“Can you keep a secret?”
“Depends.” He shrugged.
“I haven’t been going to the public school. Nina set it up. She’s homeschooling me. I’ve been going uptown to her apartment every day this week.”
Travis just looked at me. A line of worry jagged its way across his brow.
“So whose party is this? Nina’s?”
“Remember that guy from the record store? Gram?”
“You’re kidding me.” He rubbed his forehead. “The fat kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Man.” He kicked at the graffitied bench on the subway platform. “I don’t know who to worry about more, you or your mother.”
“You don’t have to worry about either of us. It’s just a party.”
“Yeah, but …” He scratched the back of his neck. “Look, I don’t totally get this thing between your grandmother and your mom—”
The train came roaring into the station. We got on. The doors slid closed and the train careened off down the tracks. Travis and I sat down. He picked up where he’d left off.
“I was saying, I don’t get it, okay? But what I do know is, if you piss off your grandma and she stops sending those checks up here, it won’t be too good for any of us.”
“What checks?”
“The ones your grandma sends to Vic every month to take care of you. How do you think she could afford all those clothes she bought you? We barely scrape by.”
The train screeched around a curve, and I planted my feet to steady myself.
“I didn’t realize I was such a cash cow,” I said.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You think that’s the reason why—” I didn’t want to say it. “Is that why she agreed to let me move in with you guys? So she could get the money?”
“Maria, come on. The money’s for you. Besides, you’re her kid. She’s your mom. She loves you.”
“I know.” The train slowed, coming to a stop at the next station. The doors slid open, but no one got on. “I know she does.”
Gram’s directions were perfect. I found the building, the elevator, then “straight on down the hallway till you smell the chicken frying.” The suite was crowded and hot. I took off my jacket and was looking for a place to stow it when two guys carrying brown paper sacks, one dressed in a Dallas Cowboys jersey, the other in a sport coat, came in and announced themselves to the crowd.
“People! Do not fear! The Texans are here!” A loud cheer went up, and I escaped to the kitchen to look for Gram. Instead, I found a potluck supper spread out all over the table and countertops—macaroni and cheese, fried okra, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, bowls of chips and Ro-Tel dip, plates full of fried chicken, and four plastic pitchers of tea, one of them marked UNSWEET in sturdy black letters.
“Stand back, hot biscuits here!” A short, bearded guy in a flannel shirt yanked a cookie sheet out of the oven, using his shirttail as a hot mitt. He dropped the biscuits onto the stove top with a clatter, then jumped to the sink to run his hand under the cold water.
“Damn!” He noticed me. “Oh, hey. Did you just come in with Seth and Jesse?”
“No, uh, I was looking for Gram, actually?” My voice went up, making it sound like I was asking a question. “He invited me.”
“You must be Maria. He told me about you. I’m Sandy.” He wiped his hand on his pant leg and held it out to me. “One of Gram’s roommates.”
“The philosophy major?”
“Physics.” He smiled. “You were close.”
“Hey, Sandy,” the Texan in the sport coat interrupted, holding up two six-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon. “The cooler’s full. You got any more room in the fridge?”
“I don’t know, man. I think we better start drinking faster.” Sandy chuckled.
“You want one?” The Texan held one of the six-packs out to me.
“Sure, thanks.” I took the entire six-pack out of his hands. He and Sandy both howled.
“Now, that’s my kind of woman!” the Texan exclaimed.
“Look out, now, Gram’s got dibs.” Sandy took another pitcher of tea out of the fridge and squeezed the six-pack in, breaking off one for himself and one for the Texan, who went back to rejoin the party. I handed him the six-pack I’d taken as a joke.
“Seriously, you want one?” Sandy loosened another can from the plastic rings.
“No, thanks. I’d rather have a glass of tea.”
“Man, tell me about it.” Sandy closed the refrigerator door. “These people up here just do not understand. Putting a pack of sugar in an unsweet tea just ain’t the same.” He opened the freezer and scooped a couple of ice cubes into a jelly glass with a picture of Dale Earnhardt on it, then filled it with tea.
