“Ian, tell me what you heard: My mom? Beau?”
Ian started channel-surfing before answering. “Did Beau ever say anything at all? He was the quintessential silent bass player. The most he ever said at any one time was when he ragged us for dicking around and being late to a gig. Or to tell a waitress how he wanted his eggs. Or if he had to go after a booking agent who was screwing us out of money.”
“I mean personally. Did he talk about my mom?”
Cynthia looked up. “Beau said she was an angel whom God caused to suffer for no reason.”
“When did he say that?”
“I don’t know. You guys were rehearsing ‘Rhianna’s Song,’ and I made a comment that no woman could be as pure as the woman in the song, and Beau said she was an angel. Et cetera. Jason, sweetheart?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re in bed. Even though we aren’t doing anything at the moment, could you leave us the fuck alone?”
~
Huddled in my borrowed basement room, I switched off instant messaging and couldn’t bring myself to check my email. How much weirdness can I stand to have delivered to my own bedroom?
Where do you go for relevant information with which to frame thought? Tolstoy’s MyUniquelyFuckedUpFamily.com? Is there a search result from Google or KartOO or Bing that will help a person in a situation like this? How do you even determine what to type in the search query?
“What if your father date-raped your mother and your uncle picked up the pieces.”
“What did your lost family think when they were alive.”
“How to understand why your mother—”
What do I type here? There isn’t any joke to make. She died when I was fifteen, and she spent the three years before that getting ready to go, so I think she was a saint. She is not here now to explain it to me, and she didn’t leave me with a guide to the inside of her mind. Uncle Beau, who left me a complete map for how to deal with work and everyday life, didn’t leave a note explaining that—what? It wasn’t me he did all that for—trying to keep me in school, then traveling with me all those years while Ian and I were living on the road and learning to play music. We were infants then, and we never would have survived if Beau hadn’t stuck with us. I thought all this time that he did it to make up for his brother having abandoned us, but it appears Jesse never knew about me. Beau took care of me because he loved my mother. Inordinately. Incessantly. Incandescently.
As a fourteen-year-old, I sat in lower Wallingford listening for hidden meanings that my father might have buried for me in his songs. I didn’t know I was listening to poetry that the man sitting at our worn kitchen table had spawned for the woman who poured him a cup of coffee and asked if he had kept himself well since last they met. The same man sat next to me in the van we took to gigs, teaching me flat-picking country and bottleneck blues, traveling chords and Reverend Gary Davis fingerstyle technique, and DADGAD tuning for Celtic melodies. The whole while he loved my mother above everything in life—and why in hell did I never wonder what he was doing playing bass in a juvenile bar band if he could teach me all of that?
Frickin’ hell, you are supposed to figure out you aren’t the center of the effing world when you’re what—twelve? Why am I so stunned that these people had other motivations and other passions?
In my heart of hearts, I don’t think this sense of upset comes from finding out I wasn’t the motivating focus for these two dear people. It is learning that my mother and Beau had this huge burning thing at the center of their lives. And they didn’t let me in.
I wanted to write to Chas and say, “Tell me where you live so I can come read all those letters. Right now.” I wanted to run there. I wanted to touch the papers and see the envelopes. I wanted to know what it looked like when Uncle Beau poured his heart out on paper and cultivated the seeds of a song. I wanted to read every word he sent my mother and what she wrote back. For years now, since she has been dead for almost as long as I knew her in life, I thought it the saddest thing that she didn’t have a true love, just our lonely little life in lower Wallingford. I was wrong, because somewhere in there they shared joy together. Even if they didn’t invite me to that party, I wanted to read what it looked like between them.
There was no chance I’d find any answers floating around in the giant bit bucket of the Internet. Without thinking it through, I swapped jeans for running clothes and ran across town to Susi’s house. On a night like tonight, she would have to let me in. There isn’t another person in the world I could talk to about this.
89 ~ “Talk to Me”
SUSI
“HELLO, MISS NEVILLE. DO you remember me from the other night?”
“Of course, Mr. Vance.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“No, other than your name and that I have seen you with Jason before. I heard that you said kind things about my work the other night.”
“I’m a business agent for the label Jason records with.”
“Please come in. May I offer you something to drink?”
“Thank you, no. I want to get straight to the point. I want Jason to continue working with me, and I’m desperate for help to persuade him. Jason is not making the best business decisions on his own.”
“Are you suggesting that I give Jason advice? I am certain that would not work well.”
“Miss Neville, I hope that you might encourage him to listen to me. We both have his best interests at heart.”
“Why choose me? I have only just met him.”
“I know who you are, Miss Neville. Does Jason?”
“He knows who I am in my present life,” I said. That’s enough.
“You’re rehearsing and recording highly original music with him.”
“We just call it backporch music, Mr. Vance.”
“What have you learned from working with him?”
“He is a brilliant composer and arranger. He’s perhaps the most talented director of performing musicians that I’ve ever met.”
