I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  But I’d started longing for her again when my band’s popularity skyrocketed. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help it. If Louisa had been following the music and now I was the music, maybe she would find her way home. I imagined her showing up at my father’s door, the issue of Rolling Stone with me on the cover in her hands, too proud to stay away from us any longer. He’d bring her to a show in Milwaukee or Minneapolis or Chicago to meet me. I’d walk offstage, feeling unusually triumphant, like I’d just played the best damn gig of my life, driven by a strange presence—and it would turn out to be Louisa.

  After every concert in the Midwest, I left the stage hopeful that my mother would be there, my parents holding hands. But that was a daydream. Louisa had probably never even heard of my band because she hadn’t gone off to follow the music, but to run away from her demons. And now I had demons to escape, too.

  I looked into Regan’s bewildered eyes and explained, “Louisa’s blond. And right now I want to disappear, just like she did.”

  THE LOST CHORD

  When Louisa married Finn Leahy, he unknowingly gave her back her daughter. If it weren’t for Finn, Louisa probably wouldn’t have discovered Emily’s music until she saw her own eyes staring out from the female version of Michael’s face on the cover of Rolling Stone. But Finn had She Laughs’ first album. He played it for her just a week after they got married, while they were on their way to see some other band. Sliding the CD into his car stereo and handing Louisa the case, he said, “This is a great little band from Chicago. Didn’t you say you lived there for a while?”

  “Yeah …”

  Louisa didn’t notice Emily on the cover of the CD. It was a live shot, so Emily’s wild, ebony hair hid most of her face. But when Louisa turned the case over in her hands, the name stuck out immediately, red letters against black. “Emily Black = Guitar/Vox.” No, she thought at first, it’s a common name, but just below it, “Regan Parker = Drums.” That was too coincidental.

  The first words Louisa heard her daughter speak rode a wave of distorted guitars and came in a ragged yowl. “You’re gone!” Emily screamed the first line of the first song. “And I don’t miss you at all!” It knocked the wind out of Louisa. Everything seemed fuzzy around the edges for a moment, but then Louisa stopped listening to the lyrics, focused on the music. She recognized the same sound she’d heard back in Carlisle when she was a teenager, “punk” before the word was used, a patchwork quilt of all the best music a kid from the middle of nowhere could cobble together.

  “Good, huh?”

  Fortunately, Finn didn’t take his eyes off the traffic on I-5. If he had, he would have seen tears glittering on Louisa’s face as she smiled. “Yeah, the best thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

  After that, Louisa followed She Laughs zealously, the way a teenager does when they discover their new favorite band. She blasted the radio whenever one of their songs came on. She bought all the magazines that featured them. At first, she had to dig for short, one-page articles, but soon She Laughs captured headlines and cover stories.

  However, the first two times that they played live in Seattle, Louisa made excuses not to go with Finn. Emily was a picture in a magazine, a voice on the stereo, an image that sang and laughed and danced around behind the glass of Louisa’s TV. That was all Louisa could handle. Being in the same room with her daughter would make her too real. Of course, since Louisa hadn’t told Finn about Emily, she ran out of excuses the third time She Laughs came to town. Finn insisted that Louisa just had to see them live.

  When Louisa saw Emily again, it was almost twenty-three years to the day since Louisa had left her. It would have been upsetting anyway, but the way Emily broke down onstage made it worse. Louisa hadn’t heard about the interview a few hours earlier that exposed Emily and Johnny Threat’s turbulent relationship, so she had no explanation for Emily’s behavior until after the fact. Louisa watched for forty-five minutes as her daughter stumbled around onstage, clinging to her bottle of whiskey more than her guitar, ranting about who she was and wasn’t sleeping with, and finally launching herself into the crowd, not getting fished out for what to Louisa felt like days. After Emily was set back onstage by two security guards, her clothes mostly torn away, Louisa released a long breath and grabbed Finn’s arm. “I can’t watch this anymore.”

  But Finn replied, “It’s rock ’n’ roll, baby!” And Louisa knew he was picturing himself, the way things could have been if it weren’t for his accident, if he were a rock star getting wasted for wasted’s sake, not just downing pills because his back ached.

