by Kyra Davis
“Yes, it seems I am.”
I hesitate as I consider my all-Top-Ramen-all-the-time food supply. “Well . . .” I breathe, relaxing back into my seat. “Alright, then.”
And we fall quiet once more, staring at a road illuminated by brake lights and listening to the quiet music of the rain.
CHAPTER 10
IT TAKES WELL over an hour to get into Los Angeles, another thirty minutes before he pulls off the highway and into the Silver Lake neighborhood. As soon as I realize where we are, I feel a little lighter, a little giddy. I lean forward, peering eagerly through the water-streaked glass, taking in the shops and cafés, all a little gritty but none of them dirty. This is a place for the young and hopeful.
“You have a beautiful smile,” he says quietly. “You should wear it all the time.”
My hand flutters to my mouth as if confirming that the smile is still there. How can this guy get me so flustered? What’s going on with me?
The view changes as he pulls onto the residential streets. They’re mostly comprised of small homes with meager front yards, yet there is a sprinkle of wealth mixed in. A sleek two-story house stands between two 1970s homes, and on the corner there’s an extravagant Spanish-style minimansion. Things are changing.
A few minutes later he maneuvers his car into a curbside parking spot. “This is where I live,” he says, gesturing to a little complex of apartments. There’s a gate, and from the street you can see that it leads to a narrow courtyard made up of cobblestones surrounding a small fountain.
He gets out of the car, but I continue to sit there, unsure if I’m supposed to wait for him while he grabs whatever he needs before we go to the restaurant. But in a moment, Brad is at my door opening it for me. “Shall we?”
Tentatively I step outside. “We’re eating at your house?”
“We are. Come on, I’ll introduce you to everyone.”
“Okay.” I try to imagine what Brad’s roommates will be like. Rockers? Frat boys? Fellow aliens from whatever planet he’s from?
As he opens the gate I check out the adobe walls of the building. The place looks pretty old, maybe a little run down, but it’s charming all the same.
He leads me to a place with a curved dark wood door and I follow him inside. There’s no real foyer, just a nice-size living room with hardwood floors. The walls are adorned with M. C. Escher prints along with a few posters of New York: the Empire State Building at night; the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise; a black-and-white image of a man walking a tightrope between the Twin Towers. And on a cushy couch covered with a dark red slipcover is a woman in her fifties with dyed blond hair and a little girl, around five or six, with frizzy brown curls, a bright blue dress, and almond-shaped eyes that are trained on Brad.
“Daddy!”
I gasp as she jumps off the couch and throws herself at him just before he lifts her into the air.
“I told you he would be here for dinner,” the girl says, twisting in Brad’s arms so she can see the blonde. Looking at this woman now, I note that she has the same angular face as Brad, the same thick eyebrows and Roman nose. She gets up from the couch, her beige cotton pants and silk knit top now wrinkled and her cardigan slightly askew. “She was insistent that you would make it.”
He has a little girl. I stare down at the floor and lay my hand against my stomach as I try to steady my breathing.
“She knows I don’t break my promises,” Brad says simply. “Mercy, this is my mother, Sharon Witmer, and this is my daughter, Miss June Witmer. Mom, June, this is Mercy Raye, the lead singer of the band.”
“Hello, Mercy.” Sharon offers me her hand and I take it almost mechanically as June giggles and presses her cheek to her father’s shoulder.
“Mercy isn’t a name!” she says.
“Neither is June,” I reply, keeping my eyes low. “It’s a month.”
“It’s my month!” she says, pounding her chest with her little fist.
I bite my lip and then slowly force myself to meet her eyes.
They’re glittering with spirit and humor. How is it that children can find so much joy in the most trivial moments? “You own the month of June?” I hear myself asking with exaggerated awe.
“Weellll . . . I don’t own it . . . but it’s my birthday month, but other people get to use it, too.”
“That’s crazy generous of you,” I say with a solemn nod. “And thoughtful. They really should call you Empress June.”
