Songs for the End of the World

by Saleema Nawaz

  Gertie was now sitting cross-legged at the side of the stage. Her back was very straight, and the placidity of her face at rest was so open it was unnerving. Emma thought she looked like someone who had been living on the fringes of society, though the homeliness of her canvas-sack outfit no doubt played a role in this impression. Next to Gertie, Emma felt ordinary. Diminished. A little foolish, too. It was the way she usually felt around vegans—who, Emma was sure, probably had it right after all. But Gertie was beyond vegan. Gertie probably strangled rabbits with her bare hands.

  Emma tried to ignore the dustiness of the stage as she lowered herself to sit down next to the older woman. After she’d dropped out, Gertie had lived in tents, in shelters, and on the street. A floor probably counted as high luxury. “Did you ever get a tattoo, Gertie?”

  “No,” she said. Emma half expected a hippie screed about toxic ink, but the other woman only reached over and patted her hand. “I change my mind too much for that. Of course, I never had a baby either.” Gertie’s eyes were wide and sincere. She even seemed to blink less than other people. “Babies used to be a way to tame a woman. And I always needed to be free.”

  Emma flinched and glanced away, watching two roadies readying a piano in the wings. She didn’t know what she’d expected to hear, but it had felt important to speak to Gertie, as though she were some holy woman come down from the mountain. Now Emma only felt nettled. “How’d that work out for you?”

  Gertie’s face was as mild as ever. “I got more freedom than I bargained for.” Songs on her original album had hinted at a distrust of modern life, but she’d told Stu that her turn away from the world at large had more to do with a bad LSD trip than anything else. “You’re braver than I ever was.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Emma hardly knew how to describe herself anymore. The pregnancy weather was a kind of separation that felt like it was as much from herself as from Stu. With every day that went by, she felt less in control of her own life. Deep in her bones, Emma feared the baby would force them off course. “It was brave of you to reach out to Stu. But it’s bad timing for the comeback, isn’t it? What with a deadly virus going around and all. Kind of a dangerous time to rejoin society.”

  Gertie pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them where they bulged up under her dress. “Maybe,” she said. “I can’t say I know much about joining or rejoining. I never even joined a band! Didn’t want to compromise when it came to the music. Or anything else for that matter.” She shifted her legs back out in a stretch, oblivious to any possibility of giving offence. “But the truth is I think things are coming to an end.”

  Emma closed her eyes. The poor woman had been living in the trees for years. There was no need to take her counsel about artistic integrity or anything else. But Gertie’s words still felt like needles under her skin. “That’s cheery,” she managed.

  “I shouldn’t say that to a pregnant lady, should I? But we’re too connected to keep going the way we have been. Everyone can see who has what and who doesn’t.” Without asking permission, she placed a hand lightly on Emma’s belly as her face eased into a smile. “I might be a paranoid old hippie,” said Gertie, “but it’s time to come together, child.”

  * * *

  The pain was a trip, Emma decided. It was a trip because it was realer than real. It was an overload of new sensation. It was stinging and burning, a trial by fire. She was being born again, like a phoenix. Maybe that was what life should be about—change and challenge and new experiences.

  “Are you sure about this, Em?” Ben was leaning up against the inside of the band’s trailer with his arms folded across his chest, a pose that showed off both his defined drummer’s biceps and his tattoos to best advantage. He shot her a worried glance.

  “It’s going to be a promise,” she said.

  “A promise? To whom?”

  “Not to who,” said Emma, ignoring the whom out of principle. “To what. To this. To music. To Dove Suite. And it’s a surprise for Stu,” she added. “So keep your mouth shut.”

  “Aha.” Ben gave her one of his wide-open prairie smiles, but it dwindled as a buzzing sound filled the trailer again.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, that hurts,” said Emma. The desire to pull away from the tattoo gun was like an exhortation being screamed by every cell in her body. The baby was kicking, too: short, sharp blows to her side.

