Rules to Rock By

by Josh Farrar

  “Did that guy give you the scar?”

  “I said forget it.”

  “Okay, fine. So there’s another band at Federal Hill?” I said.

  “Yeah, there’s Jackson’s band, Raising Cain. They’re heavy. They’re all eighth graders. And they’re really good.”

  “So I’ve heard. What grade are you in anyway? You’re sixth, right?”

  “Seventh. But I occasionally allow sixth graders to talk to me.” A quick smile. “Anyway, listen. Even more important is that Jackson Royer is easily the biggest jerk in the whole school. There’s no point in talking to him. He’ll just mess with your head.”

  “Okay, I get the message.”

  Here’s a new rule to rock by, I thought.

  Rock stars don’t let bullies mess with their heads.

  THE CHURCH OF ROCK

  “Hey ho, let’s go!” Xavier shouted the next Saturday morning, processed sugar pumping through his veins. He was skateboarding wildly inside the house, although for once it was for a very specific reason. See, a miracle had taken place: my dad had agreed to take some time off from mixing the Benny and Joon album, and the Cabreras were going on … a family outing.

  “Nick, honey, have you seen the blanket?” my mom asked.

  “Babe, we’re not going camping,” said Dad. “We’re just going for a walk. Right?”

  “I thought we could go to Roger Williams Park. It’s supposed to be beautiful there. I packed lunches.”

  “Roger Williams Park! Roger Williams Park! Roger Williams Park!” X chanted.

  “I said I could take a couple hours off, not the whole day,” Dad said.

  “Whole day off, whole day off!” X had obviously entered a chanting phase, and it was grating on all of our nerves. My nine-year-old brother was starting to act six again. Or maybe five? Not cool. Not cool at all.

  “Nick,” Mom said, “can I talk to you for a second … in private?”

  I had to laugh at that one. There was no such thing as “in private” in our place. Unless they were going to lock themselves in the bathroom and whisper like church mice, X and I would hear every word.

  My mom took my dad’s elbow and steered him toward the kitchen. They actually did a pretty good job, because I just heard a few snippets.

  “… almost finished with it …,” said Dad.

  “… but that was the whole point …,” Mom said.

  “… what puts food on the table …”

  “… not about the money and you know it …”

  “… come to a compromise …”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “… I’ll do my best … you know I love you …”

  “Yes I do … now where is that blanket?”

  Mom walked back toward us. “Okay, kids, we’ve got it all figured out. We’re going to take a walk over to Brown. We’ll do a little window shopping, maybe get some ice cream—”

  “J and J’s Candy Bar, J and J’s Candy Bar!” X chanted the name of a great ice cream place on Thayer Street, one we passed every time we went into town, as he literally tried to run up a wall.

  “Xavier, honey, you need to calm down, okay?” Mom said.

  “Sugar is the last thing X needs,” my dad said, but he said it nicely, ruffling X’s hair and giving him a playful swat on the butt. I could tell X was glad to have my dad’s attention, but it didn’t calm him down at all. If anything, it revved him up even more.

  On the way out the door, Mom tried to take X’s hand, but he twisted out of her grip. He zipped down the staircase, sliding on the handrail like a maniac. So we had it all: parental tension and my brother dancing on the edge of chaos in the key of fourth grade.

  X had never been this bad in Brooklyn. Sure, he had always been a sugar freak. He could get out of control like any nine-year-old. And my parents were horrible at controlling him. But Abuela and I had always been able to calm him down, and when he was mellow, he was an incredibly cool guy. He was hilarious at imitations, he was a great dancer, and he had a ridiculous memory for baseball statistics. How many nine-year-olds do you know who can do the moonwalk while reciting Albert Pujols’s slugging percentage for the last five seasons?

  X was really sweet and considerate, too. Since age four he’d been making his own presents for the whole family on Christmas and birthdays. He’d spend a whole day making cards and collages out of whatever materials he could find in the house: glue, tinsel, toy soldiers, jigsaw pieces, spices from Abuela’s cabinets. But ever since the move all he seemed to want to do was blabber nonsense, skate inside the house, and generally annoy the bejesus out of everybody in sight. I hadn’t had an actual conversation with him in weeks. Nobody had.

