Struts & Frets

by Jon Skovron

  “Are you going home tonight?” asked Rick.

  “We both are,” I said. “They just want to keep her under observation right now.”

  They all nodded again. In unison. This time, I did laugh a little.

  “You all go home,” I said. “Thanks for coming.” Then, because it sounded a little dismissive, I said, “Really. Thanks.”

  They all slowly filed out, except Jen5, who was still clinging to me, her face still pressed into my shoulder.

  “Can I stay?” she asked, her voice muffled.

  “Sure,” I said. “I think that would be nice.”

  For the next few hours, my mom slept and I told Jen5 everything about Gramps. Not just the new stuff, but everything. Usually I told her the funny stuff, like his obsession with McCarthy, but I’d always leave out the scary parts. And when I told her about it all now, she listened. Really listened.

  Then she told me about her own grandfather, who was dead now. He had been an orthopedic surgeon and a nut about golf. He didn’t like kids, though, so most of her memories were of him sitting in his La-Z-Boy, wearing his plaid pants, watching golf on TV, and drinking straight bourbon all morning. He also never used denture cream, or maybe it got dissolved by all the bourbon, and whenever he laughed, which wasn’t often, or yelled, which was a lot, his teeth would float around in his mouth.

  After she finished telling me about her grandfather, she asked me about my dad.

  I didn’t really even like thinking about the dad thing. But I guess a lot of people wondered about it. I’d never talked about it to anyone before.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He was just some guy my mom was dating in college. When they found out she was pregnant, he freaked and split. We don’t have any idea where he is, and I don’t think my mom wants to know.”

  “Do you?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes. When I get that feeling like something’s missing, you know? And I wonder if that’s what it is. Like I’m a puzzle and there’s a great big hole right where the dad piece goes. But when I was a kid, I didn’t feel that way. When I had Gramps, like he used to be, I felt like I had something better than anyone else. Something better than a dad.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever try to find him?”

  “Maybe someday,” I said. “But not anytime soon. I want to be my own man before I meet him. Just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “In case he’s a total asshole.”

  A little while later, Mom woke up.

  “Christ,” she said, her voice soft and scratchy. “I feel like hell.”

  Then her eyes came into focus and she looked around. “Oh, hi, Jennifer,” she said. “Thanks for keeping Sammy company. That’s very sweet.”

  “I’m just glad you’re okay, Ms. B,” said Jen5.

  “Yeah,” said Mom. “So am I.” She sat up carefully and looked around. “Okay, let’s get a nurse in here and find out how soon they’ll spring us from this joint.”

  Two hours later, we were in the Boat and heading home. But first we dropped Jen5 off at her house.

  As she climbed out of the backseat, she said, “See you tomorrow in school?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Good-bye, Ms. B,” she said. Then she started walking up the driveway toward her front door.

  Mom rolled down her window and called out, “Wait a sec, Jennifer.” Then she turned back to me and looked at me sternly. In the Mom Authority voice that she hardly ever used, she said, “Samuel Bojar, I thought I raised you better than that. You get out of this car and go give that girl a goodbye kiss.”

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  “What?” she said. “You didn’t think I knew you guys were dating?”

  “Well . . . ,” I said.

  “Sammy. She’s waiting.”

  I nodded, got out of the Boat, and walked over to where Jen5 was standing and looking a little confused.

  “Thanks again for staying with me,” I said. Then, before she could respond, I stepped in and kissed her. I meant for it to be one of those quick pecks. Who wants to make out in front of his mother? But it was such a relief that I just kind of sank into it. I’ve heard people say that they lose themselves in a kiss. But in that moment, it was the opposite for me. I felt like I found myself. Not who I wished I was, or who I was afraid of becoming, but who I really was.

  Finally, she managed to escape my grasp. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding her so tight. She stepped back and looked at me kind of bewildered.

  “Wow,” was all she said, then she smiled, turned, and walked to her front door.

  I watched her enter and shut the door behind her. Then I turned and walked back to the Boat.

  As I pulled away, Mom said, “Well, that was very—”

  “If you say sweet,” I interrupted, “I’m gonna hurl.”

  “I was going to say that was very dashing.”

  “Dashing?” I said. “I kinda like the sound of that.”

  A quiet smile curled up on her bruised lips. “I thought you might.”

  That night after dinner, Mom looked at herself in the mirror for the first time. She stared for a while at her half-shaved head, her black eye, and the glittering line of staples.

  “Looks like I’m going to have to invest in a lot of hats,” she said quietly. Then a strange expression came on her face and she pulled the half-head of hair back. She squinted her one good eye. “Or maybe,” she said, “I’ll just shave the whole thing and start fresh.”

  “That would be awesome,” I said.

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “I think so too.”

  She had bruises all over her body as well, so she had a hard time moving around. I helped her into bed and brought her a glass of water.

  “You know, Mom, if you think you need help tomorrow, I could stay home from school.”

  “Nice try, Sammy. No, I’ll be just fine. And anyway, you know the rules. No extracurriculars that day if you aren’t in class. And you have that Battle of the Bands thing tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ll be doing that,” I said.

