Summer in the Land of Skin

by Jody Gehrman

  August 6th, 1969

  Dear Einstein,

  I know it’s been a long time, friend. Too long. I’m sorry. I don’t know if you’ve tried to write…I’ve been drifting in a stupor for so long, I’ve lost track. Sorry if my thoughts are jumbled. Man. I haven’t tried to make sense in a long, long time.

  I think (who am I kidding? I know) the last time I wrote you I was high as a kite about Virgo. I can barely scribble her name, even now, without losing control. She was, at risk of sounding trite, the love of my life (remember Nabokov in Caldwell’s English class? “Light of my life, fire of my loins”? Like that.) She was everything. Hold on.

  Farther down on the same page, a new date appears.

  August 20th, 1969

  Sorry. Here’s the thing, Ein, and I can only write this once so please God don’t ask me about it ever, okay? She never showed up in Copenhagen that weekend. Later, when I went to Paris looking for her, I learned from her friends that she OD’d. I never knew she was so hooked into downers; her friend Claire said she did them morning, noon and night when she could get her hands on them.

  She told me once that dying was no big deal. She said she did it once as a kid when she almost drowned in her neighbor’s swimming pool. She claimed it was just like a very pleasant acid trip. She wasn’t afraid of it at all.

  I have to believe it was an accident, though either way it’s unbearable. To think that God is fucked-up enough to let a girl like that drift out of the world—just get lost in a Seconol maze, without meaning to—is just as terrifying as the possibility that she, knowing how I loved her, knowing that my seed was tucked inside her, taking root, inching its way closer to birth every moment—

  I can’t write about this.

  I know you must have so much to say about Dylan’s accident and all that. I heard he finally played again at the Woodie Guthrie shindig. Write me, will you? Jot down anything in that chicken scratch of yours, the more mundane the better. Tell me what you had for lunch. The last five records you bought, anything. Tell me about Rot Gut and what he’s building these days.

  I wish that we were sitting right now in your backyard, with your mother’s soap operas droning on in the living room, and that we were taking sips from long-necks and sharing a covert joint.

  Until next time, yeah?

  Keep it real,

  Chet

  I put the page down. His pain flickers through me tentatively, like a match lit somewhere inside my rib cage. The desolation and loneliness in his smeared black ink still comes through, after all these years. She was pregnant, this girl. If she hadn’t died, I would never have been born. The thought makes me a little light-headed. The implications are a frightening, tangled web. Did he settle for Mom and me, but secretly long for this dead girl and her unborn child? I fold the leather back up, tie the twine around it, wishing I could put away the swarm of questions and doubts as easily.

  What more is hiding in these envelopes? I resolve to read them slowly, one or two at a time, so I won’t get over-whelmed. My father’s letters are like dangerous, potent medicine; if I ration carefully, I might be able to handle them, but taken all at once they could be poisonous.

  I feel completely stupid about my tantrum at Bender’s this morning; what was I thinking? It seems my father has the power to thrust me into adolescent mode without the slightest warning, rendering me irrational and combative with the faintest, feathery touch of his airmail letters. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. My whole life has been wrapped around his finger. Is there anyone who has shaped me more irrevocably and decisively than this man, someone who’s been dead for more than half my existence?

  CHAPTER 10

  Independence Day

  “Testing, one two. Testing one two three.” Bill speaks into the mic and squints across the shadows at his cousin, who is standing before a great, hulking slab of knobs and levers—the mixing board. The cousin furrows his brow in concentration and spins more dials, plays with the levers. “My dog has fleas,” Bill says, before a piercing wail of feedback shoots across the room, making me duck and hold my ears. When it passes, a few titters rise up from the seven or eight college kids gathered in one corner—several girls sporting hair bright as Sno-Cones, and a bunch of short, pimply-faced boys who look like they’re still waiting for their voices to change.

  “Don’t worry,” Lucy says, appearing abruptly at my side. “This place will be packed in a couple hours.”

