Sometime After Midnight

by L. Philips

  “Charming.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do with it all,” she says defensively. “And after . . . I just couldn’t stand seeing his stuff everywhere I looked.”

  It’s understandable, but I’m not sure I’m ready to let her off the hook for sticking all of Dad’s stuff in a storage unit out in the desert, so I don’t reply. Instead, I take out my phone and text Travis.

  Hey. Meet later? Need someone to talk to. Listened to Dad’s masters. They still exist. They’re incredible and really, really sad.

  I hit send and, after a moment of thinking about it, send another one to him.

  Oh, and btw, Tonya is taking me to see Dad’s stuff. Apparently it still exists too. Some place called U-Stor-It on the 15. If I don’t text again in 24 hours, send out a search party. Only half joking.

  I lean my head back against the seat and succumb to my sleepiness, though it’s not a restful nap at all. When I wake up, I grab my phone. Travis hasn’t texted back; it’s still early by his standards, so he’s probably still passed out, but regardless, I have no bars. Complete dead zone. Damn. I hope Cameron’s still sleeping too and not trying to get ahold of me. I turn to Tonya, about to ask how much farther we have to go, when she slows the car to a crawl and turns right, where antique neon lights illuminate a cheesy sign that says, U-STOR-IT.

  There are about ten rows of long, cinder-block buildings that have orange garage doors every few feet. They all look alike to me, but Tonya obviously knows where she’s going. Gravel flies out from the tires as she turns down one particular row and stops abruptly about halfway down. She shuts the car off and looks at me before nodding toward a unit to my right. “That’s it,” she says. “Everything I kept of your father’s. Everything I could afford to keep.”

  I stare at the unit. It’s small, probably not even a quarter of the size of our one-car garage at home. And it’s all that’s left of my father.

  Tonya gets out and I take a moment before I follow, trying to process it. She’s already swiped a card at a keypad to the right of the door, and when the pad lights up green, she bends and lifts the door, rolling it completely up. When the strong noon sun hits the contents, I’m thrilled to see that the storage unit is packed. It’s also completely unorganized.

  I look over at her and she shrugs. “I’ve always meant to get out here and straighten it up, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  I step inside the unit, into the four-by-four-foot space left on the floor, and look around. There’s only one guitar that I can see. It’s a cheaper model, a low-end Fender, and the strings curl back from the fretboard, frayed. A few boxes by my feet are full of notebooks, spiral-bound and well-used, covers creased and pages butterflied out from repeated turning. I recognize Dad’s handwriting on the covers and exposed pages. Lyrics. Hundreds of notebooks of lyrics.

  “I had to sell most of the guitars. I let you pick a few, then sold what I could. Your father told me when your grandmother died that when it was his time, he didn’t want a funeral. But still, he didn’t have any insurance, and burial was expensive,” I hear Tonya say. “I couldn’t bear to get rid of his notebooks, though. It’s him, you know? His whole life in his own words.”

  The notebooks. God, I long to sit down and open them and read from start to finish, so that I can piece his life together in the poetic lines of his songs, and in between those lines as well.

  I eye the rest of the boxes. The unit is stacked with them in wobbly towers. There are a few odds and ends on the tops of the boxes: a couple of Dad’s flannel shirts, his standard uniform; some books; a lamp I recognize as my grandmother’s; some rolled-up posters and framed pictures.

  I turn to Tonya. “What’s in the rest of the boxes?”

  She scrunches her face, confused at my confusion for a moment before she answers with a sad smile. “It’s all like those, Nate,” she says, pointing to the boxes at my feet. “Journals. Notebooks full of lyrics. I mean, there are some other things. Photo albums. There’s one of you as a baby here somewhere. A few from his childhood that he took from your grandma’s house after she died. But mostly it’s his words. They tell his story. Even the hard parts.”

  “All of this?” I ask, glancing around the unit again, then back at Tonya.

  “All of it.”

