Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze, page 7
Here’s what I mean. I remember one day when I was eight or nine, Mom sent me outside to call Dad in for dinner. I walked out into the back yard and Dad was perched on an upside-down bucket, sanding a piece of wood with fine grade sandpaper, whistling to himself. When I got a little closer, I could see that the wood had been carved into the shape of a beautiful bird and he was delicately sanding and shaping the wings. It was incredible. Perfect, even. Something you would see in an art gallery. But he acted like it was no big deal. “You want it?” he said and gave it to me right then and there. I still have it on my dresser at home. A hummingbird in flight. What I mean is that I went the first half of my life not knowing my dad could carve beautiful birds out of wood.
Anyway, we each had our ways to steal some solo time with Dad. Walden’s was going to Lake Monster baseball games in Burlington and eating hot dogs. Mine was going fishing. There’s a pond a short walk from our house in Fairview, and we’d dig some worms from the garden, pack a lunch, and set out with a backpack, our rods, and a small tackle box. Anyone could use the beat-up old canoe always parked at the shore’s edge, and we’d row out into the middle of the pond and drop our lines into the greenish water.
Sometimes we’d sit in silence and stare out at the day. Sometimes Dad would bring a book of Walt Whitman poems and read out loud. Sometimes we’d talk about things. Sometimes we’d do ear training. One of us would hum a pitch and the other would have to name the note and try to harmonize a third above or below. I have perfect pitch, so I’d usually win. Sometimes we’d catch a bunch of fish and occasionally bring a couple home for dinner. Sometimes there was barely a nibble. But it didn’t matter what we did or if we caught anything or not. I felt so content sitting there with him knowing it was only the two of us. That Dad wasn’t paying attention to anyone, or anything, but me.
I don’t remember when we stopped going to the pond.
Dad and I walk to the same picnic table that we had school at that morning. He sits, but I stay standing.
“I have a favor to ask you, but you can’t tell anyone.”
“Okay,” I say. Where is this going?
“You have to promise you won’t tell your mom or your brother. This has to stay between me and you, Rain Man.”
“I promise.”
Dad lights a cigarette and blows some smoke over his shoulder where it drifts and slowly dissipates in the afternoon breeze. Crooking his arm against his mouth, he lets out a rattled series of ugly coughs. He’s wearing the same tattered jeans and flannel as always, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Like he often does lately, he seems a little nervous, a little unsure of himself. Like an awkward, insecure teenage boy has taken over my father’s body.
“I can’t play the duo sets this week,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, trying to project calm.
Dad scratches his face and takes another pull on his cigarette.
“God, your mother would wring my neck if she knew we were having this conversation.”
“Dad. It’s okay. I can handle it.”
“I know you can, but you shouldn’t have to.”
“It’s really okay.”
“Something is broken inside of me, Rain Man. There’s a wire loose in there somewhere that makes me feel like I’m going crazy. Even when I was younger, I knew it was in there, just sort of waiting for me. I’m going to fix it. I promise. But I can’t fix it this week, so we have to find a way to get through it. Sit down, will you, you’re making me nervous.”
I sit down across from him.
“We can’t let the ship go down on our watch, you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
He finishes his cigarette, then folds a piece of Juicy Fruit into this mouth.
“You know how important this residency is,” he says.
I nod.
“I know your mom never wants to talk to you kids about money, but I’m going to do it anyway. You’re old enough to know how the world works and how much is at stake when we go on the road. It’s a funky arrangement, but the way this week is set up is that we’re only going to make our full fee if the crowds are better than half full every night. Last night, it was just under half. But if we don’t sell more tickets, this week could actually end up costing us money. And I don’t need to tell you this tour hasn’t exactly been a lucrative endeavor. In our contract with the resort, though, it also says that if we have at least two sell outs, we’ll not only make our full fee, we’ll make a hefty bonus as well. And we need that bonus, Rain Man. We need to get Howard a new battery. And buy you guys some new clothes. And…” but he trails off, as if he knows he’s said more than he wanted to.
