Steven laughed. “Susi the folkie, huh? It goes well with all that bread-baking and gardening you took up.”
“You won’t be mean about it, Steven? I mean, it’s silly of me, but at the same time it’s thrilling to sing again.”
“What’s this resurrecting lover’s name?”
“Jason. But we aren’t lovers. It’s different from that.”
“You started out saying you were ‘sort of involved.’ When does that not mean ‘lovers’? Did you fall for him, but he didn’t fall for you?”
“No. He wants to marry me. That’s what he keeps saying anyway.”
“Whoa. We go from ‘sort of involved’ to getting married? How long has this been going on and you haven’t told us?”
“Just a couple of weeks. It seems longer, and more intimate, because of the music. I don’t want to marry again, as ideal as Jason makes it sound.”
“It’s difficult to start a relationship with two opposing ideals.”
“That’s the problem, Steven. We’re too different from each other, and it would never be suitable.”
“Meaning that he’s a hillbilly slob who sings twangy music?”
“No, we’re compatible around music, but we’re from two different worlds. You know I grew up in the classics. And that I believe in salvation through hard work.”
“You’re a presbyterian extremist, it’s true.”
“He plays and writes pop—sort of twisted rock-and-roll versions of the roots material Dad has.”
“What about the hard work part?”
“That I worry about. He has no visible means of support.”
“Maybe he’s rich and can indulge a hobby. You knew plenty of people like that in your former work.”
“He just plays in a bar band. From what I can tell, they never have any engagements, because the whole band is free to rehearse every single night.”
“You’re rehearsing with a rock-and-roll band?”
“Yes. They like my singing.”
“Ask him where his money comes from.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. Just do it.”
“If I start asking him questions, then he can ask me questions, too, and I don’t want that. I want him to like me for what I am, without having to consider what’s missing.”
“You don’t want to marry him, but you want him to like you. There’s an ‘and yet’ hanging in your voice.”
“After seeing Logan today, it’s made me conscious of why I worry.”
“Do he and his friends use drugs? Drink? They must all smoke.”
“Jason doesn’t let anyone drink in rehearsal, and no one except the bass player smokes. He lives in his friend’s basement and takes the bus everywhere or walks. I see him giving money to odd people on the street and waiters in restaurants—a lot more money than you tip someone. He says it’s debts from card playing. Friday night, the police had him in a patrol car for ten minutes. I don’t know if it’s drugs, but it’s not how grown men behave.”
“Is he like Logan in any way?”
“No, he’s always alert.”
“I think I’d like to meet this man. I’m out of town all week. How about Saturday?”
“He’ll be at my house when we get home tonight.”
“You have a date?”
“We were supposed to meet tonight. So I’m sure he’ll come looking for me. Why don’t you come to my house for dessert? I’ll show you the music we’re singing.”
~
When we came home, there were no messages or other sign that Jason had come by. All I had to give Steven was a few of the lemon squares I’d made to take to Ian’s. So we ate those and drank tea while we looked at the lyrics and notation I’d made for Jason’s songs.
“What does this sound like when you sing it?”
“Perhaps not so interesting when it’s a cappella.”
“Let me hear.”
“All right. Promise you won’t tell Dad.”
I sang, and Steven listened thoughtfully.
“Susi, you have to tell Dad. It’s cheating that he doesn’t know you’re singing.”
“I don’t know if it’s real yet. It happened so fast. Maybe it’ll turn out that I can’t sing after all. I don’t want to break Dad’s heart again.”
“You have never broken his heart, Susi. You’re projecting your own feelings on him. Anyway, I want to meet your new beau, to see if I can understand what’s going on with your mystery man.”
We said good-night, and I tried to calm down after taking that risk, singing in front of Steven. I saw the lighted dial on the clock too many times between midnight and three o’clock.
Jason never left a message, but I found the single rose on my doorstep again in the morning.
57 ~ “Dark As a Dungeon”
SUSI
AFTER SCHOOL, ANGELIA DISAPPEARED when the bell rang, so I had to beg Randolph to give me a ride to my brother’s, who wanted me to use his car while he was out of town. The ride across town with Randolph was not pleasantness to stand on its own, without comparison, and unfortunately my brother chooses to live on the north end of lower Queen Anne, which necessitates driving all over creation to get to his house.
Randolph began harassing me before we left the school parking lot.
“Won’t you come for dinner this Friday, Susi? My grandmother has been asking after you.”
“Friday? I don’t think I can.”
“Another night then? Thursday?”
“No, I’m engaged all week.”
“Doing what, Susi? You’ve been unavailable, ever since—”
“Yes?”
“Since Angelia’s cousin came to town. Are you having an affair?”
“It’s not your concern, but no. I was unavailable before then. You just chose to disregard what I’ve been saying to you. I’m not interested in being in a relationship.”
