Love on Stage

by Neil Plakcy

  “I’ll take the dog,” Erica said, reaching for the leash. “You go talk to Miles.”

  His parents had returned from town by then, and delicious smells were coming from the kitchen. Gavin turned down the hall to the studio, moving slowly, afraid to start something with Miles that might not end the way he wanted. But eventually he screwed up his courage and knocked lightly on the door frame.

  “What’s up?” Miles asked.

  Gavin stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “Are you mad at me?”

  Miles looked up. “Mad at you? For what?”

  “You hardly talked to me all day. Even Archie and Erica noticed. They figured out that you and I are—you know—and they think maybe you want to break up with me but don’t know how to do it.”

  Miles looked at him, then laughed. “What I don’t understand is how you can look as gorgeous as you are and still be so insecure.” He stood up. “Come here, you.”

  “I’m not usually insecure. It’s just with you.”

  Gavin walked slowly toward him, and Miles wrapped his arms around Gavin’s back. “I’m sorry if you thought I was mad at you. I’m stressed about how much work we have to do before the concert. And with so little time with Archie, I’m worried we won’t be able to make it.”

  Gavin nestled against Miles’s shoulder. “Really? You’re not mad at me?”

  “How could I be mad at you when we fit together so well?” He backed away. “Let me save what I was working on, and we’ll go for a walk, all right?”

  A few minutes later, they were walking by the lakeside. The moon glinted off the water, and in the distance, Gavin heard rock and roll coming from the campground across the water.

  “If we’re going to work together, none of you can take my critiques personally,” Miles said. “I want you all to be the best musicians you can be, and that’s going to take a lot of work, and maybe sometimes I’m not as polite as I could be.”

  “But you don’t hate me.”

  “Oh, Gavin,” Miles said and took his hand. They walked like that for a while, along the lakeshore, the two of them sealed up in their own world.

  By the time they returned to the house, everyone else was sitting around the dining room table. Gavin and Miles slipped into their places and joined the family conversation.

  When they finished eating, Gavin stood up to help clear the table, but his father said, “Gavin? A word, please,” and nodded toward the front porch.

  He trailed behind his father. His dad didn’t get angry; he thought disappointment was a more powerful weapon. He’d said things like, “I thought better of you, Gavin,” and “Is this the way we raised you?” when the local cops picked up Gavin and a couple of his friends with an empty gallon jug of cheap wine, when Gavin and a couple of girls were caught skinny-dipping at the abandoned quarry outside town, when he was late to work at the dealership or had forgotten to mow the lawn as he’d been told.

  “Your mother and I have never made you feel that your sexual orientation is something to be ashamed of, have we?” his father asked when they were on the porch.

  “No, Dad.” Gavin looked down at the rough planks.

  “And we’ve never criticized your friends or anyone you chose to date.”

  Gavin sighed. “No, Dad.”

  “Then why couldn’t you be honest with us about your relationship with Miles?”

  “Because I don’t know what our relationship is,” Gavin said. “I like him, and I think he like me. And yes, we’ve…” He stopped and searched for a euphemism. “We’ve dated a couple of times.”

  His father’s right eyebrow rose, as if he knew exactly what Gavin was trying not to say.

  “But he’s totally serious about music, and I believe that he’s here because he likes the Sweethearts’ music and wants to help us get ready to perform.”

  His father didn’t say anything, just crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You saw the contract, Dad,” Gavin said. “That Miles gets the right to produce any music that comes out of this concert. He may be a guy, and we may be…involved…but he’s also a musician and a businessman. He wouldn’t be wasting his time up here just so we could have sex a couple of times.”

  “He does seem very serious. And your grandmother is very impressed with him and his musical knowledge.”

  “You’ve always deferred to Grandma Frances when it comes to music,” Gavin said. “That you’re the businessman. So you should be able to relate to that part of Miles.”

  His father shook his head. “You have a golden tongue, Gavin. If you ever do decide to come work for me, you’d make a hell of a salesman.”

