Nine Volt Heart

by Annie Pearson

  Sebastian: She has the most beautiful voice in the world.

  As if blurting it aloud, I clicked Send, with no option for clicking Retrieve and therefore breaking a promise, telling the only secret about Susi that I knew and which she had made me promise to not disclose.

  Chas1933: She’s singing?!?

  Sebastian: I wasn’t supposed to tell. She’s shy about it, but it’s a travesty the world doesn’t know her. I’d love to get her in front of an audience.

  Chas1933: You can try, I suppose. Just don’t let her get hurt doing it.

  I took that as a mission. Zak and Ian arrived at the studio together, so I had to sign off and plug in. It was noon before I thought to wonder how someone could get hurt singing.

  Or to realize that I had given my father’s papers to my lover’s father.

  64 ~ “Are You Really Going Out with Him?”

  SUSI

  “THERE’S YOUR BOYFRIEND.”

  Randolph laid an aged, dusty file on my desk, shaking me into complete wakefulness.

  Jason Taylor.

  “I know.” I closed my email, since it contained only bad poetry and more fictitious screeds from Dominique about how Jason stole songs and abused women.

  Randolph said, “I found out from the students. They’ve been talking about it ever since your little fundraiser. How could you put an imposter in front of the trustees? In front of my grandparents?”

  “I didn’t know it. There was a mix up. Neither of us understood at the time.”

  “How long were you going to let the confusion go on?”

  “It doesn’t matter at this point, does it, Randolph?”

  “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Then you are? I thought all you cared about was teaching. For God’s sake, Susi, he never even graduated from high school.”

  Randolph stalked out, leaving the folder on my desk. I let it sit for a long time before yielding to temptation.

  The transcript stopped one quarter short of graduation. Fantastic marks in the arts and math, A-minuses in science and history. A “B” in one subject every term, usually the subject that any other student would use to skate through in order to carry enough credits: Photography, Household Economy, Health Education, Ceramics.

  Then there were the letters, the ones teachers write to help students get into college. I’d spent November, December, and January writing the same kinds of letters, praising the student’s talents and accomplishments, making weaknesses sound like assets. In Jason’s recommendations:

  Brilliant creative mind, which he chooses to apply with great force of will. Popular with classmates in spite of a tendency to be withdrawn at times. Dynamic presence in the classroom when he chooses to engage.

  I found the letter that Paul Harris wrote buried amongst the others.

  He came to us with strong recommendations from his previous teachers, but as an emancipated minor, which is usually a sign that the legal guardian has elected to put the child on the streets to live by his own wits. When he came, Jason was still recovering from his mother’s death, which he responded to by burying himself in music.

  In spite of being abandoned by the adults in his family, Jason follows the iron-bound guidance of an inner adult that seems to serve him well, though perhaps it leads him to drive himself harder than a youth should be allowed to work. He will succeed in any music program that allows him to exercise his natural assets. He will not, however, submit to any teacher who applies lessons as a task master. But he makes a noble, courageous, and gracious sparring partner for any teacher who chooses to engage him as an equal.

  Alongside these were acceptances: Cornish, Berklee, the Curtis Institute. A request from Juilliard for one more interview. Another letter that was sort of a rejection: a note that said, “I no longer attend Prescott,” in a handwriting I now recognized as well as my own. Finally, a copy of a bitter letter that Hector Henderson had sent to Jason’s grandfather, complaining that Jason’s failure to participate in the state-wide contest for jazz ensembles had cost the school the championship. Bitterness from the same teacher who wrote recommendations that praised Jason as the leader and key talent who led the jazz ensemble in his junior year to a state championship and then on to respectable recognition at the national level.

  He let the band and the school down just to play rock-and-roll in Europe.

  ~

  I’m afraid to say this aloud. I told someone I loved him when perhaps the reality is that I have no business being with him. I wasn’t lying when I said it, but there were such strong influences—my chest and head filled with his music, the blandishments he uses while begging me to let down my guard, those fingers stroking his guitar. Singing is clouding my judgment.

  Or something else is happening. Jason touches my lips after we sing and I fall into a fugue state, from which I cannot rouse myself until considerable time and physical distance separates us. Even now, hours later, I can feel his fingers on my lips while my whole body throbs, and the sensation threatens to pull me back into that state, so that I can’t listen to my own logic or heed internal warnings that tell me this might be dangerous.

  As much as I needed to talk about it with someone, he’s become friends with Angelia, so I can’t talk to her. I thought about calling my brother Steven, but he had discounted my concerns when I tried to talk to him about the same issues in relation to Logan: “Logan wasn’t ever worthy of you. It just took that accident for you to see what everyone else knew. He wasn’t on the same level as you for talent, brains, or goodness.”

  Maybe I don’t want to talk to Steven, because I don’t want to hear the same thing about Jason. Maybe I don’t want to look at the same problems all over again.

  Then again, perhaps it’s not true this time. Before, when I thought Jason was Angelia’s cousin, I thought that this man was my equal. He is beyond merely smart. He’s kind and aware of others around him. Yet he’s not the whiz-kid Jason Ferran. He’s Jason Taylor, the high school drop-out who plays in bar bands. Who doesn’t own a car or have a place to live.

