“Lots of things.” He told her about his exercise routine, about the ins and outs of juicing, about his daily walks in Riverside Park, how furniture building was the perfect way to practice staying present. As he spoke he studied her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her hands. She was just as lovely as the first time he saw her. Even more so. When she turned eighty, he would think the same. “By the way, you look great.”
“I can’t picture you making furniture.”
“It’s an old skill I learned from my uncle.”
“Did you make that chair?”
“Yep.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you. Back to the story. At first, I tried to live simply. Sowing seeds, I guess. Then, I had a conversation with Evangeline.”
“Like the woman from Lost?”
“Much younger.” When Nick and Sassa were together, they spent an entire month watching Lost episodes back to back. Evangeline Lily was her favorite Lost actor. “One night, Fellini and I were hanging out in the cabin and we heard a noise outside. When we went out to investigate, we spotted a little girl, maybe seven or eight, playing in the front yard.”
“Evangeline.”
“She didn’t say much, but what she did say, coupled with a conversation I had with Debbie, changed everything.”
“Debbie?”
“A waitress and a friend.”
“Oh.”
“I slept with her last week as a good-bye and a thank you. She helped me out.”
“How noble of you.” She walked over to the window and joined Nick. Watching a man and a woman stroll down the street arm in arm, she doodled in the dust on the windowsill her version of the Lost smoke monster. “So what did Evangeline say?”
“She said that I was in between and that I needed to get out of the middle so I could touch the sky.”
“What?”
“I had the same reaction. It seemed like gibberish until I replayed it with Debbie.”
She walked back to the sofa, slipped off her shoes, patted the cushion for Nick to join her. Facing Nick, she pulled her knees up to her chest. “Tell me more about Debbie.”
“She’s a waitress at an Italian restaurant. We talked a lot when I ate there. She became my only real friend in Great Falls. At first, she thought that Evangeline meant I was torn between Rachel and you, but that didn’t seem right to me.”
“You were with Rachel when she died.”
“True.” Nick fingered a speck out of the corner of his eye. He really had been with Rachel. How had that happened? Why was so much of life about timing? And luck? He had a sense that, after Great Falls, things were about to change for the better. “Then Debbie thought that Evangeline was trying to tell me that I’ve been between life and death all these years.”
“In the middle.”
“When Rachel died, she could no longer drag me toward life and, instead, tugged me back to the middle, back between life and death.”
“I feel shaky.”
Nick put his arm around Sassa and she rested her head on his shoulder. Touch always calmed her. And him. How did he go so long without touching her? She’d known long before he did that words and ideas were not enough. One of the first of many things he’d learned from her. “That’s how I felt. It was so bad that night that I rushed out of the restaurant.”
“I may follow your lead in a minute.”
“No, no, you definitely want to hear the rest of the story. Okay?”
“It smells like peppermint and lemon in here.”
Nick took a sip of water. The peppermint and lemon: a reminder, a witness. Like Rachel couldn’t miss his graduation. Or rebirth. Like she knew all of her hard work had paid off. “That night, after I left Debbie, I couldn’t sleep. I kept replaying what Evangeline and Debbie had said over and over again. Finally, something clicked. I’d been stuck in between life and death all these years, firmly in the middle. Music, girls, words, movies, even you kept me there. That night I had a choice. Choose life or accept a kind of living death until the real one comes along.”
“You chose life, right?”
“Yes, which for year two of my time in Great Falls meant this.” He handed her a copy of Songs of Love and Loss.
Sassa pointed to the picture on the cover of the album. “Is this your cabin?”
“Yes. Do you want to hear the CD now?”
She opened the jewel case and pulled the booklet out. Thumbing through the booklet, she occasionally paused to read a lyric or a liner note. Staring at a picture of Rachel playing guitar, she asked, “Do you have alcohol?”
He cued up the CD and poured her a glass of wine.
She reached over and pulled his hand across her lap, which she sheltered with her hands through the entire album, pressing harder and softer depending on the song, like she had invented her own form of Morse code. She handed Nick her glass after the first listen. “More wine, please. Play it again.”
After listening to the album three times straight through, Nick asked, “What are you thinking?”
She took a deep breath. “Did you know there are three pigeons on your windowsill?”
“Yeah. I leave them breadcrumbs every day.”
“For sure, each song is beautiful, but together, they form much more.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s such sadness, such love in the music. It’s the best thing you’ve ever done. You need to let the world hear it.” She glanced over at the window. “It’s warm in here. Can you open the windows? Will the pigeons come in?”
“Sure. No.”
He opened the windows. A gush of cool air entered the apartment. The pigeons made their way down to the sidewalk and searched for a new home. With one finger, he erased the smoke monster. He returned and sat on a chair opposite her. “And there’s something else?”
“You loved her.”
“I did.”
“I never pictured that you could love someone else the way you loved me.”
“Love you. I can’t. The most important thing that happened to me in Great Falls is that I affirmed what I already knew.”
“Which is?”
