Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze, page 6
I remember feeling really depressed after I wrote it. But now, smiling to myself, I put a big fat line through number four.
Then I turn to a fresh page, and write at the top Things I Did for the First Time When I was Fifteen
I take a deep breath. I write.
Kissed someone.
I pull the journal forward and hold it against my chest where my heart is still pounding.
Track Nine
The Talking Piece
A gray Tuesday morning, already our fourth day at Cascade Family Resort, starts with school. Yay.
The Cobb Family Band is arranged around a picnic table under a huge weeping willow, not far from the building our rooms are in. It’s cloudy and a little chilly this morning, so I’m bundled up in a sweatshirt with the hood drawn up over my ears. My coffee has lots of cream and sugar in it, wisps of steam rising and curling into the morning air, my palms growing warm against the paper cup.
I used to love being home schooled when I was younger. The freedom of it. The intimacy. We didn’t keep a regular schedule. My parents always told us how lucky we were and, of course, we bought it. Believing that kids who went to regular school must hate being stuffed into crowded classrooms where no one could really pay any attention to them, where they weren’t invited to really speak their minds as we were. Where they were always stuck in one place, unlike us, roaming vagabonds always in motion.
But now that I should be in high school, it all feels different, and I wonder if I’ve been wrong all along. If either my parents were lying to me, or they just didn’t know any better. And hearing Juliet talk about her swim team and her favorite classes and teachers makes me wonder more than ever what it would be like to go to school with other kids every day. To eat lunch in a cafeteria. To go to dances and school plays. To have teachers who aren’t my parents. It’s not that my parents aren’t good teachers. They’re really good actually. Dad teaches social studies, history, debate, and current events. Mom teaches math, science, literature, and English. They love ideas and learning, and we have deep discussions and they’re both so smart. It’s not them. It’s that, well, I’ve always wondered about the parts of life I might be missing by being on the road all the time. And ever since I met Juliet, I can’t stop thinking about them. They run on repeat in my mind like a highlight reel. Maybe all the things I’m missing would disappoint me. Maybe they would suck big time. But how can I know for sure unless I actually experience them?
Discussing our current book, Jane Eyre, after reading The Color Purple, is a major let down. And the fact that I have plans with Juliet this afternoon makes the minutes crawl by.
After school, we have our weekly family meeting. Family meeting has two parts, announcements and share. Announcements are pretty self-explanatory. For share, we pass around a piece of lime green sea glass as a talking piece that Dad found in the waters of the Caribbean Sea when he and Mom played in Jamaica a million years ago. I love holding its rough smoothness between my fingers.
When each of us has our turn with the talking piece, we share roses and thorns.
Mom starts. She says her roses are that she got to lay out in the sun and go swimming. And that the first show turned out okay despite a “rocky” start. I know she’s holding back a lot here, but I’m glad she doesn’t say more. Dad deserves some major flack for last night, but I’m not in the mood, and if they start fighting again, I might lose it. Her thorn is that she says she didn’t sleep very well and feels a little groggy this morning. At this, she raises her eyebrows and cocks her head to the side in a knowing way, but she doesn’t give me away. Just passes me the talking piece.
“Roses are that I like being here,” I say. “I made a friend which is pretty different since I don’t have any. It’s nice to sleep in a decent bed for once. No offense to Howard. Another is that I’m reading a book I really like called The Color Purple.”
“Since when are you reading The Color Purple?” my mom asks.
“Tracy,” Dad says. There’s a strict no talking policy when someone else has the talking piece. Apparently, it’s a Quaker thing.
“I liked the show last night,” I say. “It was fun doing the duo set, and playing with the horns. And doing the encore on my own was cool.”
I start to pass the talking piece to Walden.
“No thorns?” he says.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m kind of tired of being on the road. And being home schooled.”
“Since when don’t you like school?” my mom says.
“We do algebra in the middle of the summer. It’s weird.”
“For consistency. Year-round school is far better for retention. All the research says so.”
“Tracy,” my dad says again. “How can you expect her to speak honestly if you comment on everything she says?”
“Sorry,” my mom says.
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m done.”
Now holding the talking piece, Walden takes a deep breath. I can tell he’s thinking hard about what he wants to say. “Roses are that this place is cool. I can’t believe people take vacations like this. Uh, another rose is that I met a girl. Cordelia. She’s really nice.” My parents exchange a coy glance at this. “My thorn is that, uh, I was so mad last night when you walked off stage, Dad.” His voice is shaking slightly, and I can tell the words are hard to get out. But he keeps going. “I feel like you really let Mom down. Like you let us all down.”
He passes the talking piece to my dad, who looks like he got the wind knocked out of him. Dad nods to himself to buy some time before speaking.
“I, uh,” my dad starts. “A rose is the breakfast buffet here. You all know how I treat pancakes like a religion. These ones are really good. No Vermont maple syrup, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. I also enjoyed Rainey’s encore last night. That was an…interesting song choice.” Dad pauses and sets down the talking piece. He takes his cigarettes out of his pocket and flicks one from the pack. He doesn’t light it, though, just slips it behind his ear. “My thorn is,” he begins, but instead of saying any more, he says, “excuse me,” then gets up and walks away.
