In Her Eyes

by Renée J. Lukas

  “I mean it.” I glared at him, a warning shot, before storming out.

  I heard him call behind me, “You already blew it for all of us!”

  I gave the other guys a heartfelt speech about us not sinking our career with coke, but all I remembered was the rush of adrenaline after the show and the blurry feeling of me against everyone else in the band. That night, in the smoky haze, I saw myself in their eyes, and it was clear that to them I was the enemy, not the guy supplying them with poison.

  We loaded our equipment and ourselves into the van in silence. As it took off, I thought about what it would take to start a new band, wondering if these guys were just a bunch of losers who would bring me down sooner rather than later.

  “I’m sorry.” It was a suddenly sober, serious Jerry, speaking just behind my right ear.

  I turned around slowly, my eyes filling—I guess I didn’t really want to leave these guys. They were part of my life, my history, a story I couldn’t keep telling without them.

  “You mean it?”

  He nodded silently and sat back, his head bobbing with each pothole.

  I said nothing to Keith, who was driving. When the van pulled to a stop, I stood as tall as I could, leaning against the seat in front of me.

  “I’m leaving the band and all we’ve built unless you all come with me,” I said. “That means we’re done with him.” I pointed at Keith, not looking at him.

  He bolted up from the driver’s seat. “Hey, look, bitch…”

  “Yeah, I know what you think of me,” I said. “I’m not having you tear us up. Jerry?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, opening the back door. He jumped out with his guitar case, followed by Joey. I could tell it was hard for him, but thankfully our dream meant more.

  Tony came next, then Marty. Then me. Luckily the drums and the amps traveled separately with an assistant who had a hitch on the back of his truck. That moment was a mostly quiet, unceremonious show of solidarity. And it meant more to me than I’d ever tell them.

  “This is bullshit!” Keith whined. He climbed over the seats to the back, shouting at the rest of us outside. “Good luck practicing in a dump. You won’t get the warehouse anymore. And Ron’s money? Gone. You’ll be cut off!”

  “Fine!” I shouted. “Your money won’t last long anyway.”

  “Huh?” Keith seemed confused.

  “You’ll snort it all, asshole!” I heard one of the guys laughing behind me.

  Keith stood as upright as he could under the roof of the van. It was hard to look dignified while hunched over. He paused, took a deep breath.

  “No one’s going to go see a dyke bitch,” he snarled.

  “Oh, the one everyone’s coming to see now?” I threw his own words back at him and slammed the van’s rear door. I felt almost light, breathing in the brisk air. I had my family back again.

  That night I got on the phone with Linda and got my manager back too. Of course, it wasn’t that neat and tidy, but that sums it up. A couple of the guys were in and out of rehab, but finally they were all clean. And we were together again.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Adrienne

  Back then gay marriage wasn’t real. We had commitment ceremonies instead. We declared our love for each other and believed it did the same thing as marriage, but it didn’t. It was still an “other,” a separate and unequal act, not recognized under the law. Can you imagine?

  You might even be surprised to know that I didn’t want gay marriage, not at first. I liked having something separate from heterosexuals and saw the whole gay marriage movement as a way to assimilate more into what the straight standard was. After years of having to accept my orientation, my differentness, I had grown to like being different. Before I heard that phrase spoken, I’d never said “gay marriage,” never even thought of the words. I didn’t expect it to be something that would exist in my lifetime.

  So back to my commitment ceremony. We were somewhere in Cape Cod—Yarmouth or Falmouth, something ending with a “mouth.” It’s all a blur because I was nervous. I remember chain-smoking in this beautiful garden, a private place surrounded by greenery, watching clouds of smoke contaminate the pure and fresh leaves, all the while knowing that I was the smoke in this relationship.

  I watched through a break in the foliage as crowds gathered. All at once I got the “fight or flight” feeling, and I wanted to go with flight. Every molecule in my body wanted to run as fast as I could to get a million miles between me and that garden.

