Old Flames, Burned Hands

by McGregor, Tim

  Why? Who in their right mind would chase such a cruel master? It was no surprise that musical pursuits were so often described as Faustian. Deals with the devil, haggled over at dusty crossroads.

  Tilda stepped into the center of the room, feeling the threadbare Persian rug under her bare feet, and turned slowly in a circle. Surveying her little Fortress of Solitude from its epicentre where a chair and a mic were set up. The amp behind her, also miked. The soundboard at the back of the room, the guitars upright on their stands.

  She stood perfectly still, hands over her mouth as if she was about to scream or smash something but she did neither. Her hands dropped and she popped her fists onto her hips in a gesture of defiance, nay resolve.

  She knew what she had to do.

  SHANE KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG by smell alone. Getting out of bed every morning had never been a problem for him because of the warm aroma of brewing coffee that drifted up from the kitchen. Like a promise, it lured him out of bed to chase the day but this morning was different. No yummy coffee smell, no telltale gurgling sounds of the coffeemaker. Something wasn’t right.

  Coming downstairs, he was greeted only by the stale tang of old java. The coffeemaker was still on but the coffee in the pot was a sludgy treacle long past due. The kitchen was empty. No sign of his wife anywhere.

  “Tilda?”

  For a moment, he wondered if she was still in bed. Had he woken up and stumbled downstairs without noticing her still asleep? No, her side of the bed had been empty. What the hell?

  “Where’s mom?” Molly shuffled into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes and looking around the quiet space. “Is she sick?”

  He was about to say that he didn’t know but thought better of it. Sorry sweetheart, we lost your mother sometime during the night. No clue where she could be.

  A loud clatter from the backyard brought them both to the kitchen window. The door to the garage stood open, light streaming from inside. Piled onto the grass of the yard was a tumble of junk and debris. A milk crate flew out the garage door and crashed onto the paving stones, rolling over loudly. Shane looked at his daughter and then started for the door.

  “Mom’s finally having that big mental breakdown we’ve all been waiting for,” Molly said, following him outside.

  “Honey?” Shane called out.

  There was no reply. He stood under the lintel of the garage door, about to call out again but decided to duck. A metal bookend bounced off the door jamb and tumbled onto the grass. “Tilda! What the hell are you doing?”

  The studio looked like it had been ransacked by looters. Broken stands and bales of wire littered the floor, along with old notebooks and paperbacks. Guitar necks and tuning pegs and broken treblecleffs. Stray knobs and old vacuum tubes. Yards of cable coiled over the mess like a swarm of dead tentacles.

  Astride the chaos was Tilda, her pajamas damp with sweat and her hands grimed from digging through the dusty mess. Her cheeks flushed, an odd light sparkling in her eyes. “Oh hi. How’d you sleep?”

  “In bed.” Shane looked for a bare patch of floor to stand in. “How long have you been out here?”

  “A while. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Mom?” Molly crowded into the doorframe, eyes bugged at the mess. “Did you change your meds?”

  “Molly, honey,” Tilda smeared her forearm across her brow. “I really don’t like that sarcasm of yours. It’s mean and it’s beneath you.” She bent back to her work, pulling out boxes from under the bench.

  Shane looked at his daughter then his wife again. “I think she meant to ask what you’re doing in here.”

  “Cleaning out the studio. Getting rid of everything.”

  “Everything?” The girl looked sceptical.

  Shane stepped over the amplifiers blocking the entrance. “Why?”

  “I don’t need it anymore,” Tilda said, reaching into the box and plucking out an oddly shaped pair of sunglasses. “Hey look, my old bat-glasses. Catch, Molly. They’re yours.”

  The girl caught the flying sunglasses and unfolded the bat-shaped frames. She put them on and turned to her dad. “I think this is what they call a moment of self-actualization.”

  “Again with the sarcasm.” Tilda tossed the box onto the pile and reached for another. “It’s a cheap shield, honey. If you got something to say, just be straight about it.”