“All the big glasses are gone, but we have a free-refill policy.”
“Thanks.” I took the glass and drank.
“Come on, I’ll take you back to Gram’s room.”
I followed Sandy down the hallway, to one of the closed doors.
“Hey, Gram? Maria’s here.” Sandy knocked, then opened the door. Gram sat straddled against the back of his desk chair, his sleeve rolled up. Another boy was bent studiously over his arm as two others looked on.
“What in the sam hell are y’all doing?” Sandy asked.
“Gettin’ tattoos. You want one?”
“Hell, yeah.” Sandy leaned in to inspect more closely. “What’re you gettin’?”
“Our logo. Hey, Maria. You want a tattoo?”
“No, thanks.” I had to look away before I got queasy. I stared up at the wall opposite Gram’s bed, at two posters hanging side by side. One was a black-and-white shot of Henry Rollins shouting into a microphone. The other was a full-color shot of a young Dolly Parton.
“Needles make me kind of nauseous,” I explained.
“Oh, hey, you don’t have to hang out in here, then. I’ll be done in just a second.”
“Okay. I’ll just be—I’ll be outside, then.” I backed out of the room and went to the living room to find a corner to hide in. I gravitated toward the stereo, where the Texan in the Cowboys jersey was arguing with a black girl who was nearly as tall as I was.
“Man, Natalie, come on,” he said. “Take off this Björk shit. I made us a mixtape. Special, just for tonight.”
“Seth, I happen to like this Björk shit.” She rolled her eyes at him.
“It’s not as good as the Sugarcubes. Lookit, I promise, you’re so gonna love this mixtape. It’s got Matthew Sweet and Merle Haggard.”
“Fine, be my guest.” Natalie hit a button and the Björk CD popped out of the stereo. Seth put his tape in and pressed play. Country music came out of the speakers. Natalie saw me and smiled.
“It’s like this every time. First they want to hear all the old country music and reminisce about how they used to watch Hee Haw with their granddads. Then they start talking about how they’re so glad they got out of the South, away from all those fucking rednecks and their dumbass country music.” She shook her head. “Then from, like, two a.m. till dawn, it’s nothing but Wu Tang and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. You must be Maria.”
“Word travels fast.” I was surprised.
“Gram told me about you. He said he’d finally met a girl taller than me.”
“Yeah, I guess I’m, uh, tall.” I laughed, feeling a weird buzz in my head that wasn’t coming from the iced tea. Had Gram told everyone at the party about me?
“I’m Natalie, by the way. I hope you don’t think it’s weird. That we’re friends.”
“Huh?”
“Gram and I. I mean, we dated so long ago. Last year.”
“Oh.”
“He’s a really great guy.” She put her hand on my arm. “I mean, that’s why we’re still friends. He really knows how to treat a woman.”
“Oh,” I repeated. I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t believe Gram had talked so much about me. And to his ex-girlfriend. For a moment I felt in over my head, and I wante
d to get outside somehow, take a breath of fresh air. I wondered if Travis was right about Gram. I wished Travis was there—and I was surprised at myself for wishing it.
“So, you’re at Pratt?”
“Me?” It took a second to realize that Natalie was still talking to me. “Oh, uh, sort of. I just dropped out.”
“Really? I thought Pratt was supposed to be so great.”
“Oh, it is. It’s really—it’s really great. Excellent school. But I needed to take a little … time out, you know?”
“Totally. Sometimes I so wish I’d deferred for a year after high school. But I went to a college prep school, and the pressure was unbelievable. They wanted us to start thinking about college in eighth grade!”
“Same here!”
“And it’s crazy, because then you finally get to college, and you’re so totally burned-out, you’re just, like, ‘What’s my name again?’” She stuck out her tongue and made a crazy face. “I should’ve done what you’re doing. Taken a year off, bummed around Europe. Or just stayed at home, not thinking.”
“Totally.” I gulped my tea, wondering what to say next. “So, what’s your major?”