I wait.
“I can play the electric sets. And if we build up a head of steam and blow the roof off the place the next couple of nights, I’ll bet we generate some buzz and get those sell outs and this will all be fine. A few weeks from now we’ll be back home laughing about all this crazy nonsense. Now, I tried to tell your mom that I can’t do the duo sets and suggested that you take over. Hell, you were off to the races last night.”
I smile.
“The problem is, Mom won’t go for it. She’s so damn stubborn. As if I need to tell you that. She doesn’t want to put you in that position. Frankly, neither do I. But I don’t know what else to do. I’m afraid if I have to go out there like that again that…hell, I don’t even know what will happen. But last night.” He runs his hands through his hair and looks off into the distance, before looking back. “I’ve never felt like that before, and I don’t ever want to feel like that again. The whole world was on my back and I couldn’t take the weight of it. Like I was being crushed. And if you hadn’t saved our bacon, well, I don’t know.”
“I’ll do it,” I say. “I’ll play. But how? I mean, if Mom doesn’t want me to.”
“I have a plan.”
Track Twelve
Flowers Blooming as You Walk By
With Dad’s words still bouncing around in my head, I slip on my headphones and make my way over to a jogging path that, according to the map, snakes up and around through the woods and comes out over by Hobner Lodge. I’m more one of those fast-walk joggers, but still, it feels good to move and I have the path all to myself. The shadowy dirt trail. The tree roots and the chipmunks. The hard packed soil and the pointy ferns. They’re all mine, and the mix is my soundtrack. Before long, I’m caught up in the songs, the singers, their words, all riding the steady pulse of my breath.
Blowin’ My Mind Like a Summer Breeze sounds different the second time through. Juliet’s mix isn’t a smooth stretch of highway you coast down mindlessly. It’s a windy, thrilling ride, going one minute from Enya’s ethereal bliss to The Beastie Boys’ lyrical pyrotechnics. It feels like stumbling on the coolest, weirdest radio station ever. And it’s all just for me.
Honestly, “Where is My Mind” by the Pixies kind of freaks me out. A movie I’m not sure I want to watch. Other songs, though, make happy lightning in my stomach. The opening song, Bjork’s “Army of Me” is like an anthem for an all-female nation that doesn’t even exist yet. There’s “Fade into You” by Mazzy Star, which I think is the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. That is, until I hear “On Your Shore” by Enya on Side B, which has to be the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. That is, until, impossibly, it’s topped two songs later by “Silent All These Years” by Tori Amos, which I’m ready to put on the Mt. Rushmore of great songs.
As I hop over roots and run over the firm dirt path, the woods smelling like wild herbs and mushrooms, I think about how people have always loved music, even before they called it music. Cavemen clapped and sang and smacked sticks together. They listened to the birds and imitated what they heard. They discovered that if they beat on stretched animal skins it made a pleasing sound. I like to think it was because it helped them express something they felt inside that they couldn’t express any other way. Music was a solution to a problem that we’re still trying to solve. How to feel less alone in the world.
“Great Balls of Fire” was the first song I fell in love with. I don’t remember when or where I first heard it, but there was something about the energy of it that sent me spinning. I was hooked. I saw a video of Jerry Lee Lewis banging on the piano with his hair flying all over the place and I went right to the piano in my living room and put my leg up on the keys and started banging away like I was Jerry Lee.
Some songs you fall in love with because you love the melody. Some because of how they’re shaped and put together. Some because of the words. Or they’re just fun to play.
The first song I fall in love with on Juliet’s mix is “Dreams” by The Cranberries because it feels like walking down the sidewalk on a summer day with the sun on your face and flowers blooming as you walk by. Like a person scribbling secret things in her journal.
Other parts of the mix? I’m no prude, but the cussing—well, it’s kind of shocking in a way I didn’t notice as much the first time.
