by Vivian Lux
I stood back up and looked in the mirror. I thought I looked fine, but Lowell would probably be able to tell something was wrong. If I could put on a bit of makeup before heading off to the studio, I thought might be able to fool him.
At the thought of heading to the studio, my stomach twisted again and I fell back to my knees and retched into the toilet bowl.
I was twelve when Lowell convinced me to tell my parents what our uncle had done to me. It was the right decision, he said, even though I believed in my heart that I should keep my mouth shut. But I trusted my brother, and so I told.
Lowell said what happened next - the divorce, the breakup of our family, our father leaving us and then later our mother killing herself - had nothing to do with me. I wasn't to blame. My therapists all said the same thing.
But I still believed I should have kept my mouth shut. Better one person be screwed up than an entire family.
After that, I tried to avoid major decisions if at all possible. How can you trust your gut when it leads you so far astray?
The next major decision I made after the one that sent our lives into a tailspin was quite small. All I had to do at fifteen was decide whether I wanted to join a band with my brother. It was a simple yes or no question, but I'll never forget the pain I was in the night after tryouts. Lowell had driven us up into the northern Buffalo suburbs to a house that looked like it was too tired to go on. We played our prissy little private lesson-honed instruments for the Wilder bothers, two punks dripping in sex, charisma and the odor of pot smoke, and they told us we were in if we wanted it. Sleep on it and let them know.
I spent that night doubled over in pain. After much effort, I finally convinced my mother to take me to the hospital, certain that I had suffered a ruptured appendix.
What I learned that night, and what I was slow to relearn every time it happened since then, was that the fear I didn't allow my brain to indulge in, settled instead into my body. That night it was acute gastritis, but since then, before any major life decision, I have fallen victim to migraines, to mono, to phantom floating pains that no Advil can cure.
It happened to me then, and then it happened again and again. And it will continue to happen, until I can feel my emotions with my mind instead of my body.
Ten years later, nothing had changed.
I flushed the toilet one more time and took a deep breath. Then I gritted my teeth and crawled back from the bathroom, ignoring the sloshing and roiling in my stomach. I knew myself well enough to know that if I gave in to this sickness, I would be down for the count for days and I wasn't about to let it win.
My bedspread hung off the side of my bed but it was still tightly tucked in at the bottom. I grabbed ahold of it and used it to haul myself up to kneel against my bed frame and rest my forehead on the sheet.
My phone buzzed by my ear. My brother, texting to check up on me. Always checking in.
Lowell: Want me to pick you up?
Me: I'm going to drive myself, thanks.
There. I'd thrown down the gauntlet. Not only had I not backed out of coming into the studio today, but I also was driving myself. This was the test.
If I could stand up and eat something, then I was okay. Okay people can drive themselves to work and didn't need their brothers to prop them up.
As I hauled myself to my feet, I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror that the designer had artfully leaned against the white wall, so heavy and tilted that it looked like it was holding the whole thing up. My reflection grimaced back to me with a look of pure disgust. "This is fucking pathetic," she seemed to snarl wordlessly at me. "Get the fuck up and stop whining."
I needed a soundtrack.
I swiped through my menus and pulled up my music player. When I fell for something, I fell hard, and lately I couldn't get enough of this new band out of New York called Wrecked. Their front woman, a wailing, red-haired banshee with the stage name of Jane Doe was everything that I knew I'd never be. She was a formidable front woman, dripping in charisma, who smiled prettily and kicked ass at the same time. I flicked on her song "Uttered" and closed my eyes, letting the music buoy me back up again.
When the song ended with a crash, I stood up, threw my shoulders back and stalked out of the room. I was never going to be as good as Jane Doe, and actually, that was a relief. There was strength in self-loathing. The interesting thing about believing you're always wrong while also believing you're a piece of shit is that you go out of your way to prove yourself wrong by not being a piece of shit.
