Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  I kind of wished now that I’d taken more than one section of that teacher’s class, but I was trying to go forward and he was always pushing us to do “traditional media.” Just like everyone else. Even for the Bazaar, I’d proposed that our band could play after the formal part was over, maybe generate some interest, but they already had Traditional singers in place to do a regular Social. They didn’t think a rock concert was appropriate, unless you were Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, whose Rolling Thunder Revue blew through here a few years ago with a free show.

  I helped my mom with our lacrosse and beadwork Table for most of the day, doing the circuit of other Tables during my breaks. Toward the end of the afternoon, I noticed Groffini nosing around near our Table and glancing over at us. Apparently we were going to have another talk, but I wasn’t going to him. Eventually, he came over and small-talked my mom for a while so she wouldn’t think I was in trouble, before asking to speak to me. He cocked his head in a Follow Me gesture, and we headed out.

  “Cold out here,” he said in the parking lot. “Wanna sit in my car?” He hit the heater as soon as he started it, and warm air came out immediately. He must have just gotten to the Bazaar.

  Groffini really was the world’s most dedicated guidance counselor. It was his job, but he made it a point to come to non-school-related community events, like this, even on weekends.

  “Carson, you might be the world’s luckiest guy,” he said. “I’m going to give up on finding out what happened with Mrs. Marchese. She’s not the mind-changing sort, but it seems like I have to give my curiosity a rest. So, listen, what I want to say to you is …” He’d been rehearsing this. It was the kind of talk Groffini loved giving, and mostly, he only got to do it on the lacrosse field.

  “Don’t let these sacrifices go wasted, okay?” That was his big speech? “Do something. I don’t know what. I’m your guidance counselor, but you’ve been pretty impervious to guidance, if you don’t mind my saying.” He laughed, and I did too. I had blown off his advice before.

  “College? That’s someone else’s dream, not mine.”

  “Why not yours?” he asked, ludicrously gripping my shoulder, even though doing so made him grimace. “Arthritis in my shoulder,” he added, seeming disappointed in his own body.

  “I got other dreams,” I said. “They don’t involve going down the road to thirteenth grade.”

  “That community college works for a lot of people, even as a start. But isn’t New York City your dream? Isn’t that why you entered the Battle of the Bands? For the trip to the city?”

  “I don’t think I’m getting into New York City University,” I said, dragging out the words, to confirm how ridiculous I knew that idea was. I had to give Groffini credit for knowing that much about my desires. That was nothing I’d ever told him.

  “I think you mean NYU,” he said. “And so what? No one said you had to shoot for something like that, but you could. It would get you to New York City. But let’s say that’s not for you. I don’t know if it is or isn’t. There’s FIT too. Maybe a better fit, so to speak.”

  “What makes you think I want to go to Florida?”

  “It’s not Florida. The F is for Fashion. Fashion Institute of Technology. It’s in Manhattan,” he said, and slid a brochure off his dashboard. “I’ve seen what you can do. It’s not easy to get in either, but you’ll never know unless you try. You’ve done all these things, designing looks for your band and making those designs into actual outfits. You’ve got excellent fabric skills repairing those tricky uniform materials. If you got a full ride scholarship … you’d be living in New York City for four years. Assuming you could keep your grades up.”

  I had no idea such a place existed, and looking at the brochure, I was excited.

  “I’m not going to lie,” he said. “It’s a long shot, but that’s part of what I’m here for. I’ll help however I can with the application process. I don’t know what you did, how you got out of that failure with Mrs. Marchese, but don’t squander it. You don’t challenge the bear and come out on top very often.” I shook his hand and headed back inside, promising I’d consider it.

  The weird thing was that after all this planning my future away from here, the last couple of months had made the idea harder to consider. At first, when I saw Lewis onstage, I was pissed that he’d somehow led the others into becoming a band, even without me. But that had only happened because I had first led him. The biggest problem with being in a band is that you never get to evaluate your performance from the outside, unless you’ve got rich enough friends to shoot a show of yours. I was mad at first that they sounded good without me, but then I realized I’d been smart enough to recognize and put together the talent to make a real band.