“Microbiology.”
“Ah.” I nodded. Wow, what do you say to that? “Like biology, only smaller.”
Natalie broke into a loud guffaw that caused several of the people standing around to turn and stare.
“Now I see why you and Gram get along,” she remarked.
“Did I hear my name?” Enter Gram. He had his hair slicked back like a 1950s greaser.
“Gram! See what I mean?” Natalie laughed even harder. “What did you do to your hair?”
“It’s my rockabilly ’do. It’s Brylcreem, baby. Po-made. You like it?” He turned to give us the profile view. “And you think that’s something, check this out.” He peeled back the gauze on the inside of his forearm to show us the swollen, spidery black lines spelling out the same SSK logo that decorated his flyers.
“Gram Medley, you did not.” Natalie was indignant.
“Anybody wants a tattoo, Matt’s giving ’em in Sandy’s room now,” Gram announced. The crowd didn’t seem too enthusiastic. Gram elbowed Natalie.
“I trust you’ve been telling Maria all kinds of wonderful things about me.”
“Of course,” Natalie deadpanned. “I’m not only your fan club president, I’m also a client.”
“Ha, ha. Say, how’s everybody doing on beverages? Maria, more tea?”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“This is part of our mission as SSKs. We help new Southern transplants adjust to the sudden sweet-tea deficiency in their diets. Along with many, many other general survival tips for living in the Northeast.”
“Yeah, like, beware the winter.” Natalie’s eyes widened. “You wanna know the key to survival? Layers. Layers, and long underwear.”
“And you have to unlearn all your ‘ma’ams,’” Seth the Texan chimed in. “It’s the exact opposite of everything you learned growing up. Northern women throw a damn fit if you call them ma’am. They go freakin’ ballistic ’cause they think you’re implying that they’re old.”
“I know, dude—how hard is it to not say ma’am all the time?” Gram whistled. “I had no idea I was so well trained.”
“Oh yeah, and get ready for everybody to make fun of your accent,” Seth added. Gram and Natalie both groaned.
“I have to say, the general stupidity level is pretty astounding, as far as misconceptions about us Southerners go,” Gram said. “When I got the record store job, I put on a Velvet Underground record one day, and my boss couldn’t believe I’d heard of them. Not only that, he couldn’t believe that you could actually buy a Velvet Underground record in South Carolina.”
“Actually, that one kind of surprises me,” Natalie said.
“Come on. We’ve got college radio. We’ve got TV.”
“Hey, you know what really is weird?” Seth piped up again. “How come there’s a Little Italy, and a Chinatown, and all those Irish neighborhoods up in the Bronx, but there’s no Little South? You know, someplace we could go and drink sweet tea and eat barbecue and watch SEC basketball?”
“Well, you could go up to Harlem and eat barbecue, but y’all are too chickenshit for that,” Natalie said, crossing her arms.
“I’m not too chickenshit for Harlem,” Gram protested. “Where do you think all that okra came from?”
“Come on, you know what I meant,” Seth said. “Hold on a second—you didn’t fry that okra yourself?”
“Naw, man. I can’t cook if it don’t say ‘Top Ramen’ on it.”
“Dang, dude.” Seth shook his head. “You just shattered my world.”
“The reason there’s no Little South or whatever is because Southerners are too smart to move to New York City,” Natalie said. “Nobody realizes how good they got it down there till they come up here. Then they go running back to their cheap rents and big trees and nice manners.”
“But if it’s so great down there, then why did we all move up here?” I asked. Natalie, Seth, and Gram turned and looked at me.
“That’s the question we end up asking ourselves every time we have one of these parties,” Seth told me.
“So, what’s the answer?” I asked. They all got quiet for a second.
“Because it’s New York fucking City,” Natalie said, “and it’s the coolest city in the whole wide world.”
It was past midnight, and the bassy thump of the Wu-Tang Clan thrummed through the walls, just like Natalie said it would. But inside Gram’s room, there was soft music playing from a portable record player on his desk.
