Or how about this for a charming little gem: When I woke up from my nap that October day in hospice and realized that Evan had reached the end, I could’ve nudged the rest of the family awake too. That’s what I should have done. But I didn’t. Because all I could think was, What’s going to happen to me without him?
I’m not proud of hoarding his last moment, even though Mrs. Tillstrom still says she was glad it was me, because I was stronger than the rest of them, and I knew exactly how to ease her baby from this world. She never stops reassuring me that I did exactly what was right for Evan, but I know the truth, which is that I did exactly what was right for me.
And here we go. The last day, nothing omitted: Ev had been moved to a hospice on the west side of town, by the private school and the cemetery. But he didn’t pay much attention to the view outside his window by then, and at least the inside of the place didn’t smell like rot and Lysol.
I woke up from a catnap (Dr. and Mrs. Tillstrom and Jaime were still zonked out on couches around the room), listened to Evan’s breaths over the clicks and beeps of the monitors, and realized they were slowing down. There were whole bars and measures between each one. At that pace, did a heart still even have a backbeat?
I acted quickly, before my conscious mind could kick in and convince me that nothing had changed. I lifted Ev’s blankets and crawled into bed next to him. There was nothing left but a pile of kindling by then. I remember whispering, “Nothing to be afraid of, Ev. It’s not death. It’s only an echo.” And I was humming, running my fingers over his bald head, when I heard a sigh. When I opened my eyes, I was left clutching a cold body. Dr. and Mrs. Tillstrom and Jaime were standing around the bed, dry-eyed but choking, clutching any bit of exposed skin on Evan’s body, helping him leave us without worrying about what he’d left behind.
I carry these memories because it’s my job. But Jaime had it right, sitting in the employee break room in the PfefferBrau Haus, after we saved her from being cooked into pale ale. If I let these memories overwhelm me, then I become a survivor and nothing more. And Evan was too important to be remembered as a heap of bones.
Let me leave you with a memory I’m happy to carry because we all created it. All that gallivanting? Looking for answers in record bins and coffeehouses? This is what it led up to. So picture this instead.
Jojo quickly realized that the store wasn’t going to be big enough to hold everyone, so the two cops in the city who weren’t at the PfefferBrau Haus cordoned off the streets in the blocks around Jojo’s and let the whole city mill around. When I asked where our stage was gonna be, Jojo said, “No worries, man. Crock’s running extension cords to the roof. The whole city can see you up there.”
We listened as they clunked heavy equipment up the back stairs, while we primped in the Maxi Pad. Actually, Cilla primped Jaime. She even found a new slinky satin dress that didn’t smell like a brewery. I have no idea where she got it, although I wouldn’t be surprised if every boutique in the city had opened its doors for her if someone told them who it was for. Nobody knew Jaime’s name yet, but everyone in the city knew there was finally a girl who got away.
Jojo came into the Maxi Pad and said, “It’s time.”
We followed him up the stairs and onto the roof.
When we walked out onto the tarry blacktop, we saw that Crock and Jojo had not only moved our amps and instruments up there, they’d also found multicolored footlights that were angled right where we were supposed to stand.
Sonia plunked herself behind her kit and played a rim shot. Three stories below, the crowd roared and pointed.
Sonia and Evan started our opening riff. A backbeat to Jojo saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, the reason you’re all here tonight. The crew that caught a killer . . . Put your hands together for . . . the Gallivanters!”
Only then did I realize that Ziggy wasn’t with us, and that I hadn’t seen him since the hot room, and without him, we didn’t have a voice. I was still worrying a loose molar with my tongue, and trying not to move too much so I wouldn’t puncture a lung. Plus, as Jojo pointed out, my face looked like an eggplant. I was too damaged to front us.
Ev kept playing the opening riff and staring at me, waiting for me to jump in. He was starting to lose confidence.
I stepped up to the mic, ready to sing without Ziggy, when I felt something feathery brush my right shoulder.