  “What a gorgeous day. I feel like I haven’t been outside in ages,” my mom said, apparently trying to steer the SS Cabrera toward some friendlier waters.

  Dad was a half block in front of us, trying to keep up with X.

  “You haven’t,” I said. “You’re making a record. It’s always like this when you’re making a record.”

  “You’re right. It’s been too long. Too long since I’ve spent any time with my daughter, too.” She tousled my hair. “How were your first couple weeks of school?”

  “Do you really want to know? This is the first time since school started that you’ve talked to me for more than two minutes.”

  “Baby, I’m sorry.” She stopped. “Belle?”

  I stopped after a few feet, and she walked toward me. She reached out, about to touch my shoulder, then pulled back.

  “Belle, I promise that things will go back to normal … some kind of normal … when this record is done. I know this move’s been hard on you, and I want you to know that I know that. It’s been hard for me and your dad, too.” Did Dad even notice what state he was in when he was this obsessed? “We’ll all get through this, I promise. So … will you tell me how Federal Hill is?”

  “It’s okay, I guess.”

  I walked on, head down, trying to decide if I was going to let her off this easy. The weird thing is that if I had been in her position, with my band and a new recording studio at my beck and call, I wouldn’t want to be the typical parent, either. I’d just want to be in the studio all day, dreaming up new songs, new sounds.

  “Okay, how?”

  “I mean in some ways it might be even worse than Sunset Park.”

  “What ways?”

  “It’s just thug boys playing tough and girls in halter tops. Rock is dead.”

  “Well, give it time. You trying to find people to play music with?”

  “Yeah. Trying. It’s hard, though.”

  Up ahead, I saw X swinging monkey-style on my dad’s right bicep. Dad turned around and gave my mom a pleading look. She ignored it.

  “It’s never easy, finding people you like and like to play with. Before your dad, I just went from band to band to band. Nothing ever clicked.”

  “Tell me the story again? How you guys met?”

  “Again?”

  “Come on. I like it.”

  I knew that I was still supposed to be mad at my mom. But it was just easier to let her off the hook, and I wanted the story. I needed it. It gave me hope. If Mom had conquered Ronaldo’s first rule of rock, so would I.

  “I’ve told you that story a thousand times.”

  She brushed back her hair and smiled. It was true. I was always asking her to tell me the story of how Benny and Joon came to be. I couldn’t help it. It was like the best VH1 Behind the Music ever. It was romantic and it was about rock ’n’ roll.

  “Okay, okay … It was a little over thirteen years ago. The grunge years. I had just moved to New York from Ohio, and I didn’t know a soul. I used to get up, get a Vietnamese coffee from this little place in the East Village, and grab the Village Voice. This was before the Internet was really that big, so musicians put ads in the Voice when they were looking for band members. Your dad’s ad definitely stood out.”

  “What’d it say?”

  “You’ve probably
got it memorized by now, I’ve told this story so many times.”

  “Come on, just tell it right.”

  “It said, ‘Kurt Cobain’s guitars are hurting my eardrums. Let’s hide out in my room and play pretty records. Sick-of-it-all singer/guitar player seeks bass and drums.’ ”

  “But you play keyboards.”

  “I just liked the ad, and I went for it. I showed up at his apartment … it was right around the corner from me. I didn’t know what to expect. I thought he might be a ninety-pound weakling who hadn’t seen sunlight in years. I didn’t know if he’d be able to play—I didn’t know whether the man would be able to hold a conversation. But I was curious. I couldn’t not go.”

  “So what did you think when you first saw him?”

  “Well, it took him a long time to answer the door, I’ll tell you that much. And when he did, he looked like he hadn’t been sleeping very well. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and he was wearing a white V-neck T-shirt with yellow stains under the armpits.”

  “Gross!”

  “Yeah, maybe. But he was so sweet. And innocent, like a little boy …”

  This I didn’t get. What’s cute about a guy who acts like a little kid?

  “He was holding a to-go coffee cup, and the first thing he did when he saw me was spill it on his jeans.”

