worse, that he’d want me to quit my job as soon as we had kids. Basically, I was afraid the Paper Bag Man would try to shrink me. Not just change me—shrink, twist, rearrange me.

  I thought the guy least likely to turn me into my mother would be the roadie. If I told you Gee was on the plane two days after that phone call with a ring and an offer of true love forever, you’d probably smell a bullshit Hollywood ending, and you’d be right. What he did was disappear, for weeks—radio silence, like he forgot my number—but the next time he called and asked me to come to LA, he said “please.”

  “Please, Em, I love you and I don’t want to lose you.”

  So I quit my job and followed Gee to LA. I didn’t know, at the time, that I was establishing a life precedent.

  THE HOLE

  The first conversation I had with V was week one at the international school in Paris, and it was about Ruby, now in fourth grade.

  “Of course, we don’t require a uniform,” V said, stressing the word “require” as she stared disapprovingly at my daughter’s miniskirt and crop top.

  “Oh, c’mon.” I laughed. “All the girls in Los Angeles dress like this.”

  She smiled and nodded, didn’t even have to point out that we weren’t in LA anymore. That’s how V operated: She tricked you into stating her case for her, and then she nodded in agreement, like it was your idea in the first place. That slick.

  This time, she pretended she wanted to talk about Rio.

  “There have been several incidents we should discuss,” she said when she summoned me to her office and placed the blame squarely on my shoulders.