Don't Blame the Music

by Caroline B. Cooney

  When I saw Whit in the cafeteria, waiting for Luce and Tommy to get their hot dogs doused with chili and onion, he looked at me without expression. I had to talk to him. I needed his help and encouragement with the record idea. But he was unapproachable. I had gone back to being afraid of him. Game Plan Day was approaching, all too rapidly, and I could not make myself cross the cafeteria, or turn in my desk, to talk to Whit Moroso.

  He isn’t frightening, I told myself. You know him now. He doesn’t bite. Just go over there. He’ll be glad. He’s confused too.

  But I didn’t.

  I couldn’t.

  I wrote about Anthony. I wrote about Whit. But I never put their names down. In junior high Cindy and I used to do name games. Sitting in her bedroom we’d write pretend wedding invitations, or do spelling games with the letters of some boy’s name—like plucking a daisy to see if he loved us. Number games to see how many children we’d have, or where we’d live, or whether we’d be rich or poor.

  I could not write the names of Anthony or Whit. I had run into something too private even for my journal. Something beyond games. After a while I stopped writing in the journal altogether. Life was too confusing for words.

  Furthermore, I was fighting a war on two fronts.

  At home was Ashley, and Ash had brought out the heavy artillery.

  She demanded money. Dad repeated that he would feed, shelter, and clothe her, but beyond that she was on her own, as a woman of twenty-five should be. Over and over Ashley screamed her favorite refrain. You never did anything for me. I deserve more! You are scum!

  I didn’t listen. By now I knew Ashley would blame anything for her failures. Presidents, acid rain, preservatives in white bread.

  But my mother clung to her teacup as if it were welded to her fingers.

  Ash demanded the car now that it was in working order. Iron Mine Road is really quite remote. It’s a long drive to anything. My mother needs the car for every errand, meeting, and volunteer hour. When they denied Ash the car, she began a daily assault upon the car itself. She drained the gas tank. She left the lights on all night to wear out the battery.

  And the dog was afraid of her.

  We didn’t know why.

  Copper isn’t much of a dog. He never was. Summer people who rented behind us abandoned a litter of puppies and this one had wandered to us for his food and water. Copper adores my mother with a slobbery affection that would drive me crazy, but I’m not the recipient. Only Mom. Copper flings himself upon her joyously a hundred times a day.

  He was skulking around the house, hiding under furniture too small for him to fit beneath, so that his tail stuck out and his bent haunches spread obscenely into the room.

  Bob kept appearing.

  He never knocked. If you didn’t hear the van, you weren’t ready for him. Suddenly sweaty rolls of fat would fill all your breathing space. He didn’t speak often. You never had any inkling of his personality, which made him all the more terrifying.

  My mother took to locking up constantly—hooking screens, closing windows, latching shutters. Ashley, of course, followed her around, unlocking, unclosing, and unhinging.

  In one week, my mother’s mind was unhinged, too.

  Ashley took my favorite sweatshirt. It was bright pink, with no hood, no pockets and no zipper: just a plain cotton sweatshirt. She slit it up and down all over, so that it looked like the construction paper lanterns that we made in kindergarten. She wore this over a bright green blouse of mine. The colors were very preppy. The result was like a sliced loaf of pink and green prep.

  I stormed around the house, screaming, “It’s my sweatshirt! It’s my bedroom! Daddy, you have to stop her! Mom, you can’t just sit there and drink more tea. How long am I supposed to keep quiet? Don’t my feelings count too? How much can I take? You have to do something.”

  “All right,” said my father. “Just tell me what to do, Susan.”

  “I don’t know!” I screamed, hating him for his helplessness. Big tough football-coach-type men weren’t supposed to be defeated by scrawny little girls with a pair of scissors. “Chain her up in the cellar while we’re gone or something.”

  He nodded. “That would work. Unfortunately society frowns on people who chain their daughters up in the cellar. Very hard to explain to the judge.”

  “Then—then—” I gasped for breath, trying to find words for my rage, and ways to make Ashley leave my clothes alone.