  “More stains.”

  “Yeah, more stains. As soon as he recovered, he realized that I was still carrying my keyboard on my shoulder, so he put his coffee down and helped me get it into his apartment. The place was so tiny. And dirty. He was sharing it with I don’t know how many other musicians, and they never cleaned the place. There were dishes in the sink that must have been in there for months.”

  “Wait, I can take it from here,” I said.

  “Okay. Go for it.” My mom laughed.

  “Then he pulled out his guitar and played you a really beautiful song. He had been writing songs since he was sixteen and he’d never really played them for anyone else, so he was super nervous. But you just sat there, and you crushed out on him and the songs he was playing. You started to play along. He liked what you were doing, and he asked you if you could sing. You started to harmonize, and it was awesome. You were just looking at each other like, Is this a dream? Then, after an hour or so, he just leaned over and kissed you like you had known each other forever. Like it was nothing. And then a year later I was born.”

  She laughed. “It wasn’t quite that simple, but yes, we did get serious right away. We didn’t think about it at all. We just went for it.”

  See, my mom can be pretty cool when she wants to be. I just wish she wanted to be a little more often.

  My dad was waiting for us by the time we got to Thayer Street. I tried to picture him the way my mom must have seen him back then. He was still unshaven, still obsessed with music. But he didn’t seem like someone who would lean over and kiss somebody he’d met an hour earlier. He just seemed tired and cranky.

  “Okay, babe, it’s tag-team time. I need a break.”

  X had already run ahead of him by a block and was waiting with puppy dog eyes in front of J & J’s Candy Bar.

  “The kid is pretty whacked today,” Dad said. “You sure ice cream’s a good idea?”

  “It’s my fault. For mentioning it at home,” my mom said.

  We gathered at the shop, ordered ice creams—sugar free for X, not that it made a noticeable difference—and kept moving.

  “Should we say hi to Don?” I asked.

  “Perfect,” Dad said. “Don loves X. Maybe he can surrogate-parent for us.”

  I had been planning for this possibility while my mom was telling the origin myth. We needed a tension breaker. And we couldn’t take a stroll down Thayer Street and not enter the Church of Rock, known to mortals as Don Daddio’s Guitars.

  “I didn’t know you guys ever traveled as a pack,” said Don Daddio as we walked into the store. Three or four guys were hunched over guitars, playing loudly and not very well. It was always like this at Don’s, a mini-orchestra of mediocre guitar players competing for attention.

  “What’s up, Don?” I said.

  “I might not be thrivin’, but I’m survivin’,” Don said. He held his hand out for X, who ran up and smacked out the hardest low five he could.

  “Whoa, this guy is building his strength,” Don said.

  “Belle, hang out with me,” X said, tugging on my hand.

  “I will, bud. In a sec. Why don’t you go to the drum room”—it was his favorite room in the shop—“and I’ll meet you there in a little bit.”

  “Okay, in a little little bit,” X said, running off.

  “Phew,” my dad said. “He is off the rails today.”

  “So, what brings you here, Nick?” asked Don. “You break another D string?”

  “No, I’m good, string-wise. We’re just having a—a family day.” My dad couldn’t even spit out this simple sentence without stuttering.

  When we first arrived in Providence two months ago and my parents were building the studio, we took countless trips to Don’s. Mom and Dad had also said we could hang out at the shop while they were recording, so we’d already spent tons of time there.

  The first thing anyone noticed about Don Daddio was The Hair. Although the top of Don’s head was well on the road to Bald Mountain, he still had a thick mane of dark corkscrew curls that reached all the way down his back. Sometimes he wore The Hair in a ponytail, but today he had on his Don Daddio’s baseball hat and the corkscrews puffed out the sides of the cap like fat angel wings. His big belly pushed up against a T-shirt that read “Born a Rocker, Die a Rocker.” Don was a chubbed-out metal guy who didn’t seem at all bummed that he was several years past his prime.

  “And what can I do you for, Belle?” Don asked.

  A squeal of feedback screamed out of a nearby amplifier. Don winced.

