Beside the Music

by BJ Knapp

  “Tim had gone with his parents to Vermont for the summer,” I continue, “and I was living and working in Boston. He called me at work on a crappy day. I told him I was stressed out, and he said, ‘You should come to Vermont. It’s relaxing here.’ So I did.”

  “Okay, so when did you crash the party?” Keith asks.

  “Well,” Tim interjects, “I didn’t say, ‘Come to my parents’ house in Vermont.’ I didn’t explicitly invite her to visit me at the cabin. So, she wasn’t invited, right? ”

  “Yeah,” I say, “but you said, ‘Come to Vermont.’ I mean, if you didn’t want me to visit you at the cabin, you could have said anything else, like, ‘You need a vacation.’ You wanted me to go there to visit you, and you know it.”

  Keith watches us banter back and forth until Tim asks him, “So, member of the jury, what do you think?”

  “Hmmm... interesting.” Keith strokes his chin in mock deliberation. “The evidence on both sides is compelling. But Brenda, I just have to ask, what did you say to Tim’s parents after you turned up uninvited?”

  “Uninvited? Come on! Work with me, would ya?” I ask with feigned irritation.

  “Yes!” Tim exclaims. They high-five, and I bite into another piece of chicken, pretending to be annoyed. But I can’t stay annoyed for too long: this chicken is ridiculously good. Keith has apparently relented and drunk half the bottle of wine, and I think he’s mellowing out. After we’ve told Keith the story about my visit to the cabin, it’s as if we’re having dinner with an old friend. He makes me feel as if we actually could be friends after tonight. He tells us a few funny stories about being on tour with the band—run-ins with small-town sheriffs and the like. But he lets us tell him funny stories, too. The evening isn’t all about him, apparently, and that’s very cool of him.

  “Okay, here’s one for you,” Tim says, sipping his wine.

  “Not the stinky car, Tim,” I say and laugh. It’s gross, but it’s actually a really funny story.

  “Yes, the stinky car,” he says, laughing. He has a gleam in his eye I haven’t seen in a while. “So, a guy brings his car into the shop. I get in behind the wheel to move it into the bay so we can get it up on the lift. And man, I’ve never smelled anything this bad. I just know something’s died in that car.”

  “No!” Keith says, hooting with laughter. “How did he drive around like that?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know. So I call the guy up and ask him about it.”

  “What on earth did he say?” Keith is snickering now.

  “The dude says, ‘I had a head injury, and I lost my sense of smell. You mean to tell me my car stinks?’” Tim pauses so Keith can laugh. “Then he says, ‘Well, shit, that probably explains why I haven’t been on a second date in months.’” At this point it looks like Keith is going to fall out of his chair from laughing so hard.

  “So, did you find out what made it smell so bad?”

  “Yeah, a squirrel had died under the front seat.”

  “Gah! That’s terrible!” Keith is wiping the tears from his eyes.

  We’re talking and laughing so boisterously that the other diners glare at us occasionally, but I don’t care. I wish I could just say to them, “It’s a restaurant, not a library. Lighten up. This is Keith Fucking Kutter.” By the time we order dessert, my abs are aching from laughing so much.

  This is what I wish the world could see right now. Keith is so relatable and so much fun. I am sure that tomorrow I’ll get instructions from Toni about how I should talk about tonight on social media, and I am glad to do it. He really is a cool guy, once you get past the bullshit famous-rock-star exterior. I am so glad I got the chance to meet him tonight. Would it be weird if I offered him some coaching for his next fan encounter? He needs to know not to throw a tantrum over the wine list next time, and then he’ll be perfect.

  “I didn’t quite know what to expect, coming here tonight,” Keith says. “I’ve had such a nice time. Thank you for coming to meet me. I was so afraid that we’d end up talking about me the whole night. It’s been great to have a normal night with normal people.” He leans back in his chair and sighs. Normal? Does that mean we’re boring? Gosh, I hope not. “And the meal was great. Tim, what did you think of that wine? How was it with your short ribs?”

