Mimi’s laying the flypaper, priming the spring on the iron jaws.
Telly and I used to joke about it. How guys see only the Indy 500 curves and tight ass. See the face, which makes you smile when you don’t know her. It’s not a beautiful face, but a face you see from a great distance, very focused.
All my life, men have been peering around freezer doors at Mimi. Pizza-grabbing men. Six-pack-grabbing men. Telly used to grumble: “Don’t look at her ass; check out her eyes.”
He was right. There is speckled madness in Mimi’s eyes. Darting, long-toothed piranhas. Any sane man looking directly into Mimi’s eyes would flee.
Pretty soon they’re climbing the stairs, shh-shh-ing past my room. Through the crack in the door, I see Mimi leading him by the hand. The door to her room clicks shut.
Then the circus begins. They may as well be piping it through a PA system, because I can hear every clownish yuk and creak and cannon shot and moan and whimper.
In five minutes, the circus is over. Mr. Ringling starts to snore. Mimi curses. Mimi sighs. Mimi sobs.
Then silence.
God knows what she’s thinking. In my mind, she is staring at the midnight ceiling, wondering what the hell life is all about. Why it takes so much from you. Which is what I’m wondering, too. We have that much in common. No matter our googolplex differences, we have Telemachus in common.
And the vast, sprawling desert he has left us in.
It sure isn’t the first time I’ve listened to Mimi spank ass. I used to bury my head in a pillow to block out the sounds. Now I welcome them. They help me think. I can see how I might be Mimi’s son—I’m half crazy. As a poet, I have to be. But Telemachus? He wasn’t crazy. How could he be the son of Mimi?
Golden-haired Telemachus—Achilles on a skateboard, Socrates of the alleys. Always skating and pickin’ his guitar, sometimes both at the same time. Always jacking us up, making us feel we could be mayors and rock stars. Even poets.
Telly was sunlight. Blond and blue.
I am darkness. Shades of gray and sepia.
I lie awake pondering life’s ironies and mysteries till my alarm goes off at 3:30 a.m. I click on the reading light and try to focus on the French Revolution, but the words have all the bang of a soggy firecracker. I just can’t wrap my head around Talleyrand and Marie Antoinette. My mind is a bowl of cold oatmeal. I could sleep for a million years. If only I could.
After a while, I fling the book at the wall, swing around, and grab Ruby Tuesday. I drag my desk chair to the window. I’ve been working on the intro to the Chili Peppers’ “No Chump Love Sucker,” but it requires a skeleton-fingered stretch, which I’m not up to at 3:45 a.m. So I ditty around on Green Day’s “409 in Your Coffee Maker,” a simple, mantra-like tune, and “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic, just six notes endlessly repeated, with a couple variations. Musical treadmills.
For the next hour, I bounce sleepily from hook to hook, noodling and doodling, finding comfort in repetition.
I doze, slumped on the stool, cradling Ruby. In my dream, day is breaking, birds singing, the sun rising. It’s a summer-skateboard morning. Telly is out on his famous long board. Shirtless. His board shorts ride low, anchored by the blue elastic band of his Calvin Klein boxers. His curly blond hair flies behind him.
But when I open my eyes, the sky is frozen. The street is bound in blackness and ice.
I start playing “Here Comes the Sun.”
As tunes go, it’s a hard one to play. If you can master it—the combined pickin’ and strummin’, all the runs and contrapuntal stuff—you’re pretty good. You can hold your head high among real players. Telly practiced “Here Comes the Sun” a million times, laying it on top of the Beatles until you couldn’t hear the difference. At our middle school graduation party, he climbed onto a picnic table and played it to a group of wine-sipping moms, swishing his hair, not afraid to open his eyes and smile, the way I am when I stand in front of a crowd. Those moms jumped up from their picnic blankets. Gave him a standing ovation.
Telly capoed at seven, for that sweet harp sound, but I don’t capo at all, because I want the deep notes. I want to bend the dark morning into it. Telly knew all the runs. I barely know any. Just the chords—D, G, A7, with a little split on A7.