  Shane took a step closer to his wife. “Why won’t you need this anymore? It’s your studio.”

  “The musical career of Tilda Parish is kaput. Last night was the farewell performance. I wish it had been more of a bang than a whimper but… so it goes. All that’s left now is to snuff out the footlights and put up the chairs.”

  “Told you it was an Oprah moment,” Molly reported from behind the bat-glasses.

  It was then that Shane saw the studio’s now bare walls. The posters were gone. He took Tilda’s arm to slow her down. “Last night was just a bad show. They happen sometimes. You know that.”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “And,” he said, the frustration leaking out of his tone, “one bad gig is no reason to go nuclear and do something drastic.”

  “This isn’t drastic. Neither is it rash nor spur of the moment or,” a sharp eye on Molly, “an Oprah moment. It’s been a long time coming. Last night simply underlined the moment. Nothing more.”

  Shane let his hands drop to his sides, unable to gauge her mood or formulate any response. He’d been in this spot before. A wrong word either way could set her off. Molly killed the subsequent silence. “This is has been real but when are we having breakfast?”

  “You’ll have to fix your own this morning.”

  Molly tilted her head, as if her mother had just responded in Lithuanian. “What?”

  “Pour some cereal into a bowl, sweetheart. Add milk. Voila.”

  “God.” Molly stomped towards the house. “Now who’s being sarcastic?”

  “Hey, come here.” Shane studied his wife’s eyes for some telltale cloudiness that would tell him what this was about but her eyes remained clear. When he slid his arms around her and pulled her in, he expected she would break down and sob onto his shoulder, letting out whatever was pent up inside. Just as she had so many times in the past. “Why all this? Why now?”

  No sobs came, no shuddering of the shoulders or slow collapse into his chest. Tilda patted his back and pulled away, eyes lucid. “I’m done with it. I chased it long enough but now it’s over. No more heartbreaks, no clinging to hope that there’s still time.” She turned away and pulled down the last of the handbills from the wall.

  Shane remained stranded on the debris-strewn floor, unsure of what to do. With his embrace failing to bring on a gush of tears, his arsenal of responses was depleted and he couldn’t even move without having to leap to a uncluttered space on the floor. A line from a song flitted across his brain, about finding no good place to stand in a slaughter. “So,” he said, “you’re just gonna quit playing music?”

  “Not just playing. Writing, recording, performing, rehearsing.” She balled up an old gig poster and lobbed it onto the pile. “Fretting about it, obsessing over it. All of it, over and done.”

  “Just like that?” He snapped his fingers. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to take Sarah’s offer to help run the clinic. Earn a steady income, which will get us out from under the debt. As for this,” she surveyed the room then settled her gaze back to him. “I’ll sell the gear. Toss the junk. And then we can have a garage again. Maybe you can build that woodshop you’ve always wanted.”

  “Don’t make this about me,” he cautioned.

  “Or, if our daughter’s demeanour doesn’t improve, maybe we can move her out here until she’s nineteen.” Tilda brushed the dust from her hands. “What time is it?”

  “Just after seven.”

  “I need some coffee.” She took his hand and leap-frogged over the mess to the door. “I’m going to drive you to work today. You can streetcar it home tonight, okay?�
��

  “Why?”

  “I need to load up the gear. Then haul all that other crap to the dump.”

  “It’s not all crap,” he said. “What about the records you made? The masters and the songbooks and all that stuff? You’re not hauling all that to the dump, are you?”

  “No. I have a plan for that stuff.”

  SHE lucked out snagging a parking spot right outside the door of Orbiter Music. The shop owners, two brothers that Tilda had known for years, helped lug her equipment inside for a closer look.

  “You having a fire sale?” Travis said, kneeling over the gear assembled on the shop floor. He flipped the latches on the case holding the Telecaster. Next to it lay the Gretsch and two other acoustic guitars. Three more cases yet to be opened, then the two amps.

  “Clearing up some floor space,” Tilda said. She felt suddenly leery about revealing her decision to quit to two other musicians. Irrational, she knew, but there it was. “So what do you think?”

