The Words of Every Song

by Liz Moore

  When he wakes up again, it is noon.

  “Shit,” says Jeff. “Fucker.”

  He sees a yellow phone book on a shelf below the bedside table. It is from 2002. He flips to the white pages and runs a finger down the names, dismayed at the hugeness of the “Murphy” section. For a dreadful moment, he thinks he has forgotten Ms. Murphy’s first name, but it comes to him quickly: Marguerite. A lovely old-fashioned name. Marguerite Murphy. And there she is, between Margaret and Mitchell Murphy. He looks up, out the window. Their call for sound check is at four o’clock. He will have time to see her.

  He dials the number with a trembling finger. Hangs up before it rings. Tries again and lets it ring this time.

  A woman answers the telephone. “Hello?”

  Jeff pauses, frozen by the familiarity of her voice.

  “Hello?” she says again.

  “Ms. Murphy?” says Jeff.

  Silence. He can hear her breathing. Then: “Jeffrey?”

  “Yes,” says Jeff. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I never forget my students,” says Ms. Murphy.

  “Oh,” says Jeff, fighting his impulse to curse. Fucker, he mouths. Fuck!

  “Jeffrey?” says Ms. Murphy. “Are you there?”

  “Sure, I’m here,” he says. “Ms. Murphy, I’m in town, and I was wondering: would you like to get a drink?”

  A pause.

  “I mean, coffee?” says Jeff. “Do you have a minute to get coffee with me?”

  “Ms. Redding,” says Ms. Murphy.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m Ms. Redding now, Jeffrey,” says Ms. Murphy. “I got married, you see. But you can call me Marguerite now, anyway.” She laughs her trilling laugh.

  “Marguerite,” says Jeff. “Congratulations, Marguerite.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Would you like to get coffee?”

  V.

  They meet at an artsy little café near his old high school. Jeff gets there first and sits fidgeting in his chair, an old leather one that smells like cigarettes, though smoking is not allowed in the restaurant and probably has not been for years. The restaurant is warm inside and crowded with people, but no one notices him. He is relieved. He scans right and left out the corners of his eyes, facing straight ahead. Perhaps he should get a newspaper. Will she recognize him after such a long time? He does not think he has changed much, and she recognized his voice, after all. He sees a newspaper to his right, abandoned on a table. He stands to retrieve it and in that instant sees Ms. Murphy as she walks through the door, a folder tucked under her arm, in jeans and a plain blue crew neck shirt. He has never seen her wearing jeans before. He is perplexed.

  She notices him before he can wave, and makes her way toward his table. Jeff is still standing, half bent over from his attempt to retrieve the newspaper, and he wishes he weren’t: she takes an uncomfortably long time to arrive at his table, and he feels silly and stiff-armed. When she finally does, she places her folder on the table.

  “Well!” she says. “Look at you.”

  “Hello,” says Jeff, avoiding her name altogether. He sits back down abruptly, gesturing to the chair across from him. Should he have kissed her on the cheek? Shaken her hand?

  Her hair has grown longer and hangs down her back wholesomely in a braid, like a shining stalk of corn or a vine. She sits and cups her hands beneath her chin: Here is the church, and here is the steeple.

  “How are you doing?” Jeff asks.

  “I’m doing quite well, thank you,” says Ms. Murphy. “I love my students this year. They’re bright and inspired. Like you,” she says.

  “Who’s your husband?” asks Jeff, pointing to the small ring on her left hand.

  “Hyland Redding,” says Ms. Murphy. “He’s an artist.”

  “Cool,” says Jeff, suddenly wishing with all his might that he had not had this idea. Ms. Murphy has grown, if anything, more attractive since Jeff had her in high school: small and alluring laugh lines make their way from the corners of her eyes to the tops of her round pink cheeks; her breasts, in the blue crew neck shirt, have taken on a warm fullness; in her ears are tiny gold earrings shaped like stars. Over the phone, she gave no sign that she knew anything about his band, about his career, but he wishes now that she did know, and racks his brain for ways to bring up the topic casually.