It starts to go somewhere, and I give it space and do a slow, laid-back version, streaking it with the blues. Ruby sounds wonderful. Sorrowful. She’s leading me by the hand, barefoot through the Canadian wheat fields.
I rasp a few lyrics, give them a whiskey tinge, which I can do because I’m a thousand hours behind on sleep and can still smack up the taste of those grapes. But mostly because I’m thinking “Here Comes the S-O-N” instead of “S-u-n.”
I end on an arpeggio upstroke. Let it ring, sweet and doomy. Till it soaks into the walls.
I pat Ruby. Reach to put her back in her rocking chair. Then I notice a shadow leaning in the doorway.
I nearly jump out of my boxers.
“Holy shit!”
He shambles in, a tall, rumpled stranger. No “hello.” No “good morning.” No “sorry for doing all that circus stuff with your mom.”
He nods at Ruby. “You mind?”
I do mind. He’s a trespasser—worst kind—but it’s so sudden, so early and weary, I just shrug. He lifts Ruby out of her rocking chair and sits on the edge of my bed. “Uh-oh,” he says when he sees the extra sound hole.
He tweaks the tuning and reaches for my pick. I hand it to him. Our eyes meet.
“Never heard it played like that before,” he says. “You dug into it. Made it your own.”
He doesn’t say I played great, but still, it feels nice. Nobody ever compliments me on my guitar playing or singing. That’s probably because, outside of my thicks, I never play to anybody. In front of an audience, I freeze up. Telly and I would jam for hours, and then he’d go and play to any bus-stop grandma. He’d stroll through the West Seattle Junction strumming his guitar. Not me.
But after he died, something changed. Music started to come easier. For some reason, I got better. Almost overnight. I’m not as good as Telly, not by a long shot. But I’m definitely better.
If you apply the same principles to music that you do to poetry—namely, intestines-dragging-the-ground honesty—you will get better. Play it that way, and you can go far with a few chords.
The stranger’s words thaw something. I don’t mind his being here so much now.
He sniffs and starts to play a folk ditty. He keeps it quiet, out of respect for the sleeping house. Then he plays some blues. His pinkie wakes up, and it’s as if he’s tickling Ruby under the arms, because she starts to giggle. He’s bending the strings. She’s making sounds I’ve never heard before—raunchy, come-here-and-rub-me sounds. He plays a tappy “Great Balls of Fire,” singing in a whispery, peppery voice. Between the verses, he fills in with runs, bending it till Ruby is moaning with glee. It’s good to hear her laugh, because I’m always bringing her down. Depressing her.
“Yeah,” I say when he sews it up. “Whew!”
He reaches down and lifts my hairbrush off the floor. It’s an old, tarnished silverback. Holding the brush palm on bristle, silver on strings, he begins to play slide.
“Damn,” I say. “DAMN!”
Ruby’s changed. She’s no longer a pale, brooding poet. She’s a tanned, blond winkin’ country girl. Swiggling her hips on a porch in West Texas.
“Whoa!” I say.
The stranger smiles. Clamps a hand on the strings. “You got another guitar around here?” he asks.
Telly has three guitars, but nobody’s gonna touch them.
I turn and stare out the window. Everything comes crashing down.
He says, “Maybe we could sweeten the morning with a little jam.”
“You better go,” I say. To rub it in, I say, “You’re not the first, you know. And every one of ’em can play guitar.”
He chuckles. “Every one?”
Every one.
He shrugs.
“She�
��s gonna wake up soon,” I say. “She’ll be in a pissy mood. Trust me, you want to be at least fifty miles away.”
He shakes his head. “I’m in no hurry. You gotta have another guitar around here somewhere.”
Well, hell. Even more than wanting him to go, I want him to stay. I don’t know why, but I do.
I get up and duck across the hall to Telly’s room, a journey I’ve made a million times before except not once in the past eight months. I take a deep breath, hold it, and burst in. Inside, the light is different. It’s at least one shade brighter than the rest of the house. His guitars are standing in the corner, same as always. His teal blue Fender electric. His Epiphone Thunderbird bass. His Harmony Sovereign acoustic, which he painted red, white, and blue and sprinkled with multicolored teardrops.
