“You’re in New Orleans and you spend thirteen hours in a conference hall?” Abe said that night. He was preparing to go out. I was in bed, preparing for tomorrow’s retrospective on Women Writers of the Late 1800s.
The next night, when I got back to the hotel, there was a voicemail message from the chair of the Fiction Writing Department, my boss. “Megan,” he said. “I order you to get out of that hotel room. Meet us downstairs at ten; we’re going dancing.” I pushed delete and practiced my lie in front of the mirror. “Why no, I never got that message!” I said, in my best Oh my officer am I speeding voice, one I’d started with my therapist and perfected with Dan. Like Of course I want to see you, I just can’t tonight! or Of course I’m telling you the whole story, I don’t have anything to hide! or Oh, rats! Dancing! I love dancing!
The truth is, I’m afraid—but at that point, I hadn’t admitted it. Is there ever a point where we admit it? It’s easier to live for our work. For our books. For tomorrow’s panel on Finnegans Wake.
I spent Day Three of AWP in similar dorkishness, and would’ve done the same Day Four had I not got a phone call at 3 A.M. “Get your ass up. Get in a cab,” Abe yelled over the music—more like slurred. Yell-slurred. “And get a pen, I’m giving you an address.”
“Do you know what time it is?” I said.
“It’s called the Funky Butt,” he said.
I hung up.
He called right back. “I’ve had four shots of Jameson,” he said. “I’m totally unreasonable right now.”
I hung up again, and, again, he called right back. But this time instead of being all drunk and stupid, he said the one thing he knew would get me: “What would Henry say?”
Okay. So, when I was really little, like seven or eight, my dad was writing his graduate thesis on Henry David Thoreau. He’s really into Thoreau. He has exactly three chairs in his house: “One for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” When I got my first tattoo, he said, “What would Henry say?” And—you know those leather book covers for your Bible? They say BIBLE in all caps across the front? My dad had one of those around his copy of Walden. You see where this is going, right? I spent the first eight years of my life thinking Walden was the Book of God. I even had to memorize passages! Picture it: Daddy’s Little Girl in her OshKosh B’gosh and pigtails reciting Thoreau the same way other kids did the Pledge of Allegiance or John 3:16—
“It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.”
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”
“How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.”
—and now picture me nearly two decades later: in my pajamas, in New Orleans, reciting Thoreau’s words over and over as Abe gave me the address.
What would Henry say?
He’d say, Get your ass to the Funky Butt.
(Except he probably wouldn’t say ass.)
I stepped out of the hotel and was shocked to see the streets so alive—I thought I’d be alone in the dark like Chicago at that time, but this was the French Quarter and there were people everywhere, laughing and drinking, walking with arms locked, and greeting complete strangers like they’d known each other all their lives. “Here honey, you need some of this!” said a bead-draped redhead, handing me a Styrofoam cup filled with some kind of fruity daiquiri. I’d soon learn that if I walked into one of the numerous, open-all-night liquor booths on every cobblestone corner, I could refill that Styrofoam cup for a dollar. I stood there in front of my hotel, drinking that daiquiri like it was juice and watching the crowd pulse around me. That’s when I heard the music.
Granted, music was coming from everywhere—the bars and stores and second-story balcony windows—but this was different. This was coming from the next street, right around the corner, and I followed the sound. The strange thing was, it moved. I rounded the corner and could hear that I’d just missed it so I rounded the next corner, and the next, all the corners of cobblestone streets set like a labyrinth and all the while the music was getting louder until finally—
There.
A marching band.