  “These amps are sweet. They’ll sell within the week.” Matt said. “What else we got?”

  Travis opened the last guitar case and whistled when he saw the Rickenbacker. “Bingo. This one you should put through consignment. The Telly too. You’d get more than what we could offer you for it.”

  Tilda watched the shop owners go over her equipment, checking each piece, talking quietly between themselves. She had expected this to be painful, wistful even, but it wasn’t. Surrounded by all the guitars hanging on the walls inside the shop, her own instruments laid out on the floor were just more of the same. Gear. “Sounds good to me. What now?”

  Matt stood and stepped over his brother towards the counter. “I’ll start the paperwork.”

  SWINGING onto Lakeshore Boulevard, Tilda was seized by a sneezing jag so bad she almost sideswiped the Nissan into another vehicle. The back of the SUV was filled to the brim with the garbage and debris from the studio, and all that dust kicked up and roiled through the air. Even with the windows open, it would find her nose and bring on the sneezing. Wiping her watery eyes, Tilda wondered if there was a dustcloud trailing out from the back of the Pathfinder.

  The pile of trash she had dislodged from the studio was too much to leave curbside, so she piled it into the truck and headed east. The transfer station on Commissioners Street was the only one open to the public today. Normally Tilda avoided the entire Portlands area but there was no getting around it if she wanted the junk gone.

  Waiting in line at the weigh station, her gut rumbled uneasily being this close to Cherry Street, psychically urging the trucks before hers to hurry the hell up so she could get out of here. The queasiness dropped away when she drove up into the station and backed the Pathfinder up to the massive berm of trash. Hauling her junk out of the back and adding it to the massive pile, an idle thought flitted through her mind about coming back to this area later, to deal with the last remnants of the studio. A small stack of belongings remained behind in the garage that, until now, she didn’t know what she was going to do with. Driving back down the ramp to stop on the weigh scale and pay her fee, the idle thought had resolved into a plan.

  The plan wouldn’t be easy but it seemed like a fitting end to her musical pursuit. A tad melodramatic maybe but, hey, sometimes the grand gesture was required.

  Back home, she lugged the vacuum cleaner outside to hoover up all the grit left in the back of the truck. Shane would have a fit if he saw the mess in here. For a man who routinely could never locate a broom in the house, he was oddly fussy about the truck. With most of the day burned away, she had just enough time to shower before starting dinner. Towelling off, she got dressed with her back to the full length mirror. The day had been productive and her mood high, no need to spoil it by looking at herself naked in that big mirror.

  Seeing the mess Shane and Molly had left behind for her to clean up dampened the high from her day’s accomplishments. How can two people make this much mess pouring cereal? She had to hustle cleaning up first and the one thing she hated was having to rush dinner. Rushed to get dinner on time, she spilled and made messes of her own and that infuriated her. She should have gotten dressed after cooking. Cubing tomatoes, she had squirted juice on the sundress she’d put on, nearly ruining it. Peeling it off, she draped the dress over a chair and finished dinner in her underwear. Could the neighbours see? She decided she didn’t care, then scalded her bare leg with splatter from the steam pot.

  “WOW,” Shane said as he came to the dinner table. “What’s the occasion?”

  The overhead was dimmed. Two tapers in fancy candlesticks enveloped the table in a warm ambient glow. Mussels al Diablo heaped into bowls, an uncorked bottle of red. And Tilda, back in her dress with her hair pinned up.

  “Fresh starts,” she said and poured the wine.

  Molly flopped into a chair and took in the setting with a dropped lip. Her eyes hidden behind the bat-glasses. “Did we forget a birthday?”

  “Take those off, please,” Tilda said, passing her the salad bowl.

  “Your mother’s marking one era and beginning another.” Shane took the bottle and splashed a finger into a glass before his daughter. “You can help us toast it.”

  “Shane?” Tilda protested.

  “Her first taste,” he said. “It’s a special occasion.”

  Molly eyes goggled at the glass before her. “I get to drink? Chin chin. This is the music thingy, right?”

