Don't Blame the Music

by Caroline B. Cooney

  I stared at them all, and I did not know where my grief lay.

  But I understood something I had never thought about, or known existed. Our house was run gently and smoothly because my mother was fragile—not Ashley. Ashley, thin and tired and defeated as she might be, had the strength of ten. My mother did not.

  “Where have you been, Ash?” I said, unable to resist the topic. “Detroit? Dallas?”

  “Every city in America has a roach-ridden, urine-stinking motel where I have slept,” she said. “I have peddled my act in every corner of this worthless nation.”

  I could see my father getting ready to defend America against the charge of worthlessness. We had enough troubles without bringing America into it. “You’re in luck,” I said lightly. “We feature hot showers and roach-free accommodations.”

  Ashley gave me a long assessing look. I did not know if I got a passing grade or not. But at least I was getting a chance, which was more than Mom and Dad got. She poked at her food. “I guess that’s as good a reason as any,” she said finally.

  My heart ached.

  Whenever my mother is upset, she eats. The more she heard Ashley’s flat dead voice, the more she ate. She piled the mashed potatoes onto her plate and added enough gravy to float them out to sea.

  “You got fat,” Ashley accused her. “Fat people have no discipline. They’re slovenly.”

  My mother sat very still.

  My father sucked in a deep furious breath.

  “It’s only five or ten pounds, Ash,” I said instantly. “I don’t call that fat. I call it minor padding.” I smiled at my sister, willing her not to make things worse.

  “Oh, Christ,” said my sister wearily. “You’re one of these sugar-and-cream types, aren’t you? Always finding the silver lining. Do me a favor, Susan?”

  “Sure.”

  “Shut up.”

  There was a long, long pause. Nobody ate. Four forks played games on four plates. I had rather hastily jumped to the conclusion that I, Susan Anne, would be the savior in a difficult situation. Ashley had rather hastily pointed out to me that no, I wouldn’t.

  My father said, “We’re glad you’re home, Ashley. We’re glad you knew you could come home. But I am going to have to require you to be courteous to your mother and your sister if you’re going to live here.”

  Ashley raised thin eyebrows over glittering sunken eyes. “Oh, you are, are you?”

  My fingers tightened on the raised grapevine pattern of my water glass. My mother’s chin trembled. My father’s jaw bunched.

  The telephone rang.

  It sounded like a cry to battle. We leaped with jangled nerves. I had forgotten there was an outside world: other people, other places. Ashley had always been able to do this: envelop people so totally in her own personality that other thoughts shut down.

  Dad leaned way back in his chair. Normally my mother would yell at him, for tilting an antique on two legs like that, but tonight she didn’t notice. Grabbing the kitchen extension he said, “Yes? Yes? Who is this, please? Just a moment, please.” He cupped his hand over the receiver. “A boy named Anthony for you, Susan.”

  Oh, no.

  Oh, major league no.

  I was stretched to the breaking point dealing with Ashley, ripped and torn with thoughts of my mother and my father and how the four of us were going to exist under one roof. How could I possibly talk with Anthony, of all people, right now? I doubted I could talk to Cindy, who understood everything. But Anthony? Explain to him—without sobbing and falling apart—why I had leaped out of his car?

  More than anything, I did not want Ashley to be part of my relationship with Anthony. And I knew she was girl enough, and sister enough, to grasp right off that Anthony meant a lot to me. And somehow, in some cruel way, Ashley would jeopardize that, on purpose.

  And yet—suppose he wanted to ask me out?

  Suppose he just wanted to talk? Boy-girl talk? Getting-to-know-each-other talk?

  You don’t always have a second chance at things.

  He might never call again.

  After the way I’d abandoned him earlier, it was amazing he was trying now anyway.

  “Tell him I’ll talk to him tomorrow in school,” I said to my father.

  Dad nodded and wrapped up the conversation.