  “Don’t move,” said Marisol, the tattoo artist. Her voice was low and intense, and Emma thought she might be able to draw some strength from it. She kept still but let her eyes rove around the trailer until they came to rest on the framed snapshot she always brought on tour: a photo of her family in front of their old boat. Her mother looking slim and strong in a sleeveless top, her hands on Emma’s shoulders. Emma squinting, face scrunched, in a favourite pair of yellow shorts. Dom in her bikini with a sarong slung low on her hips, practising an alluring smile for the camera. And her father standing a little apart, sunburned in spite of his Tilley hat, his smile stiff and forced. But even from a distance, the relationships were clear. Nothing had seemed more enduring and inescapable than the four of them together on that boat. That impossible closeness that crumbled like a dry sandcastle once they returned home.

  Inhaling in a slow, steady stream, Emma fixed her gaze on the picture, trying to experience the pain as any another benign sensation, like heat or cold. The photo itself was just as likely to provoke as soothe her at any given moment. Her childhood had been an idyll underwritten by anxiety. Her grandfather, Walt, was at least partially to blame, for embezzling from the family trusts and leaving them broke, but Emma remembered tense, miserable days in the last few months of their trip, listening to Domenica explain with evangelical persistence how wonderful their lives had been before they’d set sail. Whether Dom was right, or whether things had only fallen apart at the end, was something Emma still couldn’t puzzle out. All she knew for sure were the plain facts: her parents’ marriage had dissolved on the boat and was only rebuilt, years later, after they sold it. And after Emma eloped, Faye had the nerve to say that Stu was too idealistic and that marriage was only for the naive. Emma didn’t think anyone who had fallen back in love with her ex-husband should be allowed the indulgence of cynicism.

  “You know,” said Emma, “people say you’re selfish if you don’t want kids. But what kind of world is this to be bringing a child into, anyway? That’s selfishness, isn’t it? That’s sorrow. All the wars, the pollution. And now ARAMIS.”

  Ben looked perplexed. “Nobody is calling you selfish, Em.”

  “Well, maybe you should be.” She exhaled then, and pictured calling in some of the roadies to hold her down. But all the guys out there were from a Vancouver company hired by the promoters. None of their regular crew was with them. She counted to one hundred and longed for Stu. She looked out the tiny window at a roadie smoking a cigarette, and her fear was spliced by a sudden nicotine craving curling out like a smoke tendril from the base of her reptilian brain. When her phone chimed in her purse, she told Ben to check it.

  “It’s your sister,” he said. “She says she heard about the concert on the internet and wants to know how it’s going.”

  “Take a picture,” said Emma. “Send it to her.” She smiled as Ben snapped some photos, then let her eyes close as he bent his head over her phone. She wished the time difference didn’t always make it too late or too difficult to call Domenica. She wanted to hear her sister talking honestly about childbirth, motherhood, and whether she managed to hold any of her life back for herself. She wanted to hear Dom’s voice on the phone, telling her, “Don’t worry, Em, after all is said and done, you’ll still be you.”

  The sound of the gun was the only thing keeping her on the ground. It was a song, and the gun was just percussion. Some strange new buzzing innovation by Ben. It was a performance, and she had to grit her teeth until the end.

  “She’s so
pale,” Ben was saying to Marisol. “Do you think she’s okay?”

  “I can hear you,” said Emma. It was like that dream where they were getting ready for a concert and nobody could hear her saying she couldn’t find her boots. “Can you hear me?” She forced her eyes open to make sure she was awake.

  “Sing something, Em.” Ben sounded calm, but his eyes were worried. “Would that be okay?” He looked at Marisol, who said it was a good idea as long as she could do it without moving. So they sang “Fixing a Hole” by the Beatles, Marisol smiling as Ben’s tenor rang out. Emma sang quietly until she could actually feel the music pushing back against the pain. But as she got louder, Marisol told her to stop.

  “Sorry, Emma, but you’re actually vibrating.”

  The last five minutes were sound and fire and Ben holding her hand as she breathed in and out, counting up and down to ten in her mind as she inexplicably pictured Gertie Colewick rinsing clothes in a stream before rigging them up to dry in a wooded glade.

  “All done,” said Marisol after an eternity. “You’re lucky. Greyscale is a lot faster than colour.”

