Struts & Frets

by Jon Skovron

  “Sure,” I said and valiantly attempted a smile. “Sure I will, Laurie.”

  “Thanks, Sammy.” She gave another faint smile and then hurried off to sit with her girlfriends.

  Our table seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

  “Dude,” said Rick, giving me his most serious look. “Why didn’t you invite her to sit with us?”

  “Why would I do that?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Hey, she’s totally not my type, but I have to admit she’s smoking hot. And anyway, you’ve been mooning over her our entire high school lives.”

  “Really?” asked TJ. “You have a thing for Laurie?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “It’s just lame and depressing to talk about. And anyway, she’s clearly not into me, so just let it go.”

  But I was the one who couldn’t let it go.

  “Why Joe?” I demanded. “What’s he got that I don’t?”

  “He’s older,” said TJ.

  “He’s tougher,” said Rick.

  “He’s the frontman,” said Alexander. “Don’t they always get the hot chicks?”

  “Thanks, guys,” I said. “Consider my ego boosted.”

  Then Jen5 flopped down next to me, spilling books and notebooks from her army bag in a cascade across the table. “What did Vampirella want?” she asked.

  “She was asking where Joe was,” said Rick.

  “Ha,” she said around a bite of salami sandwich. “Aren’t they a match made in heaven.”

  “That’s not what Sammy thinks,” said Alexander.

  “That’s ’cause Sammy’s a retard,” said Jen5 without looking at me.

  “I don’t know why you don’t like Laurie,” I said. “I don’t think you’ve really given her a chance.”

  “Oh, I gave her a chance all right. Back in junior high, before she’d discovered goth and was just another snobby prep girl. We were supposed to sell Girl Scout cookies together and—”

  “You were in the Girl Scouts?” asked Alexander.

  “For one year,” I said.

  “My parents were concerned about my antisocial behavior,” Jen5 said with a shrug. “They thought it would bring me out of my shell. But as the case with Miss Vampirella illustrates, a year of merit badges, cookie sales, car washes, and memorized slogans may have made me more social, but it didn’t do much good for the ‘anti’ part.”

  “So what happened?” said Rick. “Did you slap her or something? Pull her hair out?”

  “Grow up,” she said.

  “Never!”

  “Anyway, we were supposed to sell cookies together, and I was trying to talk to her like she was a normal human being and not some brainless Kewpie doll until finally she turned to me and said: ‘Uh, hey, Jen. My friend’s mom just pulled into the parking lot, so if you could just, like, not talk to me until she’s inside the store and can’t see us anymore, I’d really appreciate it.’”

  “You are lying,” I told Jen5.

  “You wish,” she said.

  “You know what I heard about love?” TJ asked suddenly.

  We all stared at him.

  “Uh, no,” I said, wondering where this came from. “What did you hear?”

  “That everyone has an image in their mind of the perfect girl or guy. And whenever someone fits eighty percent of that image, we block out the rest. We just don’t even see it. And we continue to block it out until we get to know them so well that we’re comfortable with them. Then we finally see the other twenty percent and it could be the worst thing in the world and we just never noticed before.”

  “Well, by all means, then,” said Jen5. “Let us hasten this connection between Laurie and Sammy so that he might see the idiocy of his desire more quickly! Hopefully he won’t get crabs in the process!”

  “Jesus, why do you have to be like that?” I said. “TJ’s trying to talk about something serious and you can’t even . . .”

  She was just sitting there smirking at me. Maybe she was one of my best friends, but she also pissed me off a lot.

  “You know what?” I said. “Just forget it.” And I got up, grabbed my bag, and left the table.

  As I walked away, I heard her call to me, “Come on now! Sammy! Don’t be such a spaz! I was only kidding!”

  But I knew she wasn’t. Jen5 only smiled when she was dead serious.