  Louisa shook her head and pushed her way out of the crowded venue. That night, she meant to leave Seattle, but her instincts faltered. She’d been off-kilter since Los Angeles, when she’d become attached to Colette and Nadia and stayed in one place for too long. Louisa no longer knew when it was time to go. Instead of packing her bags and getting out before Finn came home, she went to bed. Even when Finn left two days later to fill in for the guitarist in a friend’s band in Portland, and the perfect opportunity for leaving presented itself, Louisa wouldn’t have taken it if it wasn’t for Johnny Threat.

  She didn’t recognize him at first, even though his picture had been in the paper next to one of Emily stopping midsong, clutching a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The headline over them read “She Melts Down,” and the article theorized about rather than reviewed Emily’s chaotic performance at the Paramount. Finn read it over Louisa’s shoulder, shrugging. “I guess I should be glad I never made it. The media cares more about your dirty laundry than your music when it comes down to it.”

  And normally Louisa would have agreed, dismissing it as stupid celebrity gossip, but this was her daughter’s life that had been splattered all over the newsstands. She followed the Emily-Johnny saga religiously and it broke her heart. She locked herself in the bathroom and sobbed after reading the police report that described how Johnny menaced Emily in Chicago years back. Louisa couldn’t picture this girl who possessed her eyes and Michael’s smirk pressed against a door with a knife pointed at her side. Tabloid stories flew around Louisa’s head while she bartended. Her thoughts were so clouded that it wasn’t until she served Johnny Threat his third drink that she recognized his sharp cheekbones and spiky tendrils of blond hair.

  “Whoa!” Johnny barked. “Lose some of the ice!”

  Louisa met his red-rimmed, aluminum eyes for the first time. The fury stirred in them during the Live Punx! interview had been glazed over by a night of heavy drinking. Perhaps he mistook Louisa’s meeting his gaze for compassion, or perhaps he saw Emily in her eyes, but suddenly, he softened. “I’m sorry. It’s been a rough week. Everyone’s in my business. My career’s in the toilet and instead of dealing with it, I came all the way out from the East Coast to apologize to my girlfriend … my ex … and she won’t take my phone calls … I know her, though. If she’s upset, she’s out drinking. I’ve been all over Capitol Hill searching for her.”

  Extremely uncomfortable, Louisa glanced down the bar, hoping for the excuse of a customer to serve, but it neared midnight on a Wednesday, and except for a cluster of regulars whose drinks she’d just refreshed, there was no one besides Johnny.

  He took a large gulp of whiskey, and rage crept into his melancholy again. “I can’t believe she won’t just listen to my side of the story. I mean, the things that happened, they were heat-of-the-moment things. Passion. Me and her, a lot of passion. She acts like I’m the one who’s screwed up, but her life ain’t perfect. Sure, she had this cool dad who taught her to play music, but I never met him. He didn’t come to Chicago when we lived together because his no-good wife had left him there. Her mom. And she thought her life was normal. Her mom bailed when she was a baby. That’s not normal. And her dad was still in love with this woman. No wonder she was afraid of any kind of relationship.”

  Louisa gripped her side of the bar to keep from collapsing under the weight of his words. Johnny didn’t discern that her eyes were tearing up, just n
oticed their color. “You got eyes like hers. Green. Envy green. Emily green.” He slurred “envy” and “Emily” so they almost sounded identical. He drained his glass. “How ’bout another refill?”

  Louisa’s lips moved without her willing them to. “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “Get out, Johnny.”

  “Shit, you know who I am? You’ve known this whole time and just let me—”

  “I said get the hell out of here,” Louisa growled.

  “Your eyes,” he murmured again, screwing up his face as his alcohol-drenched brain slowly made connections. She probably could have gotten him out of there before the correct synapses fired if it weren’t for the call from down the bar.

  “Hey, Louisa, I need another one down here.” A regular named Dan shook his bottle of Rainier and indicated a buddy of his with a few streaks of gray in his messy brown ponytail. They all looked like Finn, which saddened Louisa because she knew she wasn’t going to see Finn again. As soon as Johnny started laughing, she knew she’d be fleeing Seattle and leaving Finn behind.

