First Love

by G. L. Snodgrass

  She looked at me with those sad puppy eyes that tore my insides into shreds. I focused on the road and continued. “Tom’s big brother Roger had a band. Heavy metal with a sprinkling of blues. They used to practice in the basement. They weren’t great but had some potential.”

  “Green Onions,” she said with a surprised look.

  I smiled at her, “Two points for the lady. Yes, Green Onions. One day the lead guitarist didn’t show up for rehearsal. It seemed he’d gone to Alaska to take a job at a cannery. Well, I’d been playing guitar for years. I knew all their songs. They’d been pounded into my head for months, so they let me set it.”

  Pulling to the left I made my way around an eighteen wheeler. Sasha was quiet. She’d twisted around to look at me, waiting for more.

  “Why’d you’re dad go to jail?” she asked.

  “Embezzlement. I learned later that he’d gotten a job with the company that he blamed for my mom’s death. He spent years taking money from them. I remember being surprised because we sure weren’t living high on the hog.”

  Sasha nodded her head for me to continue.

  “They only found out because some other guys were playing around in their computer system and found the information. The company couldn’t even figure out how much money he took. They finally came up with a figure and dad paid it all back. It helped get his sentenced reduced to seven years instead of twenty. With good behavior, he’ll be out in two years.”

  “That must have been hard on you.”

  I laughed, “You might say so,” I shrugged my shoulders, what was a guy to do but roll with the punches. “That’s not all.” Here was the dangerous part. I didn’t have to tell her, but something inside made me want to. It would be nice to tell someone.

  She raised her eyebrows asking for more.

  “A few days after I turned eighteen a couple of men, lawyers, showed up at the end of one of our gigs. They’d had a hard time finding me. I’d been living out of the back of a van for a while. They had a thick pile of papers for me. I bet I signed a dozen of them.”

  I took a deep breath. “It seems my long lost great uncle Harold had died and left me a bunch of money.”

  “Wow, that was great,” Sasha said with a curious frown as if she was trying to figure out why that was a bad thing.

  “Yeah well, the only problem was that I didn’t have a long lost Uncle Harold. I didn’t have any relatives except my father and he was sitting in a six by eight cell in Folsom.” I looked over at her to see if she understood.

  “Your father sent you the money?” she asked.

  I nodded. “All of their info about me was correct. It wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. The lawyers assured me everything was correct and legal. My great Uncle Harold in Sweden had died and designated me specifically in his will.” I still couldn’t believe my dad had done it. How long had he worked on this?

  “I figure someone is going to show up one day and demand their money back.”

  “How much?” she asked.

  I laughed to myself. Only someone who had been raised rich would have asked such a question. To them, money was a tool. Something that everyone had, like a hammer or a knife. It was only poor people who kept quiet about money. To them, it was a fleeting item that came into their lives briefly before flying out the window to pay bills and fix the thousand things that needed it.

  “Enough,” I said. “Way more than enough.”

  She shook her head. “So you were a rock and roll star?” she said with a laugh. “I’ve got to say, you don’t look the part. Short hair, tanned. You’ve actually sort of built. Not my idea of a pasty-faced druggy holed up in a recording studio.”

  I chuckled. “So you’ve noticed my muscles. Interesting. And no, we didn’t make it big. Just local gigs and a small recording contract that didn’t really pay anything.”

  “Yeah well, muscles are the first thing I check out before I get into a car with a guy.”

  “Yet you got in anyway,” I said with a smile letting her know I wasn’t serious.

  “Don’t get cocky, you’re not that cute.”

  I belly laughed. That’s what I liked about her. She gave as good as she got.

  “So why’d you leave. What happened with the band?” she asked.

  I swallowed hard. “I sort of destroyed their dreams.” Sighing to myself I continued. “Things had been going bad for a while. Drugs, girls, fighting with each other. All of it was becoming more important than the music.”

  “What? You’re telling me there were too many girls. Is that even possible for a teenage boy? I thought that was why they started bands.”

  I laughed. She’d nailed it “Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Don’t get me wrong it was great at first. Especially for a sixteen-year-old. But after two years of partying and stuff. It just got old. There was a girl. Alicia, she was Roger’s girlfriend. Or at least she said so. Roger wasn’t totally committed to the idea.”

  One morning I woke up to someone banging on my door. It was the first time I’d slept in a real bed for the last month and this asshole was spoiling it.”

  My mind flashed to Alicia, the way she laughed at my lame jokes. It used to make Roger pissed off so I went out of my way to do it. I thought of the way Alicia would stand at the edge of the stage and watch Roger with a worshipful look on her face as if she was seeing the second coming.

  “Let me guess, Alicia?” she asked.

  “No, the police. It seems Alicia had OD’d in Roger’s room.

  “Wow? What did you do?”

  “Me, I got to identify the body. Roger had taken off. I was so upset I didn’t even think of the money in my banking account and its trail getting there.

  They made me go into the room. The smell of puke hit me like a hammer. All I could think about was how gray her face looked. I didn’t know that people looked like that when they died. It was her though. No doubt about it.”