  Overwhelmed, I back up until my feet hit some boxes behind me, and I sit on a short stack of them. I put a hand on my chest, trying to calm the frantic, unsteady tattoo of my heart.

  “I’m sorry, Nate.”

  I look up at Tonya, stunned.

  She sits down on her own set of boxes and leans toward me, her expression full of apology, sincere and sorrowful. “I should have told you. I should have talked to you. I just didn’t know how to explain it. I didn’t understand it myself. And I was scared. I didn’t know how to handle all that confusion with you. I was afraid you’d want answers I didn’t have.”

  “I did,” I say. “I still do. But it’s not your fault that you don’t have them. If what Richard Pierce told me is true, Dad was very ill.”

  Tonya shakes her head violently. “That man. He said what Mick was doing wasn’t good. That the music wasn’t good and no one was going to like it. But it was good, Nate. I swear it was. It was like a doorway into his brilliant mind.”

  “I know. I have his masters. Cameron gave them to me.”

  Tonya sits back, letting out an odd, happy laugh. “Really? I was told they were destroyed.”

  “By Cameron’s father?”

  “Yes, well, I mean, someone from Paradise. I got a very official-looking letter that the masters would never be mine, and I was too naïve and too poor to try to fight it in a court.” Tonya bites at a hangnail. “I should have anyway. There’s a lot I should have done. A lot I regret. I should have seen it, Nate, and I didn’t and I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand until it was too late.”

  I want to reach out and take her hand, but Tonya and I have never been like that. I can’t remember us ever touching each other in a loving way, or giving each other that kind of comfort. All I can do is lean closer. “Will you tell me what happened? I want to hear it from you, not just Richard Pierce. I think Cameron is a good guy, and I’m beginning to think his dad isn’t entirely evil. But I want to know the truth from you.”

  Tonya glances around the unit, her face even more tired and sunken in the harsh desert sun. Then she bites her lip, takes a breath, and begins.

  “You were living with your grandmother in New York when I met Mick. He was talented, and so handsome, like you, Nate. Of course, he never would have worn suspenders,” Tonya says, looking amused and a tad flummoxed at my fashion choices.

  I have to laugh. “No. He stuck to his flannel. And his long hair.”

  Tonya smiles. I notice she looks younger when she smiles. Not so beaten down. “It wasn’t his looks I loved. Or the way he performed, although that certainly got my attention. It was the lyrics. Your father wrote lyrics that somehow managed to shrink entire emotions down to one poignant line. When I introduced myself that night after his show, I asked him if he liked Leonard Cohen, because Leonard Cohen had a very similar gift that way. And that made him stop and talk to me instead of the other girls crowding around him.”

  Tonya looks away then, her voice turning soft where there are usually hard edges. “Everything was wonderful for a while. Things moved quickly. We decided it would be better to live together and split the rent than pay for two apartments. He was recording daily, writing daily. And I don’t have a musical bone in my body, but I knew, because I knew him, what would work and what wouldn’t. What just felt right, or wrong. He always came to me for advice. But there were others he talked to that gave him advice. And I feel so stupid for not understanding until later that the others weren’t real.”

  “The voices?”

  “Yes. I thought maybe they were musicians at the studio, until he said their n
ames, of course.”

  I nod, remembering what Richard had said. “Famous dead people.”

  “Oh yes, but there were others too. He frequently talked about a Charlie and a Missy. Charlie was his childhood dog, and I didn’t put two and two together until after he died that Missy was the nickname for your mother, Melissa.”

  “Jesus,” I whisper, shaking my head. “I didn’t know it either. He hated talking about her. Whenever I asked questions about her as a kid, he’d be really vague or change the subject. He finally told me she’d left us both and that was it. I didn’t ask questions anymore.”

  For a long, heavy moment, neither of us says a word. Tonya is the one to break the silence.

