Teddy
In the bathroom Teddy, who’d asked for a short break so he could take another painkiller, did so, then stood staring at the wreck of the man in the mirror and marveling, as he always did in the aftermath of his spells, just how much they resembled tropical storms. As they approached, he often could sense the change in barometric pressure, as he had done on the ferry, even though the storm was still far out at sea, churning away, gathering force, bearing down. When it finally came ashore there wasn’t much to do but ride it out, just let it howl and rage and do its worst. At some point his buffeted, terrified psyche simply gave way to a profound sense of calm, there in the storm’s gentle eye. It wasn’t unlike what people coming down from acid trips often described—the self simply dissipating. To Teddy, a breathtaking moment of splendid, weightless drifting away. In another second or two the world and its cares would cease to matter. In their place, blessed oblivion. But then the winds returned, the shard pierced flesh, and he would know the truth—that escape was yet another false narrative. Later, bloodied and chastened and exhausted, he would do what he always did—claw up into the light, blinking, and survey the damage. Make an inventory of what was irretrievably lost, what was merely damaged and in need of mending, and then, most vitally, somehow locate and reestablish that charmless but necessary even keel that allowed for smooth, if unadventurous, sailing. What he called his life.
Making matters even worse was the fact that the world he returned to was, of course, unaffected by the storm. Given the blows he himself had sustained, he half expected to see trees uprooted, roofs blown off of houses and corrugated metal in the streets, whereas, naturally, the physical world was unscathed. In this one respect, however, tonight seemed different. Returning to the deck, Teddy couldn’t help feeling that his personal tempest had somehow broken containment, wreaking its havoc on not just himself but also his friends.
Lincoln had gone over to the railing, where he leaned staring out into the distance, perhaps at the dark outline of Troyer’s house, but more likely beyond that, to where moonlight was glittering on the waves. A blanket draped over his shoulders, he reminded Teddy of the forlorn Syrian refugees who for months now had been washing up on Greek islands. Earlier, looking out across this same expanse of lawn, he’d confided his fear that Jacy lay buried beneath it, as well as his own sense of culpability should that prove true: whatever befell her wouldn’t have if he hadn’t invited her to the island. Whereas now they knew the opposite to be true. Their invitation had actually saved her life, at least in the sense that it postponed her death. Instead of swallowing that handful of sleeping pills in Greenwich, Jacy had lived a few years longer, much of that as the girl in the photo Mickey’d showed them: wheelchair-bound, emaciated, unable to control her gnarled, flailing limbs. Thanks to her friends, she was able to fulfill her destiny of genetic misfortune. Was that what Lincoln was thinking now as he peered out into the darkness: be careful what you wish for?
Mickey, too, appeared gutted. Leaning back in his chair, he stared straight up at the night sky. To Teddy he looked emptied out, a hollow shell of the man who’d performed at Rockers just a few short hours earlier, as if for him the music had perhaps stopped playing permanently. He was determined to finish, though, and when Teddy was seated again, his blanket once more draped around his shoulders, Mickey said, “Home stretch. You think you can make it?”
Teddy assured him he would.
“Lincoln?”
“Coming,” Lincoln said, straightening up, or trying to.
When all three were settled, Teddy asked the question that was foremost in his mind. “How long was it before her own symptoms began to manifest?”
Mickey ran his hands through his hair. “Not long. A month or two? We’d be walking along and she’d suddenly wobble, like she’d felt a tremor in the earth, and when she got tired she developed this hitch in her gait. Other times she’d reach for something on the table—the saltshaker, a juice glass—and send it flying. Problem was, in addition to smoking weed, we were also drinking a fair amount, so she wasn’t the only one stumbling around, knocking things over. Still, I was pretty sure something wasn’t right. One day I snuck off to the library and did a little research. Even back then they were pretty sure ataxia was genetic. Sometimes it skipped a generation, though, and I remember holding on to that hope.”