  I stared at the silent yellow phone. Somewhere next to another silent phone, Anthony stood trying to figure out what made Susan Hall tick. I doubted that he could come up with the right answer.

  Blurred with exhaustion, I was amazed to hear myself say, “Where can I sleep?”

  But it wasn’t my voice. It was Ashley’s, expressing my thought.

  “In our room,” I said, thinking—our room? My wonderful bedroom under the eaves, with its four-generation rug, and stenciling—that room belongs to her too? “The bed is made up.”

  Her jaw fell. “You knew I was coming?”

  I wanted to claim clairvoyance, but honesty won. “No. I was thinking maybe Cindy would spend the night Friday and—”

  “Cindy? The skinny stupid one with the lisp?”

  “Ashley!” said my father. “I asked you to be courteous.”

  Already the scene had a certain familiarity, as if we had been over this territory many times, and would go over it again.

  Ashley shrugged and left the room, slipping past each of us without touching or speaking. I thought of the parable of the prodigal son. We had made merry for the beloved child’s return too—but what happens when the beloved child doesn’t say she’s sorry? The parable doesn’t talk about that. Jesus figures of course you’re sorry. Jesus, I thought, you blew it. Not everybody is sorry.

  “Good night, honey,” my mother called.

  Ashley’s footsteps made little padding sounds on the stairs.

  When she reached the top the carpet absorbed the sounds and we could hear nothing.

  “Oh, my God,” said my father quietly.

  “I was just thinking of Him,” said my mother.

  We smothered half-hysterical laughter and touched fingertips around the table, the way we do for special blessings at Thanksgiving or Christmas.

  And that was my sister Ashley Elizabeth Hall’s twenty-fifth birthday.

  Four

  WHEN I FINALLY WENT upstairs to bed, Ashley was asleep under a mound of blankets, her pitiful clothing a heap on the floor next to her bed. She must be sleeping nude.

  Nothing of her was visible.

  I undressed in the dark, as quietly as I could, but my nerves were too frazzled for sleep. After a bit I got up again and went into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet lid and wrote in my journal.

  Back when we were all going to counseling (my parents’ unending attempt to survive what Ashley did to them with each return visit) one psychologist told us to keep journals and let our emotions pour out that way. My father never touched his, preferring his emotions unpoured. My mother hesitantly wrote about which birds visited the feeder and who voted yea and nay at the Board of Finance meeting.

  But I really got into it. I’ve kept my journal for years and nobody knows.

  My first was a beautiful blank book bound in flowered fabric. The thick expensive pages daunted me. I wasn’t writing anything immortal, after all. Anyhow, the book was too attractive to other people. Cindy reached for it, wondering what was inside. My mother reached for it—even bare acquaintances at school noticed it.

  So I switched to cheap black-and-white-splotched notebooks with wide lines, the kind little kids use to learn cursive writing. Nobody would think of finding anything there but spelling lists, so it is safe from peering eyes.

  They say you’re nothing but a quitter

  And it’s left you painfully bitter.

  Left you?

  What about us?

  You think our life is marvelous

  Now that you’ve come home

  and made our lives a combat zone?

  I could hear it set to music: throbbing rock band chords and haunting
repetitive melodies. I felt better. Rock always made me feel better.

  It was my one secret from my mother. If she thought I was going the way of Ashley—heading into rock music for a career—she would lie down and die rather than endure it.

  In the morning I awoke unrested, still ridden with anxiety.

  But there was no need. Ashley remained an anonymous mound under the heaped thin summer blankets.

  I pawed through the closet.

  Some days I know immediately what to wear. I put it on, it’s right, and I’m happy. Other days I change six times and everything is wrong and out of style and the colors are terrible.

  Today, when I wanted to impress Anthony and wrap myself protectively so I didn’t have to think about Ashley, I had nothing to wear. Nothing.

  The crush came back to me, in shards and pointed pieces, as if it had broken on the rocks of last night’s family upset. I held the emotions to me, trying to find the happiness I’d known sitting at Dom’s counter with Anthony, while the construction worker winked at me and the ice melted in my Coke.