“That doesn’t account for how you are at school. You’ve missed most of your committee meetings. You haven’t been to a faculty meeting since early April. You don’t have time at lunch to eat with any of us. It’s as if you’ve abandoned your job.”
“That is not true. I don’t have time at lunch because I’m meeting with students. The committee meetings are after school, and I don’t have time after four o’clock for that right now.”
“What’s pulling you away? You said you couldn’t be with me because teaching was your entire life. Was that just an excuse, like ‘I have to wash my hair tonight’?”
This conversation did not end well.
The good things that happened while riding with Randolph was that he was busy changing lanes and navigating through the Mercer Mess, even cursing a driver who cut him off, when we passed Jason on the sidewalk, standing by a police car, talking with two officers, gesticulating while they stood shaking their heads.
~
Whatever was going on with the police and his other affairs, it caused Jason to lose his natural ebullience. When we started work that night, he listed the songs where he wasn’t happy with the results on tape. We began working through each of them, with about as much enthusiasm as any of my students taking a make-up test. Then he sent Angelia and me home early and made the others stay to work harder. Cynthia watched us leave, with an expression that made me think she found us both as interesting as insects looking for a new rock to crawl under.
As Angelia and I started down the walkway, we heard Jason’s voice.
“What is it about the concept of coming in on the upbeat that is so freaking difficult?”
“I guess it’s because you’re so downbeat, boss.”
“Screw you, Ian. Are we playing or jacking around?”
“You tell us. You’re the boss.”
A thunderous chord rang out before Jason spoke again.
“We are doing this one without twang tonight. Follow Sonny for the rhythm if you get effing lost again. Sonny, start with that skanky bass thing you had on Sunday morning.”
&nbs
p; I looked at Angelia. “I wonder why Jason is so on edge.”
“Yeah, I wonder.”
~
Rosemary, the school secretary, showed me again how to read my email, since Andrew at Berklee and two other old colleagues had complained that I’ve made myself inaccessible to cross-country communications. Andrew’s email was easy to find and then answer. The others were harder to identify, but I resolved those. Then I found that my father had amused himself a couple of times, sending me email, but he gave up when I didn’t answer.
Then there were a whole string of emails from Jason, who had written to me almost every day since—well, since he turned out to be Jason Taylor, not Jason Ferran.
I confess, reading all of them in a sitting, I felt disappointed. Some of it was like the lyrics in the songs we sang, but the rest seemed to be out-takes from others’ poetry, without attribution, or doggerel he had never evolved into songs. I’d seen or sung the lyrics to several of his songs, and as pop music goes, they had far greater literary merit than his email. I should be more romantic, I suppose, but I didn’t like reading them, so I stopped, because they made me think less of him.
Then I found my first flame email—that is what they call it, right? This was like the poison-pen letters that girls slipped in others’ lockers in high school. I shouldn’t have paid it anymore mind than trash of that variety.
I’m sending you this message for your own good. Jason Taylor wants one thing from a woman. After he captures the essence of your soul for his own work, you will hear nothing more from him except the repeated catalog of your perceived inadequacies.
If that’s what you choose to embrace, do it with foreknowledge. When he’s done with your voice, he’s done with everything else.
Signed by Dominique.
“Someone we used to know but don’t anymore,” Ian had said.
Someone who used to sing with the band. Who slept with Jason—for what other relationship could result in a malicious need to slander him? Who therefore was his ex-wife.
I could respond to the email with questions. I could ask Jason, when I ask him to explain his disquieting behaviors (though I had my own disquieting former relationship, about which I did not want to answer questions). I could worry about it, but it didn’t seem to warrant any greater concern than the bad poetry in his email. Instead, I would ignore it. I couldn’t ask him if he was using me for my voice, because I was using him for the opportunity to sing. The relationship was progressing only as that of director and performer. I’d spent a weekend without seeing him, with no stronger feelings than a sort of existential ennui, fueled by overexposure to testosterone.
Also, seeing Logan extinguished any sense I had of wanting to be intimate with a man. You just had to glance at that embodiment of utter catastrophe to lose any desire to replace it. With a booster shot of revulsion due to Logan, I made it through our brief Monday night rehearsal without rekindling flames of desire for Jason.
When I closed that nasty email, another insipidly titled email from Jason popped in my box. The senior soprano from fourth-period voice class stood at my door, ready for her bi-weekly counseling and cheerleading session, where I’d spend thirty minutes trying to convince her that only a dolt would not go to Juilliard after being accepted.
~
“Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
I let myself have an oral tantrum after that girl left my office, insisting that she wasn’t going to summer music camp in Michigan, and she wouldn’t go to Juilliard in the fall. She asked, instead, what I could do to get her into Sarah Lawrence at this late date. All of that irrational hysteria on her part had been too telling, and by the end of the conversation, I fear that I showed my profound annoyance at her utter stupidity.
“Are you all right, Miss Neville?”
