Scar Girl

by Len Vlahos

  Johnny walked me out. When we got to my car, he smiled and said, “Okay, we’ll need to practice that one at your house.” And that’s just what we did.

  When we finally got around to doing it at the gig, it came off—the stunt and the leg—without a hitch. Johnny, realizing his mother was right about needing to protect his prosthesis, somehow managed to get his hands on a peg leg. When that gnarled piece of wood went sailing through the air, it was like the Bat-Signal letting all of Gotham City know that the Scar Boys were back.

  I was a little surprised at how pissed off Cheyenne was when we got to the greenroom, and it made me feel a little bad, but honestly, at that point, she was Johnny’s problem, not mine.

  CHEYENNE BELLE

  “What the fuck was that?!” I screamed at Harry and Johnny the second we got to the graffiti-covered excuse for a dressing room behind the stage. I know the other guys see the romance of CBGB’s, but to me that place is a dump.

  “C’mon, what?” Johnny answered, laughing. “Did you see how much they liked it?” He was sitting on the bench, pulling on the custom-made sock that sat in the socket of his real prosthetic leg.

  “Yeah, well, maybe you two idiots could’ve warned me first.” Harry was trying hard to stifle a laugh. Johnny wasn’t even trying; he was doubled over, the jerk.

  “I didn’t know, either,” Richie offered, all serious. Then he burst out laughing too, adding, “But it was fucking awesome! How many times did you guys practice that?”

  I was pissed off and I was hurt, so I left the dressing room and went out front while Mud played their set.

  Like I said, they weren’t much to watch. The five members of the band—two guitars, bass, drums, vocal—all had Beatlesque haircuts, flannel shirts, jeans, and ratty sneakers. It was a uniform for alt rockers that had already become a cliché. They pranced around the stage like it was some weird kind of ballet. I was embarrassed for them.

  They were playing a song called “I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired.” The lead singer, so pleased with how clever the lyric was, could barely contain his smirk as he sang that line over and over again. And the guitar player, who moved like he was double-jointed—by that, I mean like a real spaz—kept winking at me. Actually winking. I mean, who does that?

  Anyway, right at that exact moment, the entire world stopped spinning.

  Or maybe my brain sped up, I don’t know.

  Each beat of the snare echoed and boomed for an eternity.

  Every wink of that creepy guitar player’s eyelid was like a curtain slowly coming down.

  Every word that singer sang was a drawn-out slur.

  Time did everything it could to stop.

  Sitting at that crusty, crappy table in the cesspit that is CBGB’s, on the heels of a great Scar Boys set, after Johnny and Harry had played their trick that had so pissed me off, in the middle of the ridiculousness of “I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired” by Chemicals Made of Mud, the dumbest band in the history of dumb bands, I felt the baby move for the first time.

  Holy shit, the baby—my baby—was moving.

  I knew without any trace of doubt I was going to keep it.

  PART THREE,

  NOVEMBER 1986

  A ballad once in a while doesn’t go amiss.

  —Chrissie Hynde

  Who are your musical influences?

  HARBINGER JONES

  The Bay City Rollers.

  CHEYENNE BELLE

  The Bay City Rollers.

  RICHIE MCGILL

  Let me guess, the other guys said the Bay City Rollers?

  Yeah, we all hate that question. It’s, like, the most unoriginal question in the universe, and we swore that if anyone ever asked it, we would all always say the Bay City Rollers.

  But I kind of like you, so I’m gonna give you a break and give you my real answer.

  You ready?

  The Bay City Rollers.

  HARBINGER JONES

  We decided to take the next day off from rehearsal.

  But I never take a day off from the guitar. I was hanging out in the basement in my parents’ house, watching The Price is Right, the guitar on my lap.

  After a while I found myself picking the same riff over and over again. It was kind of beautiful. Maybe that sounds immodest, but it’s the only word I can use to describe what I was hearing. Everything around me dropped away. The TV became a blur of muted color, the cheering of the game-show audience faded to static. The only thing I could hear was that riff.

