The Guardian's Playlist

by J Powell Ogden

  “Seeger or Metallica?”

  “What’s Metallica?”

  “What’s Metallica? Only the greatest metal band, like, ever.”

  “Oh. Then this probably isn’t the same song. It’s Indie folk rock,” I said. “Can I finish now?”

  “Sorry.”

  “So, this song, “Turn the Page” by Blue Pantaloons, came on the radio, and one of the lines said everything would be okay.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “No…everything did turn out okay,” I explained. “Jason didn’t really care that I wanted to break up, and only a few stupid idiots were still talking about me.”

  “So that’s your proof that God exists?”

  “It’s not proof. It’s…reinforcement. And that’s only one example.”

  “I think I need to hear another one,” he grumbled, resting his chin on his knees, obviously not impressed.

  I contemplated the snow at the edge of the cliff while I thought about it. My memories got more personal from there, and they would be harder to talk about.

  “Do you remember when I told you I had pneumonia when I was eleven?” I began, and he nodded half-heartedly.

  “It started as the flu, and I missed like, a month of school. I was so lonely. I missed my friends and my homework was piling up. I felt like everyone had forgotten me, and then just when I started to feel better the flu turned into pneumonia, and I ended up in the hospital. I was really sick, coughing up nasty brown crusty crap that choked my lungs and feeling like someone was stabbing me every time I took a breath.”

  He looked up from his knees and started paying attention.

  “They were sticking needles in my veins it seemed like every hour, testing for this and that. Then there was the arterial blood gas test. They take that from your artery, and it hurts like hell. It left purple bruises all over my…” I looked down at my wrist.

  He reached over with his fingertips and brushed the phantom pain away. “I’m sorry Catherine…I didn’t mean to—”

  “But that wasn’t the worst of it!” I went on in a rush. “The worst was feeling like a total weakling. Like I had no strength at all. I couldn’t even make it from my bed to the bathroom, and here my older sister was running 5 K’s, and my baby sister was flipping over balance beams backwards and my friends were having sleepovers without me…and I couldn’t even walk to the stupid bathroom…” I shook my head, the emotions crashing and breaking over me all over again. Why did I have to be such a baby? “I know it sounds stupid. I mean I wasn’t going to die or anything. But at the time I already felt dead, like there was no way I could fight my way back again. I was so tired and weak, and I wanted to give up and—”

  “Catherine, no…”

  I nodded. “It was the middle of the night, and I was lonely and scared and I grabbed my stupid iPod from the drawer next to my hospital bed. I heard a song I’d never heard before, one I’d never downloaded onto my iPod. It was kinda quiet, you know? And in the very last verse, it said, ‘For now and in this Place, the very Saving Grace, is ever knowing I can fly.’ Michael, I could barely walk, and it said I was going to fly.”

  I looked up to see a burgeoning desire to believe in Michael’s eyes, but he was fighting it. My throat constricted with emotion. I wanted badly to believe, too.

  “And so…I just lay there in the bed, feeling like shit, looking up at the ceiling tiles, crying like a baby. It was like someone knew I needed a little strength, a little hope, and was sitting there right next to me, singing that song just for me.”

  Michael was quiet for a minute, and then he asked, “So…who do you think is picking the songs?” That question made me squirm, but I thought of Saint Joan and shoved my theory out there anyway. Something told me he needed to hear it.

  “I think maybe I have an Angel…or something,” I mumbled.

  “An Angel,” he said, failing to clip the sarcastic edge from his voice.

  “Look. I had something happen to me when I was five that…” I shook my head and clamped my mouth shut. No, I was delusional, obviously.

  “You can’t start to tell me something like that and then stop,” he protested. “I promise I won’t laugh.”

  Sure. “Five year olds aren’t reliable witnesses,” I pointed out stoically. My parents knew about the nightmares but had few details, and I’d never told anyone about the voice in the light that ended them. But again, it was like something was whispering deep inside me that he needed to know. It told me it was time to share my darkest secret and flickering hope, that I’d been saving them for this moment. And so I began. “When I was five,” I said, wrapping my arms around my knees and focusing on the snowy trees at the edge of the cliff. “I went through this stage where I had horrible nightmares every night.”

