CHAPTER 4
The car lurched forward, and before I knew what was happening, Jonas grabbed the wheel and turned it sharply to the right. “Are you crazy, Jessie? You need to stay within those lines.”
“I told you I suck at driving. I’m never doing it again.”
The evolution of our friendship in the outside world had officially begun. Beyond the hospital doors, Jonas was giving me my first driving lesson.
“If you even went just a little farther to the left, you would have hit that old man on the bike.”
“Do you want the wheel?” I asked.
“Don’t be so pig-headed. You have to practice, but you also have to pay attention.”
How could anyone concentrate on driving with Jonas Levy sitting beside her? And how could I maintain my cool when my palms were sticking to the steering wheel, and I felt more like an octopus with too many arms?
“I’ve told you ten times, you don’t use both feet for driving. The right foot controls the brake and the gas.” I pushed on the gas, hearing the car rumble to life.
“Good, now when you want to brake, move it over to the brake pedal. Put the car into drive and let’s try it again.”
“I don’t know why we’re doing this. I don’t need to drive anywhere.”
“Trust me, you’ll be glad you learned. LA’s a big place.”
I switched into gear and maneuvered the car into the street. We weren’t far from the hospital, a peaceful residential community about to be overrun by thrashing metal. How did he persuade me to venture out of our safe habitat and into this wild terrain anyway? I scanned the street before me. There were no little old men on bicycles to worry about, so I pressed on the gas a little harder.
“Good, ease into it,” he said, as if he’d taught driver’s ed his whole life. “You just might be driving by your sixteenth birthday. A little more practice and you’ll ace the test.”
We approached an intersection at the same time as another car. He said, “You know what to do right now, right, when two cars reach a four-way stop sign at the same time?”
I didn’t answer. I vaguely remembered reading about the rules and regulations meant to keep us from hurting others on the road. Why wasn’t there a manual like that for people?
“You did read the driver’s ed guide, Jess, didn’t you?”
“Uh, parts of it.”
He was visibly irritated with me. “The person on the right has the right of way. That’s you. Now go before this guy does and we hit him.”
I pressed my foot gently on the pedal and began to move into the intersection.
“If you don’t know the rules of the road, you’re not going to pass the driving test. The written component is just as important.”
“I told you, I don’t even want the measly license.”
“Watch out!” he cried out. “Brake!”
“What?” I answered, searching the road ahead of me, frantically trying to follow his direction. And there it was, a tiny little duck crossing my path. I hadn’t even noticed him coming in our direction. With both my feet this time, I defied the rules, desperate for the extra push I’d need to stop the unwieldy beast I commanded. The car stopped short, and Jonas and I lurched forward. Without another word, we unbuckled our seatbelts and switched places.
“Fuck the right of way,” I said, backing up against the seat and throwing my legs up onto the dashboard. “And while we’re on the subject, what’s the deal with neutral? I just don’t get neutral. Why would anyone want to be in neutral? You’re either moving forward or moving backwards. Seriously, this whole right of way and neutral business is too complicated.”
“You’re making it complicated, Jess. It’s a driver’s test. Don’t get so bent out of shape.”
But I couldn’t help it. I was fixated on neutral, and where I wanted to be was moving forward, with Jonas, fast. Typical of him not to notice the deeper meaning in what I was saying.
CHAPTER 5
“How are you feeling, Mr. Levy?”
It was a Friday afternoon, the weekend was upon us, and I’d delayed going home. Visiting the Levy family gave me the fictitious belief that I was no longer alone.
“Old,” he answered.
“You’re not old,” I said. “Mrs. Maxwell down the hall, now she’s really old. She’s fifty-five.”
“Fifty-five?” he laughed, “I’ll forgive you for that one, Jessie.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say you’re old.”
“It’s okay. Unfortunately I feel like a ninety-one-year-old. It’s not good for business, that much I can tell you.”
“What business is that?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters. What did you do before you got sick?”
“Guess,” he said.
“I love guessing games. Banking?”
“No.”
“Lawyer?”
“Do I come across that boring and stuffy?”
“Absolutely not,” I said with conviction. “You’re the furthest thing from boring and stuffy, especially with MTV playing in your room all day long.”
“Why the uptight professions?”
“I see how the doctors and nurses take care of you, how they respect you. I guess I just see you in a position of power, like Blake Carrington on Dynasty.”
“Now that’s a person I’ve never been compared to.”
“It’s not a criticism. Blake Carrington’s a pretty successful guy.”
“Depends on how you define success. For some it’s power and prestige. For others it’s something different.”
“What is it to you?”
“My family.”
“That’s nice,” I gushed.
“You look very happy when you smile,” he noted.
“I was thinking the same thing about you.”
“Then let’s do it more often.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, kindly offering my hand to him, but he was having trouble reaching my fingers with the IV hooked up at an angle that made the stretch painful. His fingers had also turned that eerie shade of blue that Jonas was concerned about. I stretched my arm farther and slid my hand beneath his palm, giving it a friendly squeeze. “There, it’s official. Now, tell me what you do. You’re not some famous celebrity, are you?”