  Their performance showed me that my instincts were even more right to include Maggi. That hadn’t been a sure shot, but I’d thought it would be a reason for us to spend more time together and maybe we could get more serious. But Maggi surprised me. She brought something to our sound you just didn’t hear anywhere. She gave us that It! that every band that makes it has got—the thing that once you hear it, you say, oh that’s Such and Such.

  And now maybe she and I had a future together, here. Tonight would be perfect. I’d help them pack up and then see if she was ready to cash in on that date bet we’d made after yanking Albert from Sanborn Field Day. I was hoping she’d just maybe forgotten my promise to take her to John’s Flaming Hearth because we’d been so busy. The other possibility, the one I hadn’t wanted to think about, was that she was hoping I’d forgotten. But the tapestry and those little canoes said otherwise.

  It was that lull between the Bazaar and the evening Social—time to ask her. I felt the smile come on as I reached the Old Gym’s door. I didn’t want to just take her to John’s for something to eat. When we were there, in candlelight, I’d tell her how I really felt about her, how I’d felt since early summer and just couldn’t tell her. I’d tell her that I’d been afraid that starting a relationship in a band had potential to screw things up, but now that we’d evolved into something different, something stronger, I was free to say what I’d wanted to, for so long.

  “Too late,” Marvin said when I stepped back in. He carefully swaddled a Double-Heart Canoe in Bubble Wrap. “Or are you back for the Social? Doesn’t seem like your scene, but I got an extra horn rattle.” Marvin didn’t offer me a drum, politely noting that I didn’t know the Traditional songs well enough to drum for others. The rattle was more intuitive, a starter instrument, since you had to learn in public. I hadn’t been to a Traditional Social in years, and I felt embarrassed. It was tricky to avoid them when everyone knows you’re a musician.

  “I’m good,” I said. “When did you start drumming for Socials?”

  “While ago. We each find our own way, isn’t it? You get help from some people, but others maybe need glasses. You can be right in front of them, and they don’t even see you.” He was telling me I’d been shitty to him by pretending he didn’t exist. “They’re a man short tonight, so I agreed. My first time with dancers. Hope I’m good, or at least good enough.”

  “How’d you guys do today?” I asked, pretending I didn’t hear his jab.

  “Sold out of every cap, at least half of the Double Hearts. You know, those are mostly for tourists.” I nodded. “Maggi’s weird thing didn’t sell, but we knew that ahead. It did get noticed.”

  “Sometimes, that’s all you can ask for,” I said.

  Jim and I arrived at one of the few fancy hotels in Niagara Falls an hour after the Bazaar ended. There weren’t many—it was mostly motels on the US side. Jim had a different kind of cap on, the kind you see old men wearing.

  He must have seen the panic on my face, because he started laughing and took my hand.

  “Just a dinner reservation,” he said. I banged my head on the headrest and laughed. “Don’t seem so relieved,” he added. “I thought you wanted me to be your first.”

  “I do. I do. I just …”

 
“I know. Sorry. This is the place we’re gonna go, but I planned for our first time for a different night. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He brought my hand up to his mouth, kissing my knuckles. “So I thought we’d take a stroll through the lobby, you’ll know where to go, next week.” We passed the registration desk, and he pointed to the elevators. “Pay attention to those,” he said. We entered the restaurant, and he gave a different last name for the reservation.

  “Look, Honeymoon Suite,” Jim said, sliding a pamphlet to me. “It’s not our honeymoon, but it’ll sort of be like one, right?” I opened the brochure. My throat locked up.

  “At first, I thought we might go to Canada,” he continued, “but that could get tricky.” Even with me using tribal ID to cross into Canada, they could ask him anything, and I’m sure he was hoping to avoid And what’s the relationship between you and this fifteen-year-old girl? They’d probably ask me, figuring they could trip me up easier. They’d have no idea that I’d been crossing the border and sometimes answering their questions (depending on how militant my family was feeling) for my entire life. I could appreciate the suspicion we’d encounter at the border, though I thought it was almost as complicated to get a hotel room in Niagara Falls.

  The brochure bed and bathtub were heart-shaped, and the bedspread looked like it was red satin. The towels were deep red too. I couldn’t decide if that was awesome or creepy.