  “Samuel,” she said, using that rarely invoked Mom Authority voice for the second time. “You are going to compete in that contest. End of story.”

  about what had happened. I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t really know how to talk about it either. There was still this weird sort of distance, like at the hospital. I think everyone was being careful with me or something. Like I was suddenly this feeble person. Like I was helpless.

  I could tell it threw them even more when I asked how everyone felt about the contest. We were sitting around a table eating lunch and everybody froze, food halfway to their mouths.

  “You mean you still want to do it?” asked Rick.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “What about your mom?” asked TJ.

  “She was the one who convinced me, actually.” I turned to Joe. “Do you have the lyrics memorized?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’m ready if Rick is ready.”

  We all looked at Rick.

  “Let’s do it,” he said.

  The contest was being held at Newport Music Hall, a huge space that usually hosted all the big-name bands on tour. Not the superstar bands, of course. They played at the stadium. But everyone else played at Newport Music Hall. There was a big sunken pit in front, then more dance floor in the back. It also had a whole second mezzanine level with real theater seats. It could seat more than a thousand people. I couldn’t even imagine what a thousand people might look like. Actually, I chose not to.

  We had to show up right after school to get our names on the list, and we had to bring our gear with us. The nice thing was that we got to park in the reserved parking lot behind the building. KLMN was also providing a lot of other gear, like the amps, speakers, mics, and a simple, bare-bones drum kit so it wouldn’t take much time to switch between bands. We even got a sound check to get used to the space. Although the guy who was running it,
some gnarly old dude covered in tattoos and sporting a braided goatee that hung halfway down his chest, said it would sound a lot different when the place was filled with people.

  Walking out on that stage was amazing. I looked at the seats all the way on the upper level in the back, and they seemed so far away. There was so much space to fill up with music. It almost made me dizzy thinking about it. But a good kind of dizzy, like riding a roller coaster.

  “You got three minutes, boys,” said the sound-check guy.

  We quickly plugged in and ran through our first song. I couldn’t believe how great it sounded. We could be as loud as we wanted, and Joe knew the lyrics and Rick played the correct bass line without anyone reminding him. Laurie, Alexander, and Jen5 stood down in the pit cheering and laughing. It was perfect.

  We were all grinning like idiots as we walked off the stage.

  Rick turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Holy shit, dude,” he said. “We might actually do this!”

  I just nodded my head. I knew we would.

  So many bands were playing that they couldn’t all fit in the dressing rooms backstage. We ended up getting put in one of the backstage offices. It was dark and kind of cramped with the four of us, plus another band that I didn’t recognize. But whatever. We were still backstage at the Newport. Hell, yeah.

  “Did you hear the way your bass sounded with that amp?” asked TJ. “Incredible.”

  “I know, right?” I said. “You could, like, feel it in your stomach it was so intense.”

  “Yeah,” said Rick. “That kit is awesome too.”

  “That’s what happens when you can afford to spend a little money on decent heads,” agreed TJ. “Playing it felt great.”

  “Are you guys glad I thought of this or what?” asked Joe.

  The three of us just kind of smiled at him for a moment, because it was a weird thing to say. But he was right. This had been his idea from the start.

  “Totally,” I said. “You were so right.”

  There was a stage monitor hooked up in the office so we could hear the other bands play during the competition. At first, all we could hear was the stagehands setting things up. Then the sounds of an audience began to filter through the monitor. At first it was just a low mumble of voices, but it kept growing louder, filling up until it was more like a constant buzzing, as maybe a thousand people talked and laughed at once. We’d already had our sound check, and listening to that audience was our reality check. We were still smiling, but there was a tension to it. And we weren’t talking as much.

  And then the announcer must have come onstage because the cheers over the monitor rattled the speaker cone.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” he yelled into a mic dripping with reverb. “Are you people ready to pick Columbus’s best band?”

  SCREAM!

  “Well, KLMN 103.1 wants—no, they need—their faithful listeners to find them a diamond in the rough! They’re begging you! Pleading with you!”

  “Could this guy be any more cheesy?” Joe groaned.

  “Find the next big thing!” continued the announcer.

  SCREAM!

  “Ten bands, all born and bred right here in this town.”

  “Sammy, weren’t you born in Cleveland?” Rick asked with a nervous grin. “Uh-oh, I hope that doesn’t disqualify us.”

  The announcer continued: “They’re young, they’re hopeful, and one of them is going to get serious radio play!”

  SCREAM!

  “Here’s what happens. There’s going to be three rounds. In the first, they’ll each play one song, and you’ll pick the top three by cheering as loud as you can for the one you like. And I mean loud and long and out of control. Let us hear it!”

  SCREAM!

  “Then, the next two rounds will eliminate one band each round until we have our new big thing!”

  SCREAM!

  “Are you ready?”

  SCREAM!

  “Then let’s hear it for our first band, Cog!”

  There was a lot of feedback and general noise at first, but then a pounding, grindcore sound emerged and the band kicked in. It was total speed metal. Not my thing at all, but I had to admit that they were really tight. And like all thrash songs, it was short. It ended crisp and clean like an Olympic diver entering the water.