  I’m not worried, really, but I can feel the tension rising from her like heat. Her face is a shade whiter than usual, and her eyes are outlined in dark circles of exhaustion as she studies her watch. We’ve been working frantically for a week, sending out flyers to all the subscribers of Pulp and anyone else we can scrounge up. We even took to handing out flyers in bars—after a few drinks we’d make the rounds like cigarette girls, plastering on smiles and enduring tipsy flirtations for as long as we could stand it. Now Lucy looks like a Goth girl, with her little black dress, her combat boots and her bone-white complexion.

  “The barbecue’s ready,” she says. “We’ve got enough hot dogs and hamburgers to feed Whatcom County—I hate meat en masse.” She wrinkles her nose and makes a sound of disgust in her throat. “Do my boobs look weird in this?” She takes a step back and tucks her chin down to examine her own breasts.

  “Weird?”

  “Why do you insist on answering questions with questions? Never mind, it’s too late to change now.” She looks at me, and apparently realizes she’s being snappish. Her arms curl around my waist and she nestles her face against my neck. “You look great, that’s all. I hate to be upstaged.”

  I’m wearing her little blue sundress, the one she had on the day we met. I do feel good in it. I spent my last thirty dollars foolishly, impulsively, on a pair of vintage sandals with rhinestones at the toes. They are exquisite. Now the only thing between me and poverty is a pair of shoes.

  “Why do you look so smug?” Lucy demands, having ceased the hug and slipped out of apologetic mode already.

  I just shrug and grin. I really can’t explain it; I just feel good tonight. Sure, it’s five forty-five and there’s only a handful of people here. And yes, The Skins’ big debut is scheduled fifteen minutes from now, coordinated with the dinner hour to ensure that people will gorge themselves—mad throngs feeding like sharks. Instead of mad throngs, we’ve got the Mickey Mouse Club, and if this thing flops, we’re all dead broke. But I feel good, in my dainty shoes from a bygone era, I feel really good, and even Lucy’s chain-smoking snappishness cannot dissuade me from grinning foolishly at everything and everyone.

  “Finished a new draft of the essay last night,” she says, tugging at her dress and looking again at her own chest. “I would have shown you, but you were asleep.”

  “Cool! I can’t wait to see it.” That’s the other thing we’ve been busy with—Lucy’s application for UC Santa Cruz. It’s the only school she’s going to apply to, since the others only took applications in the winter. It’s just as well; I doubt Harvard, Yale or Stanford would understand her particular brand of genius, or overlook the mediocre grades she got in high school. UC Santa Cruz, on the other hand, might be offbeat enough to appreciate what Lucy has to offer. Now all she has left is to take the SATs, and she’s done with it. I’ll admit, I’m a little nervous about the outcome, though we won’t know for a while. We’ve gone over her essay so many times I’ve memorized it.

  I watch her now, still tugging at her dress, like a little girl in church. She puts a Camel in her mouth, searches for her lighter, curses when she can’t find it, uses a match instead. Lucy and I have spent so much time together lately, we’re practically breathing in sync. I’ve always admired sisters from a distance—I envied that mix of pettiness and tenderness, an intimacy so casual they don’t even notice it. Until now, I’ve only imagined what that’s like.

  “What are you looking at?” she asks. Her eyebrows are scowling, but the corner of her mouth is twisting into a crooked hint of
a grin that says she’s not as hostile as she wants to be.

  “Relax,” I say. “I’ve got my lucky shoes on. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Relax yourself,” she says. “If this thing flops, I’m blaming it all on you.”

  I’ve never seen Arlan nervous before. When he comes out on stage, his face is a washed-out gray. He’s got on faded blue jeans and a new shirt Lucy got him—a pale, vintage Western thing with silver buttons. Bill’s wearing the same eager, panting expression he always wears. Grady is leaning against the back wall, looking around casually through dark glasses. He’s got on his favorite T-shirt, the one with a red anarchy symbol, and he’s stroking the little goatee he’s been cultivating all week.

  The crowd that greets them is not exactly the roaring mass of fans we’d envisioned. I count twenty-three including me, Lucy and the sound guy. We’ve got the barbecue all fired up, waiting for the first slab of meat, but nobody’s even wandered near our lovely food station, which consists of several coolers, three kegs, two grills and an old wooden picnic table that Grady has painted in red, white and blue anarchy symbols.