  “Like after I died?”

  “Worse. They went on for weeks.” I closed my eyes, and chilling images rose up in my head. I snapped my eyes back open, gasping involuntarily, and locked them on Michael’s, anxiously trying to anchor myself in the present. It was so long ago, and yet I was still afraid to go back there.

  “What?” he asked, alarmed by the spike in my heart rate.

  “There were these black shadowy creatures. Their eyes were like flames. They surrounded my bed every night, and without even touching me, they pressed me down to keep me there. I couldn’t move. Michael…they told me I was beautiful…that I was perfect…that I was more special than all the others…”

  I looked away, biting my lip, wishing I could end the memory there.

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” he said quietly.

  But I wasn’t finished.

  “They told me the ‘others’ didn’t deserve to live,” I whispered, unable to look him in the eye. “They made me watch kids being tortured, murdered…with fire…with stones…and knives. They laid them all out on the side of a road, burned and maimed, like some sort of sacrifice. Then one night they put the knife in my hand and told me it was my turn to—”

  “You had dreams like that when you were five?” he interrupted, incredulous. “What the hell did your parents let you watch on TV?”

  “That’s just it! I’d never seen anything like it! I don’t know where the dreams came from, and I was starting to lose my mind, Michael. I mean, I was having a hard time figuring out what was real and what wasn’t.” I looked down at my palms, and then buried my hands deep in my coat pockets.

  “One night, I was lying in my parents’ bed with my mom and dad sound asleep on either side of me, and I was still scared. I saw the creatures even when I was awake, even with my eyes open, and they were creeping up onto the bed. The mattress bumped and swayed under their weight…and I just cried out in my mind, God please help me! Make them go away!”

  Every inch of Michael was listening now.

  “And I was suddenly surrounded by warm blinding light, and someone pulled me up onto their lap and wrapped their arms around me. And I felt a love pour into my soul that couldn’t be contained. I felt safe, like nothing could touch me. He told me I didn’t need to worry about the shadow creatures anymore, because he’d make sure they didn’t come back.”

  I looked up at Michael, still filled with awe after so many years.

  “You mean you dreamed someone picked you up,” he clarified, his skepticism trumping my hope.

  “Maybe…I don’t know. Sometimes I think it was God or an Angel, sometimes I think I just imagined or dreamed it, but that was the last nightmare I had for a long time.”

  The story was true. All of it. I could still see that light, how it penetrated right through my closed eyelids, and I closed my eyes to bask in its warm glow. I forgot Michael was there. When I finally opened my eyes again, I was startled to see him staring back at me.

  He shook his head back and forth. “No…Catherine…” he faltered. And then his lips curled back and his voice dug in harshly. “Do you really think there’s a God out there that can answer your call for help? Really?” He definitely wasn’t laughing. “Co
incidences happen, you know? You think they mean something, but they don’t. You fall far enough? You can make yourself see…” His voice failed him again, and he clenched his jaw and looked away. Then he buried his face in his knees.

  His total disbelief was a slap in the face. I knew he didn’t mean to hurt me, but it stung anyway. I probably would have felt the same way if our roles had been reversed, but the memory I’d shared was too personal to let his rejection just roll off my back. Instead, it clung to me like a heavy, wet towel on a cold, windy day at the beach.

  We sat side-by-side in silence for a while. I started to feel the cold through my coat. It was relentless. And the achiness I’d felt before was spreading, intensifying. My skin protested sorely as it shivered against the scratchy wool of my sweater, and I realized Michael was right. I was sick. I had a fever. He’d sensed it, but it wasn’t high enough yet to alarm him, and I was glad. I’d tuck myself into him and continue to share what little faith I had. It was Christmas Eve after all. I couldn’t give up. But how could I reach him?

  Far below us, an old beat-up station wagon with a naked Christmas tree lashed to its roof lumbered over the bridge. Kind of late to be getting their tree, I thought, and then I remembered my gift for him. I wasn’t as excited about giving it to him anymore, but it was a place to start.