  After school, I pulled the Boat up in front of my grandfather’s apartment building. He lived on the first floor of a place just outside German Village, so it didn’t have to keep that old-building look. I cut the ignition and waited while the Boat’s engine settled, listening to the groaning tick of the radiator slow down to silence. I was stalling. I didn’t really want to see him. I mean, I did. I loved my grandfather, maybe more than anyone else, but . . . well . . . he was getting a little crazy in his old age. I was tempted to skip it completely and tell Mom he was asleep or something. But I knew I wouldn’t do that. It’d make me miserable all night thinking about it. So after another five minutes of staring at my dashboard, I decided to face the music.

  Literally.

  When I stepped through the front door, noise hit me like a brick in the face. The lights were dim, and as I waited for my eyes to adjust, I tried to figure out what was in the noise. The Oscar Peterson Trio. Billie Holiday. And something else more modern, probably Wynton Marsalis. Three totally different jazz artists being blasted from three different stereos at the same time. And there was something else that I couldn’t figure out. It wasn’t until my eyes finally adjusted to the gloom that I saw it was my grandfather playing the piano. That gave me a little hope, because these days he usually only played when he was in a good mood.

  I walked through the living room and over to the piano, then stopped and watched him play for a minute.

  He was mostly bald, and the little bit of white hair he had around the sides and back was frizzy, almost like cotton candy. He had a short beard, which I always thought was a good idea for an old guy. It covered up that turkey neck that most of them got. He looked skinnier every time I saw him. He had a nurse or aide or whatever they were called who came in and made him breakfast, but I don’t think he could afford any more help than that, so the only other time he ate was when Mom or I came to visit and made something for him. Eating just didn’t interest him very much anymore.

  He didn’t seem to notice me, or else he didn’t feel like talking. He just kept playing. After a little while, I went into the kitchen. His freezer was filled with the same frozen dinners that filled ours. Mom just bought a ton of them at some warehouse club. I pulled out two and popped them in the microwave.

  While I stared at the revolving plastic trays through the microwave door, I heard the Wynton Marsalis album finish. Right after the microwave timer dinged, the Oscar Peterson Trio stopped. While I was setting the tiny kitchen table for us, Billie Holiday stopped too. All that was left was my grandfather’s piano. It was a little out of tune and it sounded like he couldn’t quite make up his mind whether he was playing lounge or swing style. But I liked listening to him. It reminded me of when I was a kid and my mom used to take me to see him play. It hadn’t happened a lot, because he usually played at nightclubs and other places my mom didn’t think a kid should be. But every once in a while he’d have a gig at a regular concert hall, usually backing up some famous musician on tour. I’d also get to hear him when my mom was going to school at night to get her graduate degree. She’d drop me off at Gramps’s place and we’d sit in front of the piano most of the night. He’d play lots of old big band tunes and teach me the words and I would sing along. He still lived in the same apartment, but it seemed brighter and warmer in my memory.

  He was playing Duke Ellington’s “I’m Beginning to See the Light.” It was one of his favorites, so I knew it really well. I began to sing along:

  “I never cared much for moonlit skies. I never wink back at fireflies.”

  I tried to remember what he looked like back then. He used to wear lots of beatnik turtlenec
ks and berets and heavy sweaters. I remembered that. But I couldn’t picture his face. I knew he used to smile a lot, but I couldn’t remember what that looked like. A year ago he had to retire from playing because he was having trouble remembering songs, and he hadn’t really been the same since.

  “Boy, are you going to stare at that food or are you going to eat it?” said Gramps.

  I’d been so zoned out that I hadn’t noticed he’d stopped playing. Now he was standing in the kitchen doorway glaring at me.

  “Hey, Gramps,” I said. “Dinner’s ready.”

  “I can see that!” he said, and sat down at the table. “I’m not completely blind, you know!”

  “I know, Gramps.”

  “Just mostly.”

  “Yep.”

  “Haven’t lost my perfect-pitch ear, though.”

  “Nope,” I lied. “Have something to eat.” I nudged his tray.

