A Song for Julia (7 page)

So I started playing. Actually, it was a lot different. I’d spent most of the drive up from Washington, DC, in the back of the van, playing with some licks, then wrote lyrics after getting home from my dad’s Sunday night. The sound was more compressed, somehow, than the stuff I usually wrote. Still plenty of grunge, but it had kind of a catchy beat. The lyrics … well, the song was about the girl I’d met in Washington. Julia. 

I was about a third of the way, belting out the chorus, “Julia, where did you go?” and all three of them were staring at me, stunned expressions on their faces. I stopped right in the middle of a measure.

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t stop,” Serena said, waving her hands at me impatiently.

“Yeah, keep going,” Pathin said.

I looked back at them, feeling a little alarmed by their reaction, then backed up a few measures and picked up the song again.

When I finished, the warehouse was dead silent.

Finally, Pathin said, “That’s bloody brilliant.”

Serena nodded her head quickly, a huge smile on her face, eyes shining.

Mark said, “Frickin’ sell-out. It sounds like a pop song.”

Pathin shook his head. “No … it’s brilliant. That may be the best song Crank’s ever written.”

“Who the hell is Julia?” Serena asked.

“No one,” I replied.

She snorted and gave me a grin. “You’re so full of shit, Crank. But who cares? That song was amazing. We’re performing it Friday.”

“It’s not done yet, I still haven’t even worked out…”

“Then finish it. We’re doing it Friday night. Mark will be happy … we can replace one of the covers.”

Mark looked smug.

“I agree,” Pathin said. “But I’m also very curious who this mysterious Julia is.”

“Dude, it’s just a song,” I said.

Mark muttered, “I never thought we’d be playing Top 40 crap. But if we can get rid of one of the covers, I guess I’m okay with it. But you’re still a sell-out, Crank.”

I gave him the finger.

He muttered, “Shit monkey,” and sent the finger right back.

Serena pointed at him and gave him the look. Yeah,
that
look. The one that made all of us feel like ten-year-olds caught in the cookie jar by our mothers. Mark shut up. Serena was awesome that way.

“Can you play it through one more time?” she asked me. “I want to get the feel for it.  Pathin, you caught the end? It needs some pretty powerful drums there.” Serena was in her element. Disorganized, crazy, sometimes inspired, she often acted as the band’s artistic director, if we had such a thing.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got it.”

So I played through it again. And then a third time. On the fourth, Serena jumped in with a strong backup rhythm, and Pathin and Mark came in with the drums and bass, and suddenly it was a real song. And I loved it. It was the quickest and easiest I’d ever written a song before. And possibly the best.

Even Mark looked excited by the time we did a run through. “I’ll admit,” he said. “It
is
powerful. Even if Crank is a complete asshat.”

“Powerful is not the word,” Serena said, her voice droll. “Heart-wrenching. The girls are going to be ripping their clothes off for Crank.”

I snorted and Mark said, “So what’s new about that?”

“Knock it off, Mark,” I said.

“I’ll knock it off when you stop bringing drunk groupies back here after our shows. I’m tired of having to listening to them giggling and thumping through my bedroom wall.”

Then he did an imitation, thumping rhythmically against one of the wood benches with his foot while he cried out, “Oh! Oh! Crank! Oh!”

“Shut up!” the rest of us yelled.

Mark smirked. “Let’s get the rest of this set done.”

“About time,” I muttered.

The rest of our practice was uneventful, though it went smoother than typical. But that’s the way things went: up and down. Our shows were consistently solid, but in rehearsals, the ebb and flow of emotions, arguments and just
life
tended to impact all of us. 

After practice, Serena ordered a pizza, then went off to grab a shower. I collapsed, exhausted, onto another throwaway couch in our living room upstairs above the studio. It had once been a conference room or something for the warehouse. Since we’d moved in, Serena had decorated it with brightly colored drapes and shawls she’d brought from India. Mark turned on the television and found The Osbournes. Seriously? I couldn’t believe that show had survived a single night, much less an entire season. 

Five minutes later, Serena stood in the door to the hallway and said, in an odd voice, “I found Julia.” 

“What?” Mark asked.