  Jerry’s voice was the next thing I heard.

  “Getting cold feet?” From his grin, I could tell he meant it as a joke.

  But I wasn’t joking. I had the most pained expression, one I think he’d seen before.

  “You okay?” he asked, coming closer. His hand on my shoulder only made it worse, more serious.

  “This isn’t a fuckin’ Lifetime movie,” I said, stamping out what would be my last cigarette. At least, that’s what I promised Carmen—no more smoking. I felt like I was dying, suffocating, though not from my cigarettes.

  “That would be an insult to Lifetime.” He patted me hard on the back. “C’mon, this is the best day of your life, right?” His cheery tone was forced, with the same squeaky sound he made when he got a part-time job as a baggage handler at Logan Airport.

  I looked at him blankly. Not even he could fake joyfulness today.

  “You know,” he continued, as if reminding me. “It’s the big day! Isn’t this, like, what everyone says is the greatest day of their life?”

  “Not mine.” I fell to the ground with my head in my hands. I hated to deal with people coming apart around me, so I hated to do this to Jerry. He just happened to be there. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Oh, shit. Please don’t.” He crouched down at eye level with me. Now he seemed worried.

  “I’m not sure,” I said in a barely audible voice.

  “The ceremony is in less than ten minutes.”

  “You think I don’t know that, asshole!” I threw a clump of grass I’d yanked out with my fist into the air. I tried not to get grass stains on my white silk pants. I was wearing a cute little white tux with black velvet lapels. I think my outfit was my favorite thing about the day.

  Jerry let out a long, foreboding sigh. This was that moment when your friend knows you’re fucked, but doesn’t want to tell you he thinks you’re fucked. I knew him so well—every sound, every sigh—there were a million different meanings, nuances, to each one of Jerry’s sighs and groans. This was the despair one.

  “You’re right,” I said finally, rising to my feet. “I’m fucked.”

  “If you’d told me sooner,” he said, “I could’ve gotten you a seat on the last flight out to Copenhagen.” He smiled a little, and I almost laughed.

  We never talked about it again. And I went through with the ceremony. I have the pictures to prove it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Adrienne

  I called myself an out musician, like Melissa Etheridge. But the truth was, I used to have my liaisons in private, in hotels, sometimes in back alleys (yeah, I did that). I was a better “Shane” than the character on The L Word. It wasn’t until I committed myself to Carmen that I realized I wasn’t as comfortable being “out” as I thought I was. When Carmen had to take pain medication for her chronic headaches, I had to call the pharmacy for an interaction question.

  “Hello?” came the businesslike voice on the other end.

  I stumbled over whether to say “my friend” or “my partner” is taking a medication… I managed to choke out “partner” and was surprised at myself. What the fuck was wrong with me? After I hung up, I gave myself a lot of shit about that. You have to understand, it was a different time then. You felt funny letting people know, never sure if you were in a state where most people seemed okay about it or someplace where they’d give you funny looks or whatever. I slammed the phone against the counter, mad at myself that I cared at all.

 
; * * *

  A year later, Jerry and I sat in the Cheers bar after a really great show a few blocks away. It didn’t look anything like the bar on the TV show Cheers, but we didn’t care. We sat at a table upstairs, reveling in the certainty of our success. We knew we were at our peak; the band’s sound was polished in a way it had never been before. Everyone, even our manager Linda, was feeling more optimistic that we’d soon get signed.

  “I’m not gonna tell you how awesome it was,” Jerry told me, wiping his face with a rag. “That’d give you a bigger ego.”

  “You sweat more than anybody I know,” I told him. “It’s kind of gross. Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  He laughed. “Was it because of her?”

  It was out of the blue, his question. It took me a moment to understand, then I knew exactly what he meant. Wow, he could mull something over for a long time. Even more amazing, he knew me. He was a mirror, holding up all the little truths about me, even the ones I didn’t want to see.