  “If I decide to come work with you, Dad,” Gavin said. He leaned over and kissed his dad’s cheek, which was grizzled with five o’clock shadow. “Are we good?”

  His father laughed. “You will always be my wayward son.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” He gave his dad a high five and walked back into the house. Now if only his relationship with Miles could be massaged so easily.

  Sunday morning, the grannies wanted to go to church, so the whole house piled into a couple of cars, Miles included, and drove into Eau Claire. They stopped at a pancake house after the service for a big, lively brunch, and Gavin was pleased at how seamlessly Miles had fit into his family. Gavin was conscious of his father watching Miles at first, and that put Gavin on edge, but then eventually they were all just enjoying their meal.

  When they got back to the house, Miles asked to work with Archie on his own since they wouldn’t have much time together over the following week. Gavin went out to the porch, where he sat on a rocker beside his father.

  “How is the music going?” his dad asked.

  “It’s tough,” Gavin said, leaning back in the rocker. “We work really hard every day, but I’m not good enough to tell if we’re making progress.”

  “What does Miles think?”

  “He’s not telling us.”

  “Well, he must think Archie needs extra help if he’s working with him today.”

  “Honestly, it’s hard to get Arch to practice,” Gavin said. “He works all day, and by the time he gets here, he’s tired and cranky. I think Miles recognizes that he won’t get to work with him much this week.”

  “You think he’d be better off up here until Labor Day?”

  “It would sure be better for all of us,” Gavin said.

  Then Gavin’s mother came outside. “I just got off the phone with Gretchen,” she said. She took her husband’s hand. “We’re going to be grandparents!”

  “What do you mean? I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone.”

  His mother sat in the chair next to his father. “Well, when I asked her who the father was, she wouldn’t say.”

  His dad closed his eyes, and Gavin could tell, from long experience, that his father was doing his best to control his temper.

  “She’s still our daughter, Richard,” his mom said.

  He opened his eyes. “Of course she is. Though I have to say, I wanted to be a father-in-law before I became a grandfather.”

  Gavin thought of the line from the Rolling Stones song—you can’t always get what you want—but for once, his common sense kicked in and he didn’t say anything. Instead he sat on the porch with his parents for a while, rocking back and forth and wondering what it was that he really wanted.

  A Wonderful World

  Sunday afternoon, Miles was busy working on a client project, Archie snuck away to see Mary Anne, and Erica went out on the lake with a college friend who had stopped by to visit. Gavin’s father and grandmother were out on the porch, but when he tried to join them, his father shooed him away. His mother was in the kitchen on the phone and looked like she’d been crying. Even Aunt Ida and Aunt Myrtle had their heads together in the living room, talking in low tones.

  He gave up and went for a run, down the long driveway and out along the country road that wrapped around the lake. It felt good to exercise
; he’d been neglecting his workout since he’d come to Starlit Lake, and he didn’t want to get out of shape. He’d need to go back for modeling calls as soon as he returned to South Beach.

  The smell of barbecue wafted past him as he ran, staying to the shoulder of the road and out of the way of lumbering RVs, pickups, and three-wheeled all-terrain vehicles. As his feet pounded the dirt, he heard kids laughing, people splashing in the lake, the distant sound of an outboard. They were the sounds and smells of his childhood, and he felt comforted and sheltered by them.

  He got back to the house to discover that his parents had left and the grannies had retired to their rooms. He found some cold chicken in the refrigerator for dinner and took it to Miles’s studio, where they ate, and then he read a book on music theory and Miles fiddled around with music at his keyboard. Around eleven, Miles gave up and came to join Gavin on the bed, where they snuggled together. Gavin thought things couldn’t be going any better.

  Monday morning, Archie left for work and Miles took the grannies into the studio. Erica and Gavin both sprawled on sofas in the living room. Erica put in earbuds to listen to music, and Gavin picked up the book Miles had lent him about music theory.