  “I have a present for you,” I said.

  He refused to look up.

  “Close your eyes,” I instructed.

  “They are closed. I’m thinking,” he mumbled into his knees. He could be glum if he wanted, but it was Christmas Eve, and he was getting his gift. I pulled out my iPod and scrolled to the song I’d downloaded for him and held up one of the ear pieces near his ear.

  “Now listen,” I said.

  First we heard a few sleigh bells.

  Then a layer of piano and an ample side of sax.

  And then Springsteen’s rough-rocking voice belting out “Merry Christmas, Baby.”

  It didn’t exactly fit our mood, but it was Bruce Springsteen, Michael’s favorite songwriter, and I hoped Michael would appreciate the thought anyway. I’d downloaded a bunch of songs for him to listen to. He looked up from his lonely hiding place, tilted his head to the side and gave me a reluctant half-smile. It was perfect.

  We listened to half a dozen Springsteen songs, all the classics and a few from off the radio’s well-beaten path. It seemed to cheer him up for a while. He bounced his heels in time with the music and mouthed some of the words silently to himself. When “Thunder Road” came on, he leaned his head back against the tree, pulled out the Claddagh from under his shirt and twisted it back and forth on the chain with his eyes closed. Then his mood went south again.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. What wasn’t wrong?

  He shook his head, and I waited.

  “Look…I’m sorry…” he said with feeling. “I shouldn’t have said what I said before. Just believe whatever you want to believe if it makes you feel better. I just can’t.”

  I watched helplessly from my place by his side as he struggled valiantly with some unseen enemy. He was so lost. And yet, he hadn’t always been.

  “Michael…” I pleaded. “Help me understand why. Explain it to me. What about your tattoo?”

  Glancing down at his inked sword, Michael winced and then, instead of answering my question, he let his gaze drift out into the quiet woods, humming the opening notes to Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” “My mom loved that song, too,” he murmured.

  He met my eyes before glancing quickly away again. “She could really sing, you know? I got that talent from her,” he informed me and then added darkly, “along with our special talent for falling into any addictive hole we happened to walk by. I was in one of those holes when Shawn called to tell me he’d heard they’d found my mom’s body behind a dumpster on the near west side.”

  I sucked a sharp breath into my lungs. Michael wavered out of focus uneasily and lowered his lashes. Shit. How deep would this hole go?

  “Yeah, Catherine, I was stoned out of my mind when I found out my mom was dead. Totally wasted. Isn’t that sick?” He kept his eyes on the frayed laces of his shoe. “And then it was all downhill from there. And when I crashed into the bottom? That’s when I finally looked up.” He aimed his eyes upward as I often did when I was too self-conscious to use the word “God.” Only he didn’t keep his eyes there. He looked back down at his tattoo and winced again. Then he gathered up his voice, and we began our journey down into the pit.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE TATTOO

  “SO…EVEN THROUGH the pot haze,” he began, balancing his elbows on his knees, “I felt my gut, like, fill with ice when I hung up the phone. I remember wishing I was buzzing on something stronger. Way stronger. In fact, I was wishing I was passed out somewhere, completely oblivious.” His forehead scrunched up, and he sighed again.

  “But…I wasn’t. And I got it in my head that I needed to go and see if what Shawn said was true. I hadn’t seen my mom since I’d moved in with the Gardiners, but I’d heard she was evicted and living on the streets. If she was dead, I wanted to see her. It didn’t matter that I was stoned off my ass and that everything I looked at kept pulsing and shifting to the right.”

  “Michael, I’m so sorry…”

  He flicked his eyes impatiently in my direction and then looked back out at his hands. “Yeah…well…that was my life.” He paused and then plunged back in to his dialogue, faster, like he wanted to be done with it.

  “I caught the bus and got to the scene about a half hour later. The cops were still crawling all over the place, and an ambulance and a few cruisers were parked nearby. All I could see from behind the crime tape was a mound under a white sheet halfway hidden behind an overflowing dumpster. It was one of those record hot days last May, and the trash reeked. There were flies everywhere, landing on my sweaty arms, landing on the sheet. I wanted to puke. I wanted to leave. But I couldn’t. She was my mom, you know?”

