Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze, page 18
A Little Delay
“So, what kind of music do you guys play?” River McRae asks, hefting a Peavey amp up onto a chair and arranging distortion pedals on the carpet floor of Evan’s basement.
“We’re still sort of trying to figure that out,” Evan says. “We had been playing covers. Nirvana. Soundgarden. Dinosaur Jr. The Pixies. Stuff like that.”
“So, a lot of distortion,” River says. He stomps on a white Boss tuning pedal and begins turning knobs. He’s wearing jeans with big holes in the knees, a white V-neck T-shirt, a flannel tied around his waist, and red Chuck Taylors.
“We’re also trying some original stuff,” I say.
“Cool,” River says. Clicking off the tuner, his guitar springs to sound. He rattles off a flourish of notes on his Gibson semi-hollow body, his fingers a blur, and something flutters inside me. It reminds me of the first time I heard Simon, Damon, and Chad from the St. Regis Horns. This guy can play.
“Whoa,” Evan says.
“Sorry,” River says. “Bad habit. Jazz players like notes.”
“Anyway, Rainey’s an amazing songwriter. And singer. And keyboard player.”
Sometimes I hate it when Evan fawns over me.
“And amazing at poetry,” River says. “Thanks for your help in English the other day. That poem made absolutely no sense to me. I’m like, what the hell is an urn? After she read my response, Ms. Ofalko was like, ‘well said, River, that’s very insightful and some of the best thinking you’ve done all semester.’ If only she knew I just wrote down everything you said.”
I’ll bet River knows who Pat Metheny is. Not to mention, he’s sort of amazing looking. Long, silky brown hair that hangs past his shoulders, a slender face, moody French lips. Almost more beautiful than handsome. For the briefest moment, I think about kissing him. Why do I want to kiss everybody lately?
“How did you know that poem so well?”
“My mom.”
“You talk to your mom about poetry?”
“Sometimes.”
“The only thing I talk to my mom about is what time she’s picking me up.”
“Okay,” Evan says, smacking his hands together, “and we’re back to music. What I was about to say is that Rainey has some amazing original songs.”
“Well, let’s play one.”
I walk River through the chord changes to “Ordinary Girl.”
“That diminished chord you threw in there is cool,” he says.
“Yeah, it gives it some nice tension.”
“Totally. Okay, I think I got it. Wanna try it?”
The first time through is pretty rough. Evan’s time is all over the place.
“How long have you been playing drums?” River asks.
“Two years,” Evan says, nudging his glasses up. He’s sweating like a pig and clearly intimated by River. “Sorry, I know I kept speeding up.”
We try it again. And again. After the fifth time, River apologizes, saying, “Sorry, that was me that time, I totally overplayed.” He nods to himself, plays with his distortion pedals. “Do either of you mind if I try something a little weird? I have this delay pedal that’s pretty cool and I kind of want to try it on this song. I think if over the verse section I don’t play straight chords but play arpeggios with a little delay it could sound really cool and give it more space.”
“I don’t know what any of that meant,” Evan says, “but give it a try. Rainey, what do you think?”
“Sure,” I say, feeling excited by River’s curiosity, by the way he’s exploring the possibilities in my song. It’s an impulse that reminds me of Walden.
The delay instantly opens things up, and suddenly “Ordinary Girl” is what it was always meant to be.
As the volume is fading, we all look at each other and smile without saying anything. There’s this long beat where I can tell we’re all thinking the same thing. I had almost forgotten how good it feels to make beautiful music with other people.
“Now I guess we just need a cool band name,” River says.
After practice, Evan and I sit on his front porch steps and wait for my mom. Above us there’s a dark sky blanketed with shimmering points of light. An invisible chorus of crickets chirps in the grass all around. Sometimes when Evan and I are alone together, there’s this sort of dramatic silence when I can tell he’s thinking really hard about me, about the words he wants to say. And maybe other things. He fidgets. Breathes heavily. Looks at me, then looks quickly away. At first, I sort of liked it. It feels good when someone pays a lot of attention to you, but lately, that silence makes me nervous.
“You going to the Fall Formal?” Evan asks. He picks up a small rock and throws it into the road where it does a few skips and then flies into the tall grass at the edge of the road.
“Probably not,” I say, hugging my arms around my knees against the evening chill.
I don’t know a thing about high school dances, except that only losers go alone.
“Why? I’m sure tons of people must have asked you by now.”
“Yeah, right. Try no one. You’re one of the few people at this school who even knows I exist.”
Evan laughs softly.
“You really think that, don’t you? Rainey, everyone at this school knows you exist.”
“Anyway, it’s just a dance,” I say.
“Well. Maybe we could go together. I mean, if you want. We don’t have to. I just thought. Never mind.”
“Oh,” I say, not sure how to respond to this. I want to go with Evan. I know we’ll have fun. But I also have a bad feeling it’s going to get more complicated than that. “Yeah, sure, I guess.”
“Cool,” Evan says.
Headlights crawl through the trees and up the road as my mom pulls into view.
I stand up and so does Evan.
“Can I hug you?” he asks.