  Tim doesn’t get the chance to answer, everything next happens so fast. I detect a quick movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn to look: a man wearing ratty jeans and a baseball cap is weaving between the tables, rapidly approaching ours. He pulls something from behind his back. I am frozen. Is this what it’s like when rock stars leave the house? Does Keith constantly look around and wonder what people have in their pockets? Is every lump in a jacket a gun? My heart starts to race until I see that it’s a camera and not a gun.

  I turn back just in time to see Greg react; it’s pure instinct in motion, and he doesn’t take any chances. With one swift movement, he shoves Keith under the table. My mouth is now back to hanging open, I am so confused. A bright flash of light blinds me for a moment. Then another blinks rapidly, making me flinch every time. The flashes keep coming; I hold up my hand to shield my eyes and try to see through the glare. A crowd of photographers has materialized seemingly out of nowhere and is surrounding our table.

  Between flashes, I see Keith stand and Greg take his arm. Keith tosses a wad of money on the table and hisses at me, “How could you?”

  “But I didn’t do anything,” I say. I don’t think he cares to argue the point right now, however. I don’t think he even hears me. Greg holds onto Keith with his left hand; with his right, he’s shoving the paparazzi out of his way and doesn’t look like he even cares if he knocks anyone over. He forces himself between Keith and the crowd, and I lose sight of them just after they plow their way into the kitchen. The photographers then swarm around me and Tim and block my view. The reporters bark out questions at us in rapid fire. I can’t tell who is asking what, and they come out so jumbled, I can’t make sense of anything at all.

  “Brenda, what did Keith...?”

  “...Did he......?”

  “...sober?”

  I can feel my heart rate rising; this is stressful. The camera flashes are still going off all around me, and I am so disoriented, I am seeing spots. I feel as if the reporters are closing in on me and pretty soon are going to trample me with their zoom lenses. I have to get out of here.

  I stand up from the table and straighten my back in an effort to get the crowd to fall back. It’s not working, so I take a lesson from Greg and bulldoze my way through, aiming for the kitchen. I stumble and almost fall into Edward Van Marten’s lap; I fumble with my apology and continue pushing my way through the wall of paparazzi. They are packed so tightly that I actually become frightened. I can hear the other diners gasping in disgust as I push my way through.

  Finally, I start throwing elbows, figuring the photographers will certainly want to protect their cameras and their faces. I don’t even look back to see if Tim’s behind me, although I hope he’s making his way out, too. I figure that, if we get separated in the confusion, we’ll meet back at the truck once everything calms down.

  After I’ve made it through the crowd, through the kitchen, and out the back door, I see Keith and Greg take off on a pair of motorcycles. I look back and see Tim still trying to push his way through the photographers who are clamoring to get my attention. The restaurant manager yells at them to get out of his kitchen. The kitchen door swings shut on Tim and the crowd, and I half-wonder if Tim will survive among the piranhas. Then the door swings open again just long enough for Tim to call out, “Bren! Wait there for me!”

  It only takes a few minutes more for Tim to get around to the back of the restaurant. When finds me, I’m sitting on the back steps, looking out over the harbor. For a moment it is peaceful, until the photographers following Tim begin to spill around us again. They call my name and shout out more questions.

  “Brenda, where are they staying?”

  “Do
you know where they went?”

  How do they even know my name?

  “Let’s get out of here,” Tim says, taking my arm. “Back off!” he barks at the paparazzi. I gaze at my husband for a moment, impressed by the way he is taking control and getting us out of here. It’s actually kind of sexy.

  By the time we get around to the front, we find that the valet has pulled our truck to the front door and is waiting impatiently for us to get in. The restaurant manager is standing at the front door with his arms crossed, a very pissed-off look on his face. I can’t say I blame him for wanting us out as quickly as possible. The photographers have either lost interest or got their shot; they jump into their cars and speed away.

  I get into the truck and watch their receding taillights from the passenger seat. I am sure a few must have followed Greg and Keith on their bikes. Are they safe? I imagine that riding on motorcycles away from a crowd of hungry photographers is pretty dangerous.