Several songs come right out and say fuck, and it’s hard not to imagine what my mom would say about that. Probably something about how Cole Porter and Dolly Parton never use profanity when they need the perfect word. But I find myself wondering, what if fuck represents a conscious artistic choice, not the easy way out? I don’t think Liz Phair was taking the easy way out in “Fuck and Run.” I think fuck was the only word that could express what she meant. A key perfectly notched to slide into that particular spot.
Some of the songs are going to take a few more listens. “Loser” by Beck is a wild pinball machine of a song that won’t sit still long enough for me to see it clearly, and Portishead’s “Glory Box,” the side B closer, is a haunted, black and white dream.
But by the time I’ve gone through the whole thing again, and I’m dripping sweat and my legs are burning and I’ve done the jogging path three times, there’s no doubt that music-wise, I’m not in Kansas anymore. I’m not sure I ever want to go home again.
Confession #4: It turns out there’s actually some really decent music being made in the 90’s. I don’t know how I’m going to break the news to Walden.
I slip my headphones off and walk back through the grounds of Cascade Family Resort. I pass a game of horseshoes, a couple fighting in hushed tones, two boys juggling a soccer ball. I round the corner by the Coke machine, and nearly slam right into Juliet and Cordelia, who are coming the other way. Juliet is pushing a wheelbarrow stuffed with clumps of gangly weeds and a small shovel. Cordelia has a garden hose over her shoulder and a spade in her hand. We look at each other, all of us disgusting and sweaty, and burst into simultaneous laughter.
“Are you listening to what I think you’re listening to?” Juliet asks, motioning at my Walkman. I nod.
“Yes!” she says, then turns to Cordelia. “I made Rainey pretty much the best mix ever.”
I start walking with them, and though I don’t mean to, when they ask me what’s going on, I start talking about parts of the conversation I had with my dad.
"That’s really intense,” Cordelia says. “I wondered why he left the stage last night, but it all seemed normal when you came out to play.”
“Yeah, no, it was not normal,” I say, knowing I’m probably giving a little too much behind the scenes access. “It’s fine. I’m going to play the first set with my mom, but I wish we could sell a few more tickets for tonight. I think it would help my parents relax a little bit.”
We arrive at a small garden shed with a rusty metal roof where Cordelia and Juliet put away their tools and dump the weeds into a trash can. The shed smells of manure and gasoline. On a high shelf above a window, a small platoon of painted garden gnomes stands in a tidy line.
“Hey, how much money does everybody have?” Juliet asks.
“Why?”
“I have an idea.”
A half hour later, we’re all showered and riding into downtown New Buffalo in Cordelia’s ancient white VW Jetta, which she affectionally calls the Ice Queen. Duct tape barely holds seat wounds closed, the clock is busted, and the change jar is a riot of rusty pennies. But her pride in having her own car is obvious.
Juliet is riding shotgun and I’m splayed out in the back seat. In my hands is one of the posters we snagged from Evergreen Ballroom advertising our shows this week. I’m a year younger in the band picture (Mom and Dad sitting on a couch, me and Walden standing behind them), and I can’t believe how much different I already look than the skinnier, less defined, bangs-wearing girl staring up at me. A rap group called Wu Tang Clan is blaring from the crappy stereo, bass practically shaking the entire car, perfectly in sync with the recklessness of the moment.
Cordelia drives us to a copy shop, and from our pooled resources, we’re able to make three hundred copies of the poster and buy a huge roll of packing tape. From there, we carpet bomb New Buffalo, taping a poster to every telephone pole and sign board, slipping one under the windshield wipers of every parked car. We go through the McDonald’s drive thru and buy vanilla milk shakes and greasy tubs of French Fries, then drive up the Lake Michigan coast with the windows down and our hair flying everywhere and do the same thing in the next town over until all three hundred posters have been released into the world.