A full marching band at three o’clock in the morning. They were all suited up, duck-bill hats and feathered plumes, spats on the boots, and a hundred buttons. There were trumpets and drums and trombones and clarinets with Dixieland sound, fifty people strong all step-marching and moving their instruments in rhythm. There was a crowd of people following behind them, everybody dancing and trying to copy the choreographed marching movements. I could feel the daiquiri icy in my head, and it was so late, maybe I was still sleeping, maybe I was dreaming and you can do anything in a dream, right?—so I did it. I joined. “I don’t remember the last time I danced!” I yelled to the guy next to me. He was wearing a giant foam carrot on his head. “That’s the saddest thing I ever heard!” he yelled, and then we laughed, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed, either. I suddenly felt this rush—the rush of the repressed, we’ll call it—and I ran around the band, passed them on the sidewalk, and shimmied into the street in front of them. I marched high, my knees coming up level to my stomach, and tossed an imaginary baton in the air.
That’s when I saw the street the concierge had told me to take, so I walked backwards and waved goodbye to the Drum Master. He smiled, I skipped off down my street, and—
They followed me. The entire band and the growing crowd behind them followed me around another corner, and another. And another. And of course I wasn’t really leading them, of course I was just walking the same route they were taking, of course! but sometimes, we have to believe the fantastic.
I got to the Funky Butt—a wild, second-floor jazz club over a jam-packed cigar bar—waved goodbye to my band, and ran up the stairs to find Abe. He was dancing in a sweaty, sardine-packed crowd, and I rushed over to tell him my news.
“I led a marching band!” I yelled.
“I lit my pants on fire!” he yelled back, and put a shot in my hands. And then another, and another, and dancing all night long, me and Abe and a million people I’d never met but somehow knew. My boss was there, too, smoking cigars and spinning pretty girls around in circles. He dipped me low to the ground and, when I was down there, inches from the floor he asked, “Having fun?” Fun, fun—who knew! I didn’t, not me, not this girl, who was this girl I had suddenly become? One thing’s for sure—she was way more interesting than the one at the erotic poetry seminar.
For the record: I love erotic poetry. I love poetry, period. And novels, period. And short stories and essays, all of it, erotic essays, even! I don’t care what you call it or where you shelve it or what it gets printed on, I just want the words, the ideas and the stories handed to me like birthday presents. I want to find my own feelings in someone else’s experiences. I want to live lives I couldn’t possibly have lived, exist in a reality that can’t possibly be real—that’s what a story can do.
“What about your actual life?” asked my therapist.
“Do you want to have dinner this weekend?” asked Dan.
“Having fun?” asked my department chair.
“You want some crêpes?” asked Abe. Ask-yell-slurred—and suddenly I felt that click that happens when wild, drunken abandonment becomes a slobbery, drunken mess. My head was throbbing, the music was too loud, who were all these people sweating all over me?
“I have to go!” I yelled at Abe.
“No, stay! There’s an all-night crêpe place! We’ll have mimosas!” he yelled back, but I was already running down the stairs, out the door, into the street and—
There they were.
The trombones. The clarinets. The drums—all of them lined up in perfect rows, all of them frozen still in attention, all of them watching the Drum Master’s hands. They were suspended in the air, tense and ready, but his head was turned to me. “When
ever you’re ready,” he said. I could only see his mouth. The rest of his face was hidden under a giant, duck-billed helmet with a long feather plume.
“Ready for what?” I whispered.
“This,” he said, dropping his hands, and it all began again, fast as a needle scratch on a record: the explosion of sound, a crowd appearing from nowhere, everyone dancing in crazy, synchronized choreography, costumes made of feathers and sequins, and—high above the quarter—the sun started to climb the sky. “You look like you need this,” said a bead-draped brunette, handing me another Styrofoam cup, and Abe appeared at my elbow. “Fuck,” he said. “You really do have a band!”
Then he grabbed my hand and we jumped into the street, tossing our batons as we went.
I don’t remember the rest of that trip. I don’t remember the flight to Chicago, or the cab ride home to Humboldt Park. What I do remember is my blaring alarm clock at 6 A.M., the jackhammers pounding in my temples, and, for some reason, this stupid discussion I’d had in grad school. I said that if the writing was good enough, you could live the experience through the words and never need to have it for yourself. “Why do I need to drink? I’ve read Hemingway! I’ve read Beowulf! I know what drinking feels like! Here, look at this passage from Kingsley Amis describing a hangover. It’s perfect! It’s poetry! I don’t ever need to have one!”