  Just as I am about to climb into the passenger seat, I hear her shrill nasal voice: Portia. She has that wealthy woman’s way of speaking, where she doesn’t move her bottom jaw.

  “Timothy. Why didn’t you tell me you were dining at the club tonight? Isn’t this a bit far from your neighborhood?” Portia doesn’t care about geography; “neighborhood” equals “above your station,” and that question was just for me. I turn around to find her striding toward us. She manages to execute the walk on the uneven cobblestone driveway perfectly in high heels. Just one more way I can tell that she’s not really human: nobody can do that. “Why do you insist on driving this heap around?” She gestures to Tim’s truck. I smirk a bit. “Let me call Richard on Monday, and he’ll find you something more suitable.” Of course, she is on a first-name basis with a luxury-car importer. She looks me up and down, and I can’t help but think she’s going through her mental contact list to see who can help her find a more suitable wife for Tim.

  “Not necessary, mother,” Tim says, air-kissing her cheek.

  “Hello, Portia.” I plaster a fake smile on my face and extend my hand to her. She doesn’t take it.

  “Well, I’d better be getting in,” Portia says. She straightens the collar on Tim’s shirt and artfully ignores me. “Stella and Edward are in from New York and have invited me for a digestif.” Of course, she is also on a first-name basis with the Van Martens. She looks me up and down, and I can tell she disapproves of my dress—the one dress I wear when I want to feel hot and confident. Now I need to find another dress; she’s ruined this one for me. I try the same up-and-down look on her probably ridiculously-expensive designer dress, but I really cannot pull off the disdain as well as she can. She’s been doing it to me since Tim popped the question.

  The time Tim brought me home to meet Portia was an absolute disaster. I’d Googled her and knew that, in her prime, Portia had been the “it” girl of Newport society. I learned that her debutante ball had been expected to be so well attended that she’d had hers on her own, rather than with a group of girls, the way it’s normally done. Her marriage to Tim’s dad was mentioned in Time magazine, as well, where they’d been described as the “tastemakers of Newport society.”

  On the night Tim drove me to his family’s mansion, I brought Portia a spray of yellow roses, because Tim had told me they were her favorite. She politely thanked me and promptly handed them to the housekeeper to have them put into a vase. Then she set them on the same table where an embarrassingly large arrangement of the same flower had already been placed. Mine, a full dozen, looked pathetic next to the tower of yellow roses she already had. And she’d set mine next to hers on purpose, I just knew it.

  Portia’s subtlety in her efforts to make me feel inferior became more aggressive after Tim proposed. She took me to dinner soon after and handed me an envelope containing thirty thousand dollars in cash. I knew what she was doing, but I started out playing dumb.

  “Oh, is this for the wedding? How generous of you.” She raised her eyebrow; I’d wanted her to come right out and say that she expected me to take the money and leave Tim. I excused myself and left the cash on my bread plate. I didn’t tell Tim about it, at first. It was just too bizarre. There’s no way he would have believed me; I didn’t quite believe it myself. Then, when she realized paying me off wouldn’t work, she got a bit more creative.

  A short time later, Tim and I attended a fundraiser at her mansion. We didn’t know that she’d also invited a few of Tim’s “more suitable” ex-girlfriends. Portia’s house is an old school mansion with a ballroom on the bottom floor, where she hosts incredibly ostentatious parties that are very well attended. I learned very quickly that Portia is still very much the “it” girl of Newport high society. Get an invitation to one of Portia’s parties, and you are in an exclusive club comprised of the wealthiest families in Newport. When we walked in to the party, the caterers, wearing white dinner jackets, were all bustling about with hors d’oeuvres on sterling trays. I think Portia had strategically placed young, flawless-skinned blondes all over the room, just waiting for Tim to take his pick of them. And, of course, she’d told these women that Tim was available. As a result, Tim was surrounded by impeccably dressed, ice-princess-blonde socialites, all fawning over him.