  “What can I get you to drink? I love this song,” says Jeff, in one breath. He does not even know what strange song is playing in the little café, but he wants them to talk about music.

  “Nana Mouskouri,” says Ms. Murphy, sighing approvingly. “I like her too.”

  A waitress stops at their table and takes Ms. Murphy’s order: a cup of Earl Grey tea. Jeff asks for a second Belgian beer.

  “Where are you living these days?” asks Ms. Murphy, at the same time as Jeff says, “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I’m grading, I think. Hyland is away visiting friends,” says Ms. Murphy, looking down at the folder between them ruefully. Jeff surmises that it is full of student papers. He is filled with sudden hope: Hyland Redding is away.

  “Would you like to come to a concert?” says Jeff. But however, he wonders, however will I tell her it is mine? And that it will be huge and populated by screaming sixteen-year-old girls? He is disgusted, suddenly, with his life. Here is Ms. Murphy and she is married. He should be married to a woman like Ms. Murphy. He vows immediately never to have another one-night stand. He has vowed this before, unsuccessfully, but he means it now.

  Ms. Murphy looks at him closely. “I’d love to come to your concert, Jeffrey,” she says. “Half of my students will be there too!”

  Thirty minutes later, the two of them say goodbye.

  VI.

  Celeste, in her way, is burning the cookies. She has forgotten about them and now they are burning in the oven. She is on the phone.

  “Yes,” she is saying, “it’s tonight.”

  On the other end of the phone is a fifteen-year-old boy who loves Celeste. Kenneth Wang.

  “I’d love to come,” says Kenneth. He doesn’t really like music, but he likes Celeste. He likes her hair, the way she cut it short. He shares her interest in French poetry and, like Celeste, is passionately liberal. He thinks of Celeste as a beacon of intellect and beauty in their stereotypical high school. She thinks of him as her friend Kenneth Wang, who is funny, who wears suit jackets and ties and blue jeans to school because he likes to look older than his age, a bit like a movie producer (Kenneth loves film) or a graduate student.

  “Crap,” says Celeste, “my cookies!”

  “What?” says Kenneth Wang. “Celeste?” But there is no one there.

  The cookies are black on the bottom but fine on the top. Celeste decides that she can salvage them and gets out a plate and a knife. One by one, she saws the bottom off each cookie and places it on the plate, thinking all the while of her big brother Jeff and how she will be glad to see him. She remembers him before he got famous, of course. She is much younger than he is, so to her he always seemed famous, in a way, as much-older siblings do. A bit legendary, as if he got to everything first, as if he set some path from which diverging is prohibited. But Celeste has diverged from her brother’s path, and she is surprisingly adult in most of her manners. Every time Jeff sees her—two or three or four times a year—he is surprised by her ability with language. He never had her way with words, and he envies her for it, the way she envies him for his music. But only a little bit. They are brother and sister.

  “Dad!” calls Celeste, from the kitchen. Her father is reading a book in their small living room. “Dad, Kenneth is coming with us tonight!”

  “Okay,” says her father. He has his camera around his neck. He has his wallet and his cell phone in his pocket, and a light jacket on the back of his chair. He is ready, and it is only three-thirty.

  VII.

  In the flourescent light of the backstage area, Tom and Camilla sit quietly with the girls, who have fallen asleep on a whi
te leather couch. Tom taps a little rhythm on his knee with his left hand, his head resting on the wall behind him. He is waiting for his sound check call. He can hear the techs now: “New York Giants,” comes an echoing voice from the stage. “New England P-p-patriots. S-s-san Francisco F-f-forty-Niners.”

  Camilla has learned in all her years with Tom that to initiate conversation with him before his shows is usually fruitless. His responses are mostly monosyllabic; his look is faraway. But today he seems different. He is looking at her intently, smiling a bit.