“Way to go, you jerk,” I say to Walden, smacking him on the arm.
“Sorry,” Walden says. “But what’s the point of saying our meetings are supposed to be honest if we can’t actually be honest? And it’s true. He did let us down.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“Oh really? Then whose fault is it? Fleetwood Mac’s?”
“Guys,” Mom says. “Let’s not do this.”
“What if he does it again tonight?” Walden asks.
“He won’t,” Mom says, but she doesn’t sound convincing.
Track Ten
Blowin’ My Mind Like a Summer Breeze
“Catch,” Juliet says and tosses a cassette tape into my lap. It’s an hour after school, and we’re sitting on the couch in the Overlander Suite, munching Nutter Butters, drinking grape soda, and watching MTV. “It’s a mix. I stayed up almost all night making it after I got back from the beach. It’s going to change your life, okay, so get ready.”
Mix tapes are one of my favorite things in the world. I often make them for myself to bring on the road, and sometimes make them as presents for my family. But no one’s ever made me a mix before. One made just for my ears to hear.
The cover is a picture of a palm-tree studded beach, some of the palm trees standing straight up, others leaning down toward the sand as if to pick something up. The picture looks so familiar, and then it hits me. It’s one of the pictures from the mirror in Juliet’s bathroom, cut to fit and then folded perfectly into the shape of a tape case. Carefully, I pull out the cassette, cradling it like a scared object. Blowin’ My Mind…reads the label for side A, Like a Summer Breeze finishes the label for side B, a beautiful phrase split in half.
Blowin’ My Mind Like a Summer Breeze. I’m not quite sure what that means, but I like the sound of it. Like a song lyric.
On the inside cover, the songs for each 45-min side are written out in blue pen, arrows pointing from the song name to the artist.
Side One
Army of Me→Bjork
Seether→Veruca Salt
Fade into You→Mazzy Star
Loser→Beck
You Outta Know→Alanis Morrissette
Feel the Pain→Dinosaur Jr
Dreams→The Cranberries
Lithium→Nirvana
Where is My Mind→The Pixies
Deeper Than Beauty→Sloan
Side Two
Just a Girl→No Doubt
People Everyday→Arrested Development
Cannonball→The Breeders
On Your Shore→Enya
So Whatcha’ Want→Beastie Boys
Silent All These Years→Tori Amos
Will Work for Food→The Halo Benders
Fuck and Run→Liz Phair
Joyride→Built to Spill
1979→Smashing Pumpkins
Glory Box→Portishead
I say the names in my head, most of which I’ve never heard before. Bjork, Mazzy Star, The Breeders, Sloan, Liz Phair, The Halo Benders, Beck, Portishead. I like the images they create in my mind, the unheard melodies they promise.
“Thanks,” I say, but that one word feels so inadequate compared to what I feel.
I was pretty nervous about seeing Juliet today, afraid it might be weird, or she wouldn’t like me anymore. But it’s not weird. It’s easy. Neither one of us has mentioned the kiss, though.
“You want to listen to it?”
“Yeah.”
She slips the mix into her stereo, and we lie side by side on the carpeted floor while it plays, holding hands, our fingers intertwined like tree roots. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Moods and sounds dancing around and shifting without warning, yet all somehow fitting perfectly together like the pieces of a puzzle.
Mixes are magical because they’re one of a kind, never to be repeated the same way again, which is kind of the point. The art of mix making is that you’re choosing songs in the hopes that the person you’re making it for will love them as much as you do, but then putting those songs into the exact perfect sequence to create the most love in that person. You want them to fall in love and be swept away by those songs in that order. You’re trying to capture their heart.
I guess when it comes down to it, mixes are love.
The last song fades and the tape clicks off. Juliet and I have barely spoken for 90 minutes. My lips feel dry. We’re still holding hands, and I can smell Juliet’s Freesia scented lotion in my hair.
“Well?” she says.
“Wow,” I say.
“I told you. So good, right?”
“So good.”
“Do you ever have that feeling,” she asks, sitting up, eyes opening in excitement, “where you listen to music so hard and so carefully you almost become the music?”
“Um, all the time. I thought I was the only weirdo who thought that.”
“And then there were two,” she says.
I immediately want to hear it again, but Juliet wants to go swimming.
“Swimming?” I ask, as if it’s not something people normally do.
“Yeah, c’mon, it’ll be fun,” she says. “The lake is so warm right now. I’ll see if Cordelia wants to come too and we’ll meet you and Walden down at the beach. Cord and I have to do some landscaping work later for my dad, but there’s time.”
“Okay,” I say, feeling unsure about squeezing into my bathing suit, and not wanting to break the spell of the past two hours.
Reluctantly, I trudge back to my room to change into my dreaded navy blue one-piece. My nemesis. Somehow, I knew I couldn’t avoid it forever.
