by BJ Knapp
“Tim, what do I need to do to convince you that nothing like that will ever happen again?”
“I don’t know, Bren. It’s just a feeling that I need to have, and I’m not feeling it right now.”
We eat the rest of the brie and talk about our days. Throughout the conversation, I try to come up with the one thing I could say that would make Tim “feel it” again. But then it dawns on me that there really isn’t one magic sentence that will make everything alright again. I have to rebuild our marriage, brick by brick. And that means I have to get creative and even woo him a bit until we get back to where we were before. I need to give him a reason not to get bored again.
All through October, I start putting that extra effort into planning fun things for us to do, though it’s kind of hard, because we’re leading up to the election. So I go with him to his campaign events and help out wherever I can with coordinating volunteers.
One Sunday morning, we wake up a bit late. Tim has decided to take the day off from campaigning so we can do something together.
“I have a surprise for you,” I tell him. “Come on, get dressed. Let’s go.” We get into his truck, and I drive us to the southwestern part of Rhode Island. This part of the state has dense forest with a few small lakes and rivers. I pull into a canoe rental.
“We’re going canoeing?” He smiles at me. We used to go frequently, back when we were first married. But things got busy, and we haven’t gone in years.
The guide directs us to our canoe. I arranged for it to be stocked with a picnic basket filled with his favorites: of course, brie and grapes. But a few other things, too, like a bottle of red and even some gummy bears. While Tim is checking out the basket, I confer with the guide over the map of the Wood River.
“You’ll want to go upstream for about two miles, and then you’ll see a small path on the left. Look for the blue dot on the trees.”
I get into the front, and Tim gets into the back because he’s better at steering than I am. We paddle upstream, as the guide directed, until I see the blue dots, and then we pull the canoe onto the river bank.
“I’ll take the blanket,” I say. “Will you carry the basket?”
“Where are you taking me?” he asks. It’s so hard to surprise Tim, and I am so excited I can barely contain myself.
We walk for maybe a quarter of a mile; the trail opens up to a meadow. We cross the meadow and end up at the top of a ridge that looks over the entire river valley. The view extends for miles.
“Look, you can see the water tower over there. I think that’s the one in Mystic,” I point out.
“How did you find this place? This is incredible!”
“Well, I’ve been doing some research on different places we can go together. I wanted to take you somewhere where neither of us has ever been.” I like the idea of our going to new places together. It makes me feel as if we are starting over by experiencing new things together. I have plans tonight to take him to try Ethiopian food, as well; again, something neither of us has tried.
While I’ve been researching new places to go, I’ve also been right alongside of him, throwing myself into planning a huge fundraiser for the end of October. We are actually having fun together again. We laugh together more and more. He holds my hand when we walk in the woods. He kisses me goodnight now and tells me he loves me before leaving for work. I can feel our marriage getting just a tiny bit stronger by the day.
***
Tonight is Friday, and it’s the week before the fundraiser. Tim and I have just seen a great movie, and as we leave the movie theater, I feel like listening to some music, so I turn on the radio in the car.
“Here’s the new one from Hydra,” the DJ is saying. “They’ve been in Rhode Island all summer long, recording a new album. Look for it to hit stores and iTunes for Christmas. But, until then, here’s the first single, called ‘She Thinks.’”
The song starts with brash electric guitars and a bluesy bass line, similar to what I remember when I eavesdropped on them in Del’s basement. Then Ben starts to sing, “She thinks I’m an asshole, but she wants me anyway...,” and I can’t switch off the radio fast enough.
“You don’t want to hear the rest of the song Keith wrote for you?” Tim asks.
“Nope.”
“Have you heard it before?”
“Nope. Well, a little. I went to the studio after you moved out to see for myself how far along they were, and I heard a little bit of it. I’ve never heard it all the way, through.”
It’s quiet in the car for the rest of the way home. The tension between us makes my skin feel tight; it start to feel as if all the progress we’ve made in the last few weeks went right out the window when that stupid song came on. The radio still is kind of a minefield; I never know when I’ll stumble upon a reminder of how I let Hydra wreck my marriage. Each time, it’s just another reminder of how I’d failed my husband.