  “Why does Arlan look like that?” Lucy says, chewing on a cuticle.

  “Like what?”

  “He’s green! Look at him.”

  He does, in fact, look like he might be sick at any moment, but I feel obligated not to agree. “He looks fine,” I say. “Just maybe a little jittery.”

  “I’m telling you, he’s been on stage plenty, and he never looked like that before.” We study him together for a moment in silence. He’s tapping on his mic, tuning the antique Martin with trembling fingers. He makes eye contact with her and she gives him an uncharacteristically sweet little wave. He smiles, but barely, and with visible effort. “He’s definitely going to puke,” she says.

  “They’re going to blow everyone away,” I say.

  “Yeah, ‘everyone’—all five of us!” Lucy grumbles. “Maybe we should put some meat on the grill, just to get people interested,” she says. She whips out a hamburger patty and tosses it on the barbecue; instantly, it starts hissing and spitting grease. “Motherfucker!” Lucy cries, clutching at her eye.

  “What? What happened?”

  “Grease in my eye!”

  “Let me see,” I say, hovering near her.

  “Godfuckingdammit!” she says. “What do you want to see for?” She presses the heel of her hand harder into her eye socket and groans dramatically; when she finally lets go, the eye is slightly bloodshot but otherwise seems fine. She blinks twice, then waves me away. The hamburger has calmed down now; it hisses gently on the grill, looking pink and innocuous, though not exactly appetizing.

  Blake Charles comes in, the head shop guy who owns this warehouse. I’ve met him once, talked to him for maybe three minutes about getting the keys to this place, and now he comes up and wraps his arms around me like we’ve been exchanging bodily fluids for years. Instinctively, I curl my arms up against my body, wedge my elbows between us, and push gently out of his embrace. He seems not to notice and moves on to Lucy, who lets him hug her but looks at me over his shoulder with a pained expression.

  “Look at you, look at you!” he says, shaking his dark ringlets so they slip around on his shoulders, turning his face from Lucy to me and back again. He’s a very short man of indeterminable age; he wears Buddy Holly glasses, a tie-dyed T-shirt, Guatemalan print shorts and high-top sneakers. His arms and legs are so hairy they’re black. “The belles of the ball!” He lets his gaze settle on me, and he does not blink. I decide he is the kind of person who uses relentless eye contact to force people into false intimacy. I clear my throat. “Been over at Sadie’s,” he says, finally tearing his eyes from my face. “You guys know Sadie Tyler?”

  “Yeah,” Lucy says. “Real tall, right? Lots of hair?”

  “Right. She’s having a party out at the lake—huge! Must be two hundred people over there. Lots of love going ’round, if you know what I mean.” He wiggles his moppish eyebrows, like Groucho Marx.

  “Shit.” Lucy looks at me. “Is that where everybody is?”

  “Hello,” Arlan says into the mic, but the sound level’s set way too high and the whole room ducks, cups their ears as a piercing squeal of feedback eclipses whatever it is he says next.

  “Can you take me out there?” Lucy says to Blake.

  “Where? To Sadie’s?”

  “Yeah. Just to check it out.”

  Blake grins. I notice now that underneath those Buddy Holly glasses, his pupils are so dilated they look like black marbles. “Sure—anything for you, Lucy-girl.” He ruffles her hair with one hand in a way that I know she detests, but she just gives him a tight little grin. “Let me just catch up with my bro over here, and we’ll be on our way,” he says, and then struts off to the sound guy, swinging his arms.

  As soon as he’s turned around, I shoot a look at Lucinda, but she just shakes her head at me coolly. “Don’t even, Anna. It’s not what you think. Just trust me on this one.”

  “You’re leaving me?”

  “Just for a minute. I promise. I’ll be right back.”

  I’m suddenly unsure about what to do with my hands, so I pick up a spatula and smash the hamburger meat against the grill until it’s thin as a pancake. “You’re going to some chick’s party? Are you kidding me? We’ve been working our asses off for this—”

  “And I’m still working my ass off.”