I went to the shower and cranked the hot water up as high as it would go, scalding my skin pink while keeping my mind deliberately blank. Instead of thinking about heading into the studio, I went over my scales. My fingers worked in silent unison as the hot water ran in rivers over my back. As I toweled off, I let the rigidity of the scales fall away and began to improvise, little melodies in my head, themes that I could bring to the studio today.
The hooks, the little melodic flourishes that made the Ruthless catalog stand out? Those were mine. Rane was the songwriter and guitarist, laying down the meat of the songs we played. Keir was the voice, his low, sinister growl climbing up into a bluesman's wail that choked with emotion and brought the female fans to their feet. Balzac was our invisible backbone, his basslines forming the foundation, the ground floor of the skyscraper of rock we'd become. And my brother was the literal heartbeat driving us all forward.
I was more ornamental than that. The keyboards I played floated on the shimmery surface of the songs, polishing them until they gleamed. No one ever mentioned how unnecessary I was to the band. In fact, rivers of ink had been spilled in the music press about how vital my piano flourishes were to making Ruthless the icon it was.
But I felt it. I knew it. I was the gilding on the lily. I didn't need to be there.
Music was my life and it was as necessary to me as the blood that flowed through my veins. But I was not necessary to the music we played. I was going to the studio because I had a job to do and an obligation to my brothers -- both blood related and my brothers in music -- to be there.
Black leggings, black long-line tee and my black Doc Martens -- dressing is easy when everything already matches. At the last moment, I draped the pink scarf over my shoulders, but I did not wind it around my neck. Two pieces of dry toast settled my stomach even further.
I'd passed the test.
I was ready.
Chapter Two
True
I hit the brakes, then coasted the last few feet.
Rory was in the side yard, on her rusted metal swing set, so I watched her as I counted backwards from ten and waited for the anger to pass.
The screen door slammed shut, and I heard Lizzy's feet shuffling. She was carrying something heavy, I could tell by the sound of her footsteps on the walk. She was struggling.
And Rory was home, and watching me from the swing set with her big, round eyes. I couldn't let her see how upset I was.
I hadn't wanted to see Lizzy leaving like this. It would have made it just a tiny bit easier to accept that my marriage was over if my wife -- ex-wife -- just suddenly disappeared from it. Over. A clean break.
Not this.
The last thing I wanted to do after she broke my heart was help her. She wasn't my wife anymore.
But she was still Lizzy.
How could I not help Lizzy?
I slid out of the driver's seat and went over to help my brand-new ex-wife put her suitcase in her car.
"I'm sorry," Lizzy said, eyes cast down. "There was more than I thought there was."
"Haven't I always told you? You have too much shit," I muttered, more coarsely than I wanted. I hefted her battered suitcase into the trunk of the Cavalier.
Lizzy laughed nervously. It was such a familiar sound, her nervous laugh, that little ha-ha she let out that sounded like she was actually saying the words, not laughing. The fakest of fake laughs because she was too scared of losing control to let out a rea
l one. I wondered if she was ever going to feel comfortable enough to laugh out loud.
Once upon a time, I thought I would be the person to free up that laugh. Once upon a time I thought I could be her genuine joy.
I didn't think that anymore.
"Yeah, you might have mentioned that once or twice," she said, her voice softening. "I remember you were saying that back when Aurora was on her way, yelling about how we were ever going to fit another human being in this trailer with all my crap."
I pressed my lips together, not wanting to say anything too mean, then decided, fuck it. My marriage was over. This part of my life -- the one where I tried to be a good husband, tried to be enough for a girl I'd barely known before I put a ring on her finger -- was done. Why mince words?
"Don't start getting all sentimental and nostalgic, Eliza," I said. Lizzy blinked. I never called her Eliza. Lizzy, Liz, ZeeZee, Mama, E-train -- I had a million other names for her at one point.
Always subconsciously trying to turn her into somebody she wasn't.
One of the many reasons why she was putting her suitcase in the car right now.