I raised my eyebrows. What was she talking about?

“Come on,” she said. “You guys gotta see this.” She didn’t even look at me as she said the words.

Mark and Pathin followed her back down the hall. Whatever this was, I didn’t want any part of it. But then Mark shouted, “Holy shit!” and suddenly I was interested.

I walked down the hall and looked into Serena’s room, where the three of them were crowded around her computer.

What the hell?

Splashed across the screen was a photo, a good one. Me and Julia, kissing in front of the White House. 

Serena was reading the words below the picture:

“Young Ms. Thompson was found in passionate embrace of Crank Wilson on Saturday evening in front of the White House. Wilson is the lead singer-guitarist of a mildly successful alternative punk-rock band, which plays the local circuit in Boston and Providence. His rap-sheet is nearly as long as Ms. Thompson’s transcripts.”

Mark laughed. “Dude, you banged that college girl from Saturday?”

“What? No.”

“Not what the article says.”

“What the hell? Why in God’s name is that there, anyway?”

Serena looked at me, her eyelids lowered. “It’s not you, Crank. This is a society gossip blogger. She’s not interested in trash from South Boston. She’s interested in this girl … Julia. Why didn’t you just tell us about her? Are you hung up on her?”

I shrugged. “What the hell, guys? It’s just a girl.”

“Was she good?” Mark asked. “She looked it. Wicked ass. She looked kinda like a librarian, though. Hmm …” He started to sing, off-key, “
My sexy librarian!
”

“Shut the hell up, Mark. And I have no idea. I dropped her off at her parents’ condo and headed back to the hotel. And I don’t see how this is any of your business, anyway. Any of you.” As I said the last words, I leveled my gaze at Serena. She knew better.
She knew better
. I’d made it clear more than once we weren’t going there, ever.

She stood up. “Anything that affects the band is my business.”

“Serena, you’re being ridiculous. We didn’t even exchange frickin’ phone numbers. And it’s not like I’m not out screwing girls all the time. You ought to know that.”

 She flinched. I’d said the words to hurt, and she knew it. But she held her ground.

“I don’t give a crap about that, Crank. But don’t tell me it doesn’t touch the band … you heard that song you wrote! Tell me you don’t feel something for that girl.”

“So what if I do?”

“If you do, that’s good. But be honest with us.”

Mark and Pathin were watching, both of them quiet for a change. And it was no wonder. Serena stared at me with eyes that could kill. 

I walked up to her and nose-to-nose said, “I met the girl. We had fun for one night. We talked. We kissed. We said good night. The end. All right? Now can you leave me alone?”

She gave a slight snort, her lips turned up in scorn, and very slightly shook her head. “Whatever, Crank.”

Party-Girl (Julia)

Okay. It could have been worse. For example, Maria Clawson could have posted
that
picture. The one someone took my freshman year in high school. The one that my former best friend emailed to the entire junior class the week before we left Beijing. The one that gave credence to the vicious rumors about me.

No, I got lucky this time. She didn’t post it, though I’m sure it was buried somewhere on her website. She’d edited that picture, the old one, to block out my face and anything that could get her jailed. But, it was clear enough.

Maria used to write for the Washington Post Society Page, before the Post ditched the Society page. Since then, she set up her own hideous little blog, which, while it doesn’t have the kind of traffic huge websites have, she did have subscribers who paid through the nose for her little tidbits of gossip and sleaze and slander. The subscribers were almost exclusively wealthy, powerful members of society themselves. No one else could afford the exorbitant prices Maria charged for full access to her website. And nothing delighted them more than to see one of their peers, or one of their peers’ children, involved in some sort of hideous scandal. Maria had covered it all: drunkenness, infidelity, secret abortions, divorce, suicide …

On Sunday morning, she posted, front and center, a photo of me in Crank’s arms, kissing. In front of the White House. Which meant she’d followed us out of the restaurant, looking for dirt, and found it. And then made up a story to go along with it, a story which dredged just enough of my past into it to paint me as a complete slut.