  Shortly before lunch, Archie stormed into the living room. “I don’t need any of you messing with my life!” he shouted at Gavin and Erica.

  Erica pulled out her earphones. “What crawled up your butt?” she asked.

  Archie turned to Gavin. “What did you say to Uncle Richard?”

  Gavin cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he called my boss this morning and told him that I needed some time off so we could practice.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?” Erica asked.

  “I didn’t ask him to do that. One of you must have.”

  “I told him that it was tough to get enough practice time with you,” Gavin said. “That you were working hard and then you were tired by the time you got up here.”

  “He had no business going behind my back!”

  Gavin held up his hands. “Hey, take it up with him, not with us.”

  “You should be happy, Archie,” Erica said. “Some vacation time to focus on the concert.”

  “I don’t want to focus on the concert!” he shouted. “I just want to have a job. Now my boss is going to think I’m not serious. What about after the concert, when Gavin goes back to Miami and you go to grad school, and all I’ve got is that job?”

  “What did your boss say, exactly?” Gavin asked. “Is this like, leave without pay? Or are you taking next year’s vacation now?”

  “It’s unpaid leave,” he said. “But he went on about how great it would be for the bank if we did well at the concert, that maybe they could use some of our music in an ad or something and they could brag about having me there.”

  “That’s not bad,” Erica said.

  “I’ll bet my dad put him up to that,” Gavin said. “He’s the one who controls all the music business, you know. He probably made a trade with your boss.”

  “You think?” Archie asked.

  Gavin nodded. “You know my dad. He doesn’t do anything without thinking it through all the way. He sees that we need you here, and he was willing to make a deal.”

  “It shows how much both of them think of you,” Erica said. “If your boss didn’t think you were a good employee, he could have just fired you.” She put her arm around his shoulder. “Just remember, Mary Anne thinks you have a dreamy voice.”

  Archie frowned at her, but Gavin could see he wasn’t serious.

  Miles came out to the living room then. “Good, I thought I heard Archie’s voice,” he said. “The grannies are ready for a rest. Why don’t you three come in, and we’ll do some work together.”

  They rehearsed for an hour, and then Erica failed to hit a high note and began to cough. “Sorry,” she said between coughs. “This happens to me sometimes. My throat closes up. I need a cup of tea to relax it.”

  “Take a break, then,” Miles said. “I’ve got some other work to do. Come back when you feel better. But don’t take too long.”

  Gavin led the way toward the kitchen, but when he heard raised voices out on the porch, he motioned to his cousins to stop.

  Aunt Myrtle’s voice floated through the heat. “I won’t be made a fool of on stage,” she said. “What if I forget my lines? Frances, can’t you hear the way your voice wavers? And Ida wouldn’t know A above middle C if it ran her over with a truck.”

  “How can you forget a song you’ve been singing all your life? And how can you be so awful?”

  Aunt Ida’s high voice sounded more strained than usual to Gavin. He shared a glance with Archie and Erica. Were they working all three of the grannies too hard?

  “Maybe Myrtle’s right,” Grandma Frances said, and Gavin’s heart sank. If she agreed with Aunt Myrtle, then the whole act was sunk. “We’re too old to do this again.”

  Aunt Ida said, “We have one last chance to perform, and you’re ruining it. And I’m just the baby, so what I want doesn’t count. It never has with you two. Ida’s the silly one—she’ll do whatever we say. Well, I’m tired of it.”

  They heard the creak of a rocker as she stood up. Despite Gavin trying to hold her back, Erica rushed for the porch, with Gavin and Archie behind her. “Are you all right, Grandma?” Erica said as she walked out.

  Gavin saw that his great-aunt’s careful makeup was streaked with tears. Aunt Myrtle sat stonily beside her, looking like that farm wife from the Grant Wood painting. Grandma Frances looked the way she did when she’d forgotten to drink her morning prune juice.

