by Lori Carson
“What’s she up to these days?” Alan asks.
“She’s still doing that television series, the medical drama. She plays the wife of the lead doctor.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Alan says. “L.A. Emergency. I knew that.”
“Which one is she?” Dave asks.
“The beautiful blonde,” I say proudly.
Dave is impressed. “The one who accidentally kills her kid and has a mental breakdown?”
“Yeah.”
“Say hi next time you speak to her,” Alan says. “Tell her she’s great on that show.”
“I will.” I yawn.
Alan stands and stretches. “Okay, time to go.”
We watch Renee walk slowly across the long room to get their coats. She removes hers from under your head, carefully.
After they’ve gone, I lock up, turn off the stereo and the lights.
I carry you into your room and put you to bed. You pretend to stay asleep because you love to be carried. I used to do the same thing when I was a kid.
Your small bedroom, intended to be a dressing room, has no windows. It’s dark except for the green glow of the night-light. I pull the covers up to your chin and kiss your warm head. “Good night, Minnow.”
Your voice is sleepy and sweet.
“I love you, Mama.”
Forty-one
Jules has always had a way with animals. Now she’s got an injured blue jay in her house. She says the patient has a broken wing. She describes the way the other jays squawk outside the windows and beat their wings against the screens. When she steps outside, they do flybys, grab pieces of her hair. She thinks they aim to free the one she’s nursing back to health. But then she leaves the door open for all the blue jays, and one brave bird, the leader, she suspects, flies in to check on his friend. He steals a bit of food from the captive’s cage. After that, it’s as if they understand she means no harm.
Minnow, isn’t she just like a heroine in a children’s book? A beautiful princess with a squirrel on her shoulder and a bird lighting on her outstretched hand?
As she tells me about the blue jays, I picture the house she rents in Santa Monica. I’ve only seen it in photographs. It’s a Spanish-style hacienda with a red clay roof and a center courtyard with lush green plantings, colorful floor tiles, and a fountain. Light shines through big windows onto English pine dressers, large abstract paintings, a velvet fainting couch, a marble bust, two crystal chandeliers, her bed covered in the finest Irish linen. Even the vegetables on the kitchen counter seem more still life than salad. She shares the splendor with her beloved companion, a sensitive, geriatric Yorkshire terrier named George.
“What does George make of all the bird activity?” I ask. We’ve already been on the phone for forty minutes by then. I switch ears as she asks George what he thinks.
“George thinks everything should be about George.”
We talk on the phone late at night. It’s three hours earlier there, and she likes to stay up late. I can call her at four in the morning, New York time, and she answers after one ring.
Always, our talk turns to men. Jules is dating a powerful man in the movie business. He’s married, so the relationship is hush-hush. He collects art and admires her good eye. They visit galleries together where she chooses the paintings, and he buys them for himself. It seems unlikely that he’ll leave his wife and kids for her, but she says that’s fine. She takes a painting class, cuts fresh flowers from her garden. She runs down to Mexico for a long weekend. And of course she’s working. Doing a television series means long days and weeks. She says it’s fun but exhausting.
I tell her my news. I’ve recently started seeing someone, too, a photographer I met at a Chris Whitley show. I describe the way we rip each other’s clothes off and do it on the floor.
“Where does this happen?” Jules asks. She’s never approved of my boyfriends.
“He has an apartment on Second and Tenth Street. It’s a total crash pad. There’s usually a roommate asleep on the couch.”
“Charming,” she says. “Has he met Minnow?”
“No, and he never will,” I say. “Don’t worry. I’m not serious about him.”
“I hope you’re being careful,” Jules says. Careful. Because in the original 1988 when was I ever careful? Condoms, diaphragms, sponges, jellies, but always there were months when I relied only on prayer, as in: Please, God, let me get away with it this time and I promise next time I’ll be more careful.
“Of course I’m being careful,” I say now.