“Do you think she knew anything was wrong when we were here on the island?” Teddy wondered, recalling what she’d said—How come everything has to be so fucked up?—when they were out at Gay Head. Captive to his own desolation, he hadn’t questioned what that everything might mean.
“That occurred to me, too,” Mickey admitted. “Probably not, though, or she wouldn’t have let herself get pregnant. But it’s true she was in flight mode. Desperate to escape her dickhead fiancé. Greenwich. Don and Viv. Her father’s horrible death. So, yeah, she might have imagined the disease was one more thing she could run away from.”
“You didn’t talk about it?”
He shook his head. “That was the worst part. Every time I showed concern, she’d fly into a rage. And I mean a real rage. We all saw her get angry at Minerva, but this was different. She’d scream at me that if she wanted a fucking mother she’d have stayed in fucking Greenwich. That I should mind my own fucking business. Which would piss me off, but then the symptoms would disappear for weeks at a stretch and I’d think maybe she was right and I was acting paranoid.
“Also, there was the band. Man, you wouldn’t believe how good we were. Like, ten times better than what you heard tonight. Tight? Jesus, we could read each other’s minds.” Despite himself, he was smiling. Joy, Teddy thought. The one thing his own even keel did not permit. For him such bliss led to euphoria, which inevitably pivoted, plunging headlong into depression and despair. Was this, like Jacy’s ataxia, also genetic? Had his parents ever experienced real joy? Or had they, too, had to guard themselves against emotional extremes? They seemed to want nothing more than they had. Each other. The Sunday New York Times. Each autumn, a fresh batch of high-school students to mold. Their own version of that even keel of his.
“We were a hot ticket all over Montreal,” Mickey was saying. “Throughout Quebec, really. We also made some serious dough, which was good because I never could reconcile myself to living off the money Jacy took from her old man’s safe. We blew a good chunk of it on amps and mics and a sound system. Plus an old hearse we repurposed to schlep all the equipment around in. I told myself I’d pay back every cent once we were famous, which it actually looked like we might be for a while. When Jacy sang, man, people just lost it. Her evolution was amazing. When we started out, she was doing maybe one song per set, but before long she was singing lead on, like, every other song and backup harmonies on most of the others. In the beginning we had to coax her up onstage. By the end, you couldn’t get her off it. And with every performance she got more bold, more free. It was the part of our lives she loved the most. Like I said, she was in escape mode, and performing, for her, was the best escape of all.”
His expression darkened now. “At gigs she liked to wear these miniskirts and she had this deal where she’d leap, microphone in hand, from the stage onto a table in the front row. As you can imagine, that gave anybody sitting there a pretty good view. She always wore black panties, so when the assholes looked up her skirt, for that split second, they wouldn’t be sure what they were seeing.”
Lincoln shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “She admitted this?”
Mickey sighed. “Okay, look, I wasn’t going to go into this, but if I don’t, you’re never going to understand. Jacy’s relationship to sex was complicated. She loved it, but it had to be on her terms, and it always, always had to be her idea.”
Which was certainly how it had been at Gay Head, Teddy remembered. Jacy, merrily shucking her clothes as he looked on, paralyzed, in wonder and fear and gratitude. Shouting “Come on, Teddy!” when he didn’t
follow her into the icy waves quickly enough. Then pulling him into her embrace, her surprising strength overruling his moral qualms. Had her power over him been what excited her most?
“You always got the impression that sex itself was somehow secondary, as if she was driven by something even more powerful than desire, or maybe apart from desire. Like that night at the Theta house. I’m not saying she didn’t enjoy kissing us, but those kisses weren’t really about us.”
Of course they weren’t, Teddy thought. Given what had been going on in her home for so long, how could she be anything but confused by sex? Why wouldn’t she be tempted to weaponize it?
