Beside the Music

by BJ Knapp

  My bedroom soon became plastered with Hydra posters, pictures torn from magazines, really anything I could apply Scotch tape to. Keith Kutter never looked directly at the camera in any of the pictures—even in the liner notes—which added to his mystique. I scoured the teeny bopper mags for some secret about his life that nobody else would notice. I learned his birthday from Heavy Beats Magazine—January seventh. From Rock Insider, I learned his favorite flavor of ice cream—mint chocolate chip. And People Magazine told me he had a Dalmatian named Winston. But everyone else knew those secrets. What about his really dark secrets? In which closet would I find his skeletons?

  The teeny bopper mags didn’t have to publish his skeletons; Keith Kutter eventually published them on his own. I thought I’d heard about him publishing his memoir, but by then I hadn’t given it much thought. Of course, my sixteen-year-old self would have devoured the book the moment I’d gotten home. But my thirty-five-year-old self merely packed it into my carryon bag for the plane so I could have that forced inactivity of a plane ride to devour it properly.

  While I wait for Tim to finish his call, I fish out Colors Fade from my carryon and thumb through the pictures in the center pages. Whenever I read a memoir, I always try to wait until I’ve read to that point before looking at the pictures in the middle, but I always end up giving in to the temptation to peek. Keith didn’t include any pictures of Hydra, as this book isn’t about the band. It’s about the tragic accident that tore his family apart. First, there’s a wedding picture of him and his wife Tamsen, then baby pictures of his son Damien. Even in the baby pictures, I can see Keith’s dimpled chin and square jaw in Damien’s face. I wonder what our baby will look like, if Tim and I ever get around to having one. I always picture our daughter as a red-haired little girl named Zoe, because I’d rather our daughter have Tim’s vibrant hair than my drab brown. I look at the rest of the photos: there’s a picture of the destroyed car and one of Damien, drowsy on painkillers, in traction.

  By the time I got to college, I’d stopped listening to Hydra. I volunteered at the campus radio station and even had my own radio show. Hydra slipped away from me the moment I encountered the seemingly endless stacks of CDs at WRIU. I used to run my fingers along the shelves and count to seven. Whatever CD was under my finger when I arrived at seven was the one I played on my show. I discovered some really bad music that way—but I also found some hidden gems that I still have on my iPod. I knew that the band had put out a few albums since I’d stopped listening to them, but I never bought them, and I never really noticed when they were played on the radio. I had stopped paying attention, with the result that, today, I don’t know whether Hydra has become one of those aging metal bands who started calling their music “art” as they get older. I hope they haven’t.

  In my mind they are still wearing the same tight spandex pants and barely buttoned billowing shirts they wore in their videos on MTV. They had big, permed hair that flowed in the fan’s air current in their videos, but they weren’t into eye makeup, the way Poison or even Motley Crüe were. I know that their reputation has taken a hit as the band has declined into semi-obscurity. I’ve seen a few Twitter hashtags about them behaving rudely to their fans. In one instance, I dug into it a bit more and found an article, written by a blogger, recounting how she’d met Keith Kutter in person. She’d said hello to him, and he’d responded by snarling at her. The blog entry had gone viral. I guess a band that was that big in the ‘80s doesn’t always have the sense to worry about what is said about them on today’s social media. I would love to formally pitch them as a client at work. I know that, if I were their publicist, I could fix Keith’s reputation, and there would be no negative blog entries about him snarling at anyone.

  While I dug into the gossip about Hydra’s reputation, I also Googled the story behind Keith’s memoir. I learned that he and his family had been driving back from a barbeque at which Keith had had too much to drink. He’d lost control of the car, and as a result of the crash, his twelve-year-old son, Damien, had been rendered a quadriplegic. Keith had broken his collar bone. His wife, Tamsen, had been banged up but was otherwise uninjured.

  After the accident, Keith went on a pharmaceutically-induced bender. Tamsen kicked him out after she’d found him raiding his son’s medication bottles. She was afraid of what he would do while under the influence and frankly didn’t want to take care of Keith on top of taking care of Damien. I don’t think anyone can say they blamed her.