  He shook his head. “You first.”

  “Gramps,” I said. “I swear I didn’t put anything in it.” My mom doesn’t think he takes his medication regularly, so sometimes she tries to slip it into his food.

  His eyes narrowed and he gave me a weird look, like he thought I might be lying. “How do I know for sure? Why don’t you take a bite and prove it to me?”

  I rolled my eyes to show him I thought he was being totally ridiculous, but I took a bite of his food and chewed slowly while he watched me carefully. I guess he was waiting to see if I keeled over and started foaming at the mouth or something. When he was sure none of that was going to happen, he sat down and started shoveling food in so fast I couldn’t believe he had time to swallow.

  “That damn McCarthy was here again today,” he said between bites.

  “Again?” I asked. He’d recently been talking about this guy a lot. Senator Joseph McCarthy was some freaky congressman in the ’50s who went around trying to prove that artists, actors, and musicians were all communist spies for Russia. No matter what I said, Gramps refused to believe that the guy died in 1957. At first it had been weird the way he always went on about him, but after a while it got kind of fun. So now I played along with it.

  “Do you think he’s on to you?” I asked.

  “Ha! I’m no commie, and certainly no spy.” He stirred his beef stew around a little bit, then looked back at me fiercely. “I’m a socialist! But the distinction between a commie scum and a thoughtful socialist is far too difficult for an ignoramus like McCarthy to grasp.”

  I couldn’t really figure out the difference either, but I still played along. “That’s the truth,” I said.

  Gramps was getting more worked up now. “Last I checked, this was still a free country!”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about him, Gramps.”

  He placed his fork on the side of his nose and gave me a wink. “Damn right.” When he took the fork away, there was a blob of gravy on the side of his nose. Then he frowned. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Have you covered your tracks?” he asked, looking worried. “I can’t have my own grandson in prison!”

  “Gramps, I’m not a commie or a socialist.”

  “Ha! You think that matters to scum like McCarthy? He and his kind despise musicians. They can’t comprehend living a life of creativity and individualism! They try to turn anything you do into some kind of anti-American statement.”

  “Really, Gramps,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a problem.”

  He didn’t look very convinced. Finally, he said, “Well, tell me what your set list is right now. That’s usually where they start looking, to see what kind of songs you’re playing.”

  I told him the set list we were working on.

  “I don’t recognize any of those songs,” he said.

  “That’s because I wrote them.”

  “Wrote?” He blinked in confusion. “Why? Can’t you play anyone else’s songs?”

  “Sure we could.”

  “Then why are you writing your own? Only people who can’t play the standards have to make up their own songs.”

  “That’s not how it is anymore, Gramps. Most people play their own music.”

  “That’s ridiculous! Are you telling me that at your age, you’re writing better songs than the Duke? Than Bird? I love you, kid, but somehow I think you’ve got a few more years before you’re ready for that.”

  “Gramps, nowadays you only play other people’s music if you can’t write your own.”

  “An entire generation of arrogant hacks.” He sighed. “Let me tell you something, kid. In all my years in clubs and bars, on cruise ships, and in festivals and concert halls, I was never forced to play anything that I had to make up.”

  “I know, Gramps,” I said. There didn’t seem to be much point in arguing with him. He wasn’t even listening.

  “So.” Gramps gazed balefully down at me, his old eyes wide and a little wild. “When are you getting married?”

  Like clockwork. Music and girls. The only things he could think about.

  “Gramps,” I said, “I’m only seventeen.”

  “SO WHAT? When I was your age I’d already met the love of my life. Your grandmother. Vivian . . .” He sighed and his eyes went unfocused. “You don’t remember her, do you?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Although I think I remember her perfume, you know? I have this really vivid memory of sitting on someone’s lap while I watched you play at some festival. And I know it wasn’t Mom because of the way she smelled.”