"I'm not," she said shortly. "But I am sorry, True."
I blinked at the nickname. She hadn't call me True since we first got together, just two horny teenagers figuring out what shit felt good under the bleachers of Canastoga High. These days, the way things had been going, she simply called me Cash. Or rather screamed it.
Lately my name had been Asshole.
"I know you are, Liz. I know you're sorry. Doesn't really stop it from happening though, does it?"
She closed her eyes. "No, I suppose it doesn't." She opened her eyes again. "I'm going to go say goodbye to Aurora now."
"Rory," I corrected her. "Stop calling her Aurora, she doesn't like that."
"It's her fucking name," Eliza said, with a burst of seething anger. "I should know, I'm the one who fucking named her."
That little dig, reminding me that I wasn't there for the birth of our child. Even at the very end, we were still finding ways to hurt each other.
"Whatever," I said. "She'll be over on Friday, like we talked about."
Lizzy blinked. I could see that her eyes were filling with tears. Maybe she hadn't thought I would fight her so hard on custody. But then again, underestimating me had been her biggest mistake all along.
Lizzy went over to our daughter and I swung my leg around, turning my back on them to give my daughter privacy as she said goodbye to her mom.
I stood stock still and tried to eavesdrop anyway, but the squeak-squeak of the swing chains was all I could hear. No matter how hard I strained to overhear their conversation, that squeaking muffled out whatever Rory had to say.
We had both sat down, explained it to her. How she be splitting time between the trailer with Daddy, and Mama's new apartment over on the nice side of town. She seemed to take it all in stride, but who the hell knew with Rory? One minute she was knocking you backwards with grown-up insight, and another minute she was carrying on like a kid much younger than seven years old.
It was our fucking fault, really. I knew exactly what it was like, growing up in a broken home, and here I was doing it to my kid too. Like life was a broken fucking record, caught in a never-ending groove of bad parenting. I used to believe I was smart enough, special enough to break the cycle of broken homes, but here I was, falling in the same trap as my parents and their parents before that. Marrying out of duty and trying to force the love. It doesn't fucking work, and I knew that. I fucking knew that...
I whirled around and slammed my fist down on the trunk of the Cavalier. It rang out, echoing off the tin and vinyl of the rest of the trailers of Lake Breeze Cove.
I swear that echo rolled around and around until Eliza finally slammed her door and pulled away.
Only then did the squeak-squeak of the swing chain stop. I heard footsteps and then felt a little body press into my side.
Without looking down, I pulled my daughter closer as her mother's car slipped out of sight, half obscured by the cloud of dust that seem to fall over her like a curtain at the end of a play. Signaling that pretend time was over.
At the end of everything, Rory reached up and took my hand. "You okay, Daddy?"
I swallowed back the lump in my throat. "Yeah, Princess. I'm all right."
Her momentary maturity couldn't hold out for long. "You don't call me Princess," she ordered me, wrinkling her nose.
I knelt and looked into her gray-blue eyes. She had cloud eyes, I'd always said that. My eyes, but better because they were on her face. "Why not?" I teased her. "You are the sparkliest, glitteriest Princess I know."
She wrinkled her snub nose. "Daddy," she chided me, disgusted.
I snuck quick kiss across her forehead. "Sorry. Not a princess. You're my little lioness. What does the lion say?"
She smiled, and opened her mouth wide, showing me her teeth. "Roar!" she cried.
"Okay, Roar. You up for some ice cream?" I took a deep breath. The dust was settling. The curtain had closed. The cycle continued and I was never going to break free. "Because I sure as hell could use some."
Chapter Three
Piper
Electric Sound Studios was a second home by this point. I walked into the booth, dropped my bags on the floor and unwound the scarf from my shoulders, and sat down in front of my pretty little Yamaha workhorse. I'd spent months scouting out a studio keyboard that gave a real piano sound, and while it was no baby grand, I had real affection for my little keyboard.