  * * *

  —

  After Marisol left, taking all her equipment along with Ben’s number, Emma stayed behind in the trailer, unsure of what her new pre-show ritual should be. She hadn’t performed in front of an audience since before she got pregnant. How could she transform herself into the girl she was supposed to be onstage without the bite and heat of whisky down her throat, or the mellow buzz of a cold can of Pabst Blue Ribbon?

  In the end, she decided to put on more makeup. There was a glittery purple eyeliner pencil somewhere at the bottom of her purse that had cost almost thirty dollars. It was about time she looked for it.

  But first she angled herself on a seat in front of the mirror to peer at her shoulder again, carefully peeling back one corner of the loose bandage. Her upper back was bright pink. She jumped as the door opened.

  “So you did it,” said Stu. “And it’s red as hell.” He leaned down to inspect it, blocking the light from the window behind him. Emma felt like the trailer was shrinking around her. His face in the mirror didn’t look happy, but she couldn’t tell whether or not he was angry. “It’s bleeding, too.”

  Emma refastened the bandage and stood up. “That’s normal. That’s what happens when somebody sticks a needle into you a thousand times.” Then Stu’s face started to swim in front of her eyes as her knees buckled, and she clutched at his arm. He grabbed her with both hands just below her ribcage.

  “Are you okay?” he said, planting her back into her seat with less than his customary gentleness.

  She nodded. “Head rush.” Her mouth felt dry.

  “For Christ’s sake, there’s only a quarter of a million people who showed up to watch you. Never mind the safety of our fucking baby.” Stu’s fingers tugged at the roots of his brown hair. “Goddamn it, Em. Where’s your head at?”

  Emma slid down in her seat, lip trembling. She put a hand to her side where she’d felt the baby’s last kick. She hadn’t felt it move since the tattoo. “Where it’s always been,” she said. “On the music, the band.”

  Stu lifted her crimson outfit off the back of the chair where Emma had draped it. “Stand up and hold up your arms.”

  As he slipped it over her head, she said, “I know how to dress myself.”

  “You also have a bandaged shoulder.” Stu’s breath was warm on the nape of her neck. “Talk to me. What the hell is going on with you?”

  When her dress was fastened, Emma turned to face him. Even stern, he was so dear. His puppy-dog eyes half hidden behind his hair. His strong chin squaring off full, rounded cheeks. She decided to just say it, the thing she was so afraid of. “I’m worried I won’t be the same after the baby.” Stu only nodded. His calmness was infuriating. She wanted to shake him. “I’ll be different and everything will be ruined. For us, and for the band.”

  “Maybe you’ll change,” he agreed. “Or maybe I will. Everyone is changing all the time. Even you, Em. That’s what life is.” He closed the distance between them and put his arms around her, careful to avoid her shoulder. “Didn’t you tell me once that a plan isn’t everything? You need to be ready to shift course when the weather turns.” He chuckled with his eyes half closed, the way he did when he was embarrassed, and with the sound, Emma felt the baby move again. A sharp jab under her ribs. “I’m scared, too. Why do you think I’ve been talking about our progeny to anyone who’ll listen?”

  She swallowed her relief about the baby, not yet ready to step away from the outburst that felt like a lifting of the fog. “But why am I the only one who’s supposed to change?”

  “Haven’t you seen me trying to step up in the band? Make my own decisions so it isn’t all on you?” A wry, knowing smile at her astonishment. “Trust me, okay? We’re in this together, I swear.” Stu stroked her hair until she leaned in to feel the quick of his heartbeat. They clung to each other as it slowed and steadied, and Emma wondered if that could be enough for her—to set aside the frenetic drive of her own pulse and follow someone else’s lead.

  * * *

  —

  Emma watched Gertie from the wings as she played her last song alone. The sun had gone down, the floodlights were coming on, and the wind off the water had picked up. The banner across the top of the stage was lettered with the official name of the concert, TO AMERICA WITH LOVE, but it was too large to ripple in the breeze.