“Anyway,” Mickey continued, “it was like that with music, too. She loved to sing, don’t get me wrong. But it wasn’t really about singing. Audiences? They couldn’t get enough. People weren’t coming to hear us, they were coming to see her. She wanted us to start writing and performing our own material, so after we caught our big break, we wouldn’t just be doing covers. She couldn’t wait for the war to be over, not because it was stupid and immoral anymore—that was the old Jacy—but because when it ended we could go back home and show Vance and Don and Viv and all of Greenwich what she’d become. She made me promise we’d change the name of the band from Big Mick on Pots to Andy’s Revenge.”
Lincoln still looked uncomfortable. “It must’ve worried you, how she was changing.”
“I guess I should’ve been,” Mickey acknowledged. “I mean, her need to drive men nuts? The guys in the band were all talking about it. But it was the early seventies, you know? Janice Joplin was drinking a quart of Southern Comfort at every show. The Who were smashing their guitars onstage. Jim Morrison was whipping it out in front of live audiences. It was all about freedom, remember? Richie Havens at Woodstock?”
Teddy couldn’t help smiling. The decade Mickey was trying so hard to explain through its iconic cultural moments was one Lincoln had basically opted out of. Richie Havens?
“Anyway,” he continued, “one night she missed the table and that was that.”
“What happened?”
“Too much weed? Too much mescal? The ataxia? Maybe she just got tangled up in the mic cord. But when she landed…”
He paused, remembering. Vividly, Teddy could tell.
“Anyway, end result? Concussion, broken elbow, busted kneecap and two cracked ribs. She was in the hospital for a week, which was where most of her remaining money went. Not being Canadian citizens, we didn’t qualify for the public health care. Anyhow, we paid the bill, or most of it, and we were sent home with two different prescriptions, one for a painkiller, the other for depression, because it was clear from the beginning that it wasn’t just bones she’d broken. Overnight, she became a whole different person. Bitter. Morose. For her, it was all over. She’d never return to the States in triumph. We’d never play that gig in Greenwich. Andy would never have his revenge and neither would she.
“I tried my best to cheer her up. Told her she’d be back with the band in no time, but she’d just look at me like I was somebody she’d known a long time ago and couldn’t quite place. Her right leg was in a cast from calf to midthigh. She’d raise it up off the sofa and say, ‘That’s what you think, Mick? You really believe I’ll be back leaping on tables anytime soon?’ When I pointed out that some people did manage to sing without jumping onto tables, she told me to go fuck myself. Because for her, that’s what singing was about.
“Anyhow, it all unraveled. I kept hoping that once the cast came off and she was mobile again, her spirits would improve. Most nights we had gigs, which meant leaving her alone in the apartment because she wouldn’t dream of letting anybody see her in a wheelchair. We weren’t nearly as good without her, of course. We had to go back to playing smaller, crappier venues. It was just music again, no show at all. I told myself we needed the money, but I was just glad, really, to get away for a few hours, to lose myself in the music. Mostly I went home as soon as we finished the gig, but this one night I went out with the guys instead. Got pretty hammered. Did some coke. By the time I got back to the apartment, the sun was coming up. I figured she’d be asleep. Her meds made her sleepy, and most days she was out till noon, but no, that morning she was wide awake, watching an old movie. ‘It occurs to me now what I should’ve done,’ she said when I came in, not taking her eyes off the TV. ‘I should’ve fucking let you go to Vietnam.’ I remember standing there looking at her, thinking that eventually she’d say she was sorry, but that was the thing about Jacy. You couldn’t shame her. She wouldn’t say she was sorry until she was fucking sorry.
“Anyhow, that afternoon the cast came off, so heading home from the hospital I suggested we go get a beer to celebrate, kind of a no-hard-feelings gesture. ‘Do you realize,’ she said, in the same voice she’d used that morning, ‘there isn’t a single fucking thing in the whole apartment to eat?’ So instead of having that beer, I dropped her off and went to get us something for dinner.” After a heavy pause. “By the time I got back she was gone. I didn’t see her again for over a year. Didn’t get so much as a postcard that whole time.”
Lincoln shook his head. “Where did she go?”
