Purple Hearts

by Tess Wakefield

  I was realizing it was no coincidence that Nora had suddenly brought up the idea of musicians being sucked in by their relationships, ruining their art.

  One forgotten Fleetwood Friday did not make Toby a Yoko. And besides, I wanted to remind Nora, Yoko didn’t give enough of a shit about The Beatles to break them up. Yoko had just wanted to make badass conceptual art about clouds and scream into microphones. Toby and I both gave too much of a shit about this band to let our relationship get in the way.

  And, damn, the real sucker of my life force was Luke. The fight we’d had last night stayed with me. Waking up to his screams. The rage behind every word. I knew not all of it was about what I had done. But I shouldn’t have to take the brunt of it. I didn’t say a single word to him before I left for practice. Which took skill, considering I was literally propping him up as he limped to the bathroom.

  Toby reached for my thigh, giving it a squeeze.

  “It was a collaboration between George and Dylan,” I called to her, coughing. “And anyway, the point is the creativity. The creativity was unchanged.”

  “Especially if the artist’s, uh”—Toby cleared his throat—“partner is in the same band. They work to make each other better. You know?”

  “Show me a woman,” Nora said, sitting back down on her amp. “Show me a female musician who didn’t get swallowed by her relationship. Look what happened to Joanna Newsom when she dated what’s-his-face. Or, okay, not musicians, but Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.”

  I thought, while I stared at the Patti Smith poster on the concrete wall, the only decoration we allowed in our rehearsal space, Luke’s the goddamn problem. Not Toby. And Luke is my fault. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I held it.

  “What about Kathleen Hanna and Adam Horovitz?” Toby chimed. “Bikini Kill only grew stronger even though she was living with a member of the Beastie Boys.”

  “Some might even say in spite of.” Nora turned her heavy-lined eyes toward Toby.

  “Let’s play ‘Rhiannon,’ ” I said, hoping this discussion was over.

  “Okay, I’ll say one more thing,” Nora said, holding up one of her ringed fingers. “Artists with other artists is a proven disaster, especially when the woman is more talented than the man. He will try to . . .” She made a choking motion. “Lock her down and make her into his manic pixie dream girl.”

  The tension in the room swelled. “Are you saying we’re more talented than Toby?” I finally asked.

  Nora’s voice got louder. “I’m saying that The Loyal was ours first. . . .” She stopped. “And now that we’ve got a good thing going on, you had to complicate it.” She looked at Toby. “I just wish that you never asked her out.”

  Toby looked back at Nora, an apologetic smile on his face. “We can’t help that we like each other.”

  “No offense, Toby,” Nora said, meaning all offense. “You can like each other all you want, but if you break up and we can’t play the most important show of our lives, I’m going to kill both of you.”

  “Why didn’t you say you had a problem earlier?” Toby asked.

  “Do you really want to know?” She looked at me, then at Toby, then back at me, her ponytail swishing on her back. Neither of us answered. “Because I didn’t think Cassie would get this serious with you. All things considered.”

  “What are you saying?” Toby asked.

  I could feel blood rushing to my face, my gut throbbing. “Toby’s been with us one hundred percent from the second he auditioned, even before we, whatever. What do you want to do, kick him out so I can date him?”

  “I have stake in this band, too, now, Nora. No matter what happens with Cassie,” Toby said, glancing at me.

  “Fine,” Nora said.

  Then she pressed her lips together, and she looked at me for several seconds, unblinking. Nora had been there when I’d pushed Tyler away, when I’d reconnected with music, when I’d come to the conclusions about myself that made me want to form The Loyal with her in the first place. I need to make my own space from the ground up, I’d told her. Dating my drummer, especially now that I shared my futon with my fake husband, was not exactly making my own space.

  She began setting up her instrument.

  “And for the record, I did tell Cassie that I had a problem with it. From the beginning.”

  “Why not me?” Toby asked.

  “Because we’re not good friends,” Nora said. She gave him a look like sorry, not sorry. Toby held up his hands in surrender.

