by Barbara Hall
ALSO BY BARBARA HALL
The Noah Confessions
OPENING ACT
And So It Happened
SOUND CHECK
Guidance • You Have to Understand About My Father
Wisdom from Gigi • Talking to Mom • Madrigals
Peace Pizza • The Fringers
FIRST SET
Rehearsal • Ed the Guitar Guy • The No-Talent Show
The Whisky A Go Go • More Madrigals
Competition • Winter Breakdown
TECHNICAL PROBLEMS
Christmas Eve • Day Four • Then It Gets Weird
Even Weirder • Crazy Goes to College
Spinning Plates • Ed the Guitar Guy’s Guitar Place
That Night I Had a Dream • The Road to Coachella
SECOND SET
The Real Road to Coachella • Coachella
The Show Goes On • Beer Garden
Out by the Pool • Another Guitar • The Prayer
ENCORE
The Call
For Faith
If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.
—YANN MARTEL
And So It Happened
WHEN I GOT HOME FROM SCHOOL THERE WAS A NOTE BY THE phone.
My mother had written it. It was in her large, loopy handwriting that always seemed like it was shouting. Sometimes she actually drew flowers or smiley faces and they seemed like they were shouting, too. Be happy! Chin up! It’s all good! But the contents were usually completely ordinary, like Dinner’s in the fridge! or I’ll be home around eight!
This time the note was completely different:
Maggie Somebody called from Topspin magazine. Something about writing an article. Here’s the number. She wants you to call. XOX
I stared at it for a long time. Finally I picked up the phone and called my mom at work.
“Biscuit,” she said in her chirpy tone. That was the name of the clothing store she worked in, not a nickname for me.
“Hi, Mom. What’s this note?”
“What’s what note?”
“Somebody called from Topspin magazine?”
“Oh, yes. Maggie from that magazine. I know it’s a music magazine. Does this have something to do with your father? Or maybe you don’t want to tell me?”
“Mom, I really have no clue. You took the call. Topspin is like one of the best indie magazines on the market. What about an article? Maybe it has something to do with Coachella.”
“Why don’t you just dial the number and see?”
“This could be a big deal,” I said.
“Well, just give that Maggie a call. Let me know what she says.”
I hung up and stared at the phone for another minute, then dialed the number. Someone said, “Topspin magazine,” and I asked for Maggie and then someone said, “You got her.”
“Maggie?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Blanche Kelly.”
“Who?”
I repeated my name. “You called about an article.”
“Oh, Blanche Kelly,” she said. I could hear the exhale from a cigarette. I pictured her as some hip and tortured type.
“So Blanche,” she said, as if she was picking up from some conversation we had had earlier. “I’m really interested in your experience at Coachella.”
“You’re interested in my band, the Fringers?”
“Who?”
“The Fringers. My band. We played at Coachella. That’s why you’re calling? Somebody saw us there or something?”
“Everybody knows what happened there. It was history-making.”
“Oh.”
“And I want you to write about the whole experience.”
My heart dropped a little. Deep down I’d known it would be like this. There was no escape.
“You want me to write about my father.”
“Yes,” she said. “That would make a great piece.”
There was a protracted silence.
Then she added, “Oh, money. We pay …” Blah blah blah. Some words and terms that didn’t mean much to me. I did some math in my head and figured out what they were going to pay me. Not that much. But this wasn’t about the money.
“I’m in high school,” I said.
“Right,” she said.
“I’m not a professional writer.”
“We know that. But we want your unique perspective.”
“About my father.”
“Right,” she said. “You’re the only daughter, right?”
I was quiet.
“You can write whatever you want. We can fix it up, you know,” she added.
What could I say? That this was going to be happening to me for the rest of my life? In one way or another. While I was still quiet she piped up with “Okay, we’ll pay three hundred dollars.”
I was still thinking, but asked, “When would I have to deliver it?”
“I’ll need it by Monday.”
I laughed. “That’s so soon.”
She said, “I know, but that’s real-world journalism.”
Real world. She didn’t sound too much older than me from her voice and she had figured out the real world.
“So will you do it?” she asked. “’Cause I’ll keep an open space.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I need it on Monday.”
“Best I can say is, if you get it on Monday, then I guess you’ll have your answer.”
I hung up the phone and stood in the living room and thought about what I had to say.
Maggie from Topspin said she wanted to know about my own unique perspective. Because of my father.
As I had recently learned, it’s best to be careful what you ask for.
I went into my room and turned on my computer. I stared at its blank but demanding screen. The prompter blinked.
There was so much to say.
Now I had someone to say it to.
So I started to write. I couldn’t start with what Maggie called a “history-making” experience. For me it went back before that day. I started where I felt I had to … back to when the cracks in the dam first appeared, and then the dam burst.
Guidance
TO EXPLAIN ME, I’LL BEGIN WITH A PIECE OF ADVICE THAT MY father started giving me at age three.