Are wedding bells in the air? Or rock guitars clashing? That may be the case for Julia Thompson, the eldest daughter of Ambassador Richard Thompson, who retired to San Francisco after a mere one year as Ambassador to Russia. Longtime readers of Maria’s Meanderings will remember that Ambassador Thompson’s appointment to Russia dragged on for more than two years when Senator Rainsley of Texas questioned his fitness for the post.

Young Ms. Thompson was found in the passionate embrace of Crank Wilson on Saturday evening in front of the White House. Wilson is the lead singer-guitarist of a mildly successful alternative punk-rock band, which plays the local circuit in Boston and Providence. He has a rap-sheet nearly as long as Ms. Thompson’s transcripts. After tourists and observers objected that the young couple’s public display of affection was unseemly, they moved on to a quieter location. Could it have been Wilson’s room at the 1-star Hotel Riviera in Arlington? Readers will forgive me if they do not recognize the Riviera: home to prostitutes, drug addicts and apparently down and out rock stars. It isn’t exactly Society’s venue of choice for family functions.

Of course, we don’t know how serious the relationship is or if it serious at all. After all, this is not the first time Julia, now a student at Harvard, has been involved with dubious characters. Her classmates at the International School of Beijing, where she attended her first three years of high school, described her as a “party-girl” and whispered rumors of sex-parties and a back room abortion when she was fourteen years old. It was these rumors that put a halt to Ambassador Thompson’s appointment, until after President Bush took office, according to a confidential informant on the staff of Senator Rainsley.

The story was followed by a link that led to the subscription-only bowels of her website. I didn’t have access to that, but I knew what was there—years’ worth of stories smearing my family. None of those mentioned me by name, and most didn’t even say my father’s name; Clawson danced on the edge of legality and had somehow managed over the years to avoid being sued out of existence. 

When I read the story in my room Sunday evening, I felt my stomach clench, nausea flooding me. The rumors that Maria had published on her website in the past never included my name. I guess that’s because I was still a minor, so I was safe.

Not any more.

Party-girl.
Yeah, right. It was one thing to make things up. It was another thing to write complete fiction and pass it off as truth. I was a lot of things in high school, but I was never a partier. Except when Harry pushed it too far. When he pushed
me
too far.

No wonder, really, that my mother reacted the way she did. Our family had occupied first place on Maria’s website for quite a long time, and everybody knew it was my fault.

But nobody knew what actually happened. That was too simple and sad and sordid a story to be of any real interest to anyone.

After I read the blog entry, I sat, staring off into space for a long time. 

Finally, I got up and walked out of the room and wandered aimlessly around the campus for a while. 

It didn’t happen often, but sometimes I could hear his voice in my nightmares. 

You love me, don’t you? See? That wasn’t so bad.

It had been years since I’d heard that voice in daylight hours, but here I was, and here it was, and I felt fourteen and vulnerable and scared and alone all over again. My stomach was turning; I wanted to vomit. It had been a long time since I’d felt that way. A very long time. See … the thing is, I had no one to go to. No one to ask for help. No shoulder to cry on, no one to tell me it was going to be all right. It’s not like my sisters were going to be of any help. After all, Carrie was only nine years old back then. And I could hardly go to my parents. When they did learn about it, it was only secondhand, and I still hadn’t lived down the consequences.

I didn’t bring my daughter up to be a slut,
she told me, contempt in her voice.

When I thought of that little girl … me … barely speaking the language, lost and bleeding in the cold back streets of Beijing because she had no one to help her, it filled me with rage. It made me want to hurt someone, to break something. It made me want to scream, to stand in the center of the Quad and howl until my voice broke down. 

Instead, I went through my life, smiling at everyone, going to the college my parents expected, dressing like I was already thirty years old, working hard, having friends, almost as if I were a whole person.

I came to a stop on the edge of Harvard Square. A guitarist stood near the corner, relaxed looking in corduroy pants and sitting on a milk crate. His greying hair and beard tumbled down his chest, and without the guitar, I would have guessed he was homeless. As it was, I stood there listening. He was playing an immaculate Guild acoustic 12-string with beautiful harmonics. I closed my eyes, swaying a little, taking in the music and letting it wash away the dark thoughts and emotions that tormented me. Music had always been my refuge, my passion.