“Now I feel like I can’t listen to the radio anymore,” Tim says, breaking the silence. “I guess I’ll have to tune in to NPR for the rest of my life.”
“I was just thinking that, myself,” I say. “And just watch—the one time you turn on NPR, they’ll be interviewing Hydra.” I laugh, even though it really isn’t funny.
“Well, how does it feel to have a big rock star write a song about you?”
“Not as good as you’d think,” I reply.
“Why?”
“Because now I feel like you’ll be reminded every time you hear it on the radio, and we’ll never get to move on from it. I mean, how is it for you, knowing that another man wrote a song about your wife? God, what if that’s the big song that gets played everywhere you go?”
“I’ll get over it. It’s not like I’ve forgotten that it happened. But I want to try to fix our marriage. We’ve been doing so great lately, and we’ve been having a lot of fun. I don’t want to wreck all the progress we’ve made in the last month. I love you, Brenda. And I don’t want to lose you again. I was so miserable without you.”
“I was miserable without you, too. I am so sorry for everything that happened.”
“I know you are. Me, too.” He takes my hand as I drive and holds it until we pull my car into the garage. I can hear Vito in the living room, jumping from the couch to the floor. Tim nods toward the door to the house. “I don’t think we worked hard enough to keep him off the couch.”
“I don’t think he gave us much of a choice. He’s pretty much claimed the furniture for his own anyway. It doesn’t matter. He’s happy.”
“Are you happy, even though you’re not a rock-and-roll muse anymore?”
I wrap my arms around his waist and kiss him deeply. “Yes. Being a rock-and-roll muse is not all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe I’ll get to be a state senator’s wife, instead.”
We leave a trail of our clothes through the house on the way to the bedroom. I can’t remember the last time sex was this hot. I look into his eyes and know that our connection has, finally, been re-established. It makes me feel warm inside, and I paw my hands through his hair.
Afterward, our bed looks like a tornado hit it: sheets, blanket, and pillows are tangled and strewn at the foot. Tim wipes the sweat from his face and leans in to kiss the back of my neck as he spoons me. “God, I missed you,” he whispers into my shoulder.
“I missed you, too,” I whisper back then sigh. “You’re the only one, Tim. Do you believe me?”
“If we keep doing it like this, I will believe everything you say,” he says, chuckling softly.
Chapter 30
THE VERY THING THAT WE JOKED ABOUT a month ago happens almost exactly as I described it. I stopped listening to the rock stations weeks ago, and since then, I’ve kept the dial fixed on NPR—until tonight, when they begin their usual pledge drive. After already donating a hundred bucks to the cause, I’m not in the mood to listen to them try to convince me to chip in, so I switch over to satellite radio. I’m tuned into my favorite station, The Edge, which has obscure recordin
gs from ‘90s artists and interviews.
Tonight—of course—they’re interviewing Hydra. My first instinct is to turn it off. Listening to it would be disloyal to Tim and can only undo all the progress we’ve made in repairing the damage to our marriage. But—of course—I’m curious to hear what they have to say. How could I not be? Will they talk about me and Tim? I tell myself that I’ll listen just this once; I pull the car over so I can listen without distraction. Tim doesn’t have to know, and I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to listen to one measly radio interview, is it?
Moira Black, the velvet-voiced interviewer on this show, is quite possibly one of my favorite rock-and-roll interviewers. I guess you could call her my girl-crush. I Googled her once, to see what she looks like. I imagined her looking like an ‘80s metal sex kitten, with the big hair and low-cut top. But instead, she has cropped gray hair, wears little makeup under her heavy-rimmed glasses, and is usually wearing a plain white T-shirt and jeans. Not at all sexy, the way she sounds on the radio, and definitely not the way a woman who knows her way around rock and roll typically looks.