June’s delicate little eyebrows knit together as she considers this. “Are empresses like princesses?”
“Sorta, but you know how princesses are always getting rescued?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, no one has to rescue an empress because nobody would dare mess with one. Empresses are da bomb.”
June breaks into a fit of giggles. Brad’s mother puts her hand on my shoulder. “Well, Mercy,” she says, “it looks like you have a new fan.”
MINUTES LATER, SHARON’S taken off, and not long after that, Brad has us all sitting down to a Trader Joe’s stir-fry, freshly defrosted and sautéed in olive oil. I listen to Brad ask June about her day with Grandma, and I ask June about her school. I quickly learn that she’s in pre-K and her teacher, Miss Jenny, is the best! Just as her dad’s cooking is the best (I’m not on board with that one) and her grandmother is the most wonderful grandma on earth! And this afternoon they watched the most fantastic movie, ever! She’s a girl of superlatives and I’m totally charmed. It’s odd, because I generally try to avoid little kids, but now that I’m here, well, it’s not so bad.
And Brad . . . he just kinda blows my mind. He shows June so much respect! Patiently correcting her grammar and table manners here and there, but mostly letting her talk, laughing at her knock-knock jokes and considering her theories about A Rugrats Vacation. We end up hanging out at the table long after we’re done eating, laughing and chatting even as the leftover morsels start to crust onto our plates and our water goes from cold to room temperature. When I was a kid I had been told that while at the dinner table the talking should be left to the adults. My little sister, Kasie, was a master at the whole no-speaking-until-being-spoken-to thing. I was not. Inevitably my father would try to shut me up and I’d push back, challenging him until we were both so mad that we were speaking without thinking, spewing insults and anger all over our meal.
“Are you going to stay the night, Mercy?” June asks, bringing me back to the here and now.
“I’m going to have Maria come over when she gets back from her late shift,” Brad says, jumping in. “She’ll stay here with you while I take Mercy home. Maria’s a neighbor,” Brad adds for my benefit.
“But she won’t be back from the late shift for a long, long time, right?” June asks hopefully. “After my bedtime?”
“After your bedtime,” Brad agrees, and then checks his watch. “Which is in twenty minutes.”
“Uh-oh!” June is immediately on her feet and rushing from the room. I give Brad a questioning look.
“She gets all-alone time before bed,” he explains. “Time she can play by herself with her dolls and picture books. I invented that to give myself a little break in the evening,” he admits, “but it’s become important to her.”
“Oh, so we won’t see her again until she goes to bed?” Am I relieved? Disappointed? I have no read on myself.
“Probably not.” Brad gets up and starts to collect the plates. “Anyway, that’s my daughter.”
“And she’s the best daughter ever!” I say, imitating the sweet lyrical chime of June’s voice. Brad gives me a look, but I just laugh and shake my head. “Seriously, she’s adorable. Can I ask—”
“Where her mom is?” Brad finishes for me as he reaches for his daughter’s empty cup. “She’s—”
“That’s not what I was going to ask,” I say shortly.
“No?” He pauses and tilts his head to the side. “That’s what everybody asks after meeting her.”
“Yeah, well I’m not everybod
y and it’s not what I want to know,” I say, finishing what’s left of my water.
“All right,” Brad says, drawing out the words as he tries to figure me out. “What would you like to know?”
I look around the apartment. It’s not a Beverly Hills estate, but it’s still better than the hole-in-the-wall I live in. “What’s your day job?”
He hesitates a moment. “I usually work nights; it’s better for June that way.” He takes my empty glass and heads to the kitchen. “I can get her to and from school, go on field trips, that kind of thing,” he says over his shoulder.
“Okay.” I follow him in and grab a dish towel that’s hanging from the handle of a drawer as he puts the dishes in the sink. “What’s your night job?”
