by Barbara Hall
“That must have been tough for you. That must have been much more a challenge than being somebody’s father.”
Steady as you please, not missing a beat, he said, “I never wanted to be a father.”
It took the wind right out of me. I’d been holding my own up until that point but he had dealt the fatal blow.
The thing was, I knew he wasn’t just saying it to be mean. It was true.
What’s more, it was the truth I had been trying to get to all the time. This was my worst nightmare realized, which, like the greatest dream, is something most people don’t have to confront at my age. At any age, possibly. It’s like the monster under your bed. You keep saying it’s not real but sooner or later you might have to crawl under there to make sure.
I suddenly felt tired and overwhelmed so I stood up. I said, “Well, I guess we’ve gotten to the heart of the matter so we might as well say good night.”
My father stood very still. Because the light was so distorted out there by the pool, he looked like some kind of otherworldly being, this skinny, slight man whose mannerisms were younger than his years, but whose appearance otherwise was exactly his age. He was Rock Star Forever meets Middle-Aged Guy with Burned Bridges.
His long hair swept into his face. It would have been gray but I could see in this light that he dyed it. He was almost entirely a lie.
He said, “Blanche, I don’t mean that I didn’t want you.”
“In vino veritas,” I said.
“I’m not drinking.”
“Well, your first thought’s your best one or something.”
“Really? Is that a scientific fact?”
“Let’s look at it this way. Either you meant it, or it was something you created in the moment just to get a reaction from me. Either way, it changes my idea of you.”
“Well, while we’re being brutally honest, all you really have is an idea of me.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“I suppose it’s mine,” he said, “if you insist on breaking life down into faults and blame.”
“You know what, Dad? I’m just tired of thinking about it and talking about it. My head hurts. I just want to go to bed.”
He said, “No, let me explain. I never wanted to be a father and then I became one. I was happy to be one but I didn’t really know how. Did it ever occur to you that I took myself out of the equation because of all the damage I was doing? I saw myself inflicting it. I couldn’t stop it somehow. But I needed to. So I left.”
“And you never thought about what that did to us?”
“Of course I thought about it. But we all have stories, Blanche. This is mine. Yours is yours. I can’t rewrite it. I can’t make it different for you. First you exalted me. There was nothing I could do but destroy myself in your eyes.”
“I suppose that’s why you came.”
“I came because you asked me to. And I thought it was time.”
“And you missed your audience.”
“No.”
“My mother has had to do a thousand undignified jobs just to keep us in the game. She wanted the best for me. She figured out how to get me into this lame private school on scholarship. We didn’t have the option of shooting for the stars, Dad. We only had the option of shooting for the best we could do. She works in a clothing store and I work in a pizza joint. Everything we do on top of that is fought for. We didn’t need you to be a big rock star. We just needed you to join the fight. You didn’t. We’re alone.”
“She has a boyfriend now. You’re not so alone.”
“Okay, she’s got a boyfriend. After all these empty years you’re going to begrudge her that?”
“You have a band.”
“A band you tried to use for yourself.”
“My point is, you’re not alone.”
“And you are? Poor you, Dad. You chose that. We had no choice. Seminal artist,” I said. “What does that even mean? I can’t say I know what the point is, Dad, but I’m pretty sure you’ve missed it.”
“Look, I’m going to head back tomorrow. Let’s not end it this way.”
“You’re not sticking around?”
“Why would I?”
“More shows, maybe?”
“Blanche, this is not an argument worth hanging on to.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
I walked toward the hotel.
Behind me he said, “I’m sorry I messed everything up.”
I stood with my hand on the door. I wanted to just walk through it but that comment turned me around. I didn’t want it to be the last word between us.
“When?” I asked. “Today or my whole life?”
The question didn’t seem to faze him. As with anything he didn’t want to confront, he ignored it.
“I’d like to stay in touch,” he said.
“I’ll leave that up to you,” I said, and put my hand on the door again.
He said, “Blanche, can you at least give me this? You might have gotten some of your talent from me.”
I hated to admit it but I wanted to hear more about my talent. So I waited.
He said, “Do you realize how good you are?”
“Of course I don’t,” I said.
“Well, you are. If you hadn’t disappeared after the set, I was going to tell you all that. How good your playing is, how much I liked your arrangement. Your singing.”
It felt like a bone he was throwing me but I wasn’t strong enough to give it back.
“At the very least, maybe it was that I left my guitar lying around the house. Or that you somehow turned me into your audience all this time. If I’d been around, I might have eclipsed you. But with me gone, you had all that time to dream,” he said.
“Is that what you’re going to tell yourself?”
“I might.”
“Well, as John Lennon said, whatever gets you through the night.”
“That goes for both of us, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
He said, “Just consider it.”
I turned and stared hard at him. Because I felt all churned up and I had a thousand things I wanted to say and I was afraid I’d never see him again.