  I drifted back to that night, to the days leading up to it. My heart still ached thinking of her on that hotel bed. I should have done something, should have kept track of her. Should have helped. But I didn’t. I was more afraid of messing up the band. So I kept my mouth shut and a young girl died.

  Waiting for Sasha’s comments was becoming a strain. I glanced her way trying to get a read on what she thought.

  “So, what happened then?” she said, obviously determined to pull everything out of me.

  “So I quit. I’d had enough. It left them in a tough spot because we had a gig the next night and they no longer had a lead guitarist. The truth though is that I just didn’t care. Not enough.

  Sasha nodded her head and stared out at the passing scenery. I wondered what she was thinking.

  “Isn’t sixteen a little young to be in a band?” Sasha asked.

  “George Harrison was fifteen,” I said as if that answered everything.

  “Who,” she asked.

  My stomach dropped and I almost swerved to the side of the road. ‘Who?’ Did she just say who?

  “George Harrison of the Beatles. Please do not tell me you don’t know who he was.”

  She returned a blank stare as if I’d just named some obscure Trappist monk from the fourteenth century.

  “How about Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Von?” Nothing. It was like talking to a blank wall. “Jimi Hendrix? How about B.B. King.” If this girl didn’t know who these people where what would we ever talk about?

  Her eyes twinkled and I realized she was teasing. She couldn’t hold it back any longer and laughed out loud. “You should have seen your face.”

  Shaking my head I finished my story.

  “Anyway. The guys had gotten into the band because of the lifestyle, not the music. I didn’t like the way things were going. I was afraid to spend any of the money I’d gotten so I was still living on other people’s couches. Hopping from one cesspit to another. Besides. I was afraid if we got popped for drugs the cops might start looking into my background. So after Alicia, we had a
big fight and I walked away. They weren’t too happy about it.”

  “I can imagine that coming to the cop’s attention would be the last thing you wanted. It must have been hard to pull into that police station last night.”

  “Yeah. Well, I figured if they were after me I’d rather get it over with fast. Besides. I was pretty sure it was you they were after.”

  “What? Why?” she demanded with that scornful stare of hers.

  “Girl’s as pretty as you just seem to attract problems.”

  She was quiet for a moment as she thought about what I had said. I wondered what she thought of me and my story. What was her opinion of me now? A quitter who left his friends in a lurch. Son of a felon. Yeah, I had a lot going for me.

  Oh well, it was just a ride remember. In a few days, she’ll be gone and you can figure out what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. My guts sort of tightened up a little when I realized she wasn’t going to be part of it.

  Chapter Six

  Sasha.

  He thought I was pretty. I knew I should have been thinking about his story and all that he had gone through. But all I could think about was that he had said I was pretty. I know. I can be such a girl sometimes.

  I was finally able to pull my mind away from sweet thoughts of possibilities to ponder what he had told me.

  The first thing I realized was that my weak attempt to seem tough and streetwise must have looked ridiculous to him. Jesus, I must have seemed like such a fool.

  The next thing to pass through my mind was all the girls he must have been with. I know how girls could be around musicians. Someone as hot as Michael must have had his choice. It must have been heaven for him. A smorgasbord of female company. And what was with this Alicia. He sounded very interested in his friend’s girlfriend.

  “Your turn,” he said, shooting me a smile to let me know that it would be okay. “What happened to make you rebel against your dad and try and go three thousand miles on twenty-six dollars and a smile?”

  I took a deep breath and said, “When I was eight, my mom tried to kill me.”

  There it was out. The giant gorilla in my life. My mom hated me so much she tried to kill me. It was one of those things that could really screw up a girl’s perception about herself.

  Michael winced and sucked in a bunch of air through tight teeth. “Wow … okay, you win. It doesn’t matter what else you tell me. That’s got to rank up there at the top for bad.”

  I smiled weakly and stared at my hands in my lap.

  “She went insane,” I continued. “She’d always been ‘volatile’, strong mood swings. Strange behavior. But it started getting bad just after my eighth birthday.”

  His brow had scrunched up in concern and his eyes kept darting from me to the road then back to me. Probably trying to determine if it was hereditary.

  “Something, or someone, started talking to her in her head. Kept telling her I was a demon. That I’d become possessed and could only be set free by dying.”

  Memories jumped into my mind. Her yelling at an imaginary being. Talking to herself in the bathroom for hours. The twisted face of pain and fear. All of it flashed through me making my stomach churn.

  “I woke up in the middle of the night to see her standing next to my bed, staring down at me, holding a long white pillow in her hand. She’d brought it with her from her room. The look in her eyes scared me like nothing in this world. She hated me with an animalistic desire to kill. I actually think she wanted me to wake up so that I could see what she was going to do.

  ‘Mom?’ I said. That was all it took. She screamed and jumped onto me, straddling me with a leg either side, clamping my chest while she pushed that pillow into my face. I can still remember the lavender smell of her shampoo, it was her own pillow, making it even worse somehow.”

  My throat grew tight, I wondered if I could keep talking. I had told a dozen different therapists this story, I could do it one more time.

  Taking a deep breath I square my shoulders and took another deep breath, determined to get it over with. He deserved the full story.