After I slip it on, I stand there looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, trying to trick myself into not hating what I see. Why are humans, especially girls, pre-programmed to hate how we look? It’s crazy when you think about it. Not to mention sadistic. I heard this thing once about the power of positivity. The idea is that if you force positive thoughts onto something negative, you can gradually change negativity to positivity. I make a list in my mind.
Things I LIKE about my appearance
I’m 5-7. Tall, but not too tall.
I don’t have that many pimples.
I get freckles across my nose and cheeks in the sunshine that I kind of like.
I have brownish-red hair, the exact same color as my mom’s.
I have really long fingers that are good for piano playing.
I have a nice smile.
I’m not too hairy.
There, that wasn’t so bad.
At first, Walden, who’s watching a Tom Cruise movie on TV, says he doesn’t feel like coming to the beach, but when I tell him that Cordelia will be there, he jumps into action, digging his wrinkled swimming trunks out of a drawer.
We stroll between buildings and across grassy courtyards toward the beach. The sun is high and bright, and the morning chill is long gone. I like how after four days, I can already get around Cascade Family Resort without really thinking about where I’m going. My feet just guide me. A left at the Coke machine takes you to the beach, a right takes you to the horseshoe pits. The tall green fence means you’re near the putting green.
Walden is a few inches taller than me, which means, as usual, his stride keeps him just ahead of me. When we were little, I always used to force myself to speed up so that I could keep up with him. I wanted to be right next to my brother at all times. Today, I walk at my own pace, content to be out of sync.
“What was that song you played for the encore last night?” Walden asks, unrolling his white hotel towel and slinging it over his shoulders. Last month, he bought a set of army dog tags at a second-hand store somewhere in upstate New York, and they jangle lightly as he walks.
It’s probably stupid, but I don’t want to tell Walden about “Lithium” or Nirvana because I’m afraid he’ll be a jerk about it. Like me, Walden is a proud musical snob, even more so, and I’m afraid he’ll think I’m betraying the cause.
“Just some song I heard.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. The radio or something. Wherever people hear music.”
“Who’s it by?”
“I forget.”
“Please. Says the girl who literally can’t forget things.”
“I heard it and liked it, so I played it. What are you, the music police?”
I realize I sound more annoyed than I mean to.
“Okay, relax. Jeez. It was kind of weird, so I was curious. I just don’t know why you’d play some random song that nobody even knows,” he says. “That’s not even in our repertoire.”
“People know it,” I say. “Just not you.”
“Touché,” he says and lightly whips me with his towel.
I give him a playful push.
• • •
The four of us swim out to the dock and lay in the sparkly sun. Juliet and Cordelia are both wearing bikinis, and I feel a little old lady-ish in my blue one-piece, but I don’t think I’d ever have the guts to put my pudgy belly on display to the whole world. The sun dries our bodies while we squint into the yellow heat, then we jump back into the cool lake, then dry off again. The pattern feels wonderfully primal, like something alligators would do.
Cordelia, who used to take gymnastics, can hold a handstand for almost a full minute, even with Walden jostling the dock to try to knock her over. She and Walden giggle a lot, and at one point they hold hands for a few seconds.
Juliet tries to teach me how to dive, which results in a spectacular series of painful belly flops, but I have fun anyway, not feeling as self-conscious as I normally do. Juliet’s a surprisingly good teacher. Specific, encouraging, forgiving.
“You’ll get it,” she says. “My swim coach taught me that jumping headfirst isn’t a natural sensation, even if it’s into water. We naturally want to protect ourselves. You just have to get used to the feeling.”
Sitting on the dock, swimming and laughing and not thinking about anything, not the next city or the next show or Dad’s stage fright or Mom’s stress or the meaning of my life, feels like the most normal thing I’ve ever done. Now, if I could only put this moment into a bottle and hold onto it forever so I could pull it out when I wish my life was different.
At one point, Cordelia and Walden have a contest to see who can hold their breath the longest. Juliet and I are already sitting kind of close to each other near the dock’s edge, but while they’re underwater, Juliet scoots even closer to me, our bare legs touching, and puts her head on my shoulder for a few seconds. Lays it right there like the most natural thing in the world.
“What are you going to play for me tonight?” she asks.
Then we steal another kiss.
Track Eleven
Something is Broken Inside
Around three o’clock, I get back to my room, feeling buzzed from the sun, my skin splotchy with assorted pink continents. We’re due at the ballroom for sound check at six-thirty before the show at eight. Walden says he’s taking a nap and falls face first onto his bed.
“Ow,” he says, his face muffled by his pillow.
My brother can be pretty funny sometimes.
I want to listen to my mix again, but I certainly can’t do it here, so I throw on my running gear. Sneakers, shorts, sports bra, T-shirt. Hair in a ponytail. Red Sox hat. I grab my Walkman, stretch a little, and set out. Only, when I open my door, my dad is standing right there. He has his hand raised to knock, and we startle each other, and both jump back laughing.
“Just the person I wanted to see. Got a minute, Rain Man?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Step into my office,” he says, and nods for me to follow him.
When we were little, Walden and I used to quietly compete for our dad’s attention. With Mom, well, she was always available. Always there. And you could get as much attention as you craved. But Dad’s always been a bit of a mystery.