  That’s kind of amazing because my guitar wasn’t even plugged in. When you play the electric guitar, you can barely hear it if it’s not plugged in. But when you play often enough, your brain interprets what little sound there is and compensates for it. It’s like my brain engaged some sort of organic alpha-wave amplifier that allowed me to hear that riff with perfect clarity.

  I played it over and over again until it had the rhythm and cadence of a slow-moving train. Next thing I knew, my hands shifted to a chord progression built off the line I’d been playing, and I knew I had a song.

  I started singing, the words more or less coming to me without interruption.

  I bet when authors write books, they probably get into a zone where whole chapters pour out of them with-out ever once needing Wite-Out. That’s what happened to me.

  A song. This song. It was just floating in the air or in my brain, or maybe in the background hum of Bob Barker hawking everyday household items, and somehow it came out of my hands and out of my mouth. It was a kind of magic.

  When I was done, I turned the TV off and called Johnny. Someone needed to hear this.

  “Yeah,” Johnny said when I called him. “C’mon over, I’m just listening to music.”

  I could hear in his voice that Johnny was kind of out of it. He had good days and bad days, and after the excitement of the CB’s gig, I think he was having a bad day. I didn’t really like to be around Johnny when he was like that—I guess I saw too much of myself in him; it hit too close to home—but I also knew that’s when he needed me the most.

  He was sitting on the floor of his bedroom when I got to his house, his back leaning up against his desk. Above his head, on the desk blotter, were three brown vials of prescription medicines. I couldn’t read the labels, but figured they must be painkillers or antibiotics to stave off any infection that might have lingered in his stump. I used to have those little bottles lined up in my room, too.

  A coiled wire snaked down from a hi-fi unit to a pair of headphones wrapped around Johnny’s ears. His eyes were closed, and he was otherwise motionless. The album cover for U2’s Wide Awake in America was on the floor.

  The record is an EP, just four songs. “Bad,” an eight-minute live opus that pulls you through every emotion you can imagine, was a favorite song of ours. Both Johnny and I felt like Bono was talking to us personally.

  I nudged Johnny’s foot with the toe of my sneaker.

  “Careful, Harry,” he said without opening his eyes. “I’ve only got one of those left.”

  “I know it’s the left, and that ain’t right,” I answered. This had quickly become a favorite joke of ours. I don’t know why. “‘Bad’?” I asked about the music.

  “Actually, pretty damn good.” Johnny and I were a regular Smothers Brothers. No, strike that. More like Martin and Lewis. We were still a bit too dysfunctional to be the Smothers Brothers.

  “So let’s hear this new song,” he said, tugging the headphones down around his neck.

  I was about to take my Strat out of its case, but I realized this would sound much better on an acoustic guitar. Music is like that. You need the right tools to make it perfect. So I grabbed Johnny’s Takamine. It had a sunburst body with a built-in pickup and this trebly sound with a lot of twang. It was bright and clear, like sunshine.

  I sat on Johnny’s bed and started picking, and right away I saw him smiling. He recognized the guitar part for what it was: a really good riff. I was just about to launch
into the lyrics and melody when my brain hit the pause button. Oh, shit, I thought. I can’t sing this song for Johnny.

  CHEYENNE BELLE

  After feeling the baby move, I knew I couldn’t put it off anymore, so I got up super early the day after the gig, like eight thirty, took the number twenty bus up Central Avenue, got off at Underhill, and walked the rest of the way to Johnny’s house. The walk is way more than a mile, first up and then down a steep hill. I was tired and not feeling quite right, and by the time I got there, almost two hours after I left home, I was a bit of a wreck.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Theresa had asked from her bed as I was leaving the house. She was still bleary from whatever she’d been doing the night before. Part of me really wanted to have someone with me when I told Johnny, but I knew I needed to do this alone. I told her, “No, thanks.” She nodded, flopped her head back down on the pillow, and was snoring before I left the room.