  All I felt was more nervous.

  And no matter what I dragged out of the closet, it didn’t feel right.

  I am dressing for this crush, I thought. I guess you have to have the right clothing to have a crush in.

  Ashley moaned softly and turned under the covers. I held my breath but she didn’t awaken. I scuffled my bare toes on the hooked rug and exchanged my green cords for a pair of soft pale gray cords.

  The rug is four generations of hooking. My great-grandmother started it for this very room: sixteen by fourteen feet of cabbage roses hooked from slender cuttings of old woolen skirts and coats. When she ran out of energy, my grandmother took over, and when they were both dead, my mother even hooked quite a bit, although she detests needlework.

  It was Ashley who finished it, seventy-five years after its start. I can still remember her, the winter she was thirteen, lying on her stomach, hooking, while the radio blared and she sang along, entranced by the double rhythm of the music and her handiwork. I remember how all my mother’s friends were impressed. Imagine a thirteen-year-old with all that determination, they would cry. I wish my daughter would tackle something with that energy and dedication.

  Little did we know what Ashley would tackle next with all that energy and dedication.

  At the time I thought I would never forget which parts my sister and my mother had done, but they all blended in. There was no knowing, now, which generation had done which roses.

  I think I loved the rug as much as I loved any possession except my journals.

  After my shower, I tried a blouse with lacy collar and cuffs, and topped that with a fragile feminine vest, and added a very bright blue sash, so that it cut across all that femininity like electricity in satin. It looked right.

  Now I was dressed for my crush.

  The only problem was—what to say to Anthony? “Pardon me for being rude, but we were all having nervous breakdowns of different types and sizes.”

  I ran downstairs for breakfast. Mom was making biscuits for Daddy. He loves them drowned in butter and maple syrup. I had toast and spread plum jam on it. The morning was no different from hundreds of others. Rock lyrics quivered in my brain.

  I could hardly wait to write in my journal. I would polish the lyrics during Brit lit. One nice thing about being a B student is that teachers never suspect you of anything. They suspect the dummies and they suspect the brilliants, but we in the upper middle get away with anything.

  Especially in Danenburg’s class.

  My mother took the biscuits out of the oven with a practiced grace and slid the spatula under two of them and flipped them onto Dad’s plate. She looked solid and strong and capable. The kind of woman who was elected to the Board of Finance and was chairman of the School Volunteers Association. How could I possibly have thought her fragile?

  Anyway, we’d all had a rest. Ashley would be better, Mom and Dad would be better, I was certainly better.

  Jeffrey’s horn sounded like a brass choir in the quiet street. I kissed my parents swiftly and ran for the door.

  The terrible reality of the thirteenth day of school sank in almost as soon as I shut the door and Jeffrey headed for Emily’s corner.

  This was not going to be a day to think about crushes and Anthony and yearbooks.

  This was going to be a day for questions about Ashley.

  “Your mom called up my mom last night,” said Jeffrey, his voice vivid with greed. Greed for gossip, I thought, chilled. “She said old Starshine is home. So how is the famous rock star anyway?”

  I had forgotten that Ash’s first rock name was Starshine.

  It threw me. I remembered now how idealistic she had been, how she truly did shine with joy and hope, believing that fame and stardom were hers.

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  “Really? That doesn’t sound like the Ashley we all knew and loved.”

  As for Emily, she was questioning me before she even got to the car. Her whole neighborhood heard her first question. “I can’t wait to hear all about it, Beethoven. Nancy and Karen called me up this morning before breakfast because they heard Trash was home and they were dying for details. I’ll never forget that concert Trash gave here a few years ago. Afterward my parents said if they had had any idea that Warren and Janey Hall’s little girl would act like that, they would never never have let me go to—”

  “Shut up, Emily,” I said.