I’m about to turn thirty. So is Jules, but she’s still got another two months left of being twenty-nine. It seems a momentous birthday, an age that requires I should have my life together. I’ve been torturing myself about my nonexistent musical career. “I feel like a big failure,” I tell Jules.
“What are you talking about?” she says. “How are you a failure? You’re supporting Minnow, building a real estate career. You’re a talented songwriter and a great friend.”
It makes me feel slightly better.
“And you’re a goddess and a savior of birds,” I tell her sleepily. It’s starting to get light outside when we say good-bye.
Forty-two
In the original 1988, I open my eyes in Los Angeles, a city I’m unfamiliar with. It’s hard to imagine that ten years later I’ll buy a house here and know this city well.
I’m in town to meet the people at my new record company. They’ve put me up in a hotel just off Sunset and every morning I order the same thing from room service: a croissant with butter and jam, a pot of black coffee, and a pitcher of half-and-half.
Then I get dressed and pull on my brand-new cowboy boots.
The record company sends a car for me because I can’t drive. I have my license, but I’m afraid. I’m afraid of getting lost in this strange city, afraid of missing an exit, or driving too slowly and being hit from behind. I’m afraid of so many things.
But my bank account has more money in it than it ever has before, thanks to a publishing advance. A bidding war has taken place between five record companies. Every day another major jumped in, making crazy promises that even in my total innocence I knew were too good to be true.
I signed with Harry Garfield for three reasons. One: he was the first to ask. Two: he’d signed some of my idols. Three: he said that we were going to make a record like Jackson Brown’s Late for the Sky or Joni Mitchell’s Blue.
Yesterday Harry Garfield walked me around to the various departments, introduced me to everyone; they smiled and shook my hand. They said they loved my songs and couldn’t wait to work with me. Then Harry and I went to lunch and talked about choosing a producer. He made suggestions for how I could spruce up my image.
“Lose the backpack,” he told me. I carry a black leather backpack with me that has my notebooks in it and whatever else I may need. I told him I didn’t understand why I had to lose it. He smiled and shook his head at me. “You’re such an artist,” he said.
Somewhere in this city I know Gabriel is waking up. I haven’t spoken to him in three years, but being in the same city makes me think of him.
I have a boyfriend, Tom, waiting for me back in New York, but that relationship seems doomed. When Harry Garfield met Tom he said I could do better, but I don’t think that’s why I’ve gone cold on him. I’ve tried to love him but I can’t do it.
The car is late, so I sit down on the bed with my guitar. My Martin travels with me everywhere I go. I feel as if it contains the songs I’ve yet to write, or at the very least is a conduit. The guitar’s warm rosewood body feels alive. It comforts me and keeps me from feeling lonely.
Forty-three
My father is teaching you to play chess. The two of you face one another across the board. When you take his knight, he says: “Very good.”
Too excited to sit still, you jump up and do a little dance.
“Concentrate, Minnow,” he says.
“Dad, she’s a child.” I hear myself sound
like a nag. I’m watching from the hallway, between the den and kitchen.
My parents have moved, after twenty-five years, to another split-level house, in another Long Island town. It’s free of history and ghosts. I like the way it feels clean.
I never learned how to play chess. My father attempted to teach me when I was a kid, but I had no interest in it. It seemed too complicated. I remember he invited a little friend of mine to play instead, which made me jealous, but I pretended not to care.
He ignores me now, and you grow still. Your lovely hair falls in nutty-brown waves over your face and shoulders. You’ve picked out the plaid jumper you’re wearing and also the red shoes, the ones we call your Dorothy slippers. You’re completely focused on the board as my father considers his next move.
I pour myself a cup of coffee and join my mother at the kitchen table. The weekend papers are spread out across it, Newsday and the New York Times. I find the Arts & Leisure section in the pile. If it’s a test of compatibility to be able to sit silently with someone and read, my mother and I fail this test, addressing one another when we are most absorbed in what we are reading. We listen to the other’s thought or observation, halfheartedly, holding a finger on an interrupted sentence, waiting to return to it.