“This is nice,” I said. “Who is it?”
“You should know.” He laughed. “It’s your mom’s record. Half that stuff y’all sold at the store I brought home for myself.”
“My mom never played this.” We were sitting side by side on the bed. We’d left the other SSKs to their own devices an hour ago, retreating to Gram’s room to listen to his record collection and stuff ourselves silly on macaroni and cheese, biscuits, and collard greens. “She’s more into Patti Smith these days.”
“Can’t argue with Patti Smith. Too bad she never played this one for you, though.” Gram got up to retrieve the record cover. “I don’t know who your mom’s favorite Beatle is, but it’s not this guy. It’s practically brand new.” The cover was a black box a quarter of an inch thick. The gray, rainy picture on the front was of a sullen-looking guy in garden boots, surrounded by a bunch of statues of gnomes. George Harrison. All Things Must Pass.
“I don’t know if she has a favorite Beatle.” I handed the album cover back to him. “She’s more of a Stones fan.”
“Everybody’s got a favorite Beatle. Even Stones fans. I bet I can guess yours in one try.”
“Bet you can’t.” I folded my arms.
“John Lennon.”
I gave him an annoyed look. “How’d you guess?”
“Easy. Going to Pratt, you’re an artist. You’re probably into the whole Yoko Ono—Bagism thing.”
“Bagism?”
“Yeah—Everybody’s talkin’ ’bout Bagism—you know, from ‘Give Peace a Chance.’ That thing where John and Yoko said everybody oughta go around dressed in bags so you wouldn’t be able to see their faces, and then there wouldn’t be any prejudice.”
“Oh. I always thought that was just a made-up word,” I confessed. “That’s not a bad idea. Wearing a bag. Except how would you walk around in it?”
“That’d be the tricky part,” Gram agreed. “I could’ve used one back in junior high, though. When I was too young to grow a beard to cover the zits.”
“Now you can practice beardism,” I joked.
“Only when the Braves are in the play-offs.” Gram laughed. “Uh—what was I saying?”
“You were explaining how you guessed my favorite Beatle.”
“Oh yeah. Well, you’re a pretty serious gal, so I figured I could rule out McCartney and Ringo, since they
’re more on the pop side. And you never heard this”—he brandished the album cover again—“the greatest Beatle solo album of all time. I’m thinking you won’t fully make your conversion to a George fan until we hit ‘Beware of Darkness’ on side three.”
“Side three?”
“It’s three separate records! Six sides altogether!” He opened the box again and showed me. “All the songs John and Paul wouldn’t let him record with the band.”
“So much for the Quiet Beatle,” I said, and Gram laughed again.
“What makes you think I’m such a serious gal?” I asked him.
He sat back down next to me on his bed. “I can’t put my finger on it, exactly. It’s just something about the way you are. Maybe it’s not so much serious as it is … sad.” He reached out for my hand. “What makes you look so sad all the time?”
I bit my lip. “I dunno.”
“I don’t want anything to make you sad anymore.” He reached out and touched my cheek. I closed my eyes. Okay, I thought. This is the part where he’s going to kiss me.
“Man—‘Let It Down’—is this not the greatest song ever?”
I opened my eyes. Gram’s head was tilted back against the wall, his own eyes closed blissfully.
“Listen at those drums. That slide guitar. Dang.” He nodded his head along to the song. “I remember asking my piano teacher back at the Governor’s School to teach me how to play piano like Billy Preston. And he told me pop music was just a distraction. But it’s songs like this that keep me in love with music.” He took his hand out of mine to play air drums along with the song.
“This is why I’m thinking about moving out to LA. Get some sun, play in some bands. I’m never gonna hack it as some piano virtuoso. I just majored in music because my mom wanted me to go to college and it’s the only thing I’m interested in. But I’d rather just play Jerry Lee Lewis, you know what I mean?”
“Sure,” I said, remembering something my mom had said about Johnny Thunders. “Expertise is overrated.”
Supergirl Mixtapes Page 11