  “Maybe.” I threw back a beer and wouldn’t look at him. So he probably knew the answer. “Monogamy isn’t natural. It depends on everything staying the same, and nothing ever does.”

  “You didn’t have to commit to anyone,” he said.

  “I wanted to. I love Carmen, I do. And it’s not like I’d ever have a future with some tight-ass Republican governor.” I couldn’t believe I said that. I gave myself away.

  After a number of terms in the Georgia senate, Robin had made it to the highest office in Georgia. I wasn’t entirely surprised.

  “Not that I’ve been thinking of her that way,” I added.

  He nodded, and we sipped our drinks and picked at a plate of appetizers for a long while without anybody saying anything.

  “Sometimes I wonder,” I finally said, “if we’re meant to make certain choices, or is everything we do just stupid and random.”

  “Stupid and random.”

  “You sound so sure.”

  “Well, think about it,” he said. “I always thought I was supposed to have a dog. So remember, I got that Chihuahua, and I was all like, this was meant to be. Then he started eating my furniture, and I had to take him back. The whole thing made me sick. If I was destined to have a dog, that shit wouldn’t have happened. It was a stupid, random disaster because I picked a sick little fuck for a dog.”

  “You really did.” I remembered how he’d named it Horace, how it growled constantly at him, trying to chew off his ankles. It wasn’t a pretty sight. “I just realized why you never write love songs.”

  We laughed, or I was the one laughing, the sound blending with the happy noise of the bar around us.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Adrienne

  “Marion Mosley, a leading conservative voice in Georgia, is, of course, running to represent Georgia in the US Senate…”

  The news anchor buzzed in the background. Call it morbid curiosity, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn off CNN, especially when they said they were getting ready to hear from Governor Robin Sanders and expecting an endorsement of Ms. Mosley, a conservative cow who was hoping to litter the Senate with more of her backward policies.

  “Some are expecting this to be a lovefest,” one reporter said, “as they are practically identical in ideology, and the word is they had a private meeting last night. So this is most certainly an endorsement speech we’re about to hear.”

  “Why don’t you turn this crap off?” Carmen rubbed her temples, fresh from a hangover. She couldn’t hold her liquor, and last night’s glass of wine had turned into a bottle during one of our arguments. Like me, she hated politics, especially conservatives.

  “Yeah, in a minute.” I pretended to be distracted, but I was laser-focused on everything being said. I had to leave it on. I had to see her. Again. I sat on the couch like stone, in the small living room of Carmen’s apartment, the place we now lived together.

  Back to the TV. The camera had been fixed on an empty podium for a crazy amount of time. The longer the wait, the more nervous I felt. I didn’t know why.

  Finally Robin Sanders came into frame, in a blue pantsuit with a red flag lapel pin. She marched in lockstep with all the politicians who were trying to out-patriot each other. She stood in front of an American flag—the visuals were so obviously, carefully planned out. I wondered if anything in her mind was her own anymore. Maybe they’d put a chip in her head…

  What struck me most was how the timid girl I’d known in college had evolved into this. Sure, the college girl had bouts of strength, even stubbornness, glimmers of what was to come. But it was unusual. It’s so rare you get to see how someone you lost touch with turned out. And here she was, her face so familiar, and yet this person on camera was nothing like the girl I knew. This woman on TV was self-possessed in a way the college girl never seemed to be. Governor Sanders seemed even wily, her blue eyes playing coy with the camera, as if she knew full well her power. She was now in her early forties, like me. I wondered all kinds of strange things, like what or who had made her smile since me. A sensation of ardent longing sliced through my gut, thoughts of missed chances and lost hopes. What I used to imagine for us! Green waves beating behind us as we crisscrossed the sand, Robin complaining the whole time about storms or fire ants or something, being her high-maintenance self. I nearly laughed to myself, but I was left with a swelling lump in my throat, something I couldn’t explain to anyone, least of all Carmen.