  I vaguely remember the media outrage at the time over why Keith hadn’t been thrown in jail over the accident; after all, he’d been drunk while driving. Later, I stumbled on a YouTube video of a rare interview with him on one of those Where Are They Now? shows on VH1 or MTV. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I listened to Keith describe the guilt he felt for stealing his son’s life. That was the only interview Keith had done since the book came out, and he declared the topic officially closed to the media. That’s understandable. Why would he want to rehash that, over and over, in each interview? Still, I would think that he could find a way to use the media as a way to move the world past its outrage. I know that, if I were his publicist, that’s what I would do. Still, talk about a publicity disaster.

  I flip back to the beginning of Keith’s book and devour the first chapter before it’s finally time to get on the plane. People approach the counter beside the gate, trying to score a last minute seat upgrade. Tim checks his boarding pass and his watch; his knee bounces impatiently.

  I reach out to still his leg. “Hey, what are you thinking?”

  “Bren, I don’t know why I agreed to this trip. There is just too much going on.”

  “That’s the point, Tim. We barely spend any time together anymore.”

  “What do you mean? We have dinner together every night.”

  “Yeah, in front of the TV. We’re in the same room, but we’re not really in the same place.” It’s not just his fault—I am guilty, too.

  “Can we please not do this right now?” he asks.

  “Then when, Tim?”

  He doesn’t answer. His phone rings. I see it’s Jimmy from the shop. And now I’ve lost him again. “Shit,” he says. “I completely forgot that Rhode Island List is coming to the shop today.” He glares at me as if to say, If I wasn’t going on this trip, I’d be on top of it. His shop was recently voted the number one small business in Rhode Island List Magazine. As a result, business has been pouring in—which is great. “Call Aria,” he says into the phone. “She has photos of me in the shop that you can give to them to use for the magazine story.”

  Aria has photos of him in the shop? Just how much time is she spending there?

  Don’t get me wrong. I am proud of what Tim has accomplished with the shop. But the downside is that he’s working around the clock and never gets the chance to unwind. That’s the dilemma when it comes to being married to a small-business owner. He needs a vacation to recover from the stress, but it’s often the vacation that causes even more stress.

  I am hoping that this will be one of those trips where we’ll just forget everything at home and have fun. I’ve managed to get us signed up for a habitat tour at SeaWorld, as well as a few other activities. Then maybe we’ll have one of those nights where we sit up all night talking. I can’t remember the last time we did that.

  Tim hangs up his phone, and I watch his jaw clench and unclench. When he’s ready to unwind, he will. I can’t force him, so why pick a fight? After we finally board the plane and are settled into our seats, I squeeze his thigh, which I hope he’ll take as a relaxing gesture. I wait a few moments for him to respond and then I allow myself to get sucked back into the book.

  The writing style Keith used is dreamlike, which perfectly expresses the drug-induced haze he was living in immediately after the accident. I can feel the raw emotion coming through the early part of the book, and my heart pounds as I burn through the pages. By the time we land in Orlando, I am at the part where he’s failing miserably at re
hab. Then, as the plane pulls up to the gate, Keith has checked himself out of rehab and set off on his sailboat for months on end to heal himself on his own. That’s an interesting way to kick a drug habit, I think to myself. Go out to sea, and don’t bring any drugs with you. Although I do wonder how safe it would be to detox while alone and offshore. I am picturing him going stir-crazy for the first few weeks, while the drugs work their way out of his system—just like in the movies, when people try to kick the habit. I imagine him scratching at his arms and talking to people who aren’t there. I really hope that sort of behavior is over-dramatized for the movies, because I think it would be a horrible thing to experience while alone and surrounded by ocean.

  “So, is this one any good?” Tim says to me, gesturing to my book as I shove it back into my carryon. “You barely looked up from it for the entire flight.” Tim had had his headphones on, watching a movie on his iPad. I like to read on planes; he likes to watch movies. So we usually don’t talk the whole time. Sometimes we hold hands, but during this flight, we didn’t.

  “It’s one of the guys from Hydra,” I say to him.

