Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze, page 12
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry again. I didn’t know.”
I nod. I want to say more. I know he deserves more. That I played a role in all this too. But I can’t find the words.
We look under the beds to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything, then we’re gone.
As we load up Howard the Duck and the gear trailer, it feels like the whole week, which in some ways seems to have lasted years, has suddenly passed in a blink. Time is really weird. When I first woke up this morning, I spent a long time looking at myself in the mirror, trying to decide if I looked different at all because of all the things that had happened. Does experience show in your face? Other than some new sun freckles, a nose ring, and a secret star tattoo, of course I didn’t. I looked like me.
I can’t bring myself to leave without seeing Juliet one more time, so, after telling my parents I think I left something in my room, I sneak The Color Purple out of my backpack and sprint to The Overlander Suite. Juliet opens the door, looking surprised to see me, and even more surprised that my chest is heaving and I’m out of breath. She’s wearing her baggy camo cargo shorts, the ones she was wearing the day I first met her, and a Tori Amos concert T-shirt. It’s my first time seeing Tori Amos’s face, and shockingly, she looks a little like my mom, when she was younger, I mean. My mom’s skin isn’t quite as creamy white, and her hair isn’t quite as fire engine red. But close. On Juliet’s lips is smeared the same shade of purple lipstick as always.
“I forgot to give this back to you,” I say, passing over the book.
“You could have kept it,” Juliet says, closing the door behind me.
I shrug.
“You guys leaving soon?”
I nod. “Right now.”
“I feel like you just got here.”
“Me too. I don’t want to leave,” I say, feeling a flood of tears approaching that I somehow manage to hold off.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
As goodbyes go, it’s certainly not poetry. But maybe that’s all there is for us to say.
We hug for a long time, and I breathe in all the delicious smells I somehow know I will associate with Juliet Morrison for the rest of my life—Freesia scented body lotion, grape soda, Nutter Butters. All there in a single whiff. I slip my fingers through Juliet’s black hair and move my fingertips through its fuzzy softness, already feeling sad for the loss of it. I never thought I would love the feel of someone else’s hair this much.
“I have to go,” I say. “My family thinks I’m checking my room for anything I left behind.”
“You really need to work on your lying,” Juliet says. “Wait. I have an idea. One last thing before you go.”
After getting a red magic marker from her desk drawer, Juliet puts her hand on the wall and begins tracing it—right on the wall. By now, I shouldn’t be too surprised by anything Juliet does, but I can hardly believe my eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see.”
After she finishes tracing her hand, she takes my hand and traces it right beside hers, our traced thumbs nearly touching. Next to the two hands, she writes, Juliet and Rainey Were Here.
I look at our handprints in the middle of her bedroom wall, which seem to perfectly represent Juliet’s entire personality. Using her Polaroid camera, she snaps a picture of the traced hands and hands it to me.
“There. Now we’ll never forget.”
“You’re crazy,” I say.
“I can’t help it,” she says, hugging me one last time.
And she can’t. In the end, I guess neither of us can help how we are.
We just are.
• • •
As we drive back through Cascade Family Resort’s front gate, I see the sign again, the one that says where families go to be families again. That may work for other families, but as for the Cobbs, it’s hard not to feel our family unit has taken a step backward.
The ride home is long and boring. My bunk is still saggy, Walden’s snoring still keeps me awake. Howard the Duck’s engine still wheezes like he has a cold. But I sort of enjoy the emptiness of the endless drive. It feels good to have nothing to do but ride along. No rehearsal. No show. Just the wheels turning and the endless highway. I help Dad change one of Howard’s tires. Help flag down a car to give us a jump when the battery dies.
I make lists in my journal with my grandfather’s pen. The Weirdest Billboards. The Best Beatles Albums. Animals I’m Afraid Of. Favorite Aretha Franklin Songs. Foods That Start with the Letter S.
Indiana becomes Ohio becomes Pennsylvania becomes New York becomes Vermont. A blurry string of gas stations and rest areas and McDonald’s Extra Value Meals.
Things I Wonder About
I wonder if Juliet is thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about her.
I wonder if the whole past week has been a dream. Or maybe a test.
I wonder if I’m living the life I’m meant to live, and how I’ll know.
I wonder if I’m gay.
I wonder if it’s important that I know for sure whether or not I’m gay.
I wonder what my parents would say if I told them I kissed Juliet—a lot.
I wonder if maybe I can go to regular school this year.
I wonder if my dad is going to be okay.
I wonder if my parents are going to get a divorce.
I wonder if my songs are any good.
My whole life is a question waiting to be answered.
Side Two:
The Treehouse Tapes
August 1995-August 1996
Track One
My First Pen Pal
Press the fast forward button. Right there. Stop.
In the weeks after returning home, Dad and I rediscover fishing together. One day, he pulls our rods and the tackle box out of the basement and calls up to me in the treehouse where I’m playing guitar.
“What do you say, Rain Man?” he asks. “Want to help me dig up some worms and head to the pond like the old days?”