It was always the right.
He put his hand over the mic before I could open my mouth. “No worries, lad. I’ll take it from here.”
I stepped back into the shadows and let Ziggy take over. But even Ziggy, with his suave voice and colossal presence, was nothing standing next to Evan.
I looked three stories below to the throngs that were packing the street. All those bright new-wave colors. Neon aqua. Neon pink. Neon orange. It was like looking at a field of stars.
When Ziggy opened his mouth to sing, I swear I could hear a softer, more subtle sound come from somewhere out there. It was the faintest of pops, like a bubble in a champagne glass. Then a sigh. And I knew that, somehow, one of the Disappearing Girls (or at least pieces of one) had reappeared, and that a family could try to breathe again. A tiny piece of darkness had been lifted.
With each pop, Ev seemed to stand straighter, his lopsided smile growing bigger and bigger. When he thought no one was looking (which in truth was exactly never), he turned his smile on Jaime, who was dancing behind the keys, looking as glamorous as a classic movie star.
All these months, people had been asking me why it had to be the PfefferFest, why we couldn’t get a gig somewhere else. And I never knew what to tell them, because I didn’t really understand it myself.
Looking at Evan’s smile, I finally did.
He was why it had to be the PfefferFest. Not for the Disappearing Girls. He wanted to be a rock star. Now I realized something I’d only half understood for months— that rock star wasn’t enough. It would be better if he were a hero too. I wanted him to mean as much to everyone in the world as he did to me.
I told myself I hadn’t known that it would be Jaime that he’d save—only that he’d save someone, the way he’d saved me every day for years and years of my life.
I looked at him shine now, full of confidence and talent. He was brighter than the footlights, brighter than any wave—new or old. The man was practically a constellation all on his own.
And now he could get the credit he deserved, on this rooftop with the night sky above us and what looked like another night sky at our feet.
I sniffed the air.
No hops.
The darkness was ours again. At least for one night, we’d taken it back.
IT’S THE SUMMER OF 1985 NOW, the year after some science fiction writer said we’d all be under mind control and lose the ability to love.
I say: Bullshit. I’ve got plenty of love. Evan died last October, but he’s still with me. Whenever I remember him, it’s the way he was the night he fished Jaime out of the vat. Tall. Sharp profile. Heroic. In my memories he’s always that way—not the clown-haired sidekick he really was for the last few years of his life.
I ask my therapist about this, about why my memory’s so faulty where Ev’s concerned, and he (my therapist) says not to be so hard on myself. He says I remember Evan as a handsome, talented guy because, to me, that was what he was always like.
“Remember what you told me about that game of Mafia? You’ve always thought of him as your better half.”
We talk a lot about halves and wholes in his office. Especially when he tries to explain how my brain works. I’m not sure how much psycho talk I believe. All I know is this: Evan is gone, and I miss him. Most days, I know I’ll never stop missing him.
I still work for Jojo. I rent the apartment on the floor above the Maxi Pad. It’s really cold and used to be infested by rats, but I’ve cleared out the worst of those, thank god. Jojo and I have a “family” dinner most nights, and whatever we eat is okay by him. Whatever rent I pay is okay by him. W
hatever I wear is okay by him, however many hours I work in the store are okay by him . . . you get the idea.
Jojo tells me stories about all the people he’s loved who have gone, then he offers me another slice of pizza. I can practically hear him thinking: It’s only a matter of time before I board a bus like the assistants of his past, and he’s going to hold on to me for as long as he can. I am more than his assistant, but he doesn’t know what else to call me.
I do.
When he gets all blurry eyed and talks about me going away, and how he’ll be okay with that, really, I know what I have to do. I pat his hand and tell him that, even if I leave him, I will never really leave him. I tell him that, even though I’ve shopped around, I know for sure he’s the best father I’ve ever had. And that seems to satisfy us both.