  Tim pulls the book from my bag. “I remember this guy. He’s the one who was drunk and broke his son’s arms and legs in a car accident.” He snorts as he thumbs through the pictures. “And now he gets to write a book to glorify how irresponsible he was?”

  “It’s more than that, Tim. He’s recovering from an addiction to painkillers and trying to figure out how to cope after a traumatic event like that.”

  “He has to learn how to cope? What about his kid? Does he get to write a book, too?” He points to the picture of Damien in traction.

  “It’s still an interesting story. I grew up listening to this band.”

  Tim always laughs at me when an old Hydra song comes on the radio. I still know all the words to those oldies. “Plus, all the proceeds from his book are going to the Rainbow House—they help families with kids who ended up quadriplegic like Damien. At least he’s trying to make it right, you know? He’s still not allowed to see his son, so he’s trying to help other kids.” I think that’s pretty cool of Keith Kutter. It’s a step in the right direction to improve his reputation, if he tries to make something positive out of a bad situation that he actually caused.

  Tim and I make our way off the plane then wind our way to baggage claim. While I wait for the bags, he goes to the rental car counter.

  Tim comes back to the baggage claim just as our bags are sliding onto the carousel. He smiles as he jingles the keys at me. “Free upgrade. Convertible.” He tosses the keys at me. I catch them and smile back at him. Maybe this weekend getaway will be just the ticket for us after all.

  Chapter 3

  “AREN’T YOU COMING IN?” Tim calls to me from the pool. I’m sitting in a lounge chair finishing Keith Kutter’s book. “The water is amazing. Come on, Bren! You need to come and play with me.”

  Tim’s pretty high-strung, and it usually takes a day or so for him to uncoil and enjoy the vacation. While he is in this uncoiling period, I usually spend that time reading—so I’ve gotten the chance to read most of Keith’s book already. Now he’s fully uncoiled and ready to have fun, but I am trying to read to the end. Bad timing.

  “Just a few more pages,” I tell him. “I’m almost finished.”

  “You’ve had your nose buried in that book all weekend,” he says, playfully splashing me.

  Like he’s even noticed. He’s had his phone glued to his ear, frantically checking in with the shop and with Aria. I know that a minute on the phone is better than him constantly wondering what’s going on back home without him. Still, I am pretty pissed that I went to the trouble of planning this whole trip and he hasn’t seemed to enjoy any of it. He answered his phone three times during the habitat tour at SeaWorld yesterday. Even the tour guide started to get annoyed. And he cancelled the couple’s massage this morning because he stayed too long on the phone with Aria. Now it’s like he’s just remembered that he has a wife who has been wanting his attention for the last two days.

  Tim has completely missed the point of this trip, which was to get away from the grind at home and relax. I know he’ll be an awesome state senator, and I know he’s a great mechanic. His shop’s reviews on Yelp are all positive; they absolutely gush about his honesty. But I have to admit: sometimes it’s hard to stay supportive when I feel like I have to take the back seat. This trip is not at all what I planned. For example, we were just about to get onto a roller coaster when his mom called. We’d spent forever waiting in line for it at SeaWorld, but we had to let the people behind us take our seats so he could finish talking to her. I don’t know what they talked about, but why couldn’t he just tell her he’d call her back later? I am pretty tired of being the last person on his list. His mother, Portia, doesn’t like me, so it makes me feel even worse, knowing he’ll talk to her before he’ll talk to me.

  When Tim and I first met, he’d been on track to go to medical school and then to take over his dad’s very successful ocular surgery practice. Tim’s father was the first surgeon in the state to perform Lasik surgery, and he’d made an absolute fortune off of his practice. Naturally, Portia had wanted Tim to take over the business and continue his dad’s legacy. But Tim hadn’t been passionate about medicine. Instead, his real love had always been cars. He’s the kind of guy who can fix just about anything. He finally made the decision to become a mechanic instead of a surgeon, and now his mother thinks that I “white-trashed” him. Never mind the fact that Tim’s shop is very successful and we are comfortable—not only because of his excellent reputation as a mechanic, but also because of my budding career as a publicist. And now she probably thinks I am extra trashy because I took him to an amusement park in Orlando instead of some exclusive spa in West Palm Beach. But Tim loves roller coasters. He’d rather spend a day riding them than getting massaged and buffed with sugar scrubs.