He said, “Blanche, don’t be a joiner.”
He used to say these things randomly when he was suffering through board games with me or teaching me how to play a ukulele, or at the dinner table or when he was tucking me in.
Later he said these things to me in e-mail.
E-mail allowed my father the anonymity he desired. E-mail came at you from somewhere but you didn’t have to know where. My mother was one of those people who thought that these so-called technological advances were destroying community, face-to-face relationships and all that. But if it weren’t for e-mail, I wouldn’t have been able to talk to my father at all. And maybe that was why she hated it.
My father, see, was in hiding.
This is what he said about joining things:
“Always run as fast as you can from a big group of people and a common idea.”
This philosophy had always served me well until I was sitting in my guidance counselor’s office, the first week of my sophomore year at Laurel Hall Academy, under the perplexed glare of Dr. Morleymower.
“Dear Miss Kelly,” he said. He was an eccentric English guy of indeterminate age. Hiring eccentric English guys was so LaHa. LaHa was the affectionate name we gave to our esteemed institution. It was kind of a joke but it was a fancy joke. Being the youngest and the worst private school in Los Angeles, they tried lots of different
tricks to elevate their status. Dr. Morleymower had probably gotten his certification from the back of a magazine, but he had that accent.
“Dear, dear Miss Kelly. I’m perusing your résumé and I’m wondering what any potential university is going to make of you.”
“You mean what they’re going to make of my four-point-two average?”
“Well, of course, you’ve always performed well in the area of academics.”
“I’m at an academy. I thought that was the idea.”
“And yes, I find your sarcastic wit delightful, but that’s not going to be reflected on your college application. You see, there will be a large space for you to list your extracurricular activities, and I’m afraid you’re going to be facing a lot of white.”
“I write a column for the Manifesto.”
This was the pretentious name of our school newspaper.
“Yes, I’ve read your delightful column entitled ‘Perspective, People.’ That’s correct, is it not? And in it you seem to ramble on about your disappointment in popular culture.”
“It’s a music column. I’m just disappointed in music.”
“I’m delighted to hear that. Do you play an instrument?”
“Yes, I’ve played the guitar since I was six.”
“My, you must be a virtuoso.”
“I get around.”
“And you understand theory and history and all?”
I understood history all the way back to 1955, which was more music history than most kids my age understood. I played by ear and had learned most of what I knew how to do by watching music videos and playing along with CDs. If I did say so myself, I knew my way around the guitar and had never felt the need to take classes. But I knew there was no way to impress someone named Dr. Morleymower with that.
“My training isn’t formal. But neither was the training of any of my heroes. Paul McCartney can’t read music.”
He smiled at that, then interlaced his fingers and stared at me over the tops of his glasses.
“Do you sing?” he asked.
“Well, you know, like most people. Around the house.”
“Do you perform in public? On the guitar, that is.”
“No.”
“So you’re really just a music fan.”
I bristled. “I’m a music critic.”
“Oh, dear,” Dr. Morleymower said, and his face looked truly stricken. Let’s just say he didn’t get more handsome when he did that. “Do you really think that’s a worthy calling in life?”
“Somebody has to do it.”
“Yes, I suppose somebody does, but it seems to me everyone rushes at that calling. ‘Anti’ is not actually a philosophical credo.”
“Look, I can see where this is going,” I said. “You want me to join some group. I’m not a joiner. And I seriously do not play sports.”
“I see. Well, I’m your guidance counselor, so what good would I be if I let you cling to that position? I’m afraid I must insist you join something. I’m going to take away one of your free periods and add Madrigals to your busy schedule.”
I sank into the Victorian armchair. I suspect that waves of heat were coming out of the top of my head like in cartoons. It was bad enough to join something, but a chamber choir that called itself Madrigals was just humiliating.
“I will alert Mr. Carmichael that you will be joining them for E period.”
“Look,” I said, “do we have to take such drastic steps? What about debate team? I’m good at arguing.”
He shook his head. “You are a sophomore. By this time, most students have found their niche, and spaces are filled. We have quite a promising debate team, and there are no openings. Glancing at your options, I see the following: Equestrian. You don’t happen to have a horse, do you?”
“It’s a pretty small house. I think I would have noticed.”
“Chess club. Do you play?”
“No, but I’m a fast learner.”
“And Madrigals. Despite your denial, I suspect music is in your blood.”
My spine went up, which wasn’t an altogether rare occurrence for me.
“Why don’t we get a blood test and see?” was my response.
Dr. Morleymower frowned and said, “Miss Kelly, if you weren’t such a good student and if I were of a less sanguine disposition, I’d take offense at your tone. I might even give you a demerit. Call your mother, perhaps?”
I swallowed hard. I liked to think of myself as a rebel, but I hated getting demerits and I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone calling my mother.
