by LS Hawker
Her hackles began to rise. “What’s that supposed to—”
“All that to say I didn’t realize who you were,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the anti-Beatles girl.”
This one-line biography irritated her almost as much as his appearance. He had a Van Dyke beard and wore a cardigan and scarf, even though the temperature was in the high eighties. Seeing him, Nessa knew she’d been born too late. She longed for the old days when people meant what they said and weren’t ironic, intoning everything with quirked eyebrows and figurative air quotes. But she was grateful because his douchebaggery was just what she needed.
She pointed at his get-up. “You warm enough?”
This threw him off, but only for a beat.
“How old are you?” he said, ignoring her question.
“Excuse me?” She hated the old-fashioned “how dare you ask a lady her age?” tone in her own voice.
“You’re in your thirties, right?”
“I’m twenty-five. And how old are you? Gonna go to prom next year?”
He tilted his head. “Do you want my honest opinion of your show?”
“Meh,” she said in her most bored voice, looking at her phone and scrolling through emails she’d already read.
“It feels like you’re trying too hard.”
She pocketed her phone, crossed her arms, and smiled. “Is that right,” she said.
“Your desperation to seem relevant is embarrassing.”
She shrugged. “Here’s the funny thing, junior. I didn’t try to get this show. They came knocking on my door. So the fact is I ain’t tryin’ at all . . . all the way to the bank.”
Otto’s face turned a gratifying shade of puce.
“You don’t deserve to have this show,” he hissed.
“Oh? And who does, princess? You?”
Otto punched up his glasses and sat straight. “I graduated from the journalism school at K-State in May after toiling away for four years. I spent hundreds of hours at the campus radio station. I interned every summer for free at shitty little radio stations like this one. I busted my ass. I’m up to my neck in debt, but I can’t find a job now.” He stabbed the air in front of him with each point he made. “All I can get are hour-long freelance production jobs for minimum wage. And then I find out that before your appearance on WBEZ you’d never been on radio at all. You didn’t even major in broadcast. You tossed off some little blog post about hating the Beatles and now you get to be on Sound Opinions? Who the fuck do you think you are? You haven’t earned this.”
Nessa’s temperature rose to a high, rolling boil. Otto had no concept of what she’d gone through to get here, how she’d put herself through college at Metropolitan State University of Denver working in a record store and waitressing, living on ramen noodles and American cheese. She’d earned a bachelor’s degree in communications. She had just as much right to be here as this pasty-faced tool. Probably more. She’d clawed her way out of LA with nothing. With less than nothing, doing things he’d only ever read about.
“You don’t know anything about me,” Nessa said, her animosity sharpening her senses. “And what I do has nothing to do with you. So if you’re going to whine like a spoiled little bitch, you can get the hell out of my studio.”
“It’s not your studio,” he said.
“It is from midnight to four every Monday and Thursday.”
“This should be my show.”
She allowed a slow, sincerely cruel smile to spread over her face and gave him a lazy shrug. “Life’s not fair,” she said. “Is it?”
According to the countdown clock, she had less than thirty seconds to air, and she didn’t have a water bottle or her tissue box set up, and now she wouldn’t have time.
“Your blog isn’t that interesting,” Otto said. “It’s hacky and precious.”
“So don’t read it,” she said.
“You’re a poseur,” he said, using the French pronunciation.
Incredulous, she said, “I’m a poser.”
He nodded at her.
“Let’s see.” She ticked items off on her fingers. “Pretentious facial hair. Check. Doc Martens. Check. Horn-rimmed glasses. Check. Hipster helmet. Double-fucking check.”
“On in five . . . four . . . three . . .”
He pointed at her. She felt razor-sharp and alert like she hadn’t in ages.
Her theme music played in her headphones along with the intro voiced by some guy on the coast with balls the size of boulders, his voice deep and rich and rumbling.