One day we’re out there on a bright yellow day at the very beginning of August with a sun like an egg yolk when I get a strong bite and reel in a big golden perch. It’s one of the biggest fish I’ve ever caught, almost a foot long, and I can’t believe how excited I feel seeing it there dangling from the end of my line.
“I think that’s the biggest smile I’ve seen since we got home,” Dad says.
I shrug.
“It’s a nice smile, Rain Man. Be nice to see it more often. You look like your mom when you smile.”
But when I roll my eyes at this, he holds up his hands as if to say, sorry, bad choice of words. Things are still weird between me and Mom. They were getting a little bit better, and then about a week ago Murph came over with a six pack of Bud—Murph has been my mom’s best friend since they were young, and my parents’ manager since the beginning—and told us that Willie Nelson wanted us to open up a series of theater shows for him in October and November. Mom and Murph considered this the best news ever. But not me. And certainly not Dad. Murph, who’s only about five feet tall but has a gruff, deep voice, broke the benefits down like an equation. I’ve always loved Murph, who’s like an aunt to me and Walden, but my heart sank as she talked.
“Bigger crowds equals more exposure,” she said. “More exposure equals more CDs and T-shirts sold. More CDs and T-shirts sold equals more money. More money equals more time to keep living your dreams. More time living your dreams equals more happy. Comprende? Am I the only one who gets this?”
Murph can be a little blunt. That’s part of what we love about her. She stayed for burgers on the grill and while we ate, the adults got tipsy and spun stories about the good old days. Murph told the one about helping Neil Young find his shoe. Mom the one about driving through a blizzard to make a New Year’s gig in Denver and then playing by candlelight when the power went out. Dad about trading licks with Stevie Ray Vaughan in Austin.
At our family meeting that night, after Murph gave us all big hugs and went home, I said that I didn’t want to play the Willie shows because I wanted to go to a real school and take a break from the band. It took all the courage I had inside of me not to buckle under the disappointed look on Mom’s face. Then my dad said he didn’t feel up to playing live again—yet. His stage fright was still too bad.
Things have been pretty tense since then.
That’s why Dad has been sleeping on the pull out in the studio, and he and I are both officially on Mom’s shit list. Hence, lots of fishing.
The perch is so slippery and slimy in my hands, I can barely stand to touch it. But Dad says that if we’re going to catch fish, we have to honor them and treat them with respect. Sometimes Dad is a little out there. I do my best to hold the fish steady while Dad slips the hook free from its mouth.
“Goodbye fish,” Dad says.
“Goodbye fish,” I say and lower the perch back into the water, holding it gently until it starts moving its tail fin, then I let it go.
• • •
Look for the silver lining, a song once said. Here’s mine. I have my first pen pal.
Juliet and I write lots of letters back and forth. Her first letter actually beat us to Vermont and was in the stack of mail Mom picked up from the post office. For some reason, that felt magical, seeing it there. Mom looked disapprovingly at the postmark and return address before handing me the letter, which I immediately took to the treehouse and read over and over again like a poem I was memorizing.
Dear Rainey,
Do you know that feeling when you think about a happy memory and for a while it makes you so happy to think about it that you just want to keep thinking about it? But then the longer you think about it, the more you miss it, and then you start to miss it so badly, it kind of makes your stomach hurt?
That’s how much I miss having you here.
Where did you go, Rainey Cobb?
As I predicted, things have been boring since you left. Although, I cut a second and a half off my time in the 200m Freestyle, which is my best swimming event. I know a second and a half doesn’t sound long, but in swimming, that’s a lifetime. My coach thinks if I keep going like this, I have a really good chance of getting a scholarship, maybe even to a Big Ten school like Michigan or Indiana.
She also says if I’m serious about swimming, I have to stop smoking.
I asked her how she knew that I smoked, and she gave me one of those looks only grown-ups know how to give. You know the one I mean.
Boy, do I.
Track Two
Gently Snag the Butterflies
One afternoon I’m in the treehouse strumming a minor chord pattern on my electric guitar, putting the finishing touches on another original song. That makes nine that I’ve written. As in, seven-eight-nine. Somehow, they keep coming, pouring out of me like a faucet I can’t turn off. It makes a nice distraction from thinking about Juliet, which is what I do with the rest of my time.
I wrote three songs while we were at Cascade, starting with “Ordinary Girl,” followed by “Secret Star” and then “Peter Pan in Reverse.” This one, which I think I’m going to call “A Quiet Place” makes six already since we got home from tour a couple weeks ago. How is that possible? Part of me doesn’t trust how quickly they’re coming, but another part of me knows that’s something I should worry about later. When they stop coming. That my job at the moment is to gently snag the butterflies with my musical net as they float by.
I think it’s safe to say I’m more aligned with Dad’s philosophy of songwriting.
The guitar I’m writing on is one of my dad’s old ones that he said I could have, a cherry red Mexican Telecaster with a white pick guard. I love it so much. It’s a little beat up and some of the paint is chipped, but that makes it look sort of tough. My dad told me that nobody trusts a guitar player with a brand-new guitar, and I guess I see what he means.