“Sometimes it’s drumming,” he says with a little smile. He turns on the water and waits for it to steam. “I don’t really have a career at this point. I simply do what I need to do to pay the bills. What about you? Are you aiming to be a rock star?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I pull myself up onto the counter and take a dish he’s just cleaned from his hands. “I just like making music and being onstage, so I guess I’ll do it until it’s not fun anymore. But I don’t anticipate ever making any real money from it.”
He gives me a sidelong glance and hands me another plate. “So then what do you want to do when you grow up?”
I smile and lean toward him, almost conspiratorially, and whisper, “Everything.”
He laughs, but then the sound dies on his lips as he studies me. “You’re serious.”
“About experiencing as many aspects of life as possible? Yeah, I’m serious. Why should I limit myself to one career when I can try twenty or thirty or a hundred?”
“Because you have a calling. Traci told me that most of Resurrection’s songs are yours. That you just came up with them during jam sessions without ever writing down a single note.”
I chew on my lower lip, thinking about the drawer full of my secret sheet music.
“You can be great,” he continues. “All you have to do is really commit to it and you could be a . . . an icon.”
The comment startles me so much I almost drop the wet plate.
“I mean it, Mercy.”
“Yeah, well.” I can feel my cheeks heating up as I return my attention to my task. “You know what they say the secret to happiness is, right?”
“No,” he says, giving me a funny look. “What is it?”
“Low expectations!” I chirp.
“Jesus.” He shakes his head. “Who says that?”
“I don’t know, maybe just me.” I dry another dish he hands me. “I will say that fronting for a band is a lot better than the other jobs I’ve tried so far. I tried retail, that was not fun. I had a brief stint as a telemarketer, that was just hell. But from a paycheck perspective they were all more reliable than singing.”
“So how do you support yourself now?”
“Oh you know, I pick up odd jobs. I’m working at that club Envy tomorrow night . . . wait a minute, why am I telling you this?” I put down the dish towel. “You never actually told me what you do and I asked first. So give it up, what’s the deal?”
Brad sighs. “All right—”
“I’m done with all-alone time and I’ve washed my face and brushed my teeth!” We both turn to see June in the doorway wearing a lavender nightgown covered in smiling ponies. “Can Mercy put me to bed tonight, Daddy?”
I glance up at Brad and the expression on his face stops me. Something about that request got to him and he looks almost overwhelmed. “You’ll have to ask her,” he says quietly and I swear I detect a little quiver in his voice.
I turn back to June and am once again swallowed by a whirlpool of mixed emotions. And the way she’s looking at me like she thinks I’m good. Like I’m innocent.
“Sure,” I whisper and slide off the counter. “I’ll tuck you in, Empress June.”
June beams up at me and places her tiny hand in mine. I have the sudden urge to scoop her up, feel what it’s like to have her pudgy little arms around my neck, smell her hair . . .
But instead I let her lead me to her bedroom and I listen intently as she guides me through her small collection of treasures here. Here in the corner is my Lite-Brite, here are my Barbies, the drawings on the wall are my drawings . . .
She’s turned the whole bedroom into her own little Utopia, I can see that. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m an illegal alien. I don’t belong here.
“Before you tuck me in, you have to read me a short story and sing me a song.”
I take the story she has in her hand, something about an owl and a fish becoming friends. The premise seems far-fetched but I’m willing to go with it.
Once we’re done with that she climbs under the covers that are piled on top of her purple plastic Minnie Mouse bed.
“What does your dad sing you?” I ask as I sit on the edge of the child-size mattress.
“It changes,” she explains. “Sometimes he plays something for me on the stereo.” She points to a portable CD player attached to two little speakers sitting on top of her dresser. “He plays your song a lot.”
“My song?” I ask.
“ ‘Mercy Street’! That’s how I knew your name wasn’t really a name. It’s a street! Does that mean you’re empress of the whole street?”
My mouth goes slack and then I quickly get up from the bed and cross to the other side of the room, my back to her as I stare down at the silent speakers.
“Are you okay?” June asks, her perpetually effusive voice registering concern.
“Yeah, I just wanted to look at your stereo system here,” I lie, forcing myself to keep my voice even and light.