• • •
I still play guitar, do occasional session work, but I don’t write songs anymore. It’s not the same as it used to be. Jojo says I’ve lost my voice. I picture Ziggy glimmering off down the stairs when the music ended. Jojo doesn’t know how right he is.
So most days you can find me right here, minding the store, smelling like glass cleaner because I’m always polishing something.
Which is in fact what I’m doing when a soft voice calls, “Noah.” But underlying my name, a divine counterpoint to the tune, are the words Angel, awake!
I look up.
It’s Jaime. I almost don’t recognize her because her hair is straight and she’s wearing beige: a minidress, embroidered with lobsters, that looks right on her somehow. She seems to have boiled off all her earlier incarnations— poufy-perm girl, slinky movie siren with a gardenia in her hair. Who knows? Maybe she’ll burn through this one too.
“I thought I’d find you here,” she says, and when she smiles, she is still Jaime.
“What brings you home?” I ask.
“Summer vacation,” she says. There’s a nervous catch in her voice, like she doesn’t deserve something as frivolous as summer after what we’ve been through.
“They treating you well back there in . . . ?”
“New Hampshire? Well enough,” she says. “Although I’m notorious. The first time I didn’t drink beer at a kegger, some wiseass said, ‘You’re that girl, aren’t you?’”
I shake my head. “Sorry, Jay, I really am. But I still wouldn’t have done anything differently.”
“Me either,” she’s quick to say. “I’m glad we were there for him at the end. It’s just that some days it’s hard to find a way forward, you know? I’m not even sure I want to.”
Wow. I’m not the only one holding on to the pain. This girl’s just as twisted as me.
“Have you heard from Sonia?” she says.
I shrug. “She calls sometimes.” It’s true. You want to talk about guilt? There’s a real case. She skipped town as soon as it was obvious that Evan wasn’t getting any better and I would never replace him with someone else on bass. I suppose I shouldn’t blame her. She told me up front she was only in it for the money. Every time I hear her voice over the phone and she talks about the weather in California, or the bands she’s working with now, what she’s really saying is Forgive me for leaving. And I do. Because I remember what it was like when you’ve done something so bad you’d give anything to put it behind you—even your left nostril.
There’s something Sonia said during one call that puzzles me, though, and I decide Jay is the perfect person to ask about it.
I force a laugh. “Sonia says she doesn’t remember Ziggy. Can you believe that? She’s blanked on him completely.”
Jaime stares hard at me; her brow turns into a V shape like it used to when she was studying something. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I prompt her. “Ziggy? Our singer?”
“Noah,” she says in a way that gets my attention. “You were Ziggy. You put on an English accent. Your singing voice dropped an octave. You led us. You acted so confident.”
I figure if I stare enough, I’ll understand what she’s saying.
“We thought it was performance art. You know, like the real David Bowie? He put on these personas. We figured that was what you were doing. Channeling a real rock star that we could all get behind . . . I just thought you didn’t know when to quit acting.” She sees the expression on my face. “Oh. I see.”
She can’t be right. I don’t understand. I saw him so clearly. The chicken fluff hair, the neatly pressed suits.
Wait a minute, did I ever see him clearly? Or was he always fuzzy around the edges?
I hear the truth of what she says, even if I don’t feel it yet.
Jaime shakes her head. “I’m not surprised. You knew before any of us how sick Evan was.”
I flash back to the night Ziggy first appeared. I always thought he showed himself because we’d lost my car. Then I remember Ev rolling on the sidewalk in pain. It wasn’t the car that was lost, it was my best friend.
Jaime looks at her watch and mutters something about getting home. She came looking for me, but now she’s sorry she did.
“I’ll swing by again before I go. It’s good seeing you, Noah.”
After she’s gone, I think about the band and how it took off after we played on the roof of Jojo’s. We cut a record with a new label out of Seattle in the time between Evan’s treatments. We never quite made it to arena-band status, but we sold out at every club we played. And it seemed the weaker Evan got, the more our fame spread.