“There,” Juliet says after taping the last poster to the brick wall outside a record store and then loudly slurping the final half-inch of her milkshake. “Now we sit back and let the power of advertising work its magic.”
“Didn’t your parents advertise?”
She shrugs. “I only work here.”
Over Juliet’s shoulder, the beginnings of a purplish sunset are gathering in the softly darkening sky, which is right about the time that, having left my Timex digital back in my room, I remember that clocks exist.
“Hey, what time is it?”
“A little after seven,” Cordelia says, checking her watch.
“Oh shit,” I say. “Oh shit, oh shit. We have to go.”
“What?” Juliet says, without a trace of irony, “are you late for something?”
• • •
My mom is not happy. After I yank on my dress, which is horribly wrinkled because I forgot to hang it up after the show last night, and sprint through the backdoor of Evergreen Ballroom, she corners me and subjects me to the full wattage of the death stare, another of her patented looks. This one translates to: you only have five seconds left to live; do you have any last words? All things considered, I’d prefer the nobody said life was going to be easy stare.
“The show starts in fifteen minutes, Rainey,” she hisses more than says. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Sorry, I lost track of time.”
“Were you with Juliet again?”
I nod. “And her older sister. But it wasn’t their fault. Really. It was my fault.”
I want to tell her what we were doing. About the posters. That we were trying to help. That it was Juliet’s idea. But I’m too stunned and ashamed to speak so I just stand there and take it.
“Sneaking out last night. Late tonight. I’m stressed enough without this extra crap, Rainey. And I can’t find your father anywhere. He was here a minute ago and now he’s wandered off God knows where. Jesus!”
It’s right about then that I realize Dad’s master plan isn’t so masterful. It’s pretty stupid actually. The way he explained it to me earlier, if he disappeared shortly before showtime, he wouldn’t be able to play because he wouldn’t be there. Then I could calmly offer to play and slide into his place for the duo set. Easy. But we weren’t counting on a number of important factors. First, Mom’s stress level. Which, as she paces around frantically asking if anyone has seen my dad, then sends Walden and the St. Regis Horns off on a search party, is cranked up to atomic levels. Second, me being late and turning up the tension between me and Mom right before showtime.
Dad and I have really managed to screw things up.
Track Thirteen
Stupid
I sleep late Wednesday morning and wake up feeling so sad it’s like there’s a weight on my chest. I can still smell the beach in my hair. Taste Juliet’s cigarettes and cherry Chapstick on my lips.
I lie there for a while looking up at the way the dark cracks in the white ceiling wander and spider over each other, trying not to cry, feeling almost sick to my stomach with sadness. Walden’s bed is empty. Good. I love my brother but he’s always there. The week is already halfway over, which means we’ll be leaving soon. Only a few days ago, I couldn’t wait for this tour to be over. I was resisting every new stretch of highway we drove down, every Wal Mart parking lot I woke up in. Every chicken nugget I ate. But now? Now I don’t want to go home. I like it here. I miss our dog, Django, and the treehouse in our back yard in Vermont where I like to hang out. But I don’t want to leave Juliet or her big bedroom or her sonic revelations. I feel like myself here. Maybe for the first time ever.
And the thought of having to leave that feeling behind empties me out and scares me. I’m afraid I’ll never get it back.
I pick up The Color Purple. Celie has just discovered that her long lost sister Nettie is not only alive, but she’s been writing letters to Celie all these years that Mr ________ has been hiding. I’m happy for poor Celie, but I don’t feel like reading.
I get out my Walkman, then shake Juliet’s mix from the sock I’ve been hiding it in. I know if Walden or my parents find it, it will be a whole big thing, so it’s better to keep Blowin’ My Mind Like a Summer Breeze out of sight. Crawling back under the covers, I rewind to the beginning of side A, and push play.
Bjork’s voice feels a little harsh for the moment, and it turns out, I don’t really feel like listening to music either, so I slip my headphones off and stare at the ceiling some more.