  Yet he has these warm, intelligent friends who care a great deal for him. He has a beautiful voice and plays his instrument with the same skill that Orpheus must have had. He’s considerate. I love singing with him—it feels as satisfying as great sex, though we have had more practice singing than we’ve had with the other.

  Still, he’s a pop musician who never graduated from high school. Who in the world could be so foolish as to not take the fantastic opportunities that going to a school like Berklee would allow? Why choose to drop out of high school?

  I find myself attempting to smother reprehensible feelings, because this makes me aware of my own bias, as much as I hated feeling like an outsider myself when I was at school. What in the world does a college degree prove, for that matter? Is it like kennel papers for a dog? Does it make for a better dog? Look at Randolph, who has an Ivy League degree, but didn’t inherit even a modicum of noblesse oblige, much less a sensible view of life.

  When I was with Logan, I worked to ignore the inequality between us, feeling guilty for my snobbishness. However, leaving school was yet another sign of Logan’s lack of ambition and his immaturity. My attempt to ignore the inequality was in fact an act of condescension on my part. Since the accident, people who can still exercise their talent in the world condescend to me. It’s actually pity, and there is nothing I hate worse.

  Early in the morning, a tectonic shift brought us into a unison that both Jason and I seemed to be reaching for. Still, what if I am repeating the same error as with Logan, surrendering for the sake of sex to a relationship of unequal passions and unequal ambitions? What if I begin by believing I’m in love and once again have to fight back a reprehensible condescension?

  Fundamentally, it shouldn’t matter to me whether Jason graduated from high school. He is widely read, and nothing about him would make one think of the stereotypical drop-out in need of
remedial education. It shouldn’t matter to me.

  However, it made me think of Logan, so it did matter.

  65 ~ “Halo Round the Moon”

  JASON

  ON FRIDAY NIGHTS THE band doesn’t rehearse, after being in each other’s armpits the rest of the week. When I went to Susi’s house Friday night, after closing the studio, I could feel that she had disappeared again as soon as I kissed her hello. Looking over her shoulder, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the entire band, minus Zak, filling her living room and kitchen. Who better for her to hide behind?

  “Who are you and what have you done with the woman I love?” I whispered into her hair, but everyone crowded around before she could answer. Just the way she wanted it.

  She served up green curry with string beans, lover’s eggplant with red pepper chips to burn our mouths, a soothing sort of fried wonton with shiitake mushrooms and water chestnuts, and swimming angel—spinach and tofu in peanut sauce, though I think Susi uses real angels. Even Ian didn’t complain about the lack of animal protein, and the food was comforting, turning most everyone into drowsy, happy beasts.

  Except me. I didn’t get to sit by Susi. Susi didn’t talk to me. Or touch me. Everyone else got to talk to Susi, so that talking and the tinkling of the table service made another kind of music. Except for me, the room was full of happy, peaceful people. It wasn’t just the food, either. She had done just about everything possible in the past weeks to make every last member of the band fall in love with her. It wasn’t the obvious things that I’d fallen in love with: her warmth, intelligence, kindness. The rusty angel voice. She had made some kind of personal connection with each and every one of them: fishing, teaching, baseball, movies. Cynthia had even shown Susi the effing woodshop where she spends her time when Ian drives her crazy. No one else gets to go into her woodshop, only Susi. Susi turned them into happy beasts every night with whatever she made for us to eat on break, but what brought everyone to heel was the music. Not just the tone and color and power of her voice, but that she worked her small, charming ass off with us every night. Without complaint or distraction or needing to dominate or debate.

  Glinda, the good Witch of the North, who made them all forget how Jason had led them into the wilderness with the Wicked Witch of the West, was in the kitchen finishing off bowls of crème broulee with Sonny’s help and a soldering torch. While they worked, Cynthia and Angelia talked about teaching. The other gentlemen of the band would have contributed to the conversation if they hadn’t stuffed themselves half way to a coma on Susi’s food. I listened, wanting Susi to turn and speak to me, look at me, move toward me. All night, she drifted further and further away.

  Angelia said, “Yeah, it’s true, we teach rich kids, plus a handful of scholarship kids who are fishes out of water like we were at Juilliard. Where we teach, several of the parents make it clear that we are servants and they are our masters.”

  Cynthia said, “How do you put up with that?”

  “We ignore it and pay attention to the kids. It’s Susi who hit on the idea of teaching ballads as the roots of rock, and it clicked with the kids. She talked the curriculum committee into letting her teach her material as double credit: literature and music. She spent hours in meetings, showing how it works when you start with “Barbry Ellen” as the text, and trace it from Britain to Appalachia, and trace Cajun zydeco back to Acadia and then all the way to Bretonne fisher villages in France.”

  “I figured that out on my own,” Ian said. “I didn’t need to go to a fancy high school to do it.”

  “You figured it out—almost—some time last year,” Toby said.

  “I want to take it further,” Angelia said. “Most kids playing music don’t see the string that ties them to the crusaders who carried the oud from the Levant to Europe, so it could evolved into the violin and guitar.”