“Uh…sure,” I say, and Evan wraps his big arms all the way around me.
As we pull away, he quickly kisses me on the cheek. That’s never happened before.
“See you tomorrow.”
This is not going to end well.
• • •
“What was that about?” my mom asks as we pull out of Evan’s neighborhood.
I shrug. “Nothing.”
“You better spill it. That was a kiss. Are you and Evan a couple?”
“What? No! Mom, we’re just friends. Evan’s like my brother.”
“That’s not what it looks like to me.”
Somebody shoot me, please.
Track Twelve
I Was Here, and Now I’m Not
With Mom and Walden on tour, Dad comes to Oklahoma! alone on opening night. When the stage lights go down during the first set change, I catch a glimpse of him shuffling into the auditorium late after taking the bus, his trucker’s cap pulled low over his eyes. For some reason, Dad won’t drive at night anymore. I know it’s related to his stage fright, but I don’t see the connection. Not to mention, now that there are no stages in sight, what Dad is going through has become way bigger, and way harder to understand. He stashes himself up in the very back row where the shadows swallow him up.
Wearing all black, silently moving through the darkness as I place fake fences and cardboard cutouts of horses into position, the anonymity of stage crew is oddly thrilling. And I enjoy doing my part to make the show work.
“Nice job, Rain Man,” he says afterward, giving me a hug. “But next time,” he whispers, “you should be in the show. They could have used you. Except for that female lead, she was pretty damn good.”
With just me and Dad at home, it’s harder to ignore how much worse he’s gotten, how much he’s withdrawn into himself. He talks less. He stops shaving. He barely leaves the house, even to go to the grocery store. We live on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and canned peaches and pears. The milk and eggs run out. The last two slices of bread grow fuzzy beards. The cupboards turn bare.
The thing I notice the most, though, is that he stops laughing. Dad and I joke a lot. It’s our thing. We’re not Abbot and Costello, but making jokes is part of how we communicate. But even that’s mostly gone. He buries himself in massive tomes about The Civil War and The American Revolution and The History of Bebop. He carves and builds and sands endless creations out of wood, his jeans always covered in a burly layer of pale sawdust. He keeps recording his Christmas album. I can tell how much he misses Mom. I think he hates himself for letting her go on the road without him.
One night, we’re eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner with supplies I picked up from the corner store when the phone rings. It’s Mom, calling from a pay phone in Baltimore to say a quick hi before she heads to the gig. Mom and I chat for a minute before I pass the phone off to Dad. I slip into my bedroom and strum Walden’s guitar to give them some privacy, and when I hear Dad stop talking, I come back to the table and take a bite of my sandwich, wishing we had some milk. That’s when Dad starts crying. Suddenly, there’s tears running down his cheeks, but otherwise he’s almost perfectly still and staring off at nothing.
“Dad? Are you okay?”
“I don’t know where the hell I went, Rain Man. I was here, and now I’m not.”
The next day, I get out the number of Dad’s therapist, Dr. Powers, and call her. Mom wrote down the number before she left and told me to keep an eye out for “anything really weird.” I’m pretty sure this qualifies.
Dr. Powers, a stiff but nice woman with her hair up in a tight bun and huge glasses, comes over and talks to my dad in the living room for a long time. I’m not allowed to hear, so I listen to my Walkman to distract myself.
Before she leaves, Dr. Powers asks if she can talk to me. I say sure.
She tries to explain to me what’s going on with my dad.
“You mean with his stage fright?” I ask.
She nods. “I know that’s what you guys have been calling it in your family, but what your dad is dealing with is closer to anxiety and clinical depression. Do you know what that means?”
“Kind of,” I say.
She explains how depression and anxiety can be caused by a lot of things, but how it’s never as simple as one reason. And how it’s never going to only show itself in one way, like being afraid to perform in front of an audience. Stage fright is an effect, but it’s not the cause. She explains how a lot of what Dad experiences and feels is out of his control, but that doesn’t mean he’s powerless.
“So, he can get better?”
“Absolutely,” she says. “He can. And he will. But he has to work at it every day. It’s never going be as simple as flipping a switch. Your father is an awfully stubborn man, Rainey.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Millions of people deal with depression and anxiety. Far more than we might think. Most of them don’t do anything about it because they’re afraid it makes them look weak. Especially men. And unfortunately, we live in a society that’s obsessed with projecting outward composure and always having it all figured out. But it’s not about being strong or weak. It’s about being honest about what you experience, and then doing the work so you can keep living your life.”
She gives me a plastic bottle of pills and tells me to make sure Dad takes one every day.
“You’re a very brave and strong young woman, Rainey,” she says. “Your Dad is lucky to have you.”
“If he’s so lucky to have me,” I say, trying but unable to stop my own tears from coming, “then why can’t I help him?”
“Sweetie, you are helping him. You are. Right now. This is what help looks like.”
• • •
When Mom and Walden get home, I’ve hardly ever been so glad to see two people in my life. Unfortunately, the first Richmond tour didn’t go so well.