I looked at his watery blue eyes, and there was a deep well of determination in them. I knew I wasn’t going to win this battle, so I figured I might as well take the path of least resistance.
“Madrigals,” I said.
“Yes, you’ll fit right in.”
Fit right in.
Somewhere in the world, my father was feeling a pain deep in his chest.
You Have to Understand
About My Father
HE LEFT WHEN I WAS SIX.
I remember that day because I knew it was going to happen. It wasn’t that my parents’ fights had gotten louder or scarier. It was that they had stopped happening. Even as a kid I knew that was a bad thing. It meant they weren’t even talking. It meant they had given up.
We lived in Silver Lake then, which was a hip part of East L.A., multiethnic and full of artists and all kinds of people with alternative lifestyles. The ladies who babysat for me next door were a couple and they were foster parents to about ten kids all of different colors, some with things wrong with them, and there were all kinds of animals, including lizards and raccoons. I loved it. I felt like I was living in a happy circus. We put on talent shows and worked in the garden and dressed the animals up in doll clothes and jumped on trampolines and there was a tree house. Somebody was always falling out of it and there were broken bones and trips to the emergency room but it all seemed normal and fun.
My house had its own kinetic energy. There were always musicians coming and going. When the musicians left, sometimes my parents would argue. Sometimes they wouldn’t, they would just laugh and talk. Sometimes my father would go out to the small guesthouse behind where we lived and he’d stay there all night. That’s where his studio was. I wasn’t allowed to go in. Sometimes I’d peek through the dirty window and see the panels and the soundboards and the amps and the guitars and the keyboards. It looked fun but I knew it was serious.
I knew my father was famous. I just didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know that famous was a rare thing to be. I thought the ladies next door—Mimi and Joss—were also famous. I thought their million kids were famous and that my mother was famous and I was, too.
When my father left, I realized that it was only him.
The musicians didn’t come around anymore.
The house was quiet.
Famous had gone away.
My mother tried to soft-sell it at first. She said he was going away to think. Since I often went to my room to think, and it only took about twenty minutes, I kept expecting him to walk back in, refreshed and ready to play cards or read me a book. He sometimes did those things but it was always unpredictable. For days at a time he was in the mood for us and he’d act like a normal dad. Then he’d get a broody expression and he’d go into the studio behind the house and my mother and I would do things alone and quietly. We’d watch movies or play board games. She tried to pretend we were having normal days, but I knew we were waiting for him to come back and be cheerful. Sometimes his disappearances, or his thinking spells, would go on for what I now realize were weeks but felt like months.
When he did come back, though, it seemed like Christmas. He’d play us the songs he’d written and then his musician friends—his band, I suppose—would come over and there would be all-night jam sessions. I was able to sleep through the noise because it was happy noise. Those were exciting times, but they weren’t the best times. The best times were when he was imme
diately finished with a project and waiting to hear from his manager or the record label, and that’s when he’d play games with me and act like a dad.
Sometimes he’d go on tour with his band, and those were pretty good times, too. He was always happy when he was touring and he’d call home a lot and my mother was cheerful. Sometimes we’d fly to nearby cities to see him—San Francisco or Portland or Seattle or Las Vegas. When he came back from a tour, my mother would make him a special meal and I’d make cheesy banners and he appreciated it all for a few days, and then he’d fall into a funk and disappear.
I thought that was how all families lived. With these enormous hills and valleys, everyone tiptoeing around the unwieldy nature of talent, knowing there was a great force in the home and that force always had to be served and understood and given a wide berth. I had no idea that in some houses, most houses, every day looked pretty much the same.
I remember going to my best friend Tammy’s house in kindergarten and her parents were both teachers. They came home at the same hour and they talked and they made dinner and we ate it and then we went to the den and watched television. At a certain hour, one of them would say, “Bedtime.” And we’d go to bed. When we got up in the morning, they were exactly the same people they’d been the night before and there was no chance of excitement.
I felt very sorry for Tammy, and I was sure she and her family envied my family and felt inferior. Then one day Tammy and I had an argument while we were playing, and Tammy went and told her mother. I was standing outside the doorway of her shiny clean kitchen and I heard her mother say, in a low voice, “Don’t be so hard on Blanche. Things are tough enough for her at home.”
That was the first time it ever occurred to me that things were tough for me at home. And about to get tougher.
When my dad left, he wrote a note to my mother saying that he had to go find himself. This she explained later, not right away, and I’ve never seen the note, so all I have is the hand-me-down version. He said (according to her) that his priorities had gotten shifted around because of his success and he couldn’t hear the music in his head anymore, and without that, he had no idea who he was.
He went around the world for a year and we’d get the occasional postcard. He finally landed in Bali and said that was where he intended to stay. He said it was a magical place and the air was clear and he could think. He sent instructions for us to join him. My mother actually started making the plans, and then she got another letter and it said, “This is no place for you two. Hang tight and I’ll be home when I can.”