Zak stood at my office door as if in mid-knock, but I hadn’t closed the door completely, so his knock had pushed it open, so who knows who heard my tantrum down the hallway. He held a rose in his hand—my usual morning offering.
“This was outside your door.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I have a student who doesn’t want to go to college in the fall.”
“You think everyone should, huh?”
“Not necessarily. However, talented kids who get a real chance at a great school should at least try it. I’m just dismayed because one of my students chose to not go to school because of her boyfriend.”
“You mean old Chastity, because she’s in love with Jeremy Simpson?”
“Zak, you know I can’t share a confidence with you.”
“If it’s Chastity, tell her that Jeremy is never going to marry her. In fact, after she said their souls were already married, he signed up for summer school. He’s leaving for Sarah Lawrence the day after graduation.”
“How do you know this?”
“Jeremy had to tell someone. He already told us that he banged her, after we warned him not to go for Sunday-school virgins. Now she thinks she’s in love with him. He’s too chicken to break up with her because he has to see her every day so he’s just going to sneak out of town at sunset. You’d be doing Chastity a favor if you tell her she hosed herself, telling a guy like Jeremy that she loves him, for crissakes.”
“I can’t think of how I could do that gracefully.”
“Maybe I should help. I could write her a secret letter. Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Of course not. The only message she needs is that she should make her own decisions about her future. It’s not good to decide because of what someone else wants. Lord, we shouldn’t be talking about this. What did you want, Zak? Can I help you?”
“No, I just wanted to leave that flower here before it got stepped on.”
“Will you be in class this afternoon?”
“Class? Oh yeah, sure.”
“I have a copy of your Berklee acceptance in my email. You said you didn’t get it at home. Do you want me to print it for you?”
“Yeah, sure. Great.”
Angelia poked her head in to ask if we were playing music tonight. Zak turned on like an incandescent hundred-watt bulb. “Oh man, yes! Jason has a new song. He showed it to me and I have this idea—but not for the house tonight. At the studio. I believe it needs a Hammond organ instead of drums. Do you think it will blow his mind?”
“Like Billy Preston and the Beatles?” Angelia said.
“Billy who?” Zak and I both said, just as the bell rang for class. Zak left us.
“Rosemary tells me you’re doing email now,” Angelia said, pointing to the screen behind me. “Is a cell phone just around the corner?”
“Never in this life. I did it to communicate with Andrew at Berklee about Zak. I just printed his acceptance letter.”
“Want me to give you Jason’s email address?”
“Unfortunately, I have it. He’s sent me a host of mails with bad poetry. It’s like that rose he sends every day. It’s embarrassing. I’m not tempted to keep reading email, though. For some reason, his ex-wife feels compelled to send email to explain that Jason is a terrible person. Look at this one.”
“What a venomous witch. This doesn’t sound like Jason.”
“She strikes me as unbalanced.”
Angelia said, “Tell him about it, and ask him to make her stop.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“Men are responsible for their ex’s excesses. He should make her stop.”
“I’m just not going to read it.”
58 ~ “You’re Still Standing There”
JASON
WE FINISHED THE NIGHT with nothing new recorded that anyone would be happy with in the morning. Most everyone was pissed at me and went off to find Thai food. I took a cheese sandwich down to the basement and cruised the Internet to relax. My friend Chas is as much of an insomniac as I’ve become, so he and I traded instant messaging jokes and notes throughout the night.
Sebastian: What do you think most tr
ansformed American music in the twentieth century?
Chas1933: It’s a toss-up between Rural Electrification and the railroads.
Sebastian: That’s about the last answer I expected. Explain please.
Chas1933: The first let everyone hear a wide world of music on the radio, and the second let big bands and other acts tour every town in America. And abetted the migration of the blues to Chicago. The world came to people’s doorstep, and everyone got to stir the melting pot of music that resulted.
Sebastian: OK, you convinced me. Rural Electrification also let my hillbilly ancestors plug in their guitars.
Chas had almost repaired my mood when Ephraim called me.
“I heard the rehearsal cuts from the last few days, Jason. Karl says that no one in the band wants his name on the album, yet it didn’t seem to stop any of you from doing great work. This material needs you to finish it. You need to sign your name to it.”
“You had no problem signing my name to your work on the last album, Ephraim.”
“Because you left town and wouldn’t speak to anyone. This is just a business proposal. I’m sure your attorney can show you your obligations for this album, so you and I won’t discuss that. Let’s focus. You need to be the named producer.”
“Since I’m not a member of Stoneway anymore, you can do whatever you want, Ephraim.”
“I can’t produce her again if I want to keep peace in the house and stay professional in the workplace.”
“You sleep with your client’s wife. What’s professional about that?”
“As I understood it then, and do still, you were done with Dominique by the time I met her.”
“She was done with me. Though we were still married.”
“You still are.”
“Dominique keeps dragging it out.”
“Because she wants you to apologize, Jason.”
“For what?”
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