  “God, I loved her,” said Gramps, his eyes and voice drifting farther away until it was almost like he was talking to himself. “Viv. She was a real beauty. And kind, oh so kind. Your mother got her looks. Not too much of the kindness, though. Viv understood how hard it was to be a musician. She understood what a wretched, callous thing life can be to an artist. She was a singer herself, see. A voice like a fallen angel. And for a while, a short, sweet while, we were together, partners in crime, and we could handle anything . . .”

  He was blinking away tears as he looked up at the ceiling. He really wasn’t the crying type, so seeing him like that made me a little uncomfortable. Then, still looking up at the ceiling, his hand groped across the table until it found mine, and grasped it hard.

  “Oh God, how I loved that woman,” he whispered.

  I patted the top of his hand, all liver spots and paper-thin skin, and said, “I know, Gramps. I know.”

  After that, I felt like I couldn’t just leave after dinner. So I stayed pretty late and we talked about music and girls, like always. His mood swings kept me kind of off balance, the way he would be angry and ranting and then suddenly get all sad and teary. But he was in one of his poetic moods, so he talked on and on about Parker and Gillespie, Davis and Coltrane. Names that I had heard whispered throughout my life with absolute reverence. These were gods to him, and I loved hearing him talk about them and about their music. It wasn’t just about his jazz. He would talk about how important all music was. How it took us—not just the people who played it but the people who heard it—to a place above the normal boring world. A place of pure beauty. And that would somehow always lead him into talking about beautiful women. And how they were the last refuge of the creative soul in this harsh, modern world.

  Sure, he was moody and a little crazy. But how could you not love him?

  forever when you had something cool planned at night. That day seemed endless because later I was going to see Monster Zero play.

  I was actually a little nervous to see them. They had been playing in the local scene for a couple years and they had a big following. They’d even had a regional tour, up to Cleveland and Detroit, down to Cincinnati, west to Indianapolis, and east to Pittsburgh, to promote an album they’d made on a local indie label. If you were in the scene, you knew who they were. But it wasn’t like you could buy their album in New York, L.A., or even Seattle. They were ours alone. That was until last week, when some cheesy mainstream rock magazine had named Columbus “Th
e Next Seattle.” During the grunge thing in the early ’90s, major labels could pick up unknown bands in Seattle and make a ton of money off of them by calling it “alternative rock.” Ever since, they’d been trying to do the same thing someplace else, getting their marketing minions to convince us that some up-and-coming city was the new cool scene. One year, the year Death Cab for Cutie got big, they even named Seattle “The Next Seattle.” How dumb was that? I guess some people believed it—the ones who watched MTV and read stupid mainstream rock magazines. But anyone who was already in the scene knew it was total bullshit.

  But now Columbus had been named the new “Next Seattle” and Monster Zero had been named the best band in the Columbus scene. Tonight was their first gig since the magazine article came out. Would they be the same cool band they’d always been? Or would the lure of money and national fame have already sunk its claws into them?

  At last the final bell rang, and I went straight home. I had to change, eat dinner, call everybody to figure out who was driving who and where we would all meet up, and be out the door before Mom got home and officially reminded me it was a school night and gave me a curfew. I didn’t like going against her directly, but if we didn’t talk about it before I left, then I could be a little later that night and plead misunderstanding or forgetfulness. As long as I wasn’t too ridiculously late, she’d let me slide.

  Rick lived closest to me, so I picked him up first. When I turned on to his block, I saw him sitting out on the curb waiting for me. His house was much nicer than mine. His mom was a doctor and his dad was in finance (whatever that meant), so they made a lot of money. Although you wouldn’t know it, looking at Rick. If anything, it looked like he’d tried to make himself look even scruffier since school let out. But that didn’t mean he could resist taking shots at me.

  “Boat’s getting worse,” he said as he climbed into the passenger seat.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I came outside as soon as I heard it coming, thinking it was only a block or two away, but I’ve been out here for ten minutes.”