You come running in, Minnow, and climb onto my lap.
“I won, Mama,” you say, grinning. “Grandpa showed me how.” One of your front teeth is missing. You’ve wiggled it free in the dark, excited to get a dollar from the tooth fairy.
My father is right behind you. He joins us at the kitchen table. I predict he will last no longer than five minutes. It’s Sunday, and the pregame beckons.
“What can I get everybody?” my mother asks. She stands at the refrigerator, the door ajar. She is scanning the packed shelves for our midmorning snack.
“Pancakes!” you say.
“You don’t want pancakes,” my father says. “You just had breakfast.”
“With chocolate chips?” my mother asks.
“Yes!” You jump off my lap and hop around the kitchen enthusiastically. “Pancakes! Pancakes!”
“If Grandma wants to make them, you can have pancakes,” I say. I catch my father’s disdainful glance, but ignore it and return my attention to an article I’m reading. It’s about a recent scientific discovery. Evidently, every time a memory is retrieved, it is altered in the process.
“Pancakes, it is,” my mother says.
Forty-four
After I walk you to school, I go to my office, which is just around the corner on Tenth Street off Perry. The neighborhood feels like a real village in the mornings, the scent of fresh bread wafting out over the street. I make a quick stop at the bakery for a coffee.
The sign above the storefront office reads CLARK AND WINSTON, REAL ESTATE—SALES AND RENTALS. Its elegant font is what attracted me to this particular agency. The bell on the door rings as I push it open, and the two owners look up. “Good morning,” they say, almost in unison.
Barry and Arnie sit at opposite ends of the room, with a number of desks in between them. Neither one is named Clark or Winston. The name was chosen for the respectability it suggests.
“Good morning!” I say. I’m still new and trying my best to bring the correct enthusiasm to the job.
I’ve been fortunate so far. I have what everyone tells me is beginner’s luck. It’s hard to make a living doing real estate rentals. Nevertheless, I’ve rented two my first month and have a new client coming in this morning. She needs to find a one-bedroom before leaving town at the end of the day.
Arnie calls me over to ask me what I plan to show her. We go through my list. He makes a couple of calls and finds another apartment that has just come on the market.
When my client arrives, I stand and shake her hand. She’s a busy young lawyer relocating from Boston to New York City. I introduce her to Arnie, who is wearing a nice suit but still comes across as sleazy.
I’m polite, professional, and dressed the part, still I feel like an impostor as I lead her back to my desk and hand her our registration form to fill out.
The young lawyer rents the first apartment I show her, a beautiful one-bedroom with casement windows and perfect wood floors on Christopher Street. My fellow agents can’t hide their envy. They think my good luck is using up the supply. Arnie gives me a pat on the back, which gives him an excuse to rest his hand on my ass.
To celebrate my luck I pick up some day-old roses at the Korean market, along with the half gallon of milk we need. At home, on the way to the kitchen, I notice my Martin in its stand, unplayed and patient as a good dog. Maybe I’ll sit out back on the terrace and try to write something, I think. I put the milk away, cut the stems on the roses, and glance at the clock. I’ve got ten minutes before I need to be at school to pick you up.
Forty-five
In the original 1989, my first record is released.
We drive across country, Alan at the wheel, Marianne Mercurio in back, her cello beside her like a fourth person. We play in what feels like every small club in every town or city that has one.
After sound check, we walk around trying to see into second-floor windows, wondering what it would be like to live in that particular city or town. Maybe we’ll put down roots in Austin, we say, or Santa Fe, or Portland.
We stop for meals at fast-food restaurants along the highway, and stay in Motel 6s and weird family motels, where the first thing you do when you get into your room is strip the dirty coverlet off the bed.