I went on.
And on and on.
I was insufferable in grad school. I knew everything in grad school, except the fact that I didn’t know shit. My jackhammers were not Kingsley Amis. My experiences were not Finnegans Wake. My life didn’t exist inside a conference room. It was here, in Chicago, my five-year plan, and maybe later there’d be room for something else, but now—today—my alarm clock was still blaring, so I showered quickly and ran down the front stairs with my hair still wet. In the hallway, I searched for my car keys, hoping I didn’t forget anything, coffee, I forgot coffee, I’d get some on the way to work and I threw open the door—
And there they were.
On my tiny square of lawn was the marching band from New Orleans. Same duck-billed hats, same spats, same dancing crowd behind them. Their music blended in with the West Side noise—the traffic and yelling and little kids screaming and—
I shut the door.
It can’t be, I thought, and opened the door.
—the music swelled again, loud and joyful, and—
I shut the door. Just how many brain cells had I killed with those fruity Louisiana daiquiris? I peeked through the eyehole. The band waited patiently, instruments at the ready. I cracked the door just a little bit and—
—the Drum Master dropped his hands and the sound exploded.
I slammed the door this time. Hard. Then I ran back upstairs, through my apartment, out the back door, and down the back stairs. I can shake them, I thought. Just gotta be fast enough, gotta—
Bastards, there they were! That fucking band, all lined up in formation, instruments at the ready. The Drum Master’s hands were in the air, and he tilted his feather in my direction. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said. I looked back towards my apartment with its bed and books and locks, and then out to the band. The sun was climbing behind them, over the alley, the three-flats, my city. I thought of that morning in New Orleans and how much fun I’d had. I thought of my students and what I wanted to teach them about writing, and all of a sudden, I felt that click: when avoiding your life becomes more difficult than actually living it.
“Fine,” I told the Drum Master. “But no ‘Saints Go Marching In.’” His feather nodded and, in one fluid motion, he lifted up on his toes and dropped his whole body.
Humboldt Park didn’t know what hit it.
Since then, they follow me everywhere. They’re there—in the produce section at the Jewel. Near the free-weights at the Y. Pumping gas at the Citgo. When I’m teaching, they stand in a line at the back of my classroom, and whenever I make a joke about the Oxford comma the drummer does a BA-BA-BAM! When I get on the el to go home, they’re there, playing Dixieland for the commuters. When Dan comes over for dinner, they play—something slow. Sultry. They’re rooting for me. They’ve become a part of how I do things. Like, I’ll be running late but it doesn’t matter, I have to stop and listen. Even now, as I write this, I can see them out of the corner of my eye: all of them dancing in my living room, their helmets a carpet of waving feathers. They want me to loosen up a little. Shake my shoulders, give a little shimmy. Later tonight, we’ll go out—you’re welcome to come—and I’ll lead everyone down the street—Humboldt to North Avenue and Ashland from there. We’ll pick up a crowd as we go, and all of us will dance in the street.
06| One One-Thousand, Two One-Thousand, Three
Eliza was fourteen when she moved out of Climax. Mom and Dad split up, Dad got the house, Mom the kid and within a month Eliza was packing up her bedroom in secondhand tomato boxes from Krogers. Her story could fit into one of those boxes.
She didn’t mind moving too much, crossing her fingers that her home-to-be in Iowa would be different than Climax—thirty miles west of Cereal City and empty as one of the ghost towns in the late-night rodeo flicks she watched when nightmares kept her wide awake and shivering during Michigan Februarys. She wouldn’t miss those Februarys. She wouldn’t miss the 4H fairs either, or the Mom and Dad fights in the kitchen when they thought she was sleeping, or the nose-stuck-to-the-wind girls at Climax Junior High, all who thought they were so damn better just ’cause their daddies had business on Main Street, their boyfriends got the keys to pickup trucks on Friday nights, and their new bras had little fabric roses in the center and “You don’t need one of these yet, huh, Eliza?” they’d say, and giggle, and Eliza would pull her little-girl undershirt over her head and wonder why she was always two steps behind.