  She was being paranoid. We had chanted music comes first, music comes first to each other for long enough that she was having trouble seeing what happened when something else—or someone else—was important, too. There was space for everything, right?

  “We can talk about this later, Nor.” I played the opening chords to “Green Heron” and sighed. “And I’m sorry I forgot Fleetwood Friday.”

  Nora wasn’t looking at either of us, focused on hooking up her bass. “It’s fine. Let’s just play.”

  “Let’s do ‘Green Heron.’ Toby’s been practicing that hard switch after the bridge with me.”

  Plunking her bass, Nora said, “I don’t doubt that he has.”

  Toby sat behind the drum set, banging out a few beats, laughing to himself. “Come on, Nor. There’s no point in speculating what could go wrong. Let’s just have fun.”

  “Let’s see if you can keep up this time,” she said. “Just make sure y’all don’t break up before the Sahara.”

  Toby looked at me, winking. No way, he mouthed. My gut rumbled, defensive. I threw my lighter at Nora a little too hard.

  Luke

  Two weeks in and I was sitting next to Rita in my chair, bouncing a tennis ball on the east wall. We were supposed to be looking for jobs. But every job Rita read from Cassie’s laptop either required a college degree, which I didn’t have, or required the capacity for heavy lifting and movement, which I didn’t have, either.

  Johnno wouldn’t stop calling, even when I answered and told him I didn’t have my severance yet. So I’d turned my phone off. I’d learned to watch the sun as it moved across the floor, memorizing its path. Sun coming through the bathroom, hitting the mat, meant it was around eight o’clock.

  With my phone off, I felt less of the gripping fear I had every time his name showed up on my screen. At least, I told myself, he didn’t know where Cassie lived. At least that part of my burden wasn’t on her shoulders.

  I’d risked powering it up to call Jake a few times. He’d called back once and left a voice mail while my phone was off. The downside to the phone being out of commission was that I might have missed more of his calls, but luckily all the feelings—the guilt, the pain, the fear—went away when the pills did their work. I’d taken four already today.

  Sun that hit the other side of the place, reaching the couch, meant it was around three in the afternoon. At the moment, it was near the wall, shining directly on the plants.

  “Rita, I can tell you right now, it is exactly 11:58 a.m. Look at the time.”

  “Oh, 11:52. Close.”

  “Damn.”

  Rita, currently unemployed, had been hired to “look in on me” for one hundred dollars a week. It was cheaper and easier than a nurse, and it meant Cassie didn’t have to worry about helping me get out of the chair when she had to work late, or go to her boyfriend’s house, which she’d been doing more and more since I bit her head off nearly every time she tried to help me. When the pain went away enough for me to speak like a normal person, I would tell Rita about Jake, about JJ, wishing I were talking to Cassie instead, and then feel guilty and take another pill.

  Rita and I would talk about her son, who was around my age, living in Louisiana and trying to be a chef, and then we’d sit in silence watching Hell’s Kitchen for hours. Rita would order sesame chicken with broccoli to be delivered. Rita didn’t make me do any exercises, which meant I didn’t have to waste my time making my pain worse, and that was really all the exercises seemed to do
. Somehow I could convince myself every time that the pill would make getting up a little more bearable, but it wouldn’t. There was slippage, I would tell myself when I tried to put any weight at all on the leg. The exercises make the slippage worse.

  Rita returned from the kitchen, where she’d warmed up today’s plate of sesame chicken.

  “Where’s yours?” I asked her.

  “I’m burned out on Chinese food.”

  Footsteps on the stairs.

  Cassie entered, kicking off her Converses and socks, humming along to some tune in her headphones, smelling like fresh air. I wondered if I was excited because it was Cassie, or if I was excited because since I’d killed a fly earlier this morning, this was the most exciting thing to happen all day.

  My tongue was feeling loose. Cloud head was descending. “Want some sesame chicken?” I called.