I said, “What were you thinking? Leaving us? Did you really believe that you could just subtract yourself from the equation?”
His face looked deflated.
He said, “Yes, I really did believe that.”
“You didn’t think you’d leave something behind?”
“What?” he demanded. “What did I leave behind?”
“Art,” I said to him. “Like blood on the walls.”
“Art,” he said quietly.
“And my desire to create it. You have to answer for that.”
He shook his head, staring at the ground.
“No,” he said. “I’m afraid you do. Because you now realize how much it matters.”
“More than anything?”
“Almost. But only almost.”
I did give him a smile like a benediction before I opened the door and went into the lobby of the hotel, which suddenly felt like the portal to my new life. Whatever it was going to be.
Another Guitar
THE WEDDING WAS ON THE BEACH. OF COURSE IT WAS. THE beach at sunset. That was so very my mother. She wore a white silk dress and carried violets and he wore a white silk suit but neither one of them wore shoes.
She invited Louise, and Ed got his best friend, Chuck, who was also his guitar repair guy, to perform the ceremony on the authority of the certification he had gotten out of the back of a magazine. Those things are valid and legal. I’m not making this up.
They waited until May so the weather would be nice but they somehow couldn’t wait until late June when my exams would have been over and I wouldn’t have been feeling so stressed out.
When I asked them why they weren’t waiting for summer, Mom said, “Well, Blanche, I expected you to put up a fight against the whole idea. I just made my plans without
your permission.”
“I don’t know why you’d think that.”
“I realize you got used to Ed but that didn’t mean you’d want him as a stepfather. I thought you’d be disgusted by the thought of a wedding.”
“Ed’s all right. I don’t object.”
“I know how you revere your father.”
I hadn’t told her what had happened. I wasn’t entirely sure I was ever going to. She hadn’t asked when I got back from Coachella, even though my father’s presence there had been all over the news and the Internet. Including clips of us playing together onstage. I realized that she must know, but a long time ago, my mother had made a deal with herself to limit her discussion of him. She was proud of my band, though. She had her new life. She was moving on.
I had actually gotten e-mail and fan letters about Coachella. I gave a separate interview to the L.A. Times that was buried in the corner of the “Calendar” section in a little box, with a headline like “The Next Generation of Visionary.” It had a big picture of my father, a postage-stamp-sized one of me, and a quote from me saying, “I don’t know if music is in the blood. It just feels like it’s in my head.”
I had said more than that but I didn’t worry about it.
LaHa gave us a big reception and a lot of fanfare after Coachella. Gigi and Ella and I were on the front page of the Manifesto, all decked out in our uniform costumes, with full-on rock-and-roll makeup and standing by our instruments. Edgy schoolgirls. Not what you’d expect. When you looked at that picture, it seemed we’d all been together for a long time and were going great places.
The truth was, the Fringers broke up right after Coachella. On the way back home, in the car, to be honest. I was still reeling from my encounter with my father so I was sitting in the backseat just staring out the window, trying to get my breath and a picture in my head of how my life could possibly look after this. How it was going to make sense, how I was going to know what to aim for or dream about, and the only thing that kept me centered in that whole picture was the Fringers. We were together. We were good. We could come back to Coachella and win next time.
That was when Gigi said, “Blanche, I’m really glad you made us do this. It was fun.”
“Yeah,” Ella said, “I would have had a totally dull sophomore year without it.”
I said, “You’re welcome, but come on, guys. It’s not like our work is done. I think we need to kick the rehearsals up to twice a week and think about finding an additional guitar player. I think an electric sound would really add a lot.”
I saw Gigi exchange a glance with her parents and then look back at me.
“Blanche, I can’t keep doing this. I’ve got to get my class president campaign together. I mean, besides studying and prepping for SATs.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I said.
Erica smiled at me from the front seat. “Gigi has other plans but this has been great for her, Blanche. I’m sure you’ll go on to do wonderful things with your music.”
I looked at Ella. She said, “I’m getting a better job this summer and I’m training for crew.”
“For what?”
“Rowing. I’m going to do that next year.”
“Rowing? Who are you people?”
“We want to get into good colleges, Blanche. Who are you?” Gigi said with a distinct edge.
I didn’t answer her.
Without the Fringers and without my father, I had no idea who I was.
They consented to be in the Fringers long enough for that photo and article in the Manifesto, though, and that was nice of them. Dr. Bonny announced our success at the spring assembly and we went up onstage and took bows and everyone stared at us as if we had done something magical. They had no idea that we were just a blip on the radar and we were about to go back to the obscurity from which we’d come.
While we were up there taking our bows, I saw Viv in the audience. She was smiling and clapping and whistling through her fingers as if this were the greatest display of anything she’d ever seen. She was a fan of the Fringers. As if she’d never been one of us. I wondered about that happy, exuberant expression, totally devoid of any jealousy and resentment—so unlike what you see on the faces of teenagers normally—and I wondered how she could possibly be that way.