  “I fail to see how you leaving is going to help—how do you think Arlan’s going to feel?” I look up at the stage, where Arlan and Bill are struggling with the mic, tangling themselves in various wires and looking more terrified than ever. “He’ll be crushed.”

  Her face goes steely. “Let me worry about Arlan, okay?”

  I concentrate on flipping the sad, thin hamburger. It’s sticking to the grill, and I only succeed in mutilating it. I toss the spatula down. Lucy giggles. “Fine,” I say. “Laugh!”

  She puts an arm around me. “Anna! It’ll be okay! I’m just going to see if I can round up a few customers. If it works, you’ll thank me. I promise.”

  “Ladies? Ready to go?” Blake reappears, stroking his ringlets away from his face. I notice he has a bouquet of black nose hairs protruding from his nostrils.

  Lucy leans into me and whispers, “Be right back,” before turning to Blake. “She’s staying, but I’m ready.”

  “Oh, come on, Anna,” Blake coos, and an image of black grease gurgling from his lips hits me so strongly I think I might wretch. “This is more like a funeral than a concert.”

  “Somebody’s got to watch over the dead,” I tell him.

  As they’re leaving, I retrieve the spatula and turn back to the hamburger; I attack it with renewed fervor, scraping its pulpy, charred remains from the grill.

  Once they’ve got the sound levels under control, Arlan hooks his guitar strap over his shoulder and looks from me to the far corners of the room in a vague, bewildered way that makes me feel sad for all of us.

  “Okay, I guess you can all hear me now,” he says into the mic, staring at his feet. He glances up quickly at the room with solemn brown eyes, then looks back down at his feet. I never guessed he could be so uncomfortable. He’s always at ease with his guitar; it seems to grow naturally out of his body, like an appendage. “We’re going to play a little number….” He studies his fingernails with a blank look. Three of the people who wandered in wander back out, and the door slams hard behind them, followed by the sounds of their laughter, trailing off in the distance. Arlan’s eyes dart to the door, and I can see him going paler still. He licks his lips, puts the metal slide on his shaking finger, and mumbles, “It goes something like this.”

  He starts to play, and for a moment I just close my eyes, take it in—the beauty of Arlan’s fingers bringing that Martin to life, plucking and sliding. I’m seven years old again, and the sunset is filling our living room with orange light. My father’s face is blissful as he cradles his guitar, his fingers moving rapidly,
one foot keeping time. The sun goes down and the fog rolls in from the west like waves in slow motion. My mother brings me a plate of crackers, but I do not eat. I’m mesmerized by my father’s face and the intricate tapestry of music summoned by his hands.

  My eyes fly open as feedback once again paralyzes the room; Arlan has dropped his guitar. I watch in horror as he bolts out the side door. A girl with purple, spiky hair starts to boo. Instinctively, I dash for the exit.

  Outside, I find myself in a damp alley. Arlan is leaning against a brick wall a couple of yards from the door, wedged between two large Dumpsters, his hands on his knees. I approach him cautiously. “Arlan?” I say softly. He does not look up; his chest is heaving, like he just sprinted a mile. As I inch closer, I see there are beads of sweat at his hairline. I feel suddenly afraid. “What is it? Are you sick?”

  As if on cue, he spins away from me, his shoulders rise and his head juts out; a stream of pink vomit hits the pavement with a sickening splash. I feel my guts tighten in revulsion—even more so a second later when the smell assaults me, mixing with the scent of wet garbage—but I keep moving closer, until I find myself standing right behind him. His body heaves again, and I reach forward, pull his long hair back and hold it away from his face. Another wave of stench washes over me and I have to swallow hard or I’ll gag. When he’s still again, I lay my hand on his shoulder. His muscles seem to relax a little under my fingers.

  “You okay?”

  He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and straightens, keeping his eyes closed. I guide him cautiously away from the Dumpsters and help him to lean against the corrugated metal of the warehouse. He tilts his head back and grimaces at the sky.

  “Fuck,” he says softly. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “You trying to get out of this gig?” We both laugh. He won’t look at me.

  “I’ve never been this nervous,” he says, holding his stomach. “Jesus, you got any smokes?”