These guitars wait for Telly, like he might rush in and grab one. Guitars are like puppies that way. Forever waiting, forever loyal.
I grab the Harmony, my second-favorite guitar in the world. Telemachus got it on our seventh birthday. Gift from Grandpa, a tall, rangy limping man with a white mustache. Liked to stand on the banks of Longfellow Creek, watching Telly and me fish.
Always fuming at Mimi.
Always twinkling at us.
Telly took to that guitar like a frog to a lily pad. It was the first guitar I ever played, too.
I’m using tunnel vision, not wanting to look at his room. Not wanting to see the pictures on the wall, glimpse the familiar yellow T-shirts hanging in the closet, the stacks of guitar magazines, the autographed Tony Hawk poster above his bed. Still, I feel his ghost. Feel him here. His energy is so intense, it won’t die. In death, he casts a warmer glow than anyone alive.
I’m in and out in five seconds.
“Figured,” the man says when I return. He stretches out his hand. “I’m Frank.”
“Hey,” I say. “Jonathan.”
We shake.
“What time you leave for school, Jonathan?”
“Seven ten.”
“Plenty of time,” he says.
He licks into some E blues. His pinkie starts to dart around again. I chord around him, E to A to B7. This time, instead of singing, he drawls over the music, talks it out, kind of like a poet:
I ain’t much to look at,
Gettin old and kinda thin.
I ain’t much to look at,
Gettin old . . . and lame . . . and deaf . . . and blind . . .
and kinda thin.
But there’s plenty of good tunes left
In an old violin.
He drawls on like this, all about sitting in rocking chairs by rivers, winking at lusty girls, and coping with hangovers. He sews it up with a sweet riff. Stitch, stitch, ain’t it a bitch.
“Why didn’t you sing?” I ask.
“It’s talkin’ blues, Jonathan. Sometimes you can talk a song better than sing it.”
He wiggles his pinkie. “Try using this next time. Pinkie can be a godsend, each little note like a bite of candy—an M&M.”
He plays an A chord, and his pinkie dances all around his stationary fingers, adding tinges of blue.
“See what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Give me something.”
Uh-oh. I know bits and pieces of a hundred songs, but right now I’m blank.
“I can’t sing.”
“Bull,” he says. “You sound like a young Tom Waits.”
“I don’t have any hot licks.”
“Forget hot licks.”
But I can’t forget. I gotta show off. Instead of playing from the gut, I try to play the intro to “Sweet Home Alabama.” But I fall into nervous-performance mode. My fingers freeze. It’s nothing like my gloomy version of “Here Comes the S-O-N,” which flowed naturally, but which, if I’d known Frank was listening, I couldn’t’ve played.
“Whoa!” he says. “Hold up. Let’s try this.”
He plays the opening licks to something called “God’s Little Secret.” He makes it easy to follow, and we get into the flow, me playing a four-chord rhythm, key of A, and Frank bending into the lead. He starts singing, and pretty soon I’m backing him up. We fall into a two-part harmony. In the middle of about the forty-seventh
“Ooo eeee, don’t forget to pray . . .”
. . . the walls begin to pound. We hear:
“Shaaaaddduuuuppppppppp!”
. . . and freeze midstrum.
Frank grins. “Guess our fan base isn’t too big.”
“Guess not.”
“I’ll take that as my exit cue.”
He sets Ruby in the rocking chair. Shakes my hand again. “Good to know you, Jonathan. Stay with the music. Don’t try to be like others. Do it your way, cuz you got something.”
I listen to him tiptoe downstairs, open the front door, close it. From my window, I watch his car, a dented, snow-topped red Subaru, roll down the icy street.
“Bet I never see you again,” I say.
Day is creeping in.
Irrelevant as ever.
Chapter 9
I take a hot shower, dozing under the cascade of water. Towel off, dress, and head down to the kitchen. I’m pouring a bowl of Special K when I notice a brown business card on the counter:
Frank Conway
Musician/Music Instructor
Piano, Guitar, Drums, Flute
Blues, Folk, Rock, Reggae
Plus all the contact info.
On the back, in pencil, are two words: “Call me.”