  “I can’t cut her allowance,” my father said. “I can’t send her to bed early. And we’re not going to call the police. For one thing, I don’t know what charge we would bring. For another, your mother cannot bear the publicity. Ashley knows that. Ashley would make a scene so great she’d not only be in the papers, she’d also get the network television in. We couldn’t take it, Susan.”

  “So we take this instead?” I shook my ruined clothing in his face.

  He held me by my shoulders. “It’s nothing but cloth. We’ll buy you more. You’re being very strong and I’m very proud of you. Your mother and I have made the decision to keep trying with Ashley. Maybe it’s the wrong decision. Certainly any decision we’ve ever made with her has been the wrong one. But it’s the one we’ve made, and you have to live with it as well.”

  Do I want to be that strong? I thought. Do I want to give her more chances? “What if we asked her to go?” I said.

  “Yesterday,” said my father, smiling sadly, “I told her I would throw her out. She said she’d just sleep in the gutter in front of the house. She would, you know. She’d love it. She’d get publicity for it, too. Every kid in high school would know that winter is coming and your poor sister is sleeping in the road without a blanket because of her cruel family.”

  I can hardly wait, I thought. Shepherd and Anthony asking me why we’re being so mean to frail needy little Ash.

  I wanted my best friend so much my heart screamed her name. Cindy! Cindy! But I didn’t phone and I didn’t go over.

  And how could I tell anybody, even my best friend Cindy, the terrible thoughts that chased in my mind about my own sister? How on the one hand I wanted to give Ashley everything and on the other hand I could kill her for ruining my designer sweater, my room, and my life?

  “I just realized,” I said to my father, “that most people are rational. Fair. Willing to compromise.”

  He agreed. “Nothing applies with Ash. That’s why we’re so helpless.” His face sagged like an old man’s. “We failed, Susan,” he said harshly. “A parent’s task is to bring up children to be good citizens. And we failed.”

  The weather turned cold abruptly, like a slap. Indian Summer would come, but the ferocity of early winter gave us pause. One afternoon while Ash and Bob worked on his van in the driveway I was doing my trig in the kitchen. I imagined the house during the day, when my parents and I were gone. Were Ash and Bob there alone? What did they do? Who did they have over? Did they touch our things?

  Ash had the radio turned up much too loud, but nobody complained. They were all a little afraid to complain. Ashley and Bob looked truly depraved: the one a shadow of herself, the other an animal fat enough for hibernation, grunting and sweating over something in his van.

  When Mom drove up Iron Mine Road, she slowed up way down the street. She didn’t want to enter her own driveway. I think she would have gone right past, and postponed coming home altogether, but Ashley saw her, and waved, and Mom did not know what to do but stop.

  I closed my trig book, set down my pencil, and went out to give her courage. I went down the walk, past the withered lilacs, instead of using the driveway. Too close to Bob.

  Ashley and Bob both had scissors in their hands.

  Scissors? I thought.

  Ash was cutting something heavy and dark. Bob dropped his scissors and began slicing with an Exacto knife.

  “Hi, Mom,” said Ashley cheerfully. “This old van is too cold for winter. We’re upholstering it.”

  “That’s nice, dear,” said my mother, in wh
om hope springs eternal.

  Cautiously Mom and I skirted the van, taking a look at the new upholstery. It seemed such a civilized thing for Bob or Ashley to do.

  My mother cried out, as if in pain.

  My first thought was that Ashley had used the scissors on Mom. I was so sick with horror I could hardly think, but when I stepped forward to protect her, I saw what had made her cry out. Chopped into pieces that would conform to the inside of the van, glued and tacked into place, was our four-generation hooked rug.

  Our rug.

  In a van where Ash and Bob would smoke pot and have kinky sex.

  In her sweet voice my sister said, “You have a problem, Mom?”

  My mother was pale. There were tears in her eyes.

  I led her into the house. When we were inside, I shut the door and locked it, and then I walked her into the kitchen and I locked that door too and I said, “Mom, call the police. Send her away. Have her committed. Do anything! She is horrible. Let’s admit it. Let’s cut our losses now before something truly dreadful happens. Ashley is diseased.”