She asks why they decided to record in Rhode Island, and Keith tells the whole story about how he came here to meet me. Moira lets out some intimate um-hmms as he speaks, sounding as if she’s almost purring. Then Keith talks about how he got the idea for a song while at my house, hearing wind chimes. Moira asks if those were the same chimes as on the track “Green Sky.”
“Yes, they are. And I am afraid I still owe the Dunkirks a set. They were nice enough to let me dismantle them for the record,” he says and laughs.
“Maybe someday they can put them up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Ben chimes in and laughs. I giggle and cover my mouth; it would definitely be cool to have my wind chimes hanging in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I don’t even know how long I’ve been parked in the breakdown lane on I-95; I am completely sucked into this interview. Any guilt about listening to it is completely gone. I’ve laughed out loud at a few of the things the guys said. Then Moira asks about the inspiration behind all the songs. She asks about “She Thinks.” I hold my breath; I can feel my heart beating in my throat.
“So, what was the inspiration behind that one?” she asks.
“That would be Brenda Dunkirk,” Keith replies.
“Brenda Dunkirk, the fan from Rhode Island you came to meet in July?” Moira asks, skillfully pressing. “So, does she know about it?”
“Yes. And, you know, I feel kind of awful about the way that turned out,” Keith says. “See, the Dunkirks were nice enough to let us stay in their house while we recorded at Del Riccio’s studio.”
“Really? You lived in their home? What was that like? Maybe we should have invited the Dunkirks to this interview.” She lets out a deep, sexy giggle, and I have to laugh because I know that she looks a bit like a younger Judi Dench. I wonder, what was their impression of living with us? At the time, it didn’t really seem to matter to them that my marriage was falling apart.
“I guess for Brenda and Tim, it was about what you’d expect when you have rock stars and their entourage descend upon your home,” Keith says, chuckling. “I don’t think it went so well for the Dunkirks. We haven’t spoken to them at all since we moved out. I know it put a great deal of stress on them, and I hope that, now, all is well with them.”
“Well, let’s play Mrs. Dunkirk’s song,” Moira says and switches over to the opening chords of “She Thinks.”
It is the first time I’ve ever heard it all the way through, and it’s not at all what I expected. For starters, I thought I’d love hearing a song written for me on the radio. But I am sitting here in the car and my stomach is lurching. I want to turn off the radio, but I need to listen to it all the way through at least once. I really hope that this isn’t the big hit song that I’ll hear everywhere I go: I don’t think I could deal with all that nausea until the next big thing comes out.
“‘She still thinks I’m an asshole, but I want to be her lover...,’” Ben sings, with a bluesy voice that, I have to admit, is very sexy. I think this song alone will get Ben the distinction of People magazine’s sexiest man alive. The song sounds very different than what I heard in Del’s basement that day. Somehow it sounds more modern than the traditional Hydra sound.
The song starts off with me thinking that Keith’s an asshole, and throughout the song he’s chasing me around and trying to convince me that he’s not. It’s nice to see that he hasn’t taken any poetic license with the story—for the most part: whereas, in reality, I still think he’s an asshole, the end of the song actually has my character coming around. I know that someday Tim’s going to hear this; I wonder what the hell that will do to our recovery efforts in our marriage. Will he think that I’m secretly in contact with him and haven’t told him? Will it be the same scene all over again, where I’ll have to tell him that I wouldn’t have told him, the way I did with the kiss?
I hate to say it, but the song is amazing. The arrangement is absolutely perfect. It has the loose, bluesy feel of a rock song that you’d hear from a band like The Rolling Stones or even Stone Temple Pilots. After the song ends, I imagine Moira fanning herself off and is likely swooning over Ben Taylor, sitting with her in the studio. I probably would be, too.
The ensuing silence is a little too long for radio, until she finally clears her throat and continues with the interview. She asks about the upcoming tour and about their reaction to the fact that they’re selling out arenas all over the U.S. again.
“The human interest story behind this album is lighting up the Internet right now,” she says.
“Yes, our publicists are quite busy,” Ben says, laughing.