Does he mean me or Mimi?
I shrug and pocket the card.
Pretty soon, Mimi drifts down. She’s wearing her white silk dragon kimono. Looking like a hooker from hell. All tangled curls, pale cheeks, hard mouth. Her eye makeup—which glittered last night—looks like black eyes this morning. Her hands tremble as she sets up Mr. Coffee. I bow my head and shut up. I’ve had years of practice. I go easy crunching my Special K.
“Gawwwdddd, you chew like a horse,” she says. Then, testing the water: “How did you sleep last night, baby?”
Her back is to me.
“Like a polar bear,” I say.
Her shoulders relax.
But I can’t leave it at that. I have to open my big mouth. “How did you sleep, Mimi?”
She stiffens, gnashes her teeth.
“All you ever do is write your damn poetry and play your damn guitar. Who the hell are you to judge me?”
“Nobody,” I say. “I’m nobody.”
She aims a finger. “Whatever Dr. Jacobson tells you to do today, do it! If you drag your sorry little poetic ass, you’re headed straight back to your father. Do you hear?”
I lift the cereal bowl to my lips and make a loud slurping noise.
Mimi reaches into her kimono for her cell phone, starts to punch the number.
“Hold up!”
I set the bowl down and meet her eye. “No way am I moving back,” I say. “I’ll live under a bridge with the trolls and transients before that happens.”
She nods. “You and the trolls and transients would get along fine.”
Mr. Coffee starts to percolate. Mimi skates her cell phone down the counter, grabs the pot, pours a cup, cuts it with Irish Cream. She’s steaming.
I realize my mistake. Never mess with Mimi when she’s in a threatening mood.
And there is no bigger threat than my father.
It’s impossible that Telly and I are his sons. His neck is too thick. His nose is too big. His brain is too small. The back of his hairy hand is as soft as a spanner wrench. Walt Whitman? Never heard of him.
Mimi shakes a finger at me. “If you miss your meeting with Dr. Jacobson, you’re . . .”
Mimi doesn’t know how to transform words into sticks of dynamite.
“. . . burnt toast.”
My cell phone burps.
I grab my backpack and head out to the car, Kyle’s brother’s ancient Volks. The Volks has been painted so many times, what’s left is a grayish-whitish-bird-poopish color—same shade as
the moon. Dappled with Bondo putty. It’s held together with chewing gum and duct tape. Hole under the accelerator. No second gear.
When I get in, Kyle says, “Ladies and gentlemen, Batman has arrived. He who flies off bridges in snowstorms.”
Nick, thumbing his phone in the back seat, says, “Lord of the Skies.”
The car smells of wet, shampooed hair and cinnamon Altoids.
“How’s my favorite MILF this morning?” Kyle says.
“Dude,” I say, shaking my head, “not today.”
“Just tell me one thing. Is she wearing that kimono with the fire-breathing dragon on the back?”
“Leave it alone, man,” I say.
Kyle says, “In case you forgot, thick-ism is about truth, and the truth is, your mom was designed by god—with maybe a little help from Aphrodite and final inspection by Madonna—to be a MILF, a Mother I’d Like to—”
“Fuck off,” I say.
“Respect,” Nick says. “Purify.”
Kyle folds into silence. His whole being is a clash of humility and testosterone. Like a monk with a hard-on.
We ease down the snowy street on bald tires, slide through a few stop signs, which is risky because nobody has a license yet. We gain some traction on Delridge, where they’ve dumped potash.
Nick taps my shoulder. “Jonathan,” he says. “Don’t try to fly again, okay?”
I nod.
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
Nick sighs. I feel relieved, too. How can I break a promise to Nick?
Kyle thumbs open the Altoid tin and offers me one.
“What time you meet with Gupti?”
“Fourth period,” I say, popping an Altoid.
He whistles. “Man, I’m glad I’m not you.”
Nick says, “Just say yes to everything. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You’ll be okay.”
“Fuck, no!” I counter.
When we get to Taft, Nick and I jump out and push the car over the icy speed bump into the parking lot. The bell is ringing.
Adios, Nirvana Page 4