I supposed that seeing an angel had reminded her of who she was in the universe. It gave her a sense of purpose. I smiled at her and she smiled back and even though I wanted to be angry, something about her made me feel like it was going to be okay. Maybe not soon but eventually. As if that might be the natural order of the universe. Things being basically okay.
Two days after the wedding on the beach, while I was still studying for exams, Ed the Guitar Guy officially moved into the house, and I barely noticed. He was there all the time anyway and he had hardly any belongings to his name. I noticed that some kind of weird tribal mask went up on the living room wall next to my mother’s crystals and goddesses and whatnot. And suddenly there was a black leather chair that reclined in the corner and there was a bowl of jelly beans always on the coffee table because Ed the Guitar Guy liked them and that was about it. Life went on the way it did before. Me in my room and my mom darting in and out from work and occasionally going out for coffee or tea, but when she did that, it was with Ed the Guitar Guy now instead of Louise. And when they came home they were always laughing and talking in quiet voices, like they had a secret, and sometimes they curled up on the couch and watched shows on television and laughed some more. It looked like the world’s most boring life and it wasn’t one I remotely wanted and somehow, I just didn’t mind it at all.
One night Ed knocked on my bedroom door and asked if I wanted to talk and I said what about and he said he noticed that I hadn’t been playing my guitar much since Coachella.
I told him about the Fringers breaking up. He said he was sorry to hear it but there was no reason for me not to continue playing.
I told him I was probably going to try out for the school play or do something like that next year and that would take up a lot of my time.
“Well, there’s a reason I ask,” he said. He reached for something outside my door and the next thing I knew, he was handing me a guitar case. I opened it up. It was a beautiful Gibson guitar, completely intact, no hole in the body.
He said, “We got it in the store. We haven’t been able to move it. I don’t know why. Probably because it’s discontinued, not one of their more popular models, not very flashy, but the sound is perfectly nice. And it’s a small body, I thought you might like that.”
I stared at it. I wanted to touch it but I was afraid to. I was afraid of how much I’d want it if I did. And I was afraid I’d be letting all that craziness back in my life.
I said, “You don’t have to bribe me, Ed. You’re my stepfather now and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not bugged anyway. It’s fine.”
He smiled. “It’s a gift, Blanche. You earned it. That was a lot of hard work, putting the band together and taking it as far as you did.”
“I guess,” I said, not looking at him or the guitar.
“And whatever happened up there with your father …”
“Nothing. Nothing happened.”
“Well, I just wondered if the reason you hadn’t been playing was that the guitar belonged to him.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“And even if that’s not it, a girl should have her own guitar. They keep their vibrations, you know. The person who held it and made things happen on it or to it, those impressions stay. So this one, it’s a clean slate. It’s never been anybody’s. But yours. If you want it.”
I didn’t say anything.
He stood and smiled at me. “How about I leave it here and you see whether or not you can make friends with it?”
“Fine,” I said.
He touched me lightly on the shoulder and left.
The guitar sat in its red velvet, staring up at me, like a homeless pet.
I stroked i
ts face and closed the case and decided to think about it later.
The Prayer
PEACE PIZZA. IT BECAME MY REFUGE. I GOT BACK ON MY REGULAR schedule, the one I had abandoned during the craziness of the Fringers.
I suddenly understood the name of the place. Maybe Toby had understood that when he started the business. He was a guy who just wanted to surf and hang out and he couldn’t handle ambition so he started a pizza joint and that was his peace. I always thought it was some kind of political movement but maybe not. Before, I had always looked at him as someone who had given up on life. But now that I had seen my father in action, I understood people like Toby and Ed. They weren’t burdened with all that want.
I thought maybe I could go with that idea. I could just make pizzas and not worry about who I was in the world. Pizza making was something some people did so they could get on with their real approach to living, which was being on some kind of board, surf or skate. It was all leading to exactly where it was.
Not so with Jeff. He had been promoted to night manager but he was going to leave in July so he could start an internship with some engineering company, which was all part of his gearhead plans. He was excited about it. He hoped the internship would help him get his scholarship to MIT. After which he had even more big plans for himself.
One night while I was mixing up sauce, Jeff came and stood beside me and said, “I didn’t think you wanted me up at Coachella, so I didn’t go. What’s going on with your band?”
Of course, he didn’t know. I hadn’t shared anything with him in a long time.
“I don’t have a band, Jeff. I’m just a girl who works in a pizza place.”
“Hey, listen,” he said. “I have an idea. Why don’t I record your stuff for you?”
“What?”
“I taught myself Pro Tools on the computer. I could record you. It’s pretty easy.”
“I don’t have a band.”
“You don’t need one. I can program any sound you want. I just need you to sing because I can’t program that.”