  “About a week after we got married, I woke up one night to find him gone. That wasn’t unusual. He was often up at all hours, writing and playing. But this time I heard him yelling at someone. I walked into our living room to find him having an argument with no one.” Tonya looks at me, tearful. “That’s when I understood. I didn’t know what to do, so I just started asking him questions. How often he heard them, when, how long had it been happening . . . He was reluctant to talk about it. He didn’t want me to run. But I won’t lie . . . I thought about it.”

  She looks at me, almost fearfully, as if she expects my judgment. “You have to understand. I loved him; I still do. But I didn’t know how to handle that. He was ten years older than me. I expected him to take care of me, not the other way around.”

  “It had to be scary,” I say, and she sighs.

  “It was, some of the time. He told me it’d been happening for years and that he’d gotten good at hiding it, for the most part. And he did hide it well. Most days it was like nothing was wrong, and he was especially careful to keep it quiet when you were around. But the more pressure there was to produce a masterpiece, the worse it got. Then his mother died, right when the record was truly falling apart, and it was like he couldn’t even hide it anymore. He talked to the voices all day long, and at night he wouldn’t sleep. His music got really dark.”

  “And hard to follow,” I add.

  “Exactly. Like the voices were in control, sometimes several at once.” Tonya squeezes her eyes shut. “And they were. They were in total control. I beat myself up for years, thinking about what I could have done. How I should have taken him to a specialist. How I should have blocked him from going out on that balcony. How I should have realized what was going on sooner, or realized how dangerous it truly was. That maybe all of those things could have saved him.”

  Again, I have the strange urge to take her hand, but I don’t. “That’s all I could think about too, when Richard told me about the voices. But then I heard the masters. Tonya, the music . . . He was haunted. He was tortured. He had to have just wanted out.”

  “Maybe,” she says, looking down at her hands, twisted into each other. “And I’ve made my peace with that. Mostly. It’s you I haven’t made peace with.”

  “Me?” I say, jerking back in surprise.

  Tonya swallows, looks into my eyes. “You. I was a coward with you. I couldn’t tell you the truth about him. I could barely look at you. I didn’t know what to do with you at all. You were so different from me. In some ways, you were really different from Mick. Mick was always very passionate, very animated, very full of life. And you were so reserved. So irritable. Thank goodness you were naturally a good kid because I certainly didn’t know how to raise you to be. I didn’t know how to help you or encourage you, and I knew you loved playing the guitar, but I couldn’t even afford lessons for you.”

  “I thought you hated that I played,” I say.

  “Oh, I do. You’ll turn out just like him, I’m telling you.”

  I take a breath. “And that’s why you kept me from it. You didn’t want me to turn into my dad.”

  She confirms this with a nod and takes to biting her nails nervously. “You had nightmares all the time and you used to talk to yourself. Right after Mick died, you were inconsolable. You’d play and write and . . . it was like you’d dream out loud or something. Say all these nonsense things. Or have these longs bouts of depression, where you’d barely talk at all. I was sure you were going to be sick too. That it was just a matter of time and the guitar would get you there faster. It pushed your father the same way. He heard the voices so clearly when he played.”

  “And you put me in therapy,” I say, pieces of the puzzle snapping into place. “I know I was doing . . . stuff in school. I know I was saying weird things or doodling disturbing images on my desk. I thought maybe the school forced me. I didn’t realize it was you.”

  “I tried, and just like your dad, you didn’t want to go. You’re too like him.” She’s stops biting at her nails and picks at them instead. “So I gave up. I tried and gave up a lot with you. You always wanted to be left alone. And I was never sure how much to say, or do. I didn’t feel like I had any real connection to you, and I definitely had no authority. I thought maybe if the therapist came to your school instead of me taking you there, you’d be more open to it. With me you just shut down.”

  “I didn’t think you wanted me. I thought you felt like you were stuck with me, this kid, and you really just wanted to be rid of me.”

  Tonya’s face twists with sadness and again I’m struck by how young she truly is. She’s barely over thirty. She should be out dating, having fun, trying to build a career. Instead, she’s been dealing with grief and trying to manage me.