  My mother got to the phone, falling, like a vomiting invalid trying to reach the toilet in time. Seizing the receiver she dialed, but not the emergency number. My father’s, at the gym.

  Her lips could hardly form words.

  When he answered, she whispered, “Warren. Oh, God! Warren!”

  The family conference on that episode was more like a war, complete with grenades and fallout. It was impossible that our loving close family—that popped popcorn together, and cheered at football games together, and never had arguments over anything more meaningful than whether to order pepperoni or sausage on the pizza—could have become this screaming violent quartet. If we had changed galaxies, the contrast could not have been greater.

  Or more heart-rending.

  Nothing was solved.

  If anything it was worse.

  We stopped the fight only because we were too tired to go on with it. Perhaps it would always be like that. Perhaps the war would come on schedule and stop for dinner like stopping for half time.

  That night Ashley and I lay in bed, both of us awake. It was a weird kind of slumber party. One blonde girl in her bed, one brunette across the room, but I was not ready to giggle and gossip.

  “Ash?” I fingered my sheets. My mother had sewn row after row of ivory lace onto plain sheets, so that when you turned them back there was ten inches of luxuriant femininity.

  “What?”

  You had to be direct with Ash. We had learned that quickly. Nobody on earth had less tolerance for small talk and subtlety.

  “We aren’t getting along very well,” I said, with magnificent understatement. “But we’re sisters. What do you think we should do to make it better?”

  “You are assuming,” said my sister, “that I want it to get better.”

  I had not thought of that. Could she relish these fights enough to start them for the fun of it? “Of course you do,” I said. “You’re my sister and anyway you’re an adult.” It was a pitiful argument.

  “If I’m so adult, how come I can’t use the car?”

  “You have to earn your own money and buy your own car,” I said.

  “If you’re always going to be on their side, I don’t know how you think we could ever get along.”

  “It isn’t their side so much as I agree with them. You have to prove you can be good first.” I felt like a nursery school teacher with a toddler who throws cookies across the room.

  “My definition of good is different,” said Ashley.

  “You can’t have different definitions of good in the same house,” I said. In the dark I could see the floor. I had never seen it. My entire life it had been covered with the hooked rug. I thought of Ashley and Bob in this room—my room—lifting the beds, moving the bureaus, rolling up the rug.

  “Certainly you can. You behave your way, Susan. You’re exactly what they want. Second time around God filled the order properly. And I’ll behave my way.”

  I am exactly what my parents want, I thought.

  I tried to see that as a crime, or at least something undesirable. Ashley’s voice told me it was despicable.

  And then her voice changed. It was a real voice, for the first time. No taunting sweetness; no screaming rage. It was my sister, my real sister. “Oh, Susan!” she cried. “I tried so hard. I worked at everything. I learned all of it, every single aspect of producing rock music. I was willing to do anything. I did all the scut work, I slept with anyone. It never mattered because I was going to succeed. But I didn’t.”

  Whit could not have created a sound that held more pain.

  I wept into the pillow and it sogged up my tears like cereal sogging up the milk. Ashley went on and on, talking and talking. Not a single good memory. Not a single happy moment. At least, not that she told me. It seemed to me she had wanted success the way I imagined a heroin addict needs a fix.

  A future filled with fame.

  If she could not have it, she would fill it with rage.

  I tried to tell her that I understood, but she did not want me to interrupt her. I wanted to share something in return, but I could not trust her, and besides, what was a little embarrassment over Whit Moroso compared to a life gone sour?

  In the end I fell asleep when she was still talking, and what she thought when she realized that I did not know. In the morning, I woke first. My clock radio comes on at six thirty. That morning at six thirty, the radio came on playing what seemed to me the last chords of Ashley’s hit.

  I sat up in bed, chilled.

  Ashley did not wake up.

  Had I just heard her own hit? And she slept on, not hearing it.

  How strange, really, that we had heard no music from Ashley since she got home. Had it all been drained out of her?