“Can you appreciate, then, why I want to see him succeed?”
“Yes, but I don’t know you, except that Jason wasn’t happy when he spoke of you.”
“I can tell you what Jason would say about me. He’d describe me as the man guiding his career until I ran off with his wife.”
“Is that true? It sounds melodramatic.”
“The nouns are correct, but the verbs don’t reveal the time sequence properly. His wife ran off—but not with me. Jason also ran off. Alone. While I was picking up the pieces, I ended up with his former wife.”
“You must appreciate that I’m not in a position to speak about Jason when he’s not here. If he feels betrayed—”
“Then you feel compelled to take his side.”
“Both my personal experience and every story I’ve heard have led me to think that his ex-wife isn’t a nice person.”
“She isn’t.” He seemed thoughtful. “How could you have personal experience with her?”
“She writes me email every day, explaining how awful Jason is and how he will betray me.”
“That’s not true about Jason. Miss Neville, I don’t want to talk about Dominique. Please help me convince Jason to sign with my record label.”
“That is not any of my business,” I said. “Anyway, I thought he was already recording.”
“His contract ends with this album. I want to keep him with me.”
“Even if I were inclined to interfere with his business, I couldn’t do that, Mr. Vance. I have a little knowledge of your world. Artists can’t own their own work, even when you don’t want to package and promote it for them anymore. You want to shape artists into pre-defined molds. Jason could never fit.”
“Jason is brilliant enough to go against the rules, with the right guide.”
“That would be you?”
“Can’t you help me, Miss Neville? If I signed you to record, that would bring him to my label.”
“Sign me? I’m a teacher. I’m
no longer a professional singer. I couldn’t do that just to coerce Jason into anything he might not want.”
“You aren’t going to sing and record with Jason?”
“We were just playing around. It doesn’t have a future for me.”
“Then I should say goodnight, Ms. Neville. I can see that I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”
“It was nice to meet you. May I tell Jason you spoke with me?”
“Yes. Honesty is the only way to proceed with a person as incapable of deceit as Jason.”
90 ~ “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad”
JASON
IT WAS PLENTY LATE AT night by the time I made it to Leschi, even with hopping a bus for part of the way, which raised my anxiety level. Although it took me across more miles faster than my feet could manage, I had to sit still while it moved my body through space and time.
Ephraim’s gun-metal grey BMW turned onto the arterial just as I stood on the corner opposite the street light, waiting to walk up the empty alley to her house.
“Susi, it’s Jason.”
I knocked on the door, not knowing why I ever expected that she’d welcome me in, listen to my grief, tell me what to think. A trodden red rose lay in the shadows of her front step, indicating that my would-be brother had again crept too close.
She didn’t answer, though her car sat in the garage. And Ephraim—damn his eyes—had been to visit just a moment before.
Ephraim. I lost it.
“Come on, Susi. Let me in. Talk to me.”
The lights were on, and the sound of Skip James leaked from the cracks of the doors and windows.
“Susi! Dammit, let me in. You let that bastard Ephraim in. Don’t fuck with my mind right now—”
An arm came around my neck, so tight it hurt, and a pair of hands ripped my arms back at the elbows, immobilizing me. As I sputtered to speak, my assailant tossed me half way across the alley and then pressed me up against the neighbor’s retaining wall.
Two figures bounced in the shadows, one tall and the other small. The small one kept pressing too hard at my throat.
“Get your hands off me,” I croaked.
“Don’t fuck with the lady. Leave her be.”
“What? I’m the guy paying you.”
“Yeah, sure. Joe, check him to make sure he doesn’t have a weapon.”
“Don’t touch me!” I not only used the bad mother word, I shouted it. Then I called their mothers worse names.
The smaller man ignored what I was saying, and the volume at which I was saying it, while he ran his hands down my running shorts, where nothing could be hidden. “He’s OK, Joe.” So they were both named Joe.
“Yeah, I’m OK. Now leave me the hell alone and let me talk to her.”
“Whoa, buddy. We’re walking down the alley right now, away from here. Together.”
“The cell phones in your pockets belong to me. You’re supposed to call the police if someone comes. Without hassles. Call now. Or call Sonny.”
“Sonny is working his night job.”
“So we agree that you and I both know Sonny. Call the effing police if you aren’t calling Sonny. I’m not leaving without talking to her.”
While little Joe #1 was calling, and big Joe #2 was in my face, keeping me immobilized against the retaining wall, a patrol car rounded the corner into the alley, its blue lights flashing. I was happy to see them, because we could end the current détente.
Except I hate it when the one policeman gets out of the patrol car with his hands on his service revolver, and the other just stands in his open door, talking into the radio.
“Evening, gentlemen. The neighbors are unhappy with the noise you have been raising.”
I jerked away from Joe #2, and the cop had his revolver out.
“Please put your hands behind your head.”
I complied, knowing full well that arguing was not in my best interest. “I was reaching for my ID.”