“Mercy Street,” the song that had been playing on the radio when I had gone to meet my father that night.
Dreaming of mercy
In her daddy’s arms again
How could a child guess the origins of my name?
I place my fingers against the silent speakers.
I had sung along with Peter Gabriel as I pulled into the parking lot of the diner. The timing of it was just unreal. What were the odds of that fourteen-year-old song being played on the radio at that moment? It simply had to be a sign!
“I have speakers kind of like this at home,” I say aloud, still keeping my back to June.
It’s a long song. Even the radio version goes on for over four minutes, but I refused to turn off the engine until it was over. And as the sensual, haunting notes surrounded me, I found that I was flooded with the strongest sense of hope. Hope that I could fix things between my dad and me. I thought that maybe, just maybe, he would take me in his arms. Maybe I had a home. Maybe just this once he would grant me mercy.
It had been such a nice four minutes.
“Are you suuuurrre you’re all right?” June presses.
“Yep.” I finally turn back to her, making my face a mask. Show her happiness, ease, don’t let her see all that ugly that lives inside of you. “How about a lullaby?” She beams at me and then snuggles up in the blankets again, closing her eyes, prepared to be lulled to sleep. I start singing Concrete Blonde’s “Lullaby,” which is the only lullaby I know. But the song is gentle in its own way and the imagery is sweet. I try to let the song soothe me, too. I need that. And as I sing about her breathing being the wind and her tears being the rain, I imagine myself disappearing into the elements, becoming part of everything while simultaneously becoming nothing. Is that what death is? If so, how beautiful.
I close my eyes as I continue to sing and hold my hands out in front of me, feeling the air, trying to sense what else is in it. The souls of the dead? If not, perhaps their molecules, their energy, all of it surrounding me, entering my mouth, filling my lungs. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, that’s how the saying goes. But we are all so much more and so much less than that. We’re stardust.
As the last lyrics of the song leave my mouth, I open my eyes and see that June is fast aslee
p. And leaning against the doorframe is Brad.
“That was stunning,” he says quietly as I adjust her blanket and pull myself to my feet.
I walk past him out of the room and whisper, “I want to go home.”
BRAD’S NEIGHBOR MARIA, a frazzled-looking woman in her late forties, is home from her shift at the grocery store within ten minutes, and as soon as she agrees to hang out with the sleeping June we’re in his car, heading back to my studio in North Hollywood. For some time we don’t speak. I know he can sense that I’m in some kind of funk, but he doesn’t ask and I don’t volunteer an explanation. It’s not until we’re closing in on the 134 that he breaks the silence.
“This is how you look when you’re deep in thought.”
“Excuse me?” I don’t even bother to turn my face from my window.
“Almost every time I’ve caught you deep in thought you look just like you do now . . . sad.”
I press my lips into a thin line and keep my eyes on the blurred and shadowy landscape.
“Except earlier, when I was taking you back to my place, right when I pulled off the highway . . . you were thinking about something, I could see that . . . but you were all light and sunshine. That was the exception. That’s when I complimented your smile.”
I finally turn my eyes away from the glass as I try to figure out where he’s going with this.
“What were you thinking about that made you happy?”
“Oh.” I hesitate, retracing the night to the moment he must be referring to. “I was thinking that Silver Lake was where Resurrection played our first professional gig.”
“Oh yeah?”
I nod, watching the slick road as he maneuvers around some of the slower-moving cars. “We were an opening act for another indie band. That was about . . . I guess six months ago now? It was also the first time I had ever performed in front of a paying audience.”
“How’d it go?”
“A lot of people came after we were done, you know, people who just wanted to see the headliner. But still, we got a decent-sized crowd, better than we expected, and . . . I was singing our songs, not just covers. It was wild.” I shake my head, still a little in awe of that experience. “I could feel the . . . the approval and the love of that audience. It was actually tangible. I mean . . . okay, you don’t always know when you’re breathing in smog, right?”