  I didn’t even know if Johnny was home, which, given how I was feeling, I suppose was pretty stupid. I don’t know why I didn’t call first. Maybe I wanted to catch him off guard, or maybe I wanted to see how happy he would be when I showed up at his door. Or maybe I just wasn’t thinking straight.

  When I got there my heart sank to my knees; Harry’s car was in the driveway. I felt like I couldn’t catch a break.

  Yeah, I should’ve been happy that Johnny and Harry were back to the way they were when I first joined the band. They’d been rebuilding their broken friendship brick by brick since we got back from Athens, and by this time it was stronger than ever. I guess it had to do with Johnny’s accident. Misery really does love company, you know? If I’m being honest, I wonder if my decision to keep the baby was me wanting to find a way to be closer to Johnny than Harry was.

  God, it sounds so messed up to say that out loud.

  Anyway, Johnny answered the door, and he was happy to see me. Even though he was on crutches without his prosthetic leg, he wrapped me in a big hug and didn’t let go for a long minute. That goofy “I Melt with You” song popped into my head.

  “C’mon in, Pick. Harry’s here. We’re working on a new song. You should hear it.”

  Harry stood up when we walked into Johnny’s bedroom. He always did that when I came into a room. Always a little too quickly, always with his shoulders and neck a little too stiff.

  “Oh, hey, Chey,” he said to me, and then turned to Johnny. “I can get going. We can finish this later.”

  “No, stay, stay. Play the song for Chey.” Johnny eased himself onto the folding chair behind his keyboard. We were cramped in there, and I felt like the walls were closing in. Harry looked at me, waiting for some cue, some hint to know whether he should stay or go. I needed to tell Johnny my news—our news—and I wanted Harry out of there in the worst possible way, but I was kind of stuck. I didn’t know how to ask him to leave without giving everything away.

  Anyway, maybe Harry could read all that in my eyes, because he said, “No, really, I should go. I’ll play it for the whole band when we jam Monday.”

  “Stop,” Johnny said. “Just play it. Really, she’s going to love it.”

  Classic Johnny. Issuing orders and talking about other people like they weren’t in the room. As much as all of our relationships had grown and changed, the foundation of who we were was the same. While it didn’t happen as much as it used to, when Johnny gave a command Harry was programmed to follow.

  Harry sat down on the edge of the bed, lifted Johnny’s acoustic onto his lap, and started picking. I leaned against the doorjamb, listening and watching.

  Harry was nervous. I could tell because he does this thing with his forehead, crinkling the place where his eyebrows should be, kind of like a pug. The music was much slower and more ballady than anything we’d ever played before. But the riff was hypnotic. It was haunting. Then Harry began to sing.

  Phones ring.

  Voices meander, like waves

  beating up the air.

  None of those voices ever sing.

  She wonders if

  She even cares.

  She’s nearly a saint.

  And no one notices when

  she scrapes the ground.

  She wishes she had the time

  To hear pleasant sounds.

  He stopped.

  “I’m still working on some of the lyrics, but it has a bridge, too.” He started strumming, going from the main riff to a series of power chords.

  Run away,

  Go away,

  Hide away,

  Sneak away.

  There’s got to be an easier way

  To face each day.

  Then the bridge flowed back to the main riff, like a musical river.

  Her ears ring,

  Deafened by noise of boys playing with toys.

  But the noise is nothing;

  Maybe it’s why she’s so silently annoyed.

  Johnny started messing around on the piano, but I wished he hadn’t. It almost ruined the moment.

  “Pleasant Sounds”—that’s what it’s called—was maybe the most beautiful song I’d ever heard. And here’s the thing: I knew it was about me.

  I could see it in Harry’s eyes.

  I could feel it in the chords.

  I can’t really explain it. I just somehow knew.