There was one thing Eliza would miss. About two miles out of Climax, close enough for her to get to on her bike, was a quarry. Hidden safe inside a coven-circle of trees was a green water pool near as big as a baseball field, all sunk down into the belly of mineral walls with ledges about fifteen feet up from the water. There was a flat dip in the ledge over on the southwest side, low enough for Eliza to drop her Levi’s and Albion College sweatshirts, tennis shoes and jockeys into neat folded piles and dive into the water: a long, clean smooth dive that would have secured her a spot on the CHS swim team (they almost won the state championship back in ’87!). She would kick hard under the seaweedy water—fancying herself a mermaid in its glow—push herself as far as her breath would carry and then fly sputtering to the surface, laughing aloud and diving back underneath like a waterbird. This was Eliza’s place, always empty in the daytime with the sun gleaming off the pool and lighting it up like a vanity-table mirror. She would flip onto her back, spread-eagle style like she was making snow angels, and float across the water feeling like Aphrodite or Ophelia or any of those silly adolescent girls swimming naked in the sunshine thinking achy poetic things. She always thought that when she met her Mr. Someone, she’d take him there with her, let her special spot become theirs, a together kinda place instead of a lonely kinda place.
Now, she’d never admit it to you, but Eliza always kinda fantasized that Mr. Someone might find her there, just happen upon her one day dead-man’s floating across the pool with her yellow hair splayed around her head like a fan and her body glowing phosphorescent white, and fall head-over-heels like boys always did in Jane Austen novels.
She’d imagine him standing up on the ledge behind a tree, watching her in secret, his face hot-red and his pulse thump-kicking in his chest. Every day he’d hide behind those trees, hoping that she’d be there, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. For that reason alone, Eliza always washed her hair before going to her secret place. She kept her fingernails neat and trimmed, too, and wore pink lipgloss. She wanted to be pretty when he finally came for her.
The day before she and her mom loaded all the boxes into the rente
d U-Haul, Eliza biked out to the quarry for one last swim. It was a hot day at the tag end of August and she was sweating something heavy from the ride by the time she got there, climbing down the ledge to the base of the pool. She wanted to jump right in but instead made herself take it slow, burning every moment into her brain so she’d be able to summon it up in her memory in Iowa: the silence, the peace, the green of the water, the powerful feel of the sun on her naked chest as she peeled off her tank-top and unbuttoned her shorts, letting them drop to her ankles and pushing her panties after. She shut her eyes and lifted her arms behind her head, first unknotting the ponytail that caught up her long yellow hair, and then lifting her arms up to the sky. If anyone had been watching her, they would have seen an adolescent girl with knobby knees and a straight-as-an-arrow body. But standing there with her eyes closed and hot-red fire dots appearing on the backs of her lids, her hands raised heavenwards, her hair brushing rumpled against the base of her spine, Eliza felt beautiful and grown-up and not-of-this-world. It was a moment she needed to be alone for, a moment without inhibition or fear or all her silly schoolgirl hang-ups.
But Eliza wasn’t alone.
She dove into the water, which exploded cold and delicious across her body. She kicked down deep, holding her breath in her cheeks like chipmunks, swimming in S curves around the base of the pool where the water was icy and dark forest green. When her temples started pulsing in the sides of her forehead and her mouth felt like she’d been blowing up party balloons, Eliza pushed herself towards the surface and the warm stale air, bursting through the glassy top of the water and sucking it in with fat chesty gasps. Once her breathing calmed, she treaded in place and rubbed the water out of her eyes before opening them.
Everyone Remain Calm Page 5