  Susi said from the kitchen, “The folksinger girls in my class teach themselves to sing from CDs. How many of them will get a chance to try a range of vocal styles, or learn how to take care of their voices, or how to project without injury?”

  Angelia said, “What if we find the next Mark O’Connor or Doug Sahm, and expose them to new influences and the ideas and techniques for how to master skills? Suppose we talk them into staying in school, which I have found is the biggest challenge with talented kids.

  “Yes, it is,” Ian said. “Shoot, what more painful place in the world is there besides high school? Oh yeah, jail. That’s the other worst place.”

  “No offense, but you and Susi are both kidding yourselves,” Toby said. “Arts funding has disappeared since 9-11. Because money is disappearing for music education everywhere, no one will pay you to do this.”

  “I disagree,” Susi said gently. “I believe we can get enough to do one summer, to prove the worth of the idea. Then the funding base will grow.”

  Cynthia said, “You need more than just the rich bitches who want to fund impoverished violinists at Juilliard. You need to find some rich rock-and-roll bitches who wanted to help kids be great musicians.”

  Sonny and Susi finished setting the dessert aflame and carried the bowls to people. I got mine from Sonny. As everyone was reduced to humming and sighing over scorched sweet cream, Cynthia came to the kitchen to pour coffee, where I sat on a bar stool away from the others. Since Susi didn’t want to sit by me.

  Cynthia leaned on the counter, her head close to mine and her voice low as she spoke.

  “Jason, have you been on the Internet today?”

  “I’m trying to stop. I need the Internet surfer’s equivalent of Antabuse.”

  “Your pseudo-brother is getting weird. He’s posting more frequently, boasting wildly. It’s like he’s challenging you over something.”

  “It’s just Arlo. He is ticked at me because I won’t let him play roadie for us this summer.” I spooned my warm pudding while we talked.

  “It’s not Arlo. He can’t spell, and your stalker brother can.”

  “Maybe he uses a spellchecker.”

  “Forget Arlo. He’s harmless. Your stalker isn’t. We had the house wired today with a security alarm. Should have done it long ago.”

  “I’m paying friends of Sonny’s to watch the house.”

  “You are shitting me. Why didn’t you tell me?” Cynthia didn’t seem as furious with me as she might have been in other circumstances.

  “Does it matter?”

  “I should pull the blinds upstairs. The guys in the warehouses across the alley are used to it, but I don’t like flashing strangers.” She licked the last of crème broulee from her spoon. “Tell Susi to get her house wired, too.”

  “She already has an alarm.”

  Toby’s voice rose above the hum in the room. “I still don’t get who plays which venues, Jason. Do you want me at all three?”

  As I answered, I saw the surprise on Susi’s face and began to fear that I hadn’t planned this appropriately.

  “Zak and Sonny can skip the folk scene at the museum. The rest of you need to be there. Everyone has to do the landmines benefit. We are on at seven—and you have to be in dinner jackets. Martha will have them for you when you get there. Angelia can skip the Showbox, but I hope she’ll want to play. Everyone else should be there.”

  “What are you talking about?” Susi said.

  “We’re playing several benefit gigs tomorrow.”

  “I’m not invited?” She frowned.

  “You said you didn’t want people to know you were singing. These are public events.”

  She took a step toward me, folding her arms, ready for battle, which warmed my heart in ways you can’t imagine. I’d rather she came at me straight on than fold her tent and slink off, as she seemed to be doing all evening.

  “You didn’t ask me, Jason. Don’t I get a choice?”

  “I thought you had already stated your choice.”

  “What if I changed my mind?”

  “You are scared to be alone with me,” I said, hoping the ot
hers didn’t hear. She stood so close that I could touch her hair. But I didn’t. “And you’re scared to sing in public with us.”

  “That is not true.”

  “We don’t know that. You’ll change your mind again and run away. The same as you keep running away from me.”

  “I haven’t run away.”

  “Do you deny that you’re avoiding me?”

  “I want to perform with everyone else. Let me sing with the band.”

  “OK, but first you have to play a morning gig with me to prove you won’t fold on the entire band.”

  “Where?”

  “Busking in the Market. Singing mountain songs. Nine o’clock.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “And I’ll enjoy the pleasure of your company, if you choose to come.”

  I gathered my pack from where I stash it when I’m at her house.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home. Maybe I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Why are you leaving?”

  “Susi, you’ve been avoiding me all night. ‘Fear of intimacy’ is your middle name. I’m trying to be nice and not push you, since I hope you’ll come back again. Let’s worry about your fear of performing for now.”

  “I’m not afraid. Don’t you want to—”

  “You know what I want, Susi. If I stay any longer, I’ll be on my knees, begging, in front of the audience you invited to protect you. Leaving is the only way I can preserve what little dignity I have left.”

  I kissed her good-night, the way I’d kiss that cousin I don’t have.

  66 ~ “Stumbling through the Dark”

  SUSI

  EVERYONE SNEAKED A LOOK AT me when Jason left, which caused me to stand more erect. I don’t have anything to be ashamed of. I went to the kitchen to make more coffee, where Cynthia was pouring the dregs into her cup.