  “Remember when we played at the Bowery Ballroom for the first time?” says Tom suddenly, wanting her to share with him a moment from their past, wanting her to remember him in his youth. Camilla does remember: Tom was playing then with Jeff and a different drummer and bassist. It was maybe six years ago. The first time Tom had headlined a show in a big New York venue. He had gotten too drunk and had played sloppily, cringing when he heard a recording of the show the next day.

  But she feigns forgetfulness. “When?” she says. She does not know why she is pretending this way. Perhaps so that he does not think she keeps track of every show, so that he remembers that once she had a life of her own, away from him, away from his music. They were just dating then, and Camilla remembers being afraid of what would happen in the greenroom, in the backstage area, after the show, before the show. She did not possess then the resigned security that comes with marriage. She had not yet made the decision she has since made: never to worry about Tom’s faithfulness. She trusts their marriage now, yes, but more than that, she feels secure as the mother of his children.

  “My God, it was years ago, years ago!” says Tom, laughing. Then he is called from the room by a trembling boy of eighteen who wears the green and blue uniform assigned to him by the arena, and he leaves Camilla with Clara and Alice, who breathe slowly and collectively, their round tummies rising and falling together. They are sisters.

  VIII.

  Sometime between the sound check and the show, Jeff heads for the bathroom and locks the door behind him. He needs a quiet moment to think, and Jordan and Kai have designated one room for themselves, and Tom and Camilla and their daughters are being a happy family in another, and acned teenagers in uniform roam the halls backstage. He is sweating. He has an upset stomach from some Chinese food he ate for dinner. He is looking at himself in the mirror in the bathroom and imagining Ms. Murphy naked. But she is married to Hyland Redding! he says to himself. An artist; she married an artist.

  “You disgust me,” he says to his reflection, suddenly remembering the girl who cried. He does not deserve a woman like Ms. Murphy, who is married anyway and certainly would not have him. But oh, to reach beneath her blue crew neck with a greedy hand. Oh, to touch her golden braid.

  “Hello, Marguerite,” he says aloud. “I love you. Come away with me.” He pauses. “On a tour bus. With two of my friends. This is Jordan; this is Kai. We can share the top bunk.”

  He hangs his head in despair. Marguerite Murphy, grading papers in an armchair, with cats. If they were married, he would bring her tea if she wanted, or rub her feet. Anything she wanted. He would play his guitar for her. If she wanted.

  He checks his watch. He has been in the bathroom for an hour, but no one has come looking for him. They are consumed by their own lives, he thinks, and they do not care about mine. Jordan and Kai have always been better friends with each other than with him. Tom and Camilla and their girls are a family. He has no one.

  IX.

  Celeste and Kenneth Wang sit in the backseat of the Toyota Corolla that Celeste’s father drives. Beside him, her mother lowers the eye shade and looks in the little mirror, applying lipstick.

  “I hope you brought your camera, Bob,” she says. “I think you forgot it last time.”

  “Of course I brought it,” says Celeste’s father, giving the camera around his neck a reassuring pat.

  Celeste looks at Kenneth and rolls her eyes. He smiles because he can think of nothing to say, no witty remark that would be unheard by her parents. How he wants to be witty around Celeste, to impress her with his dry sense of humor, with his intellect. Often this desire manifests itself in unsummoned lectures about this or that Asian film-maker, this or that politician. Celeste endures these because she thinks Kenneth Wang is funny, most of the time, and because he occasionally helps her with her history homework. Celeste has no head for history, prefers fiction over nonfiction, cannot keep track of dates. Kenneth, contrarily, has an astounding ability to memorize facts.

  “Almost there!” says Celeste’s mother brightly. “I just hope we’re not late.”

  “We are nearly one hour early, Joanne,” says Celeste’s father.

  X.