“It’s midnight on Thursday, which means it’s time for Unknown Legends with Nessa, the only radio show that plays the really, really deep cuts.”
Nessa opened her mic. “Happy Thursday, gang, and welcome to Unknown Legends. This is Nessa, and this first song’s official video is not exactly my cup of tea—it’s lead singer Josh Homme having a night out with a bunch of Asian businessmen. Guess it’s indicative of the difficult time the band had putting the album together. I recommend listening on full volume so you can decide for yourself what it all means. Here’s ‘Smooth Sailing’ from Queens of the Stone Age off their album . . . Like Clockwork.”
The opening synthesized beats blew into the jangling guitar of Troy Van Leeuwen, and Nessa clicked off her mic, shoved back her chair, and danced like she was at a rave in 2004. She sang loud, while staring straight at Otto. She could feel the hate waves rolling off him like San Francisco fog, and they strengthened her.
They didn’t speak for the rest of the shift, but she did her best show ever. She hadn’t gotten so many phone calls since the Beatles post, and it kept Otto hopping all night. When the bumper outro for her show played, she stood and stretched. Otto was sprawled on his chair.
“See you Monday,” she said, and walked out the door.
Friday, June 3
A NOISE ON the front porch woke Nessa, and she walked downstairs in the dark. She opened the front door, and there stood John, soaking wet.
“I just couldn’t get to a phone. It’s taken me weeks to walk home, but here I am.”
Nessa collapsed in relief, because he was real John, not crackhead John. He hadn’t relapsed after all. It had all been a horrible misunderstanding. She got him a towel and tried to dry him off, but she kept finding leaks, and water continued to run from his head, from his nose and ears and eyes.
“What’s happening?” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” he said as water poured from his mouth in a stream.
Nessa opened her eyes and looked at John’s side of the bed, undisturbed, smooth, unslept-in for weeks. She didn’t have even a moment’s reprieve, no periods of forgetting John was gone, no times of not wondering whether he was alive or dead. It was as if this new fact of her life sat on a shelf suspended above her and clocked her in the head every time her thoughts shifted away from it.
Probably somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d believed if John were to die, it would actually be a relief. Because he wasn’t the man she married anymore. He was a burden. But she wasn’t like her mother—she couldn’t stop loving John even if he was deeply flawed, even if he had destroyed his own life and hers in the process.
She looked at the bedside clock and saw it was six-thirty A.M., four hours earlier than she normally awoke the morning after her radio shift. She tried to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t stop picturing John soaking wet on the front porch.
If he was gone for good this time, dead, she wondered how she would raise their boy alone.
Daltrey, who looked so much like his father they’d called him Mini-me, was a constant reminder. The ache that accompanied it was a sharp ice pick in her consciousness. Her love for the little boy was both visceral and transcendent, but at the same time she wished him vanished too—a thought she�
��d never actually voice. How was she supposed to go on? How was she supposed to do this alone?
She got up and went to Daltrey’s room. He was still asleep, lying on his stomach, his little lips pursed. He looked like an infant when he was asleep, his long straight eyelashes lying across his cheek like angel feathers. He breathed like he was in a hurry. Fast in. Pause. Fast out. His fat little fingers curled in a sweet fist. She lowered her face to his hair and inhaled, the muzzy, sweet toddler scent making her heart ache. She went downstairs and looked out the back window where Isabeau was doing yoga in the morning sunshine.
What was it like to be so young and carefree? Isabeau was only four years younger than she, but Nessa felt like an old crone weighted down with the life experience of someone in her fifties.
Nessa poured a cup of coffee and stepped outside, where Isabeau held the warrior pose, her arms held out parallel to the ground, her legs in a deep lunge.
“What are you doing up so early?” Isabeau said.
“Nightmare,” Nessa said, and sat down on the steps.
“Daltrey’s not up, is he?”
“No. I just checked on him.”
“Good, because I want to talk to you about something.” Isabeau rolled up her yoga mat, dropped it next to the steps, and sat next to Nessa.