“You’re now outselling Jamie Fire left and right, even with her feature film in theaters right now,” she adds. Somehow, even with all the promise of hot teenage-girl promiscuity, Jamie Fire’s getting out-sold by a bunch of old guys from Australia. Her publicists must be livid that these same old guys are actually beating out Jamie’s well-planned public deflowering for media coverage. Erik must be dancing in the streets.
“Yes, I guess we are,” Ben says with a hint of modesty. And Moira eats it up. She comments on how approachable the band has become, as they get older, and I picture Erik popping open a champagne bottle, his brilliant marketing scheme having worked according to plan. After all that has happened, I can’t help but still feel a bit happy for the band. It can’t be easy to compete with Jamie Fire.
“Now tell me,” Moira continues, changing the subject, “you’ve had a shakeup in the band’s management as a result of the release of this album.”
“Yes, we have as well.” This time, it’s Keith who answers. “We parted ways with Erik Murtaugh as this album was being recorded. You know, creative differences and all that.” He chuckles. “Our former publicist, Toni Wallace, has taken over management of the band. Her first order of business was to hire her boyfriend, Nick Fenton. Nick is a composer and a brilliant arranger. He took over the arrangement of all the songs on this album and gave our sound a much-needed face lift.”
My mind goes back to the night of the great Motel 6 debacle. I am amazed that they really did go through with firing Erik. That must have been a brutal divorce. Still, it’s such great news for Toni and Nick. I’ve seen how hard Toni works for Keith and the rest of the band—she deserves this promotion. I wonder if I should call her to congratulate her, but then think better of it. I need to not contact the band at all, ever again.
“You’re right, it’s more upbeat than your former albums,” Moira chimes in. “It has a younger feel to it.”
“Exactly,” Ben replies. “A more modern sound has helped us to compete with the likes of Jamie Fire.”
Compete? Try annihilate. I can’t help but smile. They sound so cool, so modest. I am proud of their success, even if it means that the whole world now knows that Keith wants to be my lover—and that I think he’s an asshole.
They are winding down the interview.
It’s getting close to the top of the hour when Keith speaks up. “Moira, if I may say something?” He pauses. “I feel awful about how things ended with us and the Dunkirks. Brenda, if you’re out there and you’re listening, will you please give us a call? I am sure you still have Toni’s number. Please. I hate that things ended that way with you.”
A public plea? Yup, he’s still an asshole. What if Tim hears?
When the interview ends, I pull out of the breakdown lane and back into traffic. I turn the radio off, afraid that I’ll hear “She Thinks” on every station. I let the quiet in my car surround me. Listening to the interview has me feeling empty, and now I kind of wish that I hadn’t listened to it. I mean, I’m glad that everything turned out so well for them, but I hate the way that living with the band had affected my life.
I also hate that it didn’t work out. All I’d wanted was to be a part of the creative process and to help them make something fantastic. But, in a way, I guess I did. If I hadn’t kicked the band out, then they wouldn’t have fired Erik and hired Toni and Nick. Now they’re on top again. So, in a way, I did help them—just not in the way I’d initially hoped.
But now there’s a whole other dilemma. Should I call Keith? Should I give him another chance to explain himself?
My gut instinct says, hell no. But I, too, hate the way things ended with them. It’s just that I wish we could have stayed friends with the band after they moved out. Still, I’m pretty sure that, if I try to explain myself to Tim, he won’t get it. And Keith does sound more approachable on a radio interview; but I don’t really think he’s changed all that much. I know I should leave well enough alone.
Hearing the song has had a different effect on me than I’d thought it would, too. Secretly, I really like being the rock-and-roll muse. I liked reading Keith’s lyrics over my kitchen table and telling him what I thought. I liked having that frank discussion about what I thought about him, and I think I started to get through to him. I also liked that I was able to contribute something to the band’s creativity. I will never forget that morning when I got to read the lyrics for “Green Sky” and told Ben and Erik what I really thought. I was part of something bigger than me.