  “Anyway, I struggled and fought but I lost. I scratched and kicked but nothing made a difference. That heavy pillow smothered me. I can remember the world going black. A darkness creeping in from the side, then nothing.

  The next thing I knew the light began to return and my dad had me in his arms. Mom was on the floor unconscious and my dad was rocking me back and forth mumbling something in Russian.”

  Michael had stopped glancing at me and focused on the road as if one small misstep and we’d go off a cliff. He was probably afraid to look at the broken girl. His hands gripped the wheel so tight I thought for sure his knuckles would burst through the skin. I’d come to the conclusion that he was going to dump me at the next town for sure. Who could blame him? My stomach relaxed a little when he turned and gave me a small tight smile and a slight nod of his head telling me to continue.

  “They took her away, I never saw her again. I never got to ask her why. That’s all I wanted, what was the real reason. And if it really was voices in her head. Why did she follow what they said? Why didn’t she fight for me?”

  My voice hitched and I quickly turned to staring out the window as I tried to push it all backdown. I know I was starting to sound whiny. There are some questions that can’t be answered and Michael sure didn’t need the burden of trying to figure out my screwed up life.

  “I didn’t have to testify, didn’t have to see her in court. They sent her to a place for the criminally insane and we moved to California. The thing is though, that night, the police, the paramedics. I can remember them shaking their head at the awful woman who tried to kill her own child but I can also remember the looks they shot me. Like maybe I deserved it …”

  “I’m sure you just imagined those looks. No little girl deserves that,” Michael said.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, shaking my head. “I think some of them thought I might really be possessed. Or I must have been an awful child to make her mother want to kill her.”

  “Oh Sunshine, it’s not like that,” Michael said. “It’s not your fault and you can’t help it when someone gets a disease like that. You can’t even really blame her. It’d be like blaming someone for getting the flu. It happens.”

  He was saying everything that the therapists had said.

  “Do you really believe that?” I demanded. My voice had become hard and stringent. Even I could hear it. “Do you believe we should forgive and forget? Move on with our lives, pretend it never happened? I don’t. I have to know why.”

  He looked over at me quickly and I saw a hurt, faraway look, then gasped, remembering that his mother died when he was only six. He must have had a million questions himself.

  Slowly he said, “No, I don’t believe in forgetting. As for questions, sure, but when you don’t get the answers you’re looking for, don’t let that be what dictates your life. Live, don’t wallow in the pain.”

  I laughed, “That’s what I did. Live my life that is. I put it behind me. A thousand therapy sessions and a lot of denial and I was able to live normally. My dad did everything possible to make my life perfect. Nice, beautiful house. Generous allowance. I was popular in school.”

  “I bet you were,” Michael said, shaking his head.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing, just that someone like you, beautiful, smart, rich, strong, High school would have been easy. Maybe even fun.”

  “Yeah, what about you? A rock and roll band, traveling all over the country. No rules. No one looking over your shoulder. Drugs, alcohol and fighting off the girls throwing themselves at you. I know a few guys who would have sold their right arm for that kind of life.”

  “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said with a deep frown.

  “Well, my life was perfect. Really it was. School, friends, clothes, parties, boys. All of it was great. Except for that whole my mother wanting to kill me an aspect of
things. Like I said, my dad had done everything in his power to make me forget. Everything except talk to me. Anytime I had any questions he’d tell me to talk to the therapists.”

  I thought back to all the times I tried to talk to him and the way I’d have to build up the courage to broach the subject only to have him pawn me off. I still got mad thinking about it.

  “So what happened? What broke the camel’s back?” Michael asked.

  “I wanted to go to the University of Washington. My dad wanted me to go to UCLA or USC. Close to him. Somewhere he could keep an eye on me.”

  “Okay?” Michael said, not understanding the significance.

  “I would meet the mailman at the street so I could intercept the acceptance letter. I was sure I was going to get in. Normally my dad got the mail. He didn’t like me messing with his business stuff. Anyway. I was out at the mailbox one day. The mailman delivered a bunch of letters. In the middle was a purple envelope addressed to him with a Pennsylvania address. It was one of those personal type envelopes, not a long skinny business type”

  Here I took a breath and paused for a moment. The sick feeling had returned to my stomach. The same feeling I got when I recognized my mom’s handwriting.

  “It was from my mom,” I continued. “My hands shook as I opened it. I didn’t even think about the fact it was addressed to him. I needed to see what she said. I needed to feel a part of her.”

  A small tear dripped from my eyes but I didn’t turn away. Michael cringed when he saw it but he smiled gently and urged me to go on.

  “She was begging him to give me the letters she’d written me. Begging him over and over about the only way she could heal herself was to talk to me. She’d been released from the hospital slash jail two years earlier and had sent a letter every month begging me to forgive her. Telling me how much she loved me and how she was all right now.”

  Michael nodded slowly as if he was beginning to understand.

  “I ran inside and tore through his desk looking for the letters. I found them. A stack of them in a box in the back of one of his drawers. They’d never been opened. Never been given to me. I fell to the floor and started reading them right there. Her words were clear, not full of demons and nightmares. She kept telling me how sorry she was and how much she loved me. She told me how much she needed me to forgive her.”