“The crowds sucked,” Walden confesses to me that night. He looks miserable. “Duh. Nobody’s ever heard of us. People have heard of Tracy Cobb. They haven’t heard of Richmond. And Mom only wanted to play mostly newer songs. We didn’t play ‘Tell the Truth’ once. Or any of the hits really.”
“What?”
“It was a disaster. I think I’d rather go to school with you than do that again.”
The next week Mom is back to work at T.J. Maxx and giving piano lessons. She seems depressed now, too. My family is officially falling apart.
Evan books our band our first official gig for the second Friday in November at Club 182, an all-ages club in downtown Burlington, about a half hour from Fairview. We’ve played in Evan’s basement for friends a few times at this point, and they didn’t run out of the room screaming. But this is a real gig. What happened is that, after I finally broke down and gave Evan a copy of The Treehouse Tapes, he gave it to his older brother, Jacob, who’s a sophomore in college and works at the club, and also helps with booking. But then Evan did something that really made me mad. He booked our gig under the name Rainey Cobb. As if that was the name of our band.
“I thought we finally agreed on The Ripped Pages,” I say.
“We forgot to tell you, we decided we hate that name now,” River says.
“It was your idea! We voted on it.”
“True,” River says, “but now I’m vetoing it. We voted on veto power, too, remember? I thought I liked it, but it’s too fancy. Or something. Anyway, we agreed that all three of us had to like the name.”
“But Rainey Cobb isn’t a band name,” I argue. “It’s a person’s name. My name. And I don’t like it.”
“But that’s the thing. It sounds like a band name. That’s what’s so cool about it.”
“Like Veruca Salt,” Evan says.
“That’s a name from a book, not one of the band members’ names. It’s different.”
“Really? What book?”
“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” I say.
“Oh my God,” River says, “that’s why that sounded so familiar!” He teases out the Oompa-Loompa song on his guitar. “What was the fat kid’s name? We could call ourselves that.”
“Augustus Gloop,” I say. “And, no.”
“It’s already on the flyers,” Evan said.
“There’s flyers? What’s on them?”
“That picture my mom took of us. The one where we’re sitting on the couch.”
I hate the way I look in that picture, but don’t mention it.
“Jacob thinks they can get a good crowd when we play.”
“But no one’s ever heard us,” I say.
“Hence the flyers,” River says. “And people are already talking.”
“What people?”
This is all happening really fast.
Then I get Juliet’s letter.
When I see the envelope with her writing on it, my hands nearly start shaking I’m so nervous and excited. Almost two endless weeks have gone by since I wrote my confession and sent The Treehouse Tapes to Cascade Family Resort, and I’ve been in agony wondering what she thought and why she hasn’t written back. I run with the letter out to the tree house, scamper up the rope ladder as fast as I can, then break the seal on the letter.
Dear Rainey,
I’m really sorry for taking so long to write you back. My coach has been having us practice twice a day, and with swim meets on the weekend and so much homework at night my eyes are about to start bleeding. I haven’t had much extra energy.
I’ve read your letter about a hundred times by now, trying to decide what I want to say to you about it.
I’ve decided that I care about you way too much not to be honest with you. Here goes.
Nathaniel and I got back together. It just sort of happened at school. I know how hard that must be to hear. I don’t know if you’ve figured out yet whether you only like girls or whether you like boys and girls, but I’m pretty sure I like both.
I care so much about you, and our week together was one of the best weeks of my entire life. But it’s the fall now, and I’m trying not to live in the past. Plus, I live in Michigan and you live in Vermont and we can’t ever see each other!
I wish I could, but I don’t think I can love you back, Rainey. Anyway, you’ll find somebody else soon and forget all about me. I know it. I think you’ve just never had these kinds of feelings before. Believe me, I know how overwhelming they can feel.
But please don’t hate me. I mean, you can at first, but I hope you don’t always. I can’t stand the thought of you hating me.
I listened to your tape, and your songs are so beautiful, Rainey. You’re the most talented person I’ve ever met, and I know you’re going to get everything you want out of life.
You will always be my friend, but maybe it’s better for both of us if we take a break from writing for a while. What do you think?
Keep playing music, Rainey. You’ve got a gift. Keep giving.
Your friend,
Juliet
What’s almost worse than Juliet’s letter is the fact that there’s no one I can talk to about it. No one. Not my brother. Not Evan. Not my parents. I’m marooned on Heartbreak Island, population one. All I can do is add it to my list of firsts, which is turning out to be a more complicated experiment than I meant it to be.
Things I Did for the First Time When I was Fifteen.
Got my heart broken.
I’m learning the hard way that not all firsts are ones you can feel good about. Some are ones you wish you could tear up and throw away.
Track Thirteen
You’re Not Pretty Enough
The Oklahoma! cast party is in Chris Zimmerman’s basement. He’s the handsome senior with the square jaw and broad shoulders but very average voice who played the male lead, Curley, opposite Mary Hanson as Laurey.
“Make yourselves at home,” he says to me and Evan, then, leaning in, adds, “and make sure you try the Mountain Dew.”
“What does that mean?” Evan whispers to me.
“I have no idea.”
Confession #7: I hate parties.