  “I wanna tell you something,” Jim said. “I know you think I haven’t been good to Lewis.” He wanted me to notice he hadn’t said “loser.” “But he really did mess up my nephew’s life. I have a hard time getting over that.” Carson had told me the whole story after the Battle of the Bands (a Carson version anyway). It helped explain a lot of things about Lewis.

  “Oh, and another thing? I told Marchese I swapped the turkeys,” Jim said, startling me. “That my mom had wanted one without the little pop-up thing and that I didn’t think Marchese’d notice. I apologized. I got Vern to claim he saw me. You know, his ass would be in as much trouble.”

  “She believed you?”

  “No, I don’t think so, but this is a bigger mess than she wants, so I gave her an out. Teachers with high-maintenance classrooms? They know what happens when they piss us off.”

  “You did this for Lewis?”

  “No, babe. I could give a shit about that little scumbag. I did it for you. I want you to know how much I”—he tapped the heart-shaped bed on the brochure—“you.” We both smiled. When our dinners came, the salad arrived first. “Which fork you supposed to use first?” Jim whispered, and I laughed, shrugging. We each picked a different one.

  “One thing about the room,” he said. “Cheapest night’s Monday. Sorry.” He gave a sad smile. “I don’t make that much. Gotta be creative. I figured this coming Monday was short notice, but with a week, you could maybe come up with an excuse to be away on a weeknight?”

  “Monday?”

  “Kind of tough for me too. That’s my bowling night.”

  “You can’t skip bowling in exchange for my virginity?” I said, laughing.

  “Keep it down!” he hissed, looking around, but no one paid us attention. “It’s semifinals. Normally, I could miss a week, but not then. I thought I’d pick you up like usual, and you could hang at the alley while I roll frames. There’s a snack bar, video games. You like video games?”

  “Never really played any.”

  “I’ll get you some quarters before we go in. I usually stick around for Monday Night Football in the lounge with the rest of the league. We have a pool. I could win.”

  “How long is that?” My dad watched off and on. “Doesn’t ever end when they say.”

  “Yeah, football’s not exact. It ends when it does. But everything should look normal. You know that people won’t understand if they found out.”

  We finished eating, and Jim took me back to the Rez. He wanted to park somewhere so we could make out before he had to drop me off, but I couldn’t think of a single place. Any good spot would already have people partying—it was the Saturday night of a holiday weekend.

  “What’s all that about?” he said as we came up to the Old Gym, where the parking lot was still full. “Thought your thing was over at five.”

  “That’s a Social. Different from the Bazaar,” I said. “I can get a ride from someone here.”

  “We could find a spot somewhere near the back,” he said, rubbing my thigh.

  “Not in this car,” I said. “Particularly not with my name on it.”

  “I can get rid of it,” he said. “A friend of mine does pinstriping, and he gave me a good deal on it. I’d hate to do it, but …”

  “Let’s wait,” I said. “It’s a little complicating but I like it.” I leaned over and gave him a quick kiss and hopped out before he got any more ideas. It was quite possible some people were in their cars in this lot, sneaking a little fun of their own, and I didn’t want to risk being seen.

  He pulled out, and I watched him disappear before heading to the back door of the Old Gym, near the kitchen and bathrooms and locker rooms for the basketball players. Right when I got near the door, Marvin stepped out of the building’s shadows, crushing out a cigarette.

  “When did you start smoking?” I asked.

  “While ago,” he said, offering me one, but I shook my head. I thought Jim’s cigars were gross enough. I didn’t need to contribute to that nasty cloud. “Suit yourself. Carson came looking for you then split. I invited him to stick around for the Social, but he flew out the door.”

  “I don’t think Socials are his thing.”

  “No. Not his thing,” Marvin said, taking a deep drag, lighting his face the way Jim did.

  “Say,” he added after a minute. “Wasn’t that Bandit you just got out of the same that picked us up the other night? The one that happened to be coming through the Rez when we were walking to the school?”

  “Yeah. Weird, huh?” I said. “He came to the Bazaar and then invited a few of us to go get something to eat.” It is almost impossible to lie to your twin. Plus, given the Eee-ogg factor out here, it was quite possible others had noticed him, and Marvin was testing me.