  “Brenda, darling,” Portia called out to me. “I need your help. I want to cut some more lemons for the bar.” It didn’t occur to me at the time to wonder why she would be cutting the lemons. I was more excited that she had called me “darling.” So I followed her into the kitchen. She nodded at the cook and left me in there with the caterers. I’d been trying to make an impression, but before I knew it, I was chopping fruits and vegetables in Portia’s steamy expanse of a kitchen while she was busy steering other women toward Tim.

  Thankfully, he caught on and rescued me. For the rest of the night, Tim spun me around the highly-polished parquet wood floor; we danced underneath garlands of Portia’s favorite yellow roses that were strung crisscross on the ceiling, while the socialites cooled their very high and very expensive heels on the sidelines. Portia glared at us from the head table.

  I know I should stand up a bit taller; instead, I lean on the side of the truck. I need to stop letting her treat me this way. At first, Tim told me I was imagining it and asked me to just be nice. Her aversion to me is completely obvious; why doesn’t he see it? There’s no way he could have missed the way her lip curled up when she looked at me, as if I were repulsive. I know he just wants to keep the peace between me and Portia, but honestly, it’s becoming increasingly difficult not to just say to her, “It’s not my fault that Tim wants to perform surgery on cars and not on eyes. Get over it already.” It’s on the tip of my tongue, as it usually is whenever we see her. But if I say it now, after she hasn’t even acknowledged me, then I know I will just look crazy.

  I glance at Tim, but he’s looking around, watching the photographers disperse. Portia sees him looking at them, too. “Was there some sort of excitement here tonight? Why are there so many photographers?”

  Tim begins to speak, but I interrupt him. There is no way I want her to know that they were here because I’d wanted to meet Keith. “Um, I don’t know. When we got out they were all out here.” I can see the relief on Tim’s face; I am glad he’s on board with my lying to his mother. I feel as if he’s just put a toe across the line onto my side of the fight; I’ll take the small victories where I can get them. The Van Martens don’t know us, so there’s no way she’ll be shamed by me tonight in front of her fancy friends. I think I read somewhere that Portia was roommates with Mrs. Van Marten at Radcliffe. “Honey, shall we?” I ask Tim. “We don’t want your mother to keep her friends waiting.” I gesture toward our truck, putting an even wider, faker smile on my face.

  Tim takes Portia’s hands and air kisses her one more time. “Have a lovely evening, mother,” he says.

  She turns her back on me and accepts the arm of the valet, who walks her to the door of the restaurant.

  I am relieved as we pull out of the Stone Y
acht Club driveway and back onto Bellevue Avenue. I look back to make sure we’re not being followed—by Portia or by the photographers. Why does she seem to show up at the most inopportune times? Thank God she hadn’t just five minutes earlier, though: she would have seen us right at the center of the crowd. And then there’d be no way that I’d ever get into her good graces.

  As we ride over the Newport Bridge, I look down at a cargo ship anchored in Narragansett Bay. I can see a man walking on the deck. He looks tiny beside the ship’s looming tower. I always wonder where these ships come from. This time, I wonder how long that man on deck has been away from his family. It’s nice to think about something else for a moment, because I am completely freaked out about how our dinner with Keith ended. That look of complete disgust on his face keeps appearing over and over in my mind. What must he think of me right now?

  Tim breaks the silence. “How are you?”

  I groan. “I’m confused. What the hell was that? He looked really mad.”

  “He’ll get over it. I am sure this sort of thing happens to him all the time.”

  “Well, it doesn’t happen to us. We were having a nice time. He probably thinks I sold him out.” I slouch down in the passenger seat, kick off my shoes, and prop my bare feet on the dashboard. “I’ll probably never get the chance to tell him I didn’t do it” I sigh.

  “Bren, it’s okay. It’s not like he was going to be our friend.”

  “I know. But I still feel bad. Did you see the look on his face?”

  “I couldn’t see much with all those cameras going off.”

  “I know, right? That was insane.” Then I laugh a little. “I’ll bet the Van Martens are happy that the paparazzi weren’t there for them.”

  “It probably gets pretty tiring, dealing with that bullshit all the time.”

  “But now he must think that I set that up. It bugs me that I’ll probably never get to tell him that we had nothing to do with it. Do you think I should call Toni and explain?”