  “Louisa?” Johnny said incredulously. His cackle, coated in whiskey and cigarettes, like Colette’s laugh but darker, cut the air like a rusty razor blade. Johnny stood up, knocking his stool over. “Louisa.” He repeated her name greedily, like a child who had just stolen his sibling’s Halloween candy.

  “Shut up and get out!” Blindly, she heaved the bottle of whiskey at him. She missed by a mile and Johnny continued to chuckle.

  “Does she know? Does your daughter know you’re here?”

  “Shut up!” Louisa ran toward the other end of the bar, glancing back to scream at Johnny, “You stay away from her!”

  “Lou?” Dan asked in confusion. He reached for her wrist.

  She shook him off. “No, I gotta go.”

  Johnny’s laughter followed her down the street.

  Apparently, people don’t just walk out of the Four Seasons hotel, Emily thought. The woman behind the reception desk repeated, “We were told to call a car for you. Won’t you just let me call a car?” The whole thing still felt foreign to Emily: limos to the airport, the Four Freakin’ Seasons hotel. “Ms., uhhh, Carson …” Checking into places using her mother’s name. “It’s been arranged for you by your people.” Having “people.”

  “No, really, I can get there by myself,” Emily assured the clerk, her eyes fixed on the woman’s sleeve. She wore a neatly pressed tan suit. It was the most neutral thing in Emily’s field of vision. The lobby made her nauseous. The walls looked coated in that liquefied gold they dip roses in to sell for Mother’s Day. The salmon carpet’s elaborate patterns spun, a crisscross of flowers, blocks of green framed by vines of gold. Suffering from lack of sleep and what felt like a hangover that had been lingering for days, Emily clung to the reception desk, gazing longingly at the escalators that would take her away.

  The hotel clerk, her face woman-behind-the-makeup-counter-at-a-high-end-department-store flawless, stared at Emily squeamishly. Emily wondered if she looked as bad as she felt. She hadn’t showered since before her band’s disastrous show. She’d stayed up that night bleaching her hair, but just rinsed the chemicals off in the sink. The next two nights, she reapplied new makeup over old makeup before barhopping by herself all over Capitol Hill. Wednesday night, she hadn’t even gone to sleep when she got back to the hotel at three A.M., knowing she’d have to be up in a few hours anyway.

  Her “people” booked a nine o’clock flight back to Chicago on Thursday morning. The Vancouver show she’d canceled had been expendable, but she had to get it together and play Twisted Christmas in Chicago that weekend. She received many calls about this from the record company until she insisted that no one be put through to her room except for her father. But he alone had the courtesy not to call, seeming to know she needed to work things out by herself.

  The clerk—probably prepped by Emily’s “people” to make sure she didn’t miss her flight—insisted, “Let the valet at least get you a cab.”

  He stood next to Emily, trying to take her suitcase out to the entranceway. She shifted her guitar case uncomfortably on her shoulder. “No, really, I just want to walk down to the waterfront, and then I’m going to take the bus.”

  “Well—”

  Emily interrupted, too exhausted to continue the charade. “Listen, I’m from Middle-of-Nowhere, Wisconsin, okay? We didn’t even have a bus. The bus is an exciting mode of transportation for me, all right?” she snapped, inwardly cringing at her rock-star outburst. Everything in her life had become a cliché. She should have trashed her room instead of politely straightening up for the maid. “Do I need to sign anything?”

  “No, no, you’re set,” the woman stammered. “You didn’t want any phone calls, but maybe you want the messages.”

  “Thanks,” Emily murmured, taking them. “And I’m sorry, I just …” She couldn’t complete the sentence. Her excuse would have taken hours. Then she glanced down at the messages. The top one was from Michael Black. “Hey, I said to put my dad’s phone calls through!”

  She flipped through the pink slips of paper. The first one said, “I’ll be at the show in Vancouver. Flying out tonight.” The next one said, “Didn’t know Vancouver was canceled. Talked to Regan. Will be at Seattle Greyhound station Thursday morning 8 A.M. No money for another plane ticket.”

  “How do I get to the Greyhound station?” Emily asked desperately, trying not to fume at the hotel for not following instructions, at her “people” for not telling her own father what was going on, and mostly at herself for not calling him.