Oh, no. This was it. Isabeau couldn’t handle the crap parade that was life on the Donati homestead.
“Okay,” Nessa said, dejected. “I understand completely.”
“What?”
“You’re quitting.”
Isabeau smiled wide, made a pfft noise, and a get-out-of-here motion with her hand. “No! You’re stuck with me, boss. Actually, it’s kind of the opposite. Here’s what I’m thinking. It’s really kind of a hassle to have to sleep two different places, you know what I mean? Since you’re all alone, I wonder if I should just move in with you for the summer until fall semester starts. That way I’m already here for your radio overnights and I don’t have to drive back and forth. You have a lot on your mind, and you could use the help with Daltrey. As a bonus, my roommate and her creepy boyfriend could bone all they want without me cramping their style.”
Nessa laughed. “I see what you’re doing here. But I really value my privacy. Having a roommate is . . . difficult for me.”
“I know it. But we’d be helping each other out. What do you say?”
The relief she felt overrode her trepidation. Isabeau was right. With Nessa here alone on sixty acres, departing and arriving at odd hours, it didn’t hurt to have an extra set of eyes on Daltrey.
She needed to put the needs of her son above her own selfish needs of privacy.
She took a sip of coffee. “All right,” she said. “But that means I’ll have to pay you more.”
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“You’re not a very good negotiator. The proper response is ‘Yes, you will.’ ”
“Yes, ma’am,” Isabeau said, and smiled.
THAT AFTERNOON, WHILE Isabeau sat on the floor with her laptop cataloging Nessa’s music collection, Nessa sat at her desk and browsed her blog’s comments section. The latest one represented the kind of lazy trivia questions she hated.
What do these diverse artists have in common: Norah Jones, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, AC/DC, and Neil Diamond?
Posted by Anonymous | June 3 8:37 AM
Anyone with a quarter of a brain could get online and look that sort of thing up. But she always indulged her readers by answering anyway. Usually, this sort of question meant the musicians in question each had a song with a common word in it, almost without fail. She searched for, copied, and pasted each artist’s song list into wordcounter.com, which found repeated words. She’d then look through the part of the resulting list where one word was found five times.
The list came up with fourteen words that had been used five times. As she started to scroll down, a pounding on the back door sounded, and Nessa’s heart shot up into her throat.
John?
Isabeau started to rise but Nessa said, “I’ve got it.”
She ran to the door and peered out the window.
It was her nearest neighbor, Lauren, and her two boys.
Nessa unlocked the dead bolt, her heart still fluttering in her chest like a trapped bat, and opened the door to the sound of children’s voices and the jingle of Declan MacManus’s dog collar. He crowded inside with them, dancing and happy for the visitors. Isabeau waved as she threaded her way through the crowd and walked out the door past the horses Lauren had tied up outside. Lauren and the boys always rode over inside of driving, sometimes giving Daltrey a ride around the property, one of his favorite things.
“I brought you something from the garden,” Lauren said, blowing in through the door with her long muslin skirt sweeping in behind. She pulled the hemp pack off her back and emptied it on the kitchen table—two large mason jars full of berries and a basket of fresh ones—while her sons patted the dog before turning their attention to Nessa.
They had no concept of personal space, and the oldest, Ziggy, leaned into Nessa’s shoulder, his hot, sweaty skin pressed against her back, while Tosh hung on her shoulder. She’d stopped trying to keep them out of her bubble.
“You okay?” Ziggy said.
It was a weird thing about kids—how they somehow intuited your mental and emotional state in a way that adults would never be able to do, sort of like that high sound that only people under eighteen can hear. It seemed like Lauren hadn’t really noticed any problem with Nessa.
“Sure, honey,” Nessa said.
“Where’s Daltrey?” Tosh said.
“In his room. Go on up.”
They scampered up the stairs.