“You’re my true love. I did love Rachel and she’ll always have a part of my heart, but she was with me to help me choose life. She helped pull me out of the middle. And when I did, it became clear that choosing life meant choosing you. You’ve always been home, Sassa.”
“I couldn’t help you transition?” Her voice broke and her eyes teared.
He reached out, palm face up, and took her hand. “In some ways, you’ve been stuck in the middle, too. That’s what I saw in your eyes all those years ago.”
“You mean that wasn’t an elaborate pick-up line?”
“No, not at all. That’s why you had to leave.”
“I guess.”
“I now know the answers to the three questions, and they all lead back to you.”
She rose from the sofa and circled the room, Fellini glued to her side. She stopped at a picture of Nick’s dad for a moment, and touched the glass frame. Bending over, she lifted a kettlebell an inch or two off the floor to gauge its weight. “I don’t know if I can handle you loving someone else the way you loved me,” she whispered.
“Even if she helped me come back to you?”
“How can you know that? It’s a hypothetical. I needed you to pick me.”
“I did.”
“I needed you to pick me when Rachel and I were both alive. Now, I’ll never know.”
“I understand. ”
“You haven’t pointed my way for years.”
“I’m here now.”
“It’s too late. I can be your friend, but never anything more. I’m never around anyway. I’m married to my work.”
“Can’t we try?”
“No.”
“Please, let’s try.”
“Fuck, didn’t you hear me? No! No! No! I wanted you back then and I wanted her out of the way. Don’t you understand? I wanted her out of your lif
e and mine. I even muttered those exact words to myself that weekend right before we drove to the lighthouse, and she did just that. She froze herself in time and placed herself on a pedestal, just like your father. The pedestal even has a name, Songs of Love and Loss. She’ll always be there and I can’t compete with her. I need to leave.” She headed for the door.
Nick followed her and gently spun her around before she could open it. He kissed her forehead. “Don’t go, Sassa. It’s okay, I understand. We can work through this. I love you.”
She tenderly pulled his hands off of her and placed them back at his sides. “No, we can’t. I’m so sorry, Nick. I do love you, but we’ll never be together. I needed you after she died. You left. You disappeared to go find yourself, whatever the hell that means. How could you leave me after something like that if I’m really home? Did you blame me? We could have worked through the loss together. It’s too late now.”
“I didn’t blame you. I didn’t blame anyone. It was an accident.”
“Fuck you, your words, your music. There are times when you should shut up or get angry and scream or do something real. Was any of it ever real between us, Nick, or was all your talk just some ideal bullshit in your head? Don’t you get it? None of us is that noble, truthful, or honest. I can’t measure up. I never will. I’m out of here.”
Nick filled Sassa’s voicemail over the next few days; he texted her repeatedly; he sent her flowers; he wrote her a lengthy email. A few days later, she replied with a text message: Please stop calling and texting me. I need to move on. I can’t be around you now. I have to work. Maybe in time, I’ll be able to see you again, but not now. I’m sorry for everything. I can’t be your second choice.
• • •
Nick was in the middle of recording a guitar track when his recording engineer delivered the news. “Nick, I just received a text from my girlfriend. It looks like you got a review on one of the blogs, ‘Tuner.’”
“That’s surprising.”
“Should we stop?”
“I’m set up in here and I don’t want to mess with the mic positioning. Why don’t you go online and read the review to me?”
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
“Here we go. Songs of Love and Loss by Nick Satterborn. 9.4. While the title is reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, that’s about the only thing that’s derivative on this album, and even the title was a conscious choice. I don’t use superlatives often, but Nick Satterborn has created one of the finest albums of the year or any year. I dare say it’s a masterpiece.
“‘Satterborn’s music and lyrics blend together perfectly on the eleven sparse songs. His decision to use minimal instrumentation and lo-fi recording techniques heightens the overall emotiveness of the album. While I could talk about qualities of each of the songs, and there are many, the album is meant to be listened to in its entirety.
“‘Together, the songs evoke an integrated feeling of sadness, loss, and love that I’m not sure is possible to describe with words. I know it sounds strange, but I felt like I was listening to truth. No masks. No veils. No ego. Just raw truth. All I can tell you is to buy Songs of Love and Loss and listen to the songs over and over again. You won’t regret it.’”
“Maybe I better stop, after all, and come and take a look.” Nick untangled himself from his guitar and headphones. Hand in his pocket, fidgeting with a guitar pick, he made his way toward the control room. Before he’d left Great Falls, he had mailed twenty copies of Songs of Love and Loss to all the major music blogs in the country on a whim, but he didn’t expect any reviews and certainly not positive ones. As he opened the door to the control room, he whistled “Love.”
“You’re going to be famous,” the engineer said.
“I don’t want to be famous.”
• • •
On the heels of positive reviews, Nick and his newly formed band toured around the tri-state area. The venues, hot and sweaty bars and small auditoriums, packed with fifty to two hundred people, focused more on selling alcohol and food than on promoting musical acts. Even so, Nick navigated through the noisy, boozy rooms without fanfare, letting the songs speak for themselves. The crowds seemed genuinely moved. CD sales were brisk after each show; T-shirts sold out.