  She paused in the path to her bedroom and looked at me, startled. “What?” She took her headphones off her ears and I noticed for the millionth time that everything was harder than before. I thought of our e-mails, our jokes. Speaking in code, poking at each other, but stopping if it hurt.

  “Oh, I said do you want any lunch? You can have some of this,” I said.

  “I can’t eat that shit,” she muttered, and continued on her way. That’s right. I always forgot. But how was I supposed to know? I don’t know, dumbass, maybe look it up.

  “Well, I should be going,” Rita said. “I’ll leave you kids to it.”

  “No, don’t go—” I began.

  At the same time, Cassie said, “No, Rita, you can stay.”

  “Nah, I gotta go let Dante out.” Rita held up a peace sign. “See ya later, champ.”

  When she shut the door, the room got quieter. I could hear the music pumping from Cassie’s headphones across the room. She kept them around her neck, pressed pause, and continued into the kitchen without a word.

  As I ate, I could hear her take something out of the refrigerator, the sounds of a knife hitting the cutting board. Since I’d moved in, she’d begun to sort of vibrate.

  Or else I just knew her now. Measured steps, water for tea, humming: she had either just played music or had sex with Toby, which I hated to think about. Quick steps and tossing her purse meant she was late and pissed, or looking for something she had lost, which happened a lot; she forgot her phone on her nightstand at least every other day. Slow steps meant she was tired or thinking hard or about to sit down and write music.

  My empty, sesame-sauce-streaked plate sat in my lap. I was about to set it aside, but then I realized Cassie might think I expected her to clear and wash it. Rita usually took care of this part. Well, not today, cloud head said. Cloud head told me I should prove that I wasn’t just an eating, sleeping blob.

  But you are just an eating, sleeping blob, regular head said. You couldn’t keep Frankie safe. You can’t keep yourself safe. What makes you think you’re not going to fuck this up?

  With my good leg, I scooted the chair into the kitchen, plate and fork in hand. Go ahead, try. See what happens when you try.

  Cassie was cutting tomatoes, keeping her eyes on her task. Chop. Chop. Chop.

  Her kitchen seemed to shrink. I was having a hard time steering the chair in the right direction without the use of both hands. I started to sweat, from frustration or effort, I couldn’t tell. Now I was in the middle of the tile, not one foot from Cassie, eye level with her back and ass. Great.

  Either I would have to wait until she was done chopping, or ask her to move so I could get to the sink.

  My thoughts were moving slowly. This was the problem with the “one-thing” function of OxyContin. It seemed to take about three minutes to move from one idea to the next.

  I summoned more cloud head, trying to sound polite. “Could I get by here?”

  She turned, glancing at the plate and fork. “Just give them to me,” she said, reaching.

  “No, no, it’s okay,” I said, moving them out of her reach.

  “Luke, you can’t reach the faucet—” she said, grabbing again, and the movement made me lose my grip on the plate. It fell to the floor and cracked in two.

  “Shit,” we said at the same time.

  She stooped to pick it up.

  “Please, let me,” I said, and the room seemed to expand to normal size again, but too quickly, almost knocking the wind out of my lungs. I heard bullets—no particular sensation had reminded me, and yet I could hear them, just like I could hear the sound of the flag whipping. They’re picking us off from the northwest hill. My voice was distorted again, shaking, this time by something other than anger. Something that came from the same place in my stomach.

  As if sensing it, Cassie rose and stepped away.

  I leaned over in the chair, folding my torso to its limit to grab the plate halves.

  Why did these little things mess with my brain like this? Why couldn’t I just let life pass through me? And of course, because I never left her apartment, Cassie was around every single time this happened.

  I wheeled to a spot next to the counter and set the pieces near an avocado. “Or do you want me to put them in the trash?”

  “Right there’s fine, thanks.”

  She breezed past me. “Do you need the bathroom? I’m going to take a shower.”

  I stayed facing the wall, but I could feel her moving across the room. Good fucking work, Morrow. This was the problem with regular head. Regular head was worse. Regular head sent me nightmares during the day. Cloud head would take over most of the interactions from now on, I decided right then. And I know what you’re thinking, I said in my head to no one. You think it’s because I like the OxyContin. No. That’s not it.