“No clue. After a few weeks, I figured she must’ve gone back to the States. Someplace I couldn’t follow her. For all I knew she’d patched things up with Vance and got married. Mostly I tried not to think about it. In fact, that whole year’s a blur. Every single way a man can be messed up, I was. When the band fell apart, I moved to Vancouver and formed another one there, but we never really clicked, and my heart wasn’t in it. I got a couple part-time gigs as a sound engineer. Made ends meet, somehow. I was living in this tiny second-floor walk-up, above a nice elderly couple. I have no idea how Jacy found me, but one evening I came home and there she was, outside my door, with a backpack in her lap, fast asleep in her wheelchair. Somebody must’ve helped her up there, because the stairs were really steep and there obviously wasn’t a ramp.
“I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t recognize her at first. She was skin and bones and you know what? I was scared to wake her up, afraid she’d start in yelling at me again. But then she twitched awake and smiled at me, and I saw she was the old Jacy. She said, ‘Did you hear the news?’ and it took me a moment to understand what she was asking because her speech was slurred and the effort to speak caused the elbow she’d broken to spasm. But I finally said, ‘What news is that?’ since I’d been in a sound booth all day. ‘The amnesty. Gerald Ford says all’s forgiven.’ I said, ‘You came to tell me that?’ She said, ‘No, I came to give you…’ The rest was so garbled I couldn’t make it out, so she tried again, and I finally understood that she’d come to give me my life back. I was holding a bag of groceries, so I said, ‘In that case, stay for dinner’ and wheeled her inside.”
Teddy thought he heard Lincoln let out a low moan, but he purposely didn’t look over at him.
“I offered to sleep on the couch, because the bath was off the bedroom, but she said no, it was okay. Her balance was for shit and she didn’t have much strength in her legs, but she could walk short distances when she needed to. Which apparently was true, because when I woke up in the middle of the night she was sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘I just want you to know I never hated you,’ she said. ‘I left because I didn’t want you looking at me the way I looked at my father that day on the lawn.’ Just like I was looking at her right then, she didn’t have to say it. Anyhow, I told her I didn’t care about the damn ataxia or anything else, so long as she was back. She started to cry then, so I scooted over so she could lie down next to me. When she stopped crying, I asked, ‘What about the baby,’ because not long after she left something came in the mail for her. The hospital reminding her of her first prenatal-care appointment. She told me not to worry, that she’d taken care of it.
“The next morning I had to go to work, but I told her when I got back we’d talk about the future. I said whatever she wanted
was fine with me. We’d get married if she wanted—or not, if she didn’t. We could go back home to the States, or find a bigger apartment right there in Vancouver. Whatever suited her. She said okay, we’d talk about all that when I got back. Something about how she said it made me wonder if maybe I’d pushed too hard, but really, I was too happy to be worried. During that year she was gone and I was so messed up, I’d gotten it into my head that she and I were meant to live our lives together, and now here she was, which proved I was right.
“Except I wasn’t. I’d barely walked in when the station manager came into the recording booth and told me I needed to get home right away. I think her plan must’ve been to make her way down the stairs by hanging on to the banister, then ask that old couple to call her a taxi. They heard her fall—a terrible crash, they said—and found her crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. Naturally they wanted to call an ambulance, but she was alert and coherent, and somehow she convinced them she wasn’t badly hurt. All she needed was for them to fetch her wheelchair, which was still up there on the landing, and call her a cab. That if they could just do those two things, she’d be fine. It’s also possible her speech was slurred and they thought she was drunk. Anyway, while her husband wrestled the chair down the steep staircase—no easy task for a man his age—the wife went inside and called the taxi. Hanging up, though, she had second thoughts. She knew where I worked and decided to call me, too. By the time I got there Jacy had lost consciousness and they’d called the ambulance they should’ve called earlier, but by then she’d stopped breathing. The EMTs tried to revive her, but she was gone. Our Jacy.”
* * *
—
AT SOME POINT during the evening the breeze had shifted, and the waves could now be heard pounding the beach below, seemingly proximate but in reality remote.
Chances Are . . . Page 29