I’ve been enjoying playing guitar more lately. I’m still a little clumsy and slow when I change between chords, but I’m getting better, and the fretboard is starting to make more sense to me. A piano is so linear, all laid out in a line. A guitar is multiple pianos braided together. It’s more confusing, but there’s also more options to play what you want to play. For a long time, I thought there was only one way to play an A chord, and then my dad showed me all these inversions, six different ways to play the same chord all over the fretboard. My head kind of exploded, but things made more sense after that.
Through one of the treehouse windows, I see Dad’s shape between the maple and birch trees, chopping wood over by the studio. I worry about Dad. He’s more relaxed since we got home from tour. He spends a lot of time in the studio. He reads books and chops wood and plays his guitar. He builds bird houses. But playing live music is how my parents pay the bills, and it would be really bad if my dad couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t quite know what all that adds up to, but I’m not too naïve to know there’s some difficult moments ahead for the Cobb Family Band, financially speaking and otherwise, especially if I’m allowed to go to school. People have this romantic idea about professional musicians and bands like we’re all Led Zeppelin and ride around in fancy cars sipping champagne, but that’s a lie. Most of the musicians I meet are like us, barely making it, wondering how much longer they can hang on.
One day, I heard my parents arguing, and my mom said, “You’re all abandoning me, that’s why I’m yelling. So, I guess I should start working at T.J. Maxx!”
Thank God for the treehouse. I think I’d be going nuts without it. We may have a tiny house, but our back yard somewhat makes up for it.
“All I need,” I sing quietly, Dad’s wood chopping keeping an unsteady beat, “is a quiet place. A quiet place to call my own. A quiet place that’s far from home. A quiet place where we can be alone.”
A couple of birds squawk back at me in response.
I recently started thinking about the songs I’m writing as not just individual songs, but as a collection. I think “A Quiet Place” would make a good closing song, or a nice breather sandwiched between two of the angry, fast ones. And I’ve written some angry ones. Ones that have surprised me as they came out. Ones I think would shock my family if they heard them. Think of them as butterflies with metal wings and fangs. The three songs that came before “A Quiet Place,” named “Anger, Part 1,” “Anger, Part 2,” and “Anger, Part 3,” at least until I can come up with better titles, will require heavy distortion and loud drums. And screaming.
Why am I angry enough to write three songs about it? Like a good teenager, my feelings typically outrace my thoughts, and I’m not totally sure yet. I know it’s all connected to my family, my mom mostly, and the way I’ve been raised like a musical species from another planet where no other teenagers have ever been allowed to visit. That it’s connected to my week with Juliet and the fact that she’s there and I’m here. But the details feel foggy outside of my songs, where I can describe things more abstractly, more with impressions than specifics. With colors instead of lines. My anger songs are Jackson Pollock paintings, which makes them pretty different from “Ordinary Girl,” which is more like a landscape or a painting of a bowl of fruit. And anyway, one of the great things about songs is that you can get away with not explaining everything, but still say what you mean.
On the plus side, my parents earned the bonus from our three sell-outs, and we sold almost two hundred CDs and fifty T-shirts at Cascade. They gave Walden and I $300 each, and with my tour earnings, I bought a CD player and some CDs. What I really wish I had was my mix tape back, but Mom says she’s still thinking about it.
I slip Nevermind into the CD player, an album that after a rocky first date, I’ve totally fallen in love with.
Confession #5: I’m still a music snob. But I’m working on it.
Then I lay back on the loveseat and open my journal to a fresh page.
Dear Juliet,
I’m in the treehouse again. I’ve been spending almost all my time up here lately, hiding from my family.
The treehouse is actually still really sturdy, even though it was built to hold little kids. Plus, my dad put on some extra support beams last week.
What’s actually in a treehouse, you might be wondering? The floor is covered with mismatched pieces of old carpet. There’s a small table, two folding chairs, a lantern, a bookshelf, plus the small couch that I’m lying on while I write you this letter. Seriously, I still don’t know how my dad got a couch up here.
The best thing in the treehouse is the mural on the ceiling. I’m looking up at it now. I don’t think I told you about it, but it’s one of my favorite things in the whole world. My parents painted it for us when we were kids.
Close your eyes and picture all the different types of forests in the world kind of morphed together into one super forest. There are lots of different kinds of trees all snaking together. A waterfall. Mushrooms on the ground. And tons of creatures that ordinarily would never be in the same forest together. Squirrels and monkeys and butterflies and newts and frogs and foxes. There’s a huge black jaguar napping in a tree. A pair of lemurs chasing each other up a trunk. There’s even a mother elephant and a baby elephant holding the mom’s tail with her trunk. There’s pandas and koalas and black bears. A moose.
It sounds ridiculous now, but Walden and I named all the animals when we were kids and we used to make up stories about them. We’d lay on the floor for hours just looking up at the ceiling coming up with stories. Mookie the Macaw. Albert the Ape. Umi the Orangutan. Jeremy the Jaguar. The monkey family, who we named Mort, Mindy, Mellie, and Molly.
I’ve been writing more songs. I have nine now. They’re coming out so fast I don’t even know how it’s happening. It’s weird. I’m thinking of turning them into an album. But I’m not sure how I’ll make an album though since…