  He looked over at me again, and I nodded, trying to fathom how he must have felt, but it was impossible.

  “Anyway…um…since my brain had checked out a few hours earlier, I thought it would be a good idea to just duck under the crime tape and head straight for her body, which is what I did. I ran into the chest of this crabby, middle-aged detective before I realized it wasn’t such a good plan.”

  Michael looked away and rolled his eyes at himself, embarrassed by his own stupidity. “So the detective said, ‘Hey kid! Where do you think you’re going? Get back behind the tape!’ At that point, my brain finally checked back in, and I mumbled something like, ‘I…uh…knew the victim…’ I avoided the detective’s eyes for obvious reasons and focused on his buttons, which were sliding down the front of his dress shirt. Then I was thinking, oh shit, I hope he doesn’t realize I’m totally lit up. Lucky for me, he had other things on his mind.

  “The detective looked around at the crowd stuck behind the tape and smiled real big at all of them. Then he was like all sarcastic, ‘Well that’s very interesting, kid, because we don’t know who the victim is and…um…none of the schmucks we interviewed over there know who the victim is. Now, how is it that you think you know who the victim is?’

  “So I said, ‘Look! Can I just see her? I got a call,’ and he was like, ‘Right.’ He looked over at the crowd again, and then he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me over to the lumpy sheet. I heard the words heroin overdose and half-starved being kicked around. ‘Let’s see what ya got, kid,’ he said. Then he nodded at one of the crime scene techs to pull the sheet up.

  “And there she was, Catherine, friggin’ dead. Just like I always knew she would be, except knowing and seeing are two different things, and I had just enough time to turn away from her and the cop before my lunch burned its way up my throat and fired itself out of my mouth and nose.

  “She was a mess. Pasty skin, cracked lips, bony thin.” Michael wrung his hands as he talked, as he tried to face the memory of his mother lying like so
much rotten garbage next to the overheated dumpster. “Her arm was thrown up over her head and it was covered with pus-filled track marks. There was dried spit covering her chin and…and—”

  “Michael, you don’t have to…” The memory was crushing him. He took a deep breath and blew it out through his mouth. Then his eyes flashed with anger, disgust.

  “I’d never done heroin, Catherine! I mean, I’d kind of prided myself on the fact that I’d drawn the line there, you know? Like I was somehow better than she was, because I stayed away from the hard stuff? I’d watched her shoot up, but I could never understand why she did it. Why she chose the rush of heroin flooding her veins over me!”

  My throat constricted painfully for him. “She was sick…” I offered lamely, but he gave me a look that said, ‘yeah, right,’ before going on.

  “So I just stood there gagging, and then I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and asked the detective if she was wearing a ring. A gold Claddagh.”

  Michael glanced up at me meaningfully while his fingers absently sought comfort from the Claddagh’s outline resting safely beneath his black sleeveless shirt.

  “The detective looked over at the tech, and the tech shook his head no. Then the detective was like, ‘So, do you know who she is or not, kid?’ ‘No,’ I lied, then I almost got sick all over again. That ring was the only proof that we’d been happy once. Without it, my life was one big freaking hole. Empty. I thought I was going to pass out and I reached for the side of the dumpster for support. I found out later that it burned my hand, but I didn’t even flinch at the time. The tech said, ‘I think he’s on something, Mack.’

  “I heard the detective mumble, ‘shit,’ and then he was like, ‘Look at me kid. Can you follow my finger?’ He held his index finger up in front of my face and waved it slowly back and forth. That was my cue it was time to bug out. I started back toward the crime tape and the tech stood up to follow me, but the detective was like, ‘Let him go. We’ve got enough shit to deal with. Stupid kid…he’s gonna throw his life away.’ And as I ducked under the tape, he called after me, ‘So, when are we gonna see you back here, kid? I want to make sure I come pay my respects!’”