  “Well, I was stuck with you in a way,” she says, shrugging. “You were an orphan. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want you around. You were Mick’s kid, and I would have done anything for Mick. I just didn’t know what to do. I was so overwhelmed. The press wanted pictures, interviews; they hounded me wherever I went. Some offered a lot of cash, and there were so many bills. I found myself considering it one night, just because I was so desperate. So when a friend’s mother decided she was retiring and selling her ice cream shop, I begged the bank, and for some reason, probably because I had Mick’s money, they let me have it. So I moved us into a little house and ran the shop. We certainly aren’t living in the Hills, but it’s been okay, hasn’t it?”

  And that’s when I do, finally, take her hand in mine. “Yeah, Tonya. It’s been okay.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t, not really,” she says, turning over my hand in hers like she’s confused about what it might be and how it got there. “I wasn’t a mom. I couldn’t be a mom. I was scared I’d lose you like I lost Mick, but scared to get close. Still am.”

  I give her a half smile. “I’m not sure I would have let you anyway.”

  “I’m scared for you now.”

  “I don’t hear voices. I don’t talk to myself. I’ve only had that dream a few times in the last year,” I tell her.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “Not that. I’m talking about the Pierce boy.”

  I open my mouth to defend Cameron, but she doesn’t let me. She plows ahead with accusations. “If his father hadn’t told Mick the music was no good . . .”

  “I know what you’re going to say,” I tell her. “If Richard Pierce hadn’t said what he’d said that night, Dad might still be alive. He might have gotten help. He might have finished the record. He might be playing to packed arenas every night.”

  “That’s what he was supposed to do,” Tonya says, angry. “He was going to be a legend.”

  “I don’t have any doubt he would have been.” Tears build up in my eyes. “Even in the recordings Richard called unlistenable, you can hear his genius. Richard was wrong to say it, but . . . I don’t think it would have changed anything if he hadn’t, Tonya. Those recordings are definitely the work of a genius, but you can hear all the pain, too. The kind that might not have ever healed.”

  Tears come, regardless of how hard I try to stop them. I look through them, at Tonya, and she’s crying too. She folds my hand up into hers. I thin
k about my father’s strange smile as he jumped. Maybe he was smiling because he knew he’d finally have peace.

  Tonya wipes her eyes and looks at me hopefully. “You can hear the genius, huh?”

  “Yes. They’re haunting, but they’re truly art.” I stand and take the discs out of my pocket. “Why don’t you listen? Just don’t let them out of your sight, that’s all I ask. I have to keep a promise.”

  Tonya reaches for the CDs and turns them over in her hands reverently. “Cameron really gave you these? With his father’s permission?” I nod, and Tonya swallows thickly. “Can you tell him thank you for me?”

  Just then I hear tires crunching over gravel, and the unmistakable outline of a Land Rover appears.

  I don’t fight a smile. “Looks like you can tell him yourself, if you want. That’s him.”

  Tonya turns, shielding her eyes from the sun to look at Cameron’s car, then swivels her head back to me. “You really like this boy? You swear he’s decent?”

  “Nearly perfect, if not for the fact that he knows it.” I shrug. “Just try not to hold his father against him. I’m trying to do the same.”

  Cameron steps out of the car, his face revealing nothing but worry and concern for me, his handsome features relaxing almost immediately when we lock eyes and he sees that I’m okay.

  And that’s when I realize I’d do anything for him too, including letting every damn paparazzo within a thousand miles see just that.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Cameron

  I hold my hands up in the air. I’m not sure why. Some sort of “I come in peace” gesture, maybe. Maybe surrender. Maybe both. Then I start rambling.

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s crazy to just show up here at the . . .” I look up at the sign. “The U-Stor-It, an hour from all civilization. But I was worried. I hadn’t heard from you. And you said you’d call, even if the news was bad. And I was afraid it was bad.”