I could never force myself to look at any of the memorabilia—the record itself, the posters, the articles— because it reminded me too much of the price we had to pay for our fame, and how long it took Evan to die.
But after what Jaime said about Ziggy, I know it’s time to make myself look. Could she be right? Could I have been that deluded? Even before I pull our album from the “G” bin, I know what I’ll find. I even begin to see how it might have happened.
For example: Say you’re a punk-ass kid who’s never known anything but glares and limited expectations, not to mention a “legacy of violence,” as my shrink says.
Now say that your best friend is going through something horrible, and is about to go through something even worse, and you have to help him through it and you don’t even get to keep him in the end. All you get to do is help him die. If you were me? You’d never have had the confidence to do what needed doing.
It would’ve been easier to believe in David Bowie.
My mind works a feedback loop around all the cryptic comments. You don’t need Ziggy. They’re your words, man. You’re the one with the talent. Wait a minute, help me understand: We’re waiting for who?
I feel like throwing up. It all falls into place. Like the Marr. Merciless. Springing out from hidden places, slowly and secretly taking over, eating people from the inside out. I can finally call it now what I couldn’t call it then.
Cancer.
No way to do battle with it. Can’t fight it head-on. You won’t even have hope. Can only cocoon the victims in love, set them up high, and hope that there’ll be moments when they transform into something more than a victim.
I lock the front door and hang a sign up. BACK IN 10. I go upstairs to my drafty apartment, pick up my Gibson Les Paul, and strum a few licks.
Could it be possible?
I try singing a few lines. I’m rusty at first, but then the old smoothness comes back into it. I feel that low range resonate in my skull. I can hear what I didn’t understand.
Yes. Ziggy’s voice is my voice. It may have sounded foreign last year, but now it sounds completely natural.
I pick up the phone. The first call I make lasts less than five minutes. Jaime is the second call.
“Hello?”
I have to search for the words. Then I remember: The words were always mine. “I just booked an acoustic set on Saturday at the Long Goodbye. I’d like you to come.”
There’s a pause on the other end.
I go on. “I know you’re just here visiting
. I know you have to go back to wherever . . .”
“New Hampshire.”
“New Hampshire. It’s just . . . I’d really like to see you.”
There’s another pause. This one I don’t try to fill. She is thinking and I can hear it over the phone, in the way she breathes.
She sighs. “Noah, I don’t know what you’re asking . . .”
I brace myself for rejection.
“. . . but I’ll be there.”
The pause is all on my end of the phone now.
Jaime goes on. “I know we haven’t seen each other in a while, but I’ve lost so much . . . I know what’s important. You’re important. And talented. I can’t wait to hear you sing again.”
And she hangs up without saying good-bye.
I try to dampen my mood. Maybe it’s not what I think. Maybe we won’t carve out safe spaces in the dark, run our hands through each other’s hair while around us neon lights sizzle. Maybe it’s not even worth trying, because Evan still looms large between us. Or maybe it’s because Evan looms so large between us that I want to hold on to her.
It’s too late for me to worry about any of that, because I’m a musician. I hear things that aren’t there. And slowly, they’re arranging themselves into possibilities.
I pick up my guitar. Never mind how much time I’ve lost.
I’m finally ready to begin.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In December 1984 I came home to Gresham, Oregon, from my first semester of college. My parents had kept my memorabilia from high school in a corner in the basement—things I had collected that had no value to anyone but me. There were buttons from Django’s Records I’d bought for a dollar apiece that had slogans on them. The Moral Majority Is Neither. My Karma Ran Over My Dogma. And tacked to a piece of decaying cork, a poster my friends and I had ripped from a telephone pole. It was printed on orange paper, was in pristine condition, and read, Billy Rancher and the Unreal Gods Wake the Dead.
The Rise and Fall of the Gallivanters Page 19