  Jeff walks onstage with a fluttering in his heart that threatens to fell him. He wonders for a moment if his heart has stopped completely, and then comes the thud-thud that tells him he is still alive. The crowd is no bigger than any other; they are no louder; the lights are no brighter. He lifts his Strat from its stand, not even bothering to make eye contact with his guitar tech, breaking routine. Usually, he likes to look into the wings and get a reassuring nod from Jerry the tech: All set, pal.

  Tonight he is mono-visioned and insane with fear. Somewhere in this crowd, he thinks, is Ms. Murphy. He has left a ticket for her along with the usual ten tickets for his family at the ticket booth. Somewhere in this crowd is Ms. Murphy, and here I am onstage and her eyes are on me, he thinks. He cannot remember how he usually moves: intense thought precedes every twitch, every step, every note.

  Sometime during their first song, Tom looks back at him over his left shoulder and arches an eyebrow. Jeff pretends not to see him. He knows he is not on his game tonight, but he prays that his sloppiness will go unnoticed by the laypeople in the audience. This is one of his tricks. No one will notice, no one will care, he repeats to himself. A mantra.

  By the third song, he regains his stride suddenly and unexpectedly and is relieved to find that his fingers work again. He begins to have fun. He struts a little. He is glad that Ms. Murphy is here to see him like this, a rock star in front of his fans, a god among men. It is a very powerful feeling. He makes a point tonight of marching to the front of the stage, to its very precipice, and peering through the blinding spotlight at the crowd. His toes touch the air beyond the stage. A girl in the front row screams and reaches for him, but metal bars keep her about four feet away. She slams an angry fist against them. Through the glare of the spot, she looks possessed, feral.

  Jeff has no microphone; only Jordan lends backup vocals to Tom’s strong clear songs. He realizes suddenly that he can say anything out loud and no one will hear, ever; he cannot even hear himself. He tests this theory:

  “I am Jeff,” he says, in the middle of a guitar solo, wondering next why he would say “I am Jeff,” of all things.

  “Ms. Murphy, are you out there?” he tries. “Ms. Murphy!” He is shouting now.

  Turning around, he suddenly he realizes that his face is being projected on the large screen above the stage as he yells. He must look insane.

  XI.

  The backstage area glows an unearthly red. Jeff walks into the greenroom, sweating, unkempt, his bandmates behind him. The concrete walls and white leather couches, the folding tables loaded with all the food they request on their rider, remind Jeff of every other greenroom he has ever seen.

  “Good show, men,” says Tom, throwing himself onto a couch violently.

  “Dudemeister,” says Kai. He slaps Jeff on the back. “Who’s here to see you tonight, Jeffrey?”

  “No one,” says Jeff.

  “Liar,” says Kai, “We’re in Austin. I bet your moms is coming.”

  Jordan whistles. “I like when Jeff’s mom comes,” he announces, and Jeff is too tired to tell him to fuck off.

  Camilla comes in next with the girls.

  “Babies, babies, baby alert,” says Kai. “Watch your mouth, Jordan.”

  “Watch your own mouth,” mutters
Jordan, who had been fumbling in his pocket for a lighter and a smoke until the door opened.

  “Good show, men,” says Camilla, and Jeff is secretly thrilled at being let inside their marriage for an instant. They share a language, like his parents do. He wonders if Ms. Murphy and Hyland Redding share a language, if they say things at the same time and then turn to each other fondly, laughing; if they call each other simultaneously from across town, across country, and leave each other mirrored voice mails.

  He sits up straight at the thought of Ms. Murphy. Now is the time after shows when the guards begin to let people backstage, the lucky few with hot pink passes slung about their necks.

  Jeff stands abruptly and walks across the room to fix himself a drink. His usual is a bourbon and Coke. He has specific ideas about what constitutes bourbon, which he will recite if prompted. His bourbon is Maker’s Mark. He likes three ice cubes in a highball glass. He takes a sip of the dark liquid gratefully, quickly, hoping to finish before Ms. Murphy arrives.