  Just before we came out to the pool, Tim said, “It’s the last day of the trip. I am leaving this thing behind so I can get some sun.” Then he’d plugged the phone into the charger and left it on the bedside table. He raised his eyebrows when I took the book with me; I think he’d hoped I would also leave it behind. But I couldn’t bear to; I am so close to the end.

  “Come on,” he says, splashing me again. “I left my phone in the room. You should have left the book.”

  “Last page! Shhhh!” I wave him off. He rests his head on the side of the pool and whimpers like a puppy until, a few minutes later, I finally close the book. His red hair is shining in the sun, and he’s sprouted a few new freckles on his shoulders during this trip. “You’re worse than Vito.” I laugh, stepping into the pool. The cool water is refreshing against my hot skin. We left Vito, our beagle, in a kennel near the airport back home; he’d whimpered as the attendant took his leash and dragged him to his home for the weekend, trying to dig in, but hadn’t been able to get a grip on the slippery linoleum floor. Betrayed by his paws, he’d gone with the pull on the leash. When the attendant opened the door to the room with the kennels in it, I could hear the deafening racket of dozens of dogs barking at once. Vito looked back with an alarmed look on his face. Hopefully he’s made some friends while he’s been in the doggie slammer, as Tim calls it. Maybe he’ll learn a trade and get a prison tatt.

  “Aaaahhh, this is nice.” I float on my back and feel the warm sun on my face, trying not to think of Vito howling from inside his cage.

  I like to call Vito our trial baby, at least until we have a human one. We got Vito from a beagle rescue organization in order to settle my urge to be a mom until Tim decides it’s the right time.

  “So, how did it end?” Tim asks, nodding toward the book I’ve left on the chaise.

  “I kinda feel like the story didn’t really end,” I say. “Keith doesn’t see his wife or his kid, as far as I know. Where is the big Hollywood ending where he gets forgiven and gets his family back?”

  “Well, based on what you told me at dinner last n
ight, why would they want to see him? He tore that family apart.”

  Okay, I know I’ve been complaining, but dinner last night with Tim really was pretty great. In fact, it was how I’d hoped the whole trip would be: no Aria; no shop. Just the two of us talking about what we had going on. We even got into a debate about whether Keith should have been arrested for driving drunk. I bet it was one of those situations where his manager did some fast talking and got the charges cleared. Maybe the chief of police was a big fan.

  We used to have debates like that when we first got together; nothing too competitive, just friendly discussions about particular issues. They were a lot of fun, and I always learned something new. Until last night, we hadn’t had one for quite a while, and I’d missed it. At dinner, it was as if we were back in the initial stages of our relationship. We learned a lot about each other from the debates back then. Now that we’ve been married for a while, I wonder if we can ever learn something new about each other again.

  “It was a moment of weakness,” I argued at dinner.

  “Even in a moment like that, you are still supposed to know right from wrong,” Tim shot back. “You don’t get behind the wheel with your kid in the car after you’ve been drinking. And you sure as hell don’t take your son’s painkillers,” he insisted. “Not cool. Plus, if his wife hadn’t got rid of him, that boy would have had nothing but trouble, with a drug-addicted dad. I don’t blame her for not allowing Keith near her son anymore. I’d probably do the same thing.”

  “I’m just saying that you haven’t walked a mile, you know? He’s telling his side of the story...”

  “And which side is that? The side where an irresponsible drunk got behind the wheel and nearly killed his family? The side where a drug addict couldn’t stand to be the father of a quadriplegic? I feel no sympathy for the guy. It sounds like the whining of a has-been rock star to me. He should have been tossed into jail for driving drunk. He’s a selfish prick for having gotten behind the wheel in the first place.” He paused to take a sip of his wine. I wish I liked wine; it has this exotic mystique to me, and I’m fascinated about how people describe the different flavors of what are really just crushed grapes. To me, it all tastes the same. Bad.