  The boys, who had played backup during the middle section of Gertie’s set, were buzzing about the size of the crowd and the vibe of playing such a high-profile event.

  “I’ve been talking to Gertie about the song, about ‘Curious Fellow,’ and it’s actually about a mad squirrel,” said Jesse, breaking away from the others to join Emma. She could see he’d worked enough gel into his hair for it to defy gravity. “She thinks it whispered in her ear while she was sleeping in the woods.”

  Emma smirked. So much for famous love affairs and sultry California trysts. “Does Stu know?”

  “No.”

  But when Jesse told him, Stu just hooted as a wicked grin spread over his face. “That’s even better,” he said. “It means it’s about the music, not the bullshit.”

  When Gertie finished her set, she came backstage and kissed each of the boys on both cheeks, and Ben blushed, which made Emma laugh.

  By the time the crew returned from setting up the equipment, their set was already fifteen minutes behind schedule. Impatient, the audience began clapping and chanting the band’s name in rhythm. The boys couldn’t help grinning. The applause was like the crackling of a fire gaining strength, and it felt just as warming. Emma wanted to go onstage and close her eyes in the face of its naked approval.

  “Our turn,” said Stu. “Let’s do this thing.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes and led the way onstage, one arm already extended in an outsize wave. When he got to the microphone, he leaned in and said, “Let’s sing together, friends. Or for my Esperanto pals out there: Saluton, miaj amikoj. Ni kantu kune!”

  Ben sat down at his kit and grinned at Emma as she crossed the stage. Jesse was on the other side of Stu, who was wasting no time in flirting with the front row. He was a light bulb when it came to an audience, and the bigger the crowd, the brighter he shone. This audience was a moving carpet of bodies as far as Emma could see, and everyone near the stage had their hands in the air as though the music might come upon them like rain in the desert. Around the edges, Emma could make out the bright turquoise of the porta-potties, like stalwart sentinels in the distance.

  “Thank you for helping us help our country,” Stu was saying, and a cheer went up from the crowd. Crowds always wanted to cheer for themselves.

  “Thank you, Vancouver,” yelled Jesse, and there they went again.

  Emma tapped the sustain pedal of her Korg keyboard and leaned into the mic for the f
irst song, just as she caught a sudden muddiness and stutter in Jesse’s bassline as he tripped on a taped-down set of wires. They were a pretty ragged pack of saviours, if that’s what they were.

  They hadn’t performed these songs in front of a real audience before, and as the boys played the first bars of “Cover Me Over,” Emma wondered why they’d agreed to debut the album in front of so many people. It always took a while for the songs to gel, and it didn’t help that they were standing so far apart from one another on the huge stage. They’d barely even played together since recording the album.

  But as she sang the first words of the song, she knew it was going to be okay. The crowd was hot, ecstatic. Whatever reservations the promoters might have had about booking a sixty-nine-year-old woman as an opener, Emma could tell Gertie had managed to satisfy the inexhaustible cultural thirst for real experience. She was unadulterated, as organic as they come. And nothing could elicit #FOMO and other hashtag-worthy emotions quite like a rare performance by a reclusive artist. Emma registered an ambient happiness from the crowd, a contact high that was nearly as good as feeling it herself.

  Then she felt the rhythm of the songs enter her body. When it came to music, she knew how to go with the flow, to be a part of the whole. Her voice sounded good, as full and clear in the upper register as it ever did. It could still take her by surprise sometimes, which was probably why people called it a gift. They moved from “Texas Rose” to “Century” and back into their catalogue, to the songs most of the people were there to hear. “Tattletale,” “Bicycle,” “Empty Grave.” On “Lightning Heart,” Stu strummed the opening chords in her direction, and Emma felt that surge of love that never failed to kick in when he looked at her like that onstage. Even over the monitor, she thought she could hear an awwwww rising from the audience. There wasn’t a single review of any of their albums that failed to mention how cute they were as a couple. Indie or pop. Earnest or ironic. It was the one thing everyone could agree on—Stu and Emma. Even if Stu and Emma couldn’t agree on much at the moment. Then it was back to the new stuff and she was leading off on “Opened Towers.”