“You are persistent,” he laughed, while a deep cough broke away from his chest. For a brief time, I had forgotten he was sick. “See that?” he said, nodding toward the television. It was MTV again. I was already thrown by his fixation on this new-borne phenomenon and wasn’t sure if it had to do with the network or U2 singing on the screen. “That’s what I do.
“And you see this radio over here?” he said, motioning to the boom box that had been brought in. “That’s part of my job too.”
I had noticed the stereo system, the piles of cassettes, the addiction to MTV, but I figured these were merely hobbies. It never occurred to me that they might make up a profession. Maybe there was hope for me to decide on a career after all.
“Have you heard of Mindy Samuels?”
“Of course.”
“And Chuck Perry?”
“Hello. I’m a teenager in America. Who hasn’t…”
“The Funk Brothers?”
“Oh, my God, I love them. They’re one of my favorites.”
“They’re all part of my job.” He then pointed to the Los Angeles Times that lay beside him. His coughing was getting worse.
“Guess you didn’t read the paper this morning?” he asked.
“Only my horoscope, Dear Abby, and tonight’s television lineup.” This, I hadn’t seen. There it was, a full-page article about the man in the bed.
“I’m too tired, Jessie. It tells you everything you need to know.”
I held the crisp pages in my hand and began to read.
Adam Levy, the music world’s most respected and talented executive, is facing the struggle of his life. Diagnosed early last year with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a life-t
hreatening degenerative disease of the lungs, Mr. Levy is residing in Randalls Hospital in the critical care unit while undergoing treatment for this condition.
Mr. Levy, 49, the reigning president and CEO of HiTide Records, one of the largest and most successful record labels in the business, has stunned the music world with the recent news of his hospitalization. Best known for such acts as the Grammy-award winning Funk Brothers and pop superstar Mindy Samuels, Adam Levy is personally responsible for the success and triumphs of…
I paused from the parade of celebrities to study the picture included in the article. “This is a nice picture of you.” He was a handsome, virile man with a full head of hair, clean lines, and his son’s eyes; only the picture was black and white, so the people of Los Angeles were cheated out of the spectacular color. I continued reading to myself, the words summing up Adam’s Levy life, the beginning, the chances he took, the praise he received.
“It’s unheard of, the type of success Adam Levy has achieved in this transient, ever-changing, fickle music community, but the statistics prove it,” said his long-time rival Blake Friedman of Sony Music in New York. “I should despise the guy for his knack of finding number one acts, but he’s just too decent and human of a guy. Anyone who meets the man can’t say enough about him.”
Doug Henry of Rolling Stone, recently wrote, “Adam Levy is one of the true talents of music media today. He can fine-tune an artist like one might an old piano. He plucks unknowns off the street, hands them over to the right personnel, and before you blink, they are an American Top 40. His gift is one that no other label executive has been able to procure.”
When interviewed by the Times just last year, Adam Levy told reporter Ken Ronberg that the key to his professional success was, merely, “Doing something I love to do.”
Mr. Levy is married to Rachel, his wife of 25 years, and they have two children, Jonas, 22, and Amy, 12.
“They make you sound dead already.”
“They do, don’t they?” he said, sullen and afraid.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve grown to appreciate your inability to filter your thoughts.” The laughter that followed suppressed the idea of him dying and the fact that the man was practically a star.
“You should be very proud of yourself,” I said, not knowing what more to say. There was a stirring within me as if Adam Levy was charting my destiny. “I can be doing my thing, going about my business, and then I hear a song, and it’s like everything can change in an instant, everything I was thinking, feeling.”
“I understand,” he said, “more than you know. Music has taken me back to times in my life I thought I’d forgotten, places I never wanted to forget.”
“Do regular people understand or is that just the gift of the music lover? Sometimes it feels like a curse.”
“Why do you say that?”
I hesitated, choosing my words carefully. “Because just as a song can transport me back in time to a happy place, it can also take me back to a sad place.”
“I’d say that most of the time it’s been a gift. Have you ever just closed your eyes and breathed in a smell and you’re back to that place, wherever it was?”
“Isn’t that just nostalgia?” I interrupted, taken in by his sincerity, the depth at which he obviously experienced things. “You know, how you long for someone, something, or even someplace that made you feel good? But it’s gone?”
He looked at me, saw my secret sadness. “Music does that to me,” he said, kindly guiding us back to the present.
“Me too,” I said. “And movies, they do that to me also, but now I’m not so sure if it’s the movie or its music. Sometimes I fall in love with a movie more because of the soundtrack.
“That’s because the movie has a good music supervisor.”
My mind was racing with possibilities.
“You should pursue music or film if you love them so much. Trust me, if you do what you love to do, you’ll never feel like it’s work.”
I looked at him, thankful that I had the chance to know such a nice person. Then came the imminence of his death, stealing the gratefulness away, replacing it with fear. I had hardly considered the actual death. To me, he was too real to succumb to the darkness that waited.
I was adamant about keeping my cool, but a thought flashed through my brain, a short-lived idea, rather. I had spent the better part of ten years avoiding such intense feelings, and here I sought out a man who made me feel the very same feelings I was avoiding. The realization overshadowed everything else.