We play a game where one person improvises a noise and the next adds a sound and it keeps building, layers of shifting harmonies, lip smacks, whistles, mouth drums, and humming, until something strikes us so funny, it ends in gasping, hysterical giggles.
The shows are the best part. It feels good to play, and momentum is building. Mitch, the head of marketing at Warners, calls. I can hear the excitement in his voice. The single is getting adds. “I wanted to be the one to tell you,” he says, then lists the more than a dozen radio stations that are playing my record.
Every night there are a few more people in the audience than there were the day before. Suddenly we’re playing for sold-out crowds. It seems to happen overnight. It energizes us through our exhaustion.
I wonder what Gabriel would think if he were standing in the crowd. When he hears my song on the radio—a song about him—does it make him miss me, just a little?
Sometimes I choose a fan-boy, the cutest one, and kiss him under a streetlight, or ride on the back of his motorcycle, or take him back to the motel. Always a part of me is thinking: See Gabriel? Other men want me.
Forty-six
Though most of what I know of him lives in my imagination, or in the past, or in your resemblance to him, Minnow, when I fantasize in the dark, it’s still Gabriel who plays the lover. Other boyfriends come and go, but Gabriel is like a hole in a tooth. My tongue likes to run over and over it. It’s been years since we’ve actually spoken, but my memories of him play like a TV show in syndication.
I’m aware that his real life continues. Watching the Grammys a couple of years ago, I heard his name announced. He’d won in some obscure category, during the pretaping part of the show. And once, while waiting for you at the dentist’s office, I read in a magazine that he’d gotten a divorce.
I know that the real Gabriel Luna still exists, but to me he’s no longer an actual person. My fantasies have become more real to me than the man I knew.
So I’m stunned one day to see his name on a marquee at a supper club in Midtown. I believe the year is 1992. When I see it, I think, Could it be that easy? Simply buy a ticket and take a seat? The potential power of the experience frightens me. But I talk Alan into going and spend nearly two weeks’ worth of grocery money on the expensive tickets. I feel like a dirty drug addict using that money. It’s like I’m being controlled by a madness I thought I’d outgrown. I try to justify it. I tell myself that I need to see him to scold him for never taking an interest in you.
&n
bsp; On the night of the concert, I leave you uptown with Maria. You sense my agitation and linger at the door as we say good-bye.
“Go have fun,” I tell you. “I’ll be back to get you first thing in the morning.”
When I get to the club, Alan is already waiting for me out front. He is his usual happy, laid-back self and doesn’t notice how charged up I am. We’re seated at a small table right up front. I order a glass of red wine and finish it before Alan’s even taken a sip of his beer. I order another and drink half of it down.
“Whoa, Nelly,” Alan says.
I feel the warm confidence of the alcohol spread through my brain and body.
While we wait, I look around. This is a completely different scene from the downtown clubs I used to frequent, before you were born, where we paid five bucks at the door to stand in a packed crowd, watching a skinny boy play guitar on a makeshift stage. This place looks like it could be in Miami or Cleveland or some place other than New York City. Everything is red and black. There are round booths against the wall. People are dressed up, drinking and smoking, throwing their heads back, laughing.
Downtown, there would be an opening band, or two, or three. The headliner wouldn’t come on before midnight. Here there is no opener. Gabriel is scheduled to go on at eight, and at eight-fifteen his band begins to play the intro to a song I know from the first note. Instantly, I’m transported back to 1982, to the Vantage and the salsa clubs on upper Broadway.
A trumpet player I don’t recognize steps up to his microphone and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together …”
Gabriel walks out onto the stage and into the warm spotlight as his name is announced, nodding and smiling at the applauding crowd. He holds a pair of maracas in one hand. He’s wearing the black-brimmed hat, a black T-shirt, and suit trousers. He closes his eyes and lifts his face to the spotlight as if in prayer. He moves simply and elegantly, a salsa step. Front and back, and front, back, front.