“Where’s a bowl?” Lauren said.
She acted as though she and Nessa were close friends, as if they’d shared secrets and confidences. The arrangement suited Nessa perfectly. The appearance of friendship allowed her to keep her secrets and distance without a fight.
Nessa reached into one of the upper cabinets and pulled out a colander and her largest bowl, a brilliant green one Lauren had made at her pottery studio. Nessa sat at the table.
Lauren stood at the sink, rinsing the fresh-picked strawberries, blueberries, and gooseberries. Daltrey’s giggle resonated from upstairs as eight-year-old Ziggy and five-year-old Tosh chattered away. They were both named for reggae musicians, of course, and had the long dreadlocks to match. Although Lauren kept them clean, Nessa couldn’t help imagining swarms of flies around their heads.
“Why don’t the three of you come over for dinner?” Lauren said. “Mac can throw some veggie burgers on the grill and we’ll make a night of it.”
Lauren’s husband, Mac, was an IT genius putting together the computer systems at the new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility that was being built outside Manhattan. His giant brain intimidated Nessa a little, but he was a nice enough guy, if a little introverted.
He and John had had a cordial relationship, but Nessa hadn’t mentioned yet to her neighbors that John was no longer living here, and she had no intention of doing so now.
“Thanks, but I’ve got to get a blog post up tonight. I’m way behind.”
Lauren turned off the water and dried her hands before sitting at the kitchen table. “You’ll want to eat these berries today or tomorrow,” she said. “Because they’re perfect right now. But the ones in the jars will keep for a year.”
“Thank you, Lauren,” Nessa said. She didn’t want Lauren to do anything for her, but it was impossible to stop her, even though Nessa remained aloof and impersonal. Lauren was the most domestic, industrious, artistic person Nessa had ever known. Lauren did most of the talking when they were together, which worked out well. Still, Nessa missed having real friends.
But having real friends required intimacy, and intimacy required honesty.
And real honesty on Nessa’s part would dismantle the carefully constructed fortress that was her life.
In addition to gardening, canning, quilting, spinning, and pottery, Lauren homeschooled the boys. They were constantly going on field trips to museums and exhibits. Ziggy and Tosh went around all summer without shirts and grew brown, unlike Daltrey, who Nessa slathered in sunscreen any time they went outside. This drove Lauren insane.
“It’s a racket,” she said. “You’re putting chemicals all over your child, who then is deprived of vitamin D.”
“Oh, he gets that in his fortified Sugar-Coated, Honey-Covered, Chocolate-Infused, Artificially Colored Sweetie Flakes,” Nessa said.
“It’s not funny,” Lauren said.
“It’s a little funny,” Nessa said.
Lauren finished the berries, then called for her boys, who came stampeding into the kitchen with Daltrey hot on their heels.
“It’s half-off day on Tuesday the twenty-first at the splash park,” Lauren said. Ziggy and Tosh surrounded Daltrey and asked if he wanted to go swimming. His head nod was so enthusiastic, he nearly fell over. Daltrey faced her and traced a circle over his heart with a flat hand, ASL for “Please,” his big eyes begging.
Nessa tried not to grimace in resentment at Lauren. Why couldn’t she have asked Nessa before the boys came in? She was always doing this sort of thing, forcing Nessa to say “yes” to things she’d rather not do. But in spite of this irritating habit, Lauren was the only mom Nessa spent any time around. She’d stopped taking Daltrey to the playground because she couldn’t stand the inane mom talk; the endless complaining about how hard mommying was, about how little their husbands understood; the endless cannibalizing of their children’s lives, served up for the entertainment of the other moms, a justification for their existence, to make up for their own nonexistent lives. It was such an identity thing for these women.
They were the ones who posted the creepy mom memes online—like A son will hold your heart forever—all this borderline stalker talk: “My children are my heart and soul, my liver and pancreas. I’m incomplete without them, blah, blah, blah.”