  Robin spoke in a clipped Southern accent as she gazed out at the press, which was awaiting her words like she was God coming down from heaven to say what we got right as a human race and what we got wrong. It was all surreal.

  “Why are you watching this?” Carmen pressed.

  “I used to know her,” I finally said.

  “Her?”

  I nodded. “Hard to believe, right?” I didn’t take my eyes off the TV. And now neither did Carmen.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” Robin began, glancing down at what looked like a prepared statement. “Marion Mosley and I have worked together a long time. And in that time, she’s been a staunch supporter of the rights and values of families across America.” She smiled graciously, but there was a sting in her voice that didn’t match her words. I wondered if anyone else caught it.

  Her voice was somewhat husky, laden with an extra helping of smoothness, like silk on top of butter, on top of thick maple syrup.

  “I would, without reservation, recommend Marion to sit on influential boards,” Robin continued. “I would encourage her to continue her efforts in the fight to protect our children from predators and others who would subject them to dangerous lifestyles…”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Carmen squeaked.

  “I would recommend Marion for just about anything,” Robin chuckled, as did some of the reporters when she looked at them. Then she abandoned her paper. “But I can’t, in good conscience, endorse Marion for the US Senate.”

  At that moment, a flurry of cameras flashed, the snaps going off in rapid succession.

  Robin raised her hands. “I know this seems shocking, but I have to say, I have no ill feeling toward Marion Mosley. Let me be clear about that. However, on some issues she’s proven too liberal in my mind, and thus I cannot willingly back her rise to the Senate, because I am not a hundred percent certain she will fully represent the conservative voice in Georgia once she arrives in Washington. I’ll take a few short questions.” She pointed to a reporter in the frenzy of raised hands.

  “What issues specifically do you think Ms. Mosley is too liberal on?” asked a journalist.

  “Namely one in particular,” Robin said. “She did not support my initiative to do away with anti-discrimination acts, particularly for homosexuals. I believe in equal rights for all, but homosexuals shouldn’t be given special rights. In fact, Ms. Mosley stopped just short of supporting the initiative, speaking out against the anti-discrimination act but then doing nothing. As I’ve said before, talk is cheap. You have to foll
ow it up with action.”

  “Oh, my God.” I felt myself get so light I wasn’t in my body for a minute. “What the hell!” I heard myself say these things, but Carmen said I didn’t. Maybe I just thought them loudly in my own head. I nearly slid off the couch. I don’t think I heard another word of the press conference. I remember Carmen clicking off the TV, saying something about “not listening to any more of this shit,” but my head was swimming so much I’m not sure.

  It was clear that although Robin had the same face and the same name, as I’d suspected, she had definitely been replaced with someone else.

  I continued to stare at the black TV screen.

  “You used to know her,” Carmen repeated suspiciously.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You didn’t just know her, did you?”

  When I couldn’t look at her, that seemed to answer her question. Of course she was raging mad, and I had to remind her that I hadn’t even met her yet when I knew Robin. At the same time, I think she was just a little bit fascinated too.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Adrienne

  Being controversial was the way to get noticed. And Robin Sanders achieved that. Her rise to fame made it so that I could hardly go a day and not see her on a news program. Even if I wasn’t watching TV in the apartment, her face would be splashed on the TV screen of a place where I’d pick up some coffee or at a bar, everywhere I went. Sometimes other customers waiting in line behind me would talk to each other, loud enough so I could hear: “Can you believe this bitch?” Luckily, Boston was a liberal town. That’s one of the things I’d grown to love most about it.

  Of course it wasn’t long before I saw Robin again on a news show. She was being interviewed in a windy place, and I caught a glimpse of her hair blowing and tall green pines swaying behind her in the shot. I wrote some new lyrics for a song that night. It was so easy to forget the woman I’d seen at the press conference. It’s funny how we can imagine only the person we want and edit out anything we don’t like.