  “A few of you fit in that car?” Real Marvin was getting to be as nosy as Ghost Marvin.

  “A couple cars.”

  “Marie and her man with you?” he asked. We’d silently agreed not to talk about that, but he was breaching the contract. I didn’t say anything, and he took another drag. “I got eyes, Dear Sister. And they tell me way more things than you think.”

  “Like what?” I didn’t want to hear it but figured I should.

  “Like, for someone with no connections here,” he said, “that guy in the Bandit spends a lot of time on the Rez, isn’t it?”

  “He knows me. He knows Lewis. Now he knows you. That’s some connection,” I said, but we could both hear how dumb it was.

  “I got us a ride for when we’re ready,” he said. “They said I could come, but maybe we can strap you to the roof or something.” He laughed then, like his old self. We went inside, but the Old Gym felt strangely smaller. Almost everyone in the room was doing a giant double-concentric-circle Round Dance. Because the inner ring of dancers had a smaller space to travel, their movements were always a little different, expanding, contracting, but caught by the same vibe and rhythm, like rows of corn waving in those conflicting breezes that arrive just before a storm. I wanted to join in but I couldn’t find an opening, so I watched until it ended, and then Marvin and I got our ride home. I didn’t have to be strapped to the roof, as it turned out, but I did have to sit on someone’s lap, and they teased me for my bony hetch-eh. This was a pretty standard Rez joke, since we all had what Lewis called shovel butt. It made me feel like I was home. It had only taken six months.

  December 8, 4:49 p.m.

  One West Seventy-Second Street, Manhattan: A musician and an artist, husband and wife, are heading to a recording session that will also include a shoot with a well-known photographer, for a
specific assignment. The musician and the artist have met with the photographer earlier, in their apartment. The photographer has been instructed only to photograph the musician. The artist and the musician have other plans. The photographer says for their plan to work, they must do something memorable. The musician strips naked in the session. This is not the first time he’s lain himself so bare. Twelve years before, the musician and the artist posed nude on an album cover. They were not husband and wife at the time. The photo was taken on the occasion of the first time they made love. For this new photo, the artist, now the musician’s wife, is fully clothed. The musician is testing the boldness of Rolling Stone magazine. Its publisher has requested this session, to accompany an interview after a long period of silence. It is noteworthy. Will the magazine run so naked a photo on the cover?

  At an airport terminal miles away, a man lands in New York City. He is returning from the Netherlands, where he has sought international support to stop industrial dumping in Mohawk territory. He is a member of the Seneca Nation looking out for his people and their ongoing survival: cultural, political, physical. Nine years before, he had found allies in the musician and the artist, the husband and wife. With their high-profile support, New York State was unable to assert “Eminent domain,” trying to take land at Onondaga Nation for a highway expansion. The man is a member of the Haudenosaunee, known by others as the Iroquois, also known as the Six Nations. The Six Nations are the Mohawk, the Cayuga, the Onondaga, the Oneida, the Seneca, and the Tuscarora. The man understands the power of using a united voice. The man understands the strength of speaking as a group of like-minded individuals, acting in concert.

  A third man has flown across the country. He waits outside the exclusive apartment building at Seventy-Second Street and Central Park West. He has lingered off and on for a couple of days. He holds an object. He talks with an amateur photographer who is also waiting. They wait for the musician living in the building. When the artist and the musician emerge from the building, the man thrusts the object in front of the musician. The object is an album, the musician’s recently released collaboration with his wife, the artist. It’s called Double Fantasy. The musician asks if the man wants it signed. The man nods, and the musician writes his name across the image of his own wife’s neck, outstretched in a kiss with him. The amateur photographer captures this moment. The musician asks if that is all the man wants. The man takes the album back and nods. The musician talks with the photographer. They know each other casually. The musician and the artist are offered a ride by some radio professionals with whom they have spent the afternoon in a long-ranging interview. They plan to air it on Valentine’s Day. The photographer has taken a photo that will be very important shortly. In this moment, it is just film, exposed to light for less than a second. The light leaves a permanent scar on the virgin film emulsion. The scar will become an image. The photographer sees the autograph on the record, messy but recognizable.