“Can you do that carefully, using your left hand?”
“It’s in my sock.”
“Who wants to explain the problem here?”
“This guy is bothering our friend,” Joe #1 volunteered. They offered their ID in a graceful, experienced manner.
“Miss Neville is a friend of mine, and I want to speak with her.”
“The noise complaint makes all this commotion sound less innocent, Mister—” He checked my ID. “Mr. Taylor. Is this you?”
“No, it isn’t,” Joe #2 said. “Jason Taylor has long hair.”
“I cut my effing hair. I’m Jason Taylor, dammit.”
The cop said, “I think that’s easy to see, even though the picture shows long hair.”
Joe #1 said, “Oh shit, man. We are so sorry.”
A second patrol car came down the alley from the other direction, the blue strobe casting everyone in alternate shadow and skeletal glow. When this car parked, Officer Page stepped out of the passenger side, his hand resting on his service revolver.
“Good evening, Officer.” I looked at Office Page as I spoke, hoping he’d recognize me, fighting the guilty sense that I wanted to glance away. The two Joes explained themselves again—they just happened to be taking a short-cut through the alley, but the lady who lived there was a friend, and any gentleman would want to interfere in such a situation, since I was pounding on her door and shouting.
“I only raised my voice to be heard. In case she’s listening to music or on the phone and can’t hear me.”
“If the lady doesn’t want to speak to you, you can’t stand on the street shouting at her.” It must have been an official script, because Officer Page argued the same way the year before, when I wanted my voice to penetrate to Dominique on the third-floor condo. “I’m sure you don’t want the pain of charges pressed against you, Mr. Taylor.”
“Can’t you just knock on the door and ask her? She doesn’t want me to go away.”
“Here she is. Sorry for the disturbance, ma’am. Mr. Taylor says you don’t want him to go away. Is this true?”
She was standing there in a silk shirt and linen trousers, looking small and delicate, and exhausted.
“Yes. I’m sorry for the bother, officers.”
“Are you sure you’re safe, ma’am?”
“I’m not going to hurt her!” I sputtered. “I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Please calm down, Mr. Taylor. If she wants to invite you inside, we’ll leave you. But if you continue this way, I’ll have to ask you downtown to discuss the meaning of disturbing the peace.”
She invited me in. I wish she’d sent me downtown with Officer Page.
91 ~ “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
JASON
WHEN I CAME INSIDE, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Where to sit or how to stand and be comfortable. After my tantrum on the street, I was too aware of how much larger I am than she is. I came there to find comfort and found that instead I presented a threat.
I sat on a bar stool at her kitchen counter while she turned on water to make tea, a familiar gesture I now recognized as what she does to calm herself. Under the soft, indirect light in the kitchen, she seemed to be another source of illumination, faintly glowing. She turned her calm, perfectly made-up face to me, and I wanted to cry out that I knew how much pain and passion she masked, and how much I had hoped never to add to that pain. Or perhaps I just plain wanted to cry.
She said, “Ephraim Vance came by to ask me to persuade you to do business with him. If you have any idea that his visit meant anything else, you are very wrong.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He is very complimentary to you. I refused to help him, because it seemed disloyal. However, I don’t understand what he wants.”
“He wants me to sign with his label.”
“Why does he feel so strongly about it?”
“He likes our music.”
“That’s not enough explanation.”
“My music made his company millions of dollars l
ast year. He wants me to do that every year.”
I waited for the repercussion, the reactions that would transform our relationship forever. Shock and anger. Recriminations for hiding it from her, though it was she who had insisted repeatedly that we keep our individual secrets. A new-found interest in my wealth.
Nope. Instead, she said, “He’s offering you the opportunity to excel in your particular world of music, and you choose to do less?”
“I want to excel. But I want to make my own music. I want to own the music I make. It is not worth money to do less than that, Susi.”
“It must be nice to have the option of achieving your dreams and the privilege of being able to quibble over compromises at the same time.”
“You jumped onto Ephraim’s team pretty quickly. You don’t understand how controlling record labels are.”
“No?” She raised her eyebrow in question. “However, I do know what it means to be denied the opportunity to pursue a dream. I lost mine once. I begged God. I offered to make a deal with the devil, but neither God nor the devil chose to intercede. I wish I had your problems.”
“If your dream was to sing, you can still achieve that, Susi. You heard how people responded last week: they love you. It is just a matter of you choosing the right material.”
“The right material? You mean just sing your pop songs?”
“Why are you such a snob about the music we play? You put Zak down for wanting just that. Is it because you think that’s all high-school drop-outs can achieve?”
“All right, yes, Jason. I think pop music is an idle way to pass time. A series of lightweight fads. Not anything that serious people do.”
“Yet you want to teach roots music. What do you think that is, other than the last generation’s pop music fad? If you sing with us, will you be too déclassé? Compared to what? Billie Holiday? Maybelle Carter?”
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