  Louisa arrived at the Greyhound station at five on Thursday morning. She hadn’t owned a car since Los Angeles. She didn’t mind public transportation, but it limited her ability to leave when she pleased. For twenty years, she’d been able to decide in the middle of the night that it was time for a new town, throw all her stuff in the car, and head for the horizon. Instead, after the incident with Johnny, she had to catch a bus to Finn’s (it never felt like hers), throw the essentials into two suitcases, and take a cab to the Greyhound terminal. She’d decided Canada was the place to go. The bus ticket to Vancouver was cheap, and she’d used up America—except for Alaska, and Finn would look for her there.

  In the station, she dragged her suitcase over to the back row of plastic chairs and tossed her body listlessly onto one. She studied the ticket—her bus was to depart at 8:30 A.M.—and then squinted at the clock above the ticket counter. Since she had a couple hours to kill, Louisa pushed her limp hair out of her face and slid to one side, placing her balled-up hooded sweatshirt against the wall as a pillow.

  Despite the noise of nearby arcade games, Louisa dozed, waking to a frantic male voice. “Miss … Miss! You can’t smoke in here. There’s no smoking in the station.”

  Louisa’s lids flickered open, and since she’d been smoking in her dream, she mumbled an apology. Then, half conscious, she heard a female voice. “Oh … sorry.”

  The girl stopped in front of Louisa and stubbed a cigarette out under the toe of her black boot, her platinum hair swinging side to side as she did so. She started to walk off, but the station employee insisted, “Miss, you can’t just leave it on the floor.”

  “Sorry.” The girl’s scratchy voice sounded tired but familiar. Louisa watched her bend down to pick up the cigarette butt. She glanced toward Louisa, searching for the garbage, and Louisa felt a shock ripple through her as she placed who the girl was. The green eyes, though circled by signs of sleeplessness and crusty eyeliner, gave her away despite her attempts to bleach out her identity by changing the color of her naturally black hair.

  “Emily,” Louisa whispered, as the combat boots clattered across the orange and brown tile toward a trash can. Louisa wondered if, after all these years, she should really speak to her daughter. She’d sworn to stay away, but if Emily found her … Louisa straightened up, smoothing the wrinkles from her clothing. “Emily!” she repeated loudly.

  Emily halte
d in midstep, but seemed hesitant to turn. Her shoulders and neck visibly stiffened. Louisa realized how many people must call her daughter’s name, must beg to be recognized. “Emily, it’s me … ,” she began, and then stopped herself, not knowing how to say the words she’d kept buried inside for so long. She just prayed that the girl would turn her head. After a long pause, she finally did. Tears sprang to Louisa’s eyes and she had to hold on to the side of her chair to remain upright.

  Everything about the woman in front of Emily looked faded, from the T-shirt and jeans she wore to her hair, so bleached it appeared whitewashed. Like an old photograph. Emily met eyes like scuffed, clouded emeralds that matched her own and staggered backward with her hand over her mouth. She lost sight of the bus station, suddenly able to see only the black-and-white picture that she’d kept on the speaker in her childhood bedroom, that she’d taped to the dashboard of her car as she’d run around the country, and that she had tucked into a notebook in her purse minutes earlier.

  If she imagined that photo crumpled slightly, creating crinkly lines around the eyes and mouth, and if the bulge of the woman’s pregnant belly was flattened, which of course it would be because Emily had been born over twenty-three years ago …

  Emily blinked until her surroundings came into view again. When she removed her hand from her mouth, her words came out in a strangled sob. “No, it can’t be …”

  The woman seemed to be struggling to breathe as well. “I’m …”

  “Louisa?” Emily gasped, her hands at her face again, fingers pressing against the bridge of her nose, the corners of her eyes, because goddammit, she wouldn’t cry.

  “Yes,” Louisa confirmed with a nod, her chin quivering. She didn’t know why she had expected this girl—this grown woman—to call her “Mom,” but her heart sunk into her stomach when Emily didn’t.

  Anger and sorrow collided in Emily’s chest. Of course, it hadn’t happened the way she daydreamed, Louisa coming to her greatest-ever concert. Louisa was no longer moving, searching out the next band, the next wave. She remained where the last wave had crested five years before, and if she’d seen Emily play, she hadn’t seen the best damn show but the worst. “Not like this,” Emily stuttered.