  “Yes.” Tilda raised her glass. “The music thingy.”

  “Jeepers, Molly.” He shook his head. “You have no idea how talented your mother is. The songs she’s written. Or seeing her onstage…”

  “I’ve seen her play.”

  “In a crowded bar, up onstage belting it out? It’s powerful.”

  Tilda swirled her raised glass to move things along. “Okay, let’s keep it simple and not get maudlin. Onwards and upwards.”

  Clink.

  Despite what her father assumed, this wasn’t Molly’s first taste of wine. She had snuck some at a wedding last fall and earlier this spring at her grandmother’s place in Wasaga. For sure she had developed a taste for it now. She took a sip and tried her damndest to keep her lips from puckering but, in the end, lost out.

  Shane threw his eyes at Tilda and they both laughed. He tucked into his mussels, said “This looks great, honey.”

  They ate in silence, the only sound that of the shells clinking into the cast-off bowl. Molly ignored the mussels, choosing instead to dip hunks of butter-slathered bread into the broth and slurping it back. Shane took her bowl, stole the untouched shellfish and gave the bowl back. He looked up at Tilda. “How’s the garage looking?”

  “Cleaner than it’s ever been. Bigger too, with all the stuff gone.” She rose and crossed to the counter where her bag lay. She came back, tossing an envelope at him. “Check it out.”

  He opened the envelope and his eyes widened at the sight of the bills. “Holy smokes. Where did this come from?”

  “I sold the gear today. Not bad, huh?”

  “How much is here?”

  “Almost five grand.” She found her glass and took a sip. “Plus there’s more to come. The Telly and the Rick are up on consignment. They might fetch another five.”

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Cool,” Molly said. “Are we getting a flat screen?”

  “No,” Tilda said. Shane handed the envelope back and she tossed it onto the counter. “That, my dear, is going to get the jackbooted heel of debt off our necks.”

  Molly rubbed her belly. “Golly. That’s exciting.”

  The meal ended and Molly drifted off before being excused. Shane poured a little more wine, took up both glasses and asked his wife to show him the garage.

  “TA-DAA,” She said, sweeping a hand over the de-cluttered garage space. “Not bad, huh?”

  “Wow. I don’t think it’s ever been this clean.” He turned around, taking it all in. The old couch was still there, along with th
e paint-splattered chair and the Persian rug. The workbench that spanned the south wall was clean. “I can’t believe you got rid of everything.”

  “You should have seen the dust I kicked up. Half of it’s still in my lungs.”

  His gaze fell to the bench, where two faded milk crates remained, crammed with material. “What about this? Keepsakes?”

  “No. That’s going too, but I have a plan for that.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” He poked through the crates. “Just wipe the slate clean?”

  “I’m sure.” Tilda set her wine glass down and plucked items from the trove. “Master tapes, the rest of the CDs. Posters. All must go.”

  “The masters? But then there’s no record of any of this. Your songs.”

  Reaching behind the crate, she lifted up a vinyl record. The sleeve showcased her name overtop a photograph of Tilda leaning on an old cattle guard, guitar in hand. A vinyl pressing she had had done years ago. “CDs deteriorate, tapes rot. But vinyl doesn’t die. I thought maybe… Well, never mind.”

  “No. What?”

  She waved the thought away. “I thought Molly might want it one day.”

  “She will. When she grows out of this troll phase.” He swept his glass over the crates. “So what’s the plan for this stuff?”

  “Just something I have to do.”

  “Okay,” he said. Her tone telegraphed that she didn’t want to discuss it any further so he let it go. Her breezy attitude to this sea change was too casual, too forced to be this easy. He’d simply wait it out. Whatever was churning inside would make its way out eventually. With Tilda, it always did.

  Still, something about this seemed off. How Tilda could upend this all-consuming part of her life and just cut the strings and let it float down the river was mystifying. Music was everything to her. Maybe, he thought, the simple answer was that he didn’t know his wife as well as he thought he did.