  “Ay ay ay. Excuse me one sec, hon,” he said, waddling swiftly toward the offender, an impossibly skinny white boy with long, spindly legs and a T-shirt that read “One Day I’ll Be Your Boss.” Don put his hand on the fret board of the screaming guitar, and the kid looked up, surprised.

  “Dylan, buddy, you’re killing me here. The Daddios are hard of hearing as it is. You wanna make me deaf before I hit forty-five?”

  The kid looked at Don like he was speaking Swahili. I heard some noise in the back of the shop. X was making a real racket in the percussion room.

  “If you want to turn it up to eleven, you gotta do that at home, okay, kid?”

  The boy nodded sleepily, and Don returned to his perch behind the counter, rolling his eyes.

  “You tell him, Don,” Mom said.

  “Thank ya much, Leah,” said Don. “Belle, I’m guessing you’d like a few minutes alone with that Beatle bass, eh? The Hofner?”

  “Sure,” I said. Duh. I love that bass. That’s the bass Paul McCartney plays! The bass Satomi Matsuzaki from Deerhoof plays! That bass is my dream bass.

  Don walked to the vintage wall, where his most precious instruments were displayed behind glass, and pulled it out.

  “Excellent. The prodigious young Cabrera girl indulges her sixties obsession yet again.”

  There was a loud crash from the percussion room.

  “What in God’s name is that kid doing back there?” Don headed in that direction and my mom gave me a nervous smile.

  With a silent apology to Satomi (my poor bass was sitting at home, and here I was, cheating in public), I plugged the Hofner into an old Ampeg amp. I figured that anything could happen with the mood X was in, so I’d better get my licks in now. That Beatle bass was so sweet! I played some riffs I’d been working on lately, originals, and each note sounded so rich and smooth. It was glorious.

  “Dad, what do you think of this one?” I asked, playing a White Stripes–ish bass line that I thought could make a cool song. “Dad?” It was torture even trying to get him to listen. He wasn’t even looking at guitars; he was just spacing.

  “Oh ye
ah, Belle. That’s nice. Sounds good.”

  “Thanks.” Was he listening or not? This was the problem with Dad. He was pretty good at pretending to clue in—he could put a smile on and nod at all the right moments—but I had the feeling he barely heard a word I said.

  Suddenly, another loud crash from the percussion room. “Oh boy, here we go,” said my dad, going to investigate. I couldn’t hear what was said after that, but he really looked like he was about to lose it when he entered the room. X had probably knocked some drums over or something, and Dad seemed like he was about to cry. My mom and I just stood there nervously. And before we knew it, there was another crash, followed by my dad letting out a truly pained sounding “Owwww!” Then X flew out of the room, zipped by me, and took refuge behind a Marshall stack.

  “He threw a cymbal at my shin.” My dad race-limped out, rolling up his pant leg to inspect the damage. I could see a welt was already forming. “This is family time? What did I do?”

  Yep, that just about summed it up. Together time. Love and kisses. A family outing, Cabrera-style, complete with two kids who were angry beyond words and two parents who didn’t seem to understand why. The only difference between X and me was that he had the courage to actually show how mad he was while I escaped into Beatles songs. I couldn’t wait to get home and play my bass.

  Rock stars just don’t do family outings.

  HAIKU CITY

  I went straight to my “room,” pulled out my cell phone, and dialed Abuela’s number. What would she have to say about the cold, high-ceilinged apartment, the mic stands left in the shower, my parents staying up all night, forgetting to tuck in X, forgetting even to make dinner most nights?

  By the fourth ring, I knew she wasn’t going to pick up. This was the hard thing about trying to call Abuela. She was always home, but she could never get to the phone before the old-school answering machine picked up. It was only six p.m., so I figured she was either doing the dishes, asleep in front of the TV, or blasting an old merengue CD on the boom box in her bedroom. Sure enough, the outgoing message started to play, the same one Abuela had kept on the machine my whole life. Abuela spoke loudly and at a slow pace that always used to drive me crazy when I’d call home. Tonight, though, I didn’t mind. The thought of Abuela recording this years ago, probably reading and rereading the simple message a dozen times to get it right, made me smile.