In each audience, he searched for Sassa. Sometimes he spotted her pushing her way through the throng, but the spot never panned out. Rachel’s death drove Sassa away. Songs of Love and Loss might have been the final wedge between them. The album had been too hard for Sassa to hear. He hadn’t chosen her when Rachel was still alive. How could he ever get her back given all that had happened? The same thoughts cycled over and over.
One night, after a show in Stamford, he brushed against a number of people on his way to the dressing room. They all pressed him for something, an autograph, a photo, a business proposal, a quickie. He signed a T-shirt. He posed for a photo. He gently let a girl down with his standard line. “I’m not ready yet.” Why did girls want to replace Rachel?
He sat down in a stained, worn-down leather chair and recalled a conversation he’d had with Sassa early in their relationship.
“If you ever have to choose between taking care of yourself and taking care of me, take care of yourself,” she’d said.
“I won’t.”
“You won’t take care of yourself?”
“I won’t have to choose.”
“I’m serious, Nick.”
Taking care of himself. That’s exactly what he’d done for the past two years. Had he lost her as a result? He had to do . . .
“ . . . love your work. I’m Maggie. I work with Conan O’Brien.” She handed Nick her business card: Maggie Smith, Executive Producer, Conan O’Brien Show. “I listened to your CD on a recommendation from a friend. I loved it. Your performance tonight was icing on the cake.”
“Thank you.” He didn’t believe her. Didn’t Maggie understand that she was interrupting important Sassa-time? He had already performed once. He had to get rid of her.
“Would you be interested in performing on an upcoming Conan show?”
Not really. Go away. He glanced over Maggie’s shoulder at one of his nodding bandmates, then another in the corner of the room. And another. Fuck. The downside to a democratic band—he’d been overruled. “Maybe. When?”
“Three weeks from now.”
“One song?”
“‘Love.’ It should boost album sales.”
“I don’t really care about that.”
“What do you care about?”
“That’s hard to explain.”
• • •
Nick dreamed up an idea. Instead of playing “Love,” he would compose a new song for the show. He’d pitch it to Conan’s producer as a world premiere. He phoned Maggie and told her what he wanted to do. At first, she hesitated, but after tossing the idea around, she agreed as long as she could first approve the new material.
On his sofa with his guitar across his lap, he opened his notebook and found the partial song he’d written for Sassa when they first met. He played what he remembered of the song: “When love passes through / It will take us home / It will take us home / And these dreams will become real / There I can see the truth of you / Every moment of every day and night.” He shook his head back and forth; the music and lyrics sucked. A complete rework was needed. He glanced at his wall clock. Noon.
He went to work, and gave the song a new title, “When Light Passes Through.” Preserving the chorus melody he’d originally played for Sassa, he rewrote everything else. While he’d envisioned the original song as a simple love song, the new version played deeper and darker, more representative of the ground they’d covered. The lyrics didn’t depict them together; they depicted the dream of being together. They painted a picture of longing.
Eight p.m. He opened the window. The combined smell from a couple of nearby restaurants, soy sauce, pizza, curry, invited him. Starving and humming his new song, he left his apartment to find the pizza. Was the song good enough to pull
her back?
When he returned, he emailed a demo off to Conan’s producer with an attached lyric sheet and a simple note that stated: This is what was hard to explain.
• • •
The day of the show. Chills. A headache. Nick went through his mental checklist, paying attention to every detail—new strings on the OM42 guitar, an extra set of strings, extra John Lennon guitar picks, lyric sheets, appropriate back-up clothes in case he spilled something. He still had Rachel’s Santa Cruz guitar, the one he played on Songs of Love and Loss, but decided to use the guitar he had first played for Sassa years ago at her apartment, his Martin OM42. Would she watch?
A Conan-provided limo drove the band to the gig. When they arrived, Maggie greeted them and showed them where to set up their equipment for the sound check.
“We’ve had a slight change in plans,” Maggie said.
Nick grinned. “We get to go home?”
“We had a last minute cancellation of one of our guests. Would you be willing to play two songs instead of one? That would give you the opportunity for a quick interview between the songs.”
He slid his capo out of his pocket. He opened and closed it a few times. “Two songs are okay.”
“How about if we give you the questions ahead of time?”
“That depends on the questions.”
“Good point. Are you willing to give it a shot?”
He turned to the guys and asked them what they thought. All were enthusiastic. “Okay.”
“One more detail. I hear you have a Newfoundland. Can he join you for the interview with Conan?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“He’s big.”
“I know.”
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “I guess that might help with the nervousness. I’ll see if we can get him here on time.”
• • •
Pressure built in Nick’s forehead. His arms tingled. He leaned against a wall, light-headed. He smelled oil all around him and, for a moment, thought he might blow up. He would never get Sassa back. His short-lived music career would end in a heartbeat, the victim of old fear. His father and Rachel were laughing at him. Why did he think he could leave the middle? It wouldn’t be long until he was back where he belonged.
The Color of Home: A Novel Page 24