  “Luke?” Cassie called. “Can you hear me?”

  “No, I don’t need the bathroom,” I responded. I needed to defeat my own thoughts. I could be a new version of old Luke. “I mean, no, thank you,” I corrected, reaching for another pill.

  Cassie

  I stayed in the shower longer than normal, turning up the hot water to pelt me raw. Luke was always there, hurting in the quiet, a dark cloud in the house. I felt bad for shoving him on Rita, but after two weeks in the same house, his moods were beginning to affect mine. I had started to write sadder songs, which didn’t quite fit. I had a chance at a record deal, for Christ’s sake. I should have been pushing out hits, or at least joyous, forward-moving songs, songs that bloomed with possibility. I had even started to get annoyed with Toby, as if he should act as a punching bag for my frustration with Luke.

  Mom would have known what to say to lift my spirits, but she had no sympathy for me. When I called, her voice was strained, a cold kind of friendly, like a how are you to the guy who delivers her mail. She would make an excuse to get off the phone before I could tell her much about Luke. She knew just that he was home, and injured. Nothing about how hard it was, how bad things were with him. I’d gotten myself into this mess, I could almost hear her say, and I could get myself out.

  The muscles in my back and arms were aching from holding Luke’s weight. He was supposed to be able to put some weight on the leg by now, but he could still get to the toilet only if I helped him from the doorway, where the wheelchair wouldn’t fit. This morning I had slipped on the wet floor, and my head missed the edge of the sink by centimeters. I had to be more careful.

  I thought of the broken plate. He had to be more careful. Doubt was creeping into my thoughts every day, but I pushed it away. If it was this hard to care for each other when no one else was around, think of how difficult it would be to make it seem like we were a couple in the presence of a real nurse.

  And I still needed his health insurance and the extra thousand dollars a month.

  I thought about how strange it was that after two weeks, he hadn’t asked me to get him anything. He ate whatever was put in front of him. He made sure to never be on my laptop whenever I came home. No requests for certain foods, no new clothes, no boxes from Buda he wanted to retrieve.

  Maybe
that was the problem.

  All he had was the space that I had set up. My books, my records, the dusty trinkets from vacations Mom and I had taken. My schedule, my nonathletic arms to lift him. I should get him a plant, or something, I thought. Something living to be around other than me and Rita.

  I stepped out of the bathroom, glancing at where he had wheeled himself next to the window. He turned to me, but quickly looked away, a tennis ball in his clenched fist. I disrobed in the bedroom, and got ready for work. I’d said I would go in early today to do liquor inventory, get some extra hours.

  On my way out of the room, my eye caught a strange sight on my pillow. Two orange dots I’d never seen before. I looked closer, picking them up. They were small, cylindrical, and made of foam. Earplugs.

  I smiled.

  Luke had gotten me earplugs. Or rather, he had asked Rita to get earplugs for me, so I could sleep through the night without waking up to his muttering through the thin walls.

  The hardness I’d felt toward him dissipated. The pain was not his fault.

  On my way out, I noticed his head had collapsed. He must have fallen asleep.

  “Luke?” I said.

  No answer.

  I approached him, reaching for his shoulder. The muscles near his neck were still hard, knotted now from controlling the wheels. I noticed his buzz cut was growing out into a dark amber color.

  He should get a haircut. And maybe I could help him do some leg bends for a few minutes.

  “Luke,” I whispered, nudging him. He didn’t move.

  Fear cascaded suddenly, fragmented what-ifs jumping to the front of my brain. What if he took too much pain medication by accident? And what followed almost brought tears to my eyes: What if he did it on purpose?

  “Luke,” I said louder, shaking his shoulder harder.

  He snapped awake, craning to look at me. “What?” he said, his eyes hard.

  “Oh, um.” I took a step back, relief flooding. I was worried about you, I wanted to say. “I just wanted to thank you for the earplugs.”