“Jessica?” he asked.
I would have welcomed an intrusion by Jonas. This conversation was worse than ones I had with Dr. Norton, primarily because I’d never wanted to open up to her the way I wanted to share with Adam Levy and his unavoidable son.
Let’s not forget just how astute I was, how years and years of practice had taught me to master the game of denial. The storms I’d weathered before this one, this slow drizzle, were far worse. Deep breath. Deep breath. Count to ten, clear the runway, and I was off.
“It’s okay,” I said, wiping the couple of tears that got away. “I’m okay. I’m just sorry that you’re so sick. You’ve been so nice to me, you, your family, it’s just sad to think…”
“You shouldn’t be worrying…”
“Hmmm,” I grimaced.
“This can’t be easy for you, having lost your own dad.”
I stiffened at this. “How did you know that?”
“Your mother.”
“My mother?” enunciating just so, as if she were the devil incarnate.
“It will make it that much harder to say good-bye.”
“I’m not thinking about my father or saying good-bye to you,” I lied.
The coughing began again. He watched me watching him. Tubes were covering his body like overgrown weeds. I handed him some water to bring them to life.
“It must have been difficult for you.”
I nodded, because I knew that was the expected response. I couldn’t say this to him, but as long as he was alive and breathing, I knew that I was safe from the ghosts of my past. As long as I could keep the dialogue going, listen, smile, and dote, then he would remain on this earth. I foolishly believed, as most almost-sixteen-year-olds did, that I had control over whether somebody would leave.
“Don’t be upset with your mother. She loves you very much. She worries about you.”
I shook off the words of affection as if they were a contagious disease. I would deal with my mother and her flitting later.
“Please don’t tell Jonas,” I begged. “He’ll just feel sorry for me and I don’t want his pity.”
“You don’t know my son very well. He adores you.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
The door swung open and Dr. Missed Opp kindly asked me to leave. “Mr. Levy needs his rest,” he said.
Adam Levy finished by saying, “You’re like his little sister Amy; wait until you meet her.”
I know he was trying to be kind, but the worst thing he could have compared me to was Jonas’s sister. “I can’t wait,” I said, getting up to leave.
“Remember what I told you, Jessica, do something you love…”
But the door closed behind me, and his words were cut off, leaving me to wonder how this conversation took such a downward spiral.
CHAPTER 6
I knew my mother was angry with me before I even entered the house. Maybe it was the fact that I was an hour late for my own birthday dinner, the evening she spent hours meticulously planning to include all my favorite things—Beth, a handful of new video releases, and the radio on full blast. How could I explain to her that I would rather be at the hospital with Jonas and his family and that I had no desire to return to the world of the Parkers? Beth seemed insignificant to me; in fact, my life seemed hardly consequential enough to contain the thoughts and perplexities that burdened me. I had already celebrated wi
th the people that mattered: Jonas, Adam, Rachel, and even Amy, Jonas’s prized little sister. She was twelve years old and adorable. I liked her instantly.
Perhaps Mom was just angry because it was the day he left, the day our lives changed forever. My birthday was not a celebration, just a testament to my mother’s loneliness.
The day started out unsettling. Adam’s blood pressure dropped, and his breathing became rapid and shallow. It was my day off, being my sixteenth birthday and all, but in my new profession, there was no such thing as a day off. This new occupation did just that, occupied my living and my breathing. Beth wanted to spend the day together at Venice Beach going over our recent crushes, but I had an agenda that only included the hospital.
I was about to enter Adam’s room when everyone was leaving it, the looks on their faces grim and foreboding. “What’s going on?” I asked, first to Jonas, then to Mrs. Levy.
“Maybe it’s not a good idea for her to be here,” she said to Jonas, eyeing me at first, then lowering her head to Amy. I searched Jonas’s eyes. Mrs. Levy was clearly worried. Amy resembled a Raggedy Ann doll, and not because of her red hair, but because of the way she reached for her mother’s hand.
This can’t be happening again, I was thinking, over and over in my head.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Jonas spoke. “I’ll take a walk outside with the girls. You stay with Dad.” He kissed her softly on the cheek and in a knee-jerk reaction, I brushed my own cheek with my palm.
Jonas, the den leader, led us out of the hospital and to a garden I’d never noticed before. There I was formally introduced to Amy Levy. Her fiery hair was a surprise, as was the unblemished complexion, not a freckle in sight. The green in her eyes was a shade close to her brother’s. “Are you Jonas’s new girlfriend?” she asked.
“No,” I laughed.
“You’re very pretty,” she told me, rather matter-of-factly.
“Thank you. So are you!”
Amy was sweet and inquisitive, with a giggle that sounded more like hiccups. She loved her big brother and was protective of him just the same. If she weren’t only twelve years old, I might have found my new best friend. An aspiring ballerina, Amy dared to go where I never could. I was a great athlete, I’d been told, but I was lacking the discipline, poise, and elegance that accompanied a career in ballet. Besides, a tutu was not my best look.
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