  Johnny was clueless. When it came to music, he wasn’t the same as the rest of us. Johnny was, in some ways, the most talented guy in the band, but it was coming from a different place. With me and Richie and Harry, it came from the heart. With Johnny, it came from the head. I actually think that’s a good thing for a band, to have some of it coming from the heart and some of it coming from the head.

  Anyway, Harry and I were in the middle of sharing this incredible moment, and Johnny was sitting there, grinning like an idiot, missing the whole thing.

  “Isn’t that great?” he said to me. “Don’t you love it?” he pushed. Johnny always pushed.

  I started to cry. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, or maybe the song was just that beautiful, or maybe the long walk from the number twenty bus had done me in. Whatever the reason, I lost it.

  “Chey?” Johnny asked, this time with a gentle voice.

  “I’ll leave you guys alone,” Harry said. He put down the acoustic guitar, picked up his Strat, and walked out of the room. I heard the front door to Johnny’s house close, and we were alone.

  “Pick, are you okay?” Johnny pulled himself up—like I said, he wasn’t wearing his leg—and took a hopping step toward me. I saw him stifle a grimace of pain as he tried to pull me into an embrace. It didn’t work.

  We flopped down together on the bed, Johnny landing on top of me, pretty hard.

  I panicked for a second, thinking, like, Oh, crap, did he just squash the baby? But even I knew that was silly. He must’ve seen my eyes go wide or heard me gasp with fear or something.

  “Chey, I’m sorry. . . . I’m not . . . it’s not what you think.”

  It would’ve been so easy to just tell him right then and there. To say, “No, Johnny, I don’t think you’re hitting on me. It’s that I’m worried about the baby in my belly. Our baby.” But I couldn’t. His eyes were darting back and forth, and they were all glassy. Everything about him seemed lost, like he was in some kind of maze and couldn’t find his way out. Johnny was still going through so much shit that I couldn’t dump this gigantic thing on him. I just couldn’t. It would just have to wait a few more days.

  I managed to choke back my tears and tried to smile.

  “No, it’s okay,” I whispered, talking about us falling onto the bed. “I know, I know.”

  And then Johnny McKenna did something I’d never seen him do before.

  He started crying.

  HARBINGER JONES

  It got way more complicated when Chey showed up. I mean, the song was about her. Of course it was about her. I didn’t realize that when I was writing it. Sometimes the words and music just pour out and you have no idea wh
at they mean until much later.

  In the case of “Pleasant Sounds,” I understood the meaning as soon as I started playing the guitar riff for Johnny. But once I’d started picking the notes, I was trapped.

  I kind of hiccupped when I sang the first line—Phones ring—my voice catching like it was tripping over the edge of a carpet. And I mumbled. But it didn’t matter.

  Johnny, who is smarter than me most of the time, is kind of dumb in a couple of very specific ways. It would never occur to him that I would write a song about Cheyenne. Whether that’s because he and I are best friends and he and Chey are together, or whether it’s because he thinks someone like me has no business fantasizing about someone like Cheyenne, I have no idea.

  So I finished the song, and Johnny was just beaming. I could tell that he really loved it, and that put me at ease.

  “We have to add this to our set right away. Play it again.”

  So I did, and he started messing around with some piano parts.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  In the two minutes Johnny was gone answering the door, my nerves started jangling. I was pretty sure it was Chey. It’s like the universe suddenly notices that I’m doing kind of okay and then it rings the doorbell to set things straight.

  When Chey walked into the room trailing Johnny, I felt an overwhelming need to get the hell out of there. I tried, but Johnny kind of forced me to play the song.

  Again, I was trapped.

  I know what you’re thinking. How can he force you, Harry?

  There was too much history between Johnny and me for it to work any other way. It’s hard to explain.

  I played the song with my eyes shut the entire time. When I finished, Cheyenne just started bawling. She knew right away that the song was about her. Johnny looked confused.

  I grabbed my guitar and left, feeling pretty shell-shocked. I figured Chey was crying over the guilt of her and me having kissed in Georgia and that she was going to tell Johnny everything.