  The song was excellent. It had deserved its popularity. The DJ said nothing about it. Perhaps he could remember nothing. That group had literally been a one-week wonder, and that week had passed from every memory but Ashley’s.

  I dressed in the half dark, and in the clear light of the bathroom I nearly went into shock. Ashley had been at work on my clothes. She had cut off the buttons and shredded cuffs. She had painted an obscenity on the back of the shirt.

  I still could not believe it. That she trespassed upon me like that! How much could we put up with? To have my clothing mutilated, day after day! It was impossible.

  But impossible, too, to wake a sleeping Ashley and yell at her. Better just to wear something else and shrug.

  The radio played a particularly unpleasant selection of rock singers. Not one of my favorites. All of a sudden I hated it. Hated rock, hated rock musicians, because look what rock music had done to our lives!

  Choking on screams of my own rage, I ran downstairs. My mother was listening to the local radio station for the weather, and they, incredibly, were playing Ashley’s hit single.

  We stared at the radio as if it contained the answers to the mysteries of life. I held up my arms so my mother could see the shredded sleeves. We wept together. “I will never play rock again,” I told her passionately. I turned the radio off so hard the knob broke in my hand. I stared at it. Never in my life had I purposely broken anything. “Look what rock has done to us!” I sobbed, biting the words like an animal ripping flesh from a bone. “Look how horrible it is. You get into rock and it ruins you.”

  My mother held me, wrapping me in her arms, rocking me, kissing me everywhere, her tears damp on my cheek and neck. “Oh, Susan. No, no, no. Susan, honey, it isn’t rock’s fault.”

  “Then whose fault is it?” I cried. “Of course it’s rock.”

  “I grew up on rock music,” she said. “I love it. I always have. The Beatles. Kiss. The Who. Diana Ross. Bruce Springsteen. Donna Summer. Susan, a hundred names are filling my mind and a thousand lyrics are racing through me. I could list forever.” She ran her fingers through my hair, tugging my head back and kissing the stains on my face. “Rock music has bro
ught me endless pleasure.”

  “But what about Ashley?”

  “Ashley twisted it.”

  “No, Mother!” I cried, willing her to understand. “Rock music twisted Ashley!”

  The pain in my mother’s voice matched Ashley’s of last night. “Susan, Ashley was never a musician. She had no real talent. What’s more, she had no respect for the music itself. She just wanted fame, and rock was the technique she chose.”

  I stared at her.

  “If anything,” said my mother gently, “she was the one who damaged rock.” She poured orange juice for me, and pushed two slices of cinnamon raisin bread into the toaster.

  “We’re going to ride this out,” she said to me. “Have faith, honey. Something went terribly wrong with your sister, and maybe it was my fault, and maybe it wasn’t, but at least let’s not blame music.”

  Ashley appeared in the door.

  We stared at her. Her hair unbrushed, her face unwashed, her nightgown—mine, actually—crumpled. Her eyes blazing. Filled with the hatred she had told us about. “Then who do we blame?” she said in icy rage. “Who do we blame because Ashley Elizabeth Hall went terribly wrong?”

  We shrank from her. “I would rather not lay blame,” said my mother. “I would rather work things out.”

  Ashley amazed us by quoting the Bible. She had gone to Sunday school, but who would have thought anything stuck? “You think you can make the rough places plain, Mother, and the crooked straight? Well, you’re wrong. Some places don’t get straightened, and some don’t get smoothed.”

  Ashley advanced on us so frighteningly that we pulled together, and virtually hid behind the counter—but she didn’t have assault in mind. She was making herself an omelet.

  Mom and I nearly laughed with hysteria.

  Ashley beat three eggs violently and began chopping peppers and onion. The knife came down frighteningly close to her fingertips.

  This is my life, I thought. I’m living here. I, who ought to be worrying about eye makeup and Anthony, college and ski weekends.

  Jeffrey’s horn blared.

  Ash was so startled the knife slipped and she did cut herself. It wasn’t much of a cut. A Band-Aid was enough.