  They stared at me. I am never rude. I am never even mildly discourteous. And this is just carpool, I thought. What is it going to be like in school?

  School.

  I had never quite believed that our school had two thousand kids in it. Two thousand questions and jeers later, I believed.

  Ashley would have loved it.

  She had, after all, achieved fame. Everybody remembered her, or had been told about her. But not her music. Nobody could recall her one hit, and I’m not sure anybody even knew there had been a hit. Nobody remembered her painful, hypnotic guitar chords.

  They remembered her insane behavior. The treehouse in the Congregational Church cemetery. Her clothes—or lack of them. Her bald shining skull and her horrible vicious language.

  She was my sister.

  I kept my chin up and I defended her.

  “The final three questions on the quiz,” said Miss Margolis, “are a gift. An absolute gift.”

  “Whenever a trig teacher tells you the questions are a gift,” said Anthony from the back of the room, “you know you’ll need three advisors, a computer program, and four weeks to do them.”

  Everybody laughed.

  “Don’t panic,” said Emily. “There isn’t time left in the period to reach the final three questions anyhow.”

  I took advantage of the chatter to scribble in my journal.

  I meant to write my anger against the gossipy eager faces that had pressed into mine, but my anger came out against Ash.

  Sister, sister.

  Oh, how I’ve missed her!

  I’ve been worrying …

  … currying …

  my memories.

  Trying to brush them into something sweet.

  Oh, Ash.

  Today’s been a treat.

  It really has.

  Those aren’t rock lyrics, I thought. Not a poem either. They’re my soul.

  “My mother took trig in this very room,” said Anthony, “and in real adult life she has never needed a single fact you taught her, Miss Margolis.”

  “Thank you for that contribution, Anthony,” said Miss Margolis, glaring. “It was truly inspiring.”

  “Any time,” said Anthony generously, and everyone laughed again.

  I looked over at him, but his eyes didn’t fall on me. By design? Was he trying to avoid seeing or thinking about me? Or had he forgotten me? My skin prickled, yearning for his attention. It was hard to focus my eyes in his direction for fear that he would look at me, and our eyes wo
uld lock and I would disintegrate and everybody would see it, and laugh.

  How can I manage to be alone with him, I thought, despairing, when so many people are rushing up asking for hot details on Ashley?

  Please God, don’t let Anthony ask me questions. Let him be understanding. Let him see I can’t bear talking about Ashley.

  I stared at Anthony.

  His handsomeness was rather like a shield. Like Ashley’s loud music or cruel words. I could not see beyond it. It protected him from view, and behind all that handsomeness, Anthony could be whatever he chose, and nobody would know.

  What an unsettling thought to have. I threw the thought out, like crumpled paper.

  “Speaking of inspiration,” said Emily, “why don’t we read aloud from Beethoven’s journal? I’ll bet she’s writing something immortal right this minute.”

  They knew about my journal? My private hoard? My interior thoughts? They knew?

  Jeffrey lunged over two people, sprawling on Karen’s desk, and snatched the journal from my fingers. I cried out as if he had cut me with a knife. He would read it aloud. He would jeer. I would be as exposed as if they really had removed my clothing, and left me, like my sister, naked in a treehouse.

  Whit Moroso’s hand, like doom, robbed Jeffrey of his prize.

  Once Whit had it, it was gone. Even Jeffrey would not think of attempting to take anything from Whit. Emily made screeching noises and Karen giggled happily. Miss Margolis hesitated. She lets us get pretty rowdy, because this is an advanced class. But she was going to have to interfere and nobody liked tangling with Whit. Whit held the notebook in the air.

  I was falling into the jaws of some terrible dark hell. The mouths of the class yawned open around me. There was nothing kind or decent in the world, and I was all alone.

  Gently, Whit handed me back the journal, unopened. “It’s white-collar crime you have to look out for, you know, Beethoven,” he said softly. “High-class Jeffrey’s the danger, not low-class Whit. Lesson for the day.”