  “Yikes,” muttered Rick.

  The announcer said, “Let’s hear it for Cog!”

  SCREAM!

  “And now our next band, Casanova Trio!”

  SCREAM!

  “Oh, God,” said Joe. “Poser emo crap.”

  But it was worse than that. It was cheesy Britpop. It was Wallflowers meets Morrissey.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “You’re next,” said a gruff voice.

  “We’ll sound amazing compared to these pussies,” said Joe.

  We opened the door and trooped up the dark, narrow stairwell. At the top we entered into the wings. We could see Casanova Trio out onstage, looking just as sad and lame as we had imagined they would.

  We could also see the audience.

  It’s easy to say “one thousand people.” But it’s not easy to look at them all at once. I got through an audience of fifty at the open mic, but you didn’t have to count to see the difference. It was a wall of eyes, all of them about to turn toward us in a few moments. Sick dread flushed through my stomach and my hands were suddenly shaking.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” TJ said.

  “Shut up,” said Joe.

  That didn’t help at all and TJ sprinted back down the stairs to the bathroom. He came back up a minute later, a little pale but looking much happier.

  “You guys should try that,” he said. “Seriously.”

  But even if any of us wanted to, we couldn’t. The song ended and we could hear the announcer say, “Let’s hear it for Casanova Trio!”

  SCREAM!

  “And now, show the love for Tragedy of Wisdom!”

  SCREAM!

  My first thought was, God, I still hate that name. But then it was time to walk onstage and that thought evaporated. In fact, all thought evaporated. My stomach totally bottomed out and it was the same feeling as at the open mic. Walking across that stage to my spot seemed like it took forever. My body was so stiff, I felt like Frankenstein’s monster. When I got to the right place, just picking up the cord and plugging in my guitar seemed like a huge undertaking. How the hell was I going to play? Then I looked out at the audience—all those faces, all that noise—and for a split second I froze completely. My eyes couldn’t hold what I was looking at. My brain was blowing fuses all over the place. If there had been an EKG monitor hooked up to my heart, all you would have heard was beeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

  But I heard the click of TJ’s sticks counting us in and even though my head was still on ice, my body knew exactly what to do and started without the rest of me. We were halfway through the first verse before I even realized we were playing.

  And it was going brilliantly. We were on. The music pounded through me and I just let it come, let it blast out into the open air. We filled that vast space. Filled it with the music that we had created. I felt like I was ripping open my chest to the audience, showing them everything I had inside. I felt like they knew me, understood me, each and every one of them, and I had nothing to hide. I felt drunk and amazed. This was why I did it. This was why it was all worth it. This was better than anything.

  Then we hit the bridge. That’s when Joe forgot his lyrics. He kept singing, but he was saying nonsense words. Scatting like some sort of punk rock Ella Fitzgerald, except badly. I looked over at him and I could tell he was getting upset. But maybe we could make it through, get back to a chorus, something he knew, and maybe no one would notice. I glanced over at TJ and Rick, though, and the looks they were giving Joe would have definitely alerted anyone paying attention that things were not going as planned.

  And that was when the bass line went somewhere else. Rick seemed so amazed at Joe’s scatting rou
tine that he hadn’t even realized he’d switched to the wrong song. But Joe noticed. I guess he was glad there was someone else to blame besides himself because he stopped scatting and started talking: “That’s our crappy bassist, Rick!” he called to the crowd, mimicking the announcer’s cheesy voice. “Never knows what song he’s playing! And I always thought fags were supposed to be good at music! And while I’m at it, I might as well introduce the rest of the band. TJ, our pussy drummer! He stole my girl with his nice-guy act but was too much of a wimp to tell me! Let’s here it for pussy drummers!”

  There were a thousand people watching us. Some of them where kind of laughing but a lot of them looked like they didn’t know what the hell was going on. All I could think was: Just finish the damn song. Just get to the end and it’ll all be over.

  “And that, of course, is our guitarist and songwriter, Sammy,” said Joe. “And I have to say that this kid has had a rough life. I mean, his mom is so hot that even with twenty staples in her head she gave me a boner. Who knows? Now that I’m single and she’s single, hell, maybe I could be Sammy’s new daddy!”

  That was the moment I stopped playing and threw my guitar at him.

  It missed, of course. Guitars aren’t very good projectile weapons. It hit the floor and the neck cracked. That sound faded to complete silence. No music, no Joe, no announcer, no audience. My footsteps echoed as I picked up my broken ’61 Gibson SG reissue and walked off the stage, through the wings, down the stairwell, out the exit, through the parking lot, and to the Boat.

  And I just started driving.

  fact, I don’t think I was even paying attention as I drove. But I ended up at Gramps’s place. If anyone would understand what I was feeling right then, it was him. But of course he wasn’t there. He was in a psych ward, probably never to be released. Because he wasn’t going to get better.

  Shit.

  I sat there in the car and stared at the front lawn of the apartment building. It wasn’t very big. Just a little patch of grass spotted with a few dandelions. Less than two weeks ago, Gramps and I sat out there, talking about Chet Baker and the moon. Less than two days ago, he nearly beat my mother to death in probably about the same spot.