  “My sisters are ruining everything for me again,” Aunt Ida wailed. “But that’s nothing new.”

  “No one is ruining anything,” Grandma Frances said.

  Archie sat on the porch beside his grandmother and asked, “What’s the problem?”

  “We can’t do this, Archie,” she said. “We’re too old, and our voices aren’t what they used to be.”

  “We sound good together,” Gavin said. “I know I’m the least musical one of all of us, but I think we’re great, and we’ve improved a ton since we started working with Miles.”

  “I think so too,” Erica said. “I want to do this, with all three of you.”

  Archie surprised Gavin by saying, “So do I.” He reached up and took his grandmother’s hand.

  “What if we only sing ‘Apple Cider Time’ together,” Gavin suggested, “and Archie, Erica, and I do the rest of the numbers?” He looked at Aunt Myrtle. “Do you think you could manage that?”

  Myrtle looked at Frances, then at Ida, who was still standing by the door, teetering on her heels and clutching Erica’s hand. “I think we could manage one number,” Aunt Myrtle said. “What about you, Frances?”

  “I would like the chance to sing again with the two of you,” she said to her sisters. She looked at her grandson. “What do you think Miles will say?”

  “He’ll say that he’ll take the best that we can give him. And if that’s just one song together, then that’s all there is.”

  Ida sat back down in her rocker, and Myrtle handed her a tissue and a compact. “Fix your makeup, dear. You’re all streaky.”

  Erica led the way back to the kitchen, where she put up the water to boil for tea. “Crisis averted,” she said. “For now at least. You think we could get away with that, Gavin? Just singing one number with them and the other two on our own? Or should we just do ‘Apple Cider Time’ and be done with it?”

  “I like ‘Milking the Cows,’” Archie said. “It would be fun for the audience.”

  “And maybe the grannies could join in with the harmony,” Gavin said. “So they’d still be there, but they wouldn’t be stressed.”

  They talked over various permutations as Erica drank her tea, and then they walked back to the studio.

  “Small problem,” Gavin said once Miles had finished what he was working on and taken off his headphones. He explained the situation and t
he options.

  “I’m glad the sisters figured this out themselves,” he said. “They just don’t have the vocal chops anymore to do three numbers. But I couldn’t figure out how to tell them that without breaking a few hearts.”

  “Do you think Archie, Gavin, and I could carry the other numbers?” Erica asked. “Or should we tell the concert people we’re cutting back to just one?”

  “You guys can manage, if you work hard,” Miles said. “But we only have two weeks. Erica, will your voice hold up?”

  She nodded. “I’ve sung a lot harder than this in the past. I have to pace myself.”

  Miles looked at Archie. “How about you? You ready to commit?”

  Archie nodded. “The last couple of times my group performed, we had these marathon rehearsals. It was fun.”

  “Good,” Miles said. Then he looked at Gavin, but before he could say anything, Gavin held his hand up.

  “I’m the weakest singer,” he said. “Can you change some of the orchestration so that I’m not always singing the lead?”

  Miles shook his head. “You don’t need that. Your voice is a lot better than you think. I’ve been riding you hard because I want you to be better. Truth is, you could walk on that stage right now and do all right.”

  “All right isn’t good enough,” Gavin said. “I want to be great for my grandma and my aunts. And Archie and Erica too.”

  “Then we’ve got a lot of work to do.” Miles put his headphones back on and motioned them to the microphone. “Let’s take ‘Milking the Cows’ from the top.”

  They sang until dinner, then sang again afterward. It was close to ten o’clock by the time Miles dismissed them.

  Gavin hung back. “What you said earlier,” he said, not sure how to phrase what he wanted to know. “Was that just to make Archie and Erica feel better?”

  Miles shook his head and smiled. “You’ve come a long way since the first time I heard you, Gavin,” he said. “Back then, I thought, ‘cute guy, decent voice, but can’t really sing.’ Since then, though, you’ve improved hugely. You just needed somebody to tell you what to do.”