"Back in the fucking saddle, boys!" Rane Wilder came roaring into the studio like a freight train, his absurdly booming laugh defying the expert soundproofing. He looked over in the corner. "And girl!" he shouted.
I lifted my hand in a small wave and gave him a nod.
Rane scared me half to death when I first started with the band. He came across as the kind of cocky, strutting, all-male alpha that made my insides tighten up and words flee my mouth.
If Lowell hadn't been in the band with me, I would have quit on the very first day. In the very first minute.
But he was, so I'd stuck around and realized that Rane was actually a good guy. He was too loud and lazy and he had no work ethic whatsoever, but he looked out for me in his own weird way. He seemed to instinctually know when I needed to say something and shut everybody else up so I could make myself heard. I liked that about him, even if everything else about him made me cringe.
Keir Wilder, his brother and the singer for the band came in next. He planted his feet in the center of the room and inhaled deeply. "Ah!" he bellowed. "Smells like home."
"Smells like shit, actually," Balzac grumbled. He set down his precious upright and spoke into the mic. "Yo, who's been eating fish in here?"
"I think it's the new soundproofing," I piped up, pointing.
Keir walked over to the wall, bent, inhaled, winced and stood back up again. "Yup. That's exactly it. Good eye, Pep.
I looked back down at my keyboard. Keir had this way of looking at you where it felt like he could see straight into your soul. Made me feel fucking weird.
I pulled on my headphones and began warming up. The muffled sounds of set-up went on around me, the shouts of greeting when my brother walked in and the monumental amount of shit the guys gave him about the modeling he'd done on the side. My brother grinned and shuffled his feet, letting the Wilder Brothers slap his back so loudly I could hear it through my noise-cancelling headphones. Then Keir shoved Rane and my monitor flipped on.
"You warmed up, Pep?" my brother asked.
I lifted my fingers from the keys. Drills were my favorite. I could play scales for hours, lost in the progressions. It always took me a second to transition to recording.
"Yeah," I said into my mic.
Rane cleared his throat. "So I wrote this way back for Desolation City, but it was utter shit."
"Oh, well that's encouraging," Keir interjected.
"Guys." Alan Lightwell, the tech we'd worked
with for two of our past three albums, came in over the monitor. "We've got two days to rehearse, that's it. Think you can keep the arguments to a minimum?"
"He started it," Rane complained petulantly. He shoved his brother in the shoulder. "Hear him, dipshit? He's telling you to keep your mouth shut."
"I was just wondering why you were bringing old unworkable shit back from the dead, that's all."
Rane threw up his hands. "Alan, you're going to have to get his fiancée in here, the guy won't listen to anyone but her."
"Oh yeah, like I'm the only pussy-whipped Wilder brother."
"Yo!" my brother barked. "Can we play some fucking music already?" He was doing that thing where his knee was bouncing so fast it was blurry. He only did that when his mind was a million miles away. I wondered what he was thinking about.
"So!" Rane continued, like nothing ever happened. "I wrote this shit back for Desolation City, and it didn't work for that album at all, but I'm thinking this is the direction I want to go. Pep?" he turned in a tight circle to face me. "Here's the riff I'm working with."
He played a simple four chord progression with an interesting little staccato stutter step to the rhythm. I nodded along for a moment, and then began to noodle around it, building in a light jazz riff that stretched across the top notes. After four measures, my brother kicked in, laying down a heavy backbeat that grounded the riff instantly. Balzac's bit was the last, a walking blues progression that brought it up to the next level.
Keir was nodding along the whole time, his eyes closed as he swayed in place. He stepped up to the mic and started picking out the melody I'd found, and began growling out a simple refrain. We never finalize the lyrics until the very end, so he was really only making noises. It wasn't anything yet. But it was something. My stomach unknotted. This was good. This was the kind of magic we were capable of when we were really in sync with each other.
Unfortunately, that magic didn't last much longer than that song.
Keir yanked off his headphones. "Take five," he bellowed into the mic.