All This Heavenly Glory (6 page)

He told me he wanted to go solo, and do a totally different kind of music. More of a James Taylor kind of thing, except he
wasn’t really like James Taylor at all, and anyway, he often made a big point of saying that the record industry pigeonholed
you into this or that, and that he couldn’t get a break (which I don’t really agree with, anyway, I think you can always be
the exception to that kind of thing), even though he was very rich and every single time we went out people asked him for
his autograph and once we were holding hands and this girl grabbed his other hand and yanked him over to her so hard that
I fell into a potted palm and bruised my knee and you can be sure she didn’t say she was sorry. But actually I kind of felt
even worse for him that time, because he just won’t be rude to these people, and yet, you know, they take it for granted that
they can touch him or whatever. When a stranger on the street touches me I’m like,
Back the fuck up.
Anyway, sometimes he would play songs for me on his acoustic guitar and I’d say,
Oh that was really great,
and he’d say,
Really, you think so?
and I would try to be encouraging to him, but the truth is I’m a very bad liar, and I can’t even believe he didn’t notice
that, although I’m of course glad he didn’t. But the lyrics would be something like,
Monique’s hair fell down to there, she smoked Cauloises like I breathe air, I really wish I didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t
care…
A couple of them were a little better than that and when I sang harmony on the second chorus of one of them he acted as impressed
as if I’d discovered plutonium or something. He said,
Do you realize how hard that is? To just pick up a melody and then harmonize?
I said,
Not really,
since it wasn’t, but I was thinking that in my family if you didn’t have that kind of thing as a basic skill you were probably
switched at birth. They’re all musicians. Declan told me I had a really beautiful voice and asked why I didn’t sing and I
said,
I did when I was a kid, and then, I dunno, I’m more into writing screenplays and stuff
now. Admittedly I was stretching it, in my mind there was more of an emphasis on the “and stuff,” but I was thinking about
writing screenplays, anyway.
Okay, I just got weird about it. Anyway I don’t write music.
To which he said,
Oh, it’s easy, anyone can write music,
to which I of course out of politeness repressed an urge to say,
Not anyone,
considering how nice he was being to me. Anyway, I said,
I guess it’s an issue.

Right after that, he ran into Monique and they got back together for a while, during which time I assume she took over the
job of reassuring him about his hairline not receding and his being better-looking than Johnny Depp and whatever else he was
obsessed with that
week.
Maybe not. Maybe French girls don’t do that. In any case, she had apparently just shaved her head, which not only bumped
her up into a supermodel, for reasons beyond my grasp (because you can he sure that if I ever shaved my head, not only would
I not be able to look at myself but everyone I know would think that something was very seriously wrong, and I seriously doubt
I’d get a promotion), it made him even a thousand times more attracted to her. During an off period with the middle brother
I was flirting with this preppy kind of Wall Street guy who used to come in after work for a beer and a pizza, always rumpled-looking.
Not my type, really, but whatever. I met him at KCOU after my shift and between him and buybacks from the ice-cream bartender,
who also didn’t drink (what’s with that?), I was seriously drunk and went home with him. I have no idea what we could have
talked about that led up to this, it wasn’t anything I was in the habit of, and I didn’t really think we had all that much
in common before we went to KCOU, I just thought he was semi-cute. Anyway, we fooled around a little and were on the verge
of fooling around a lot, but as soon as he got naked he passed out, and my buzz was starting to wear off, at which time I
became extremely grossed out at both the hideousness of his pale naked body and how preppy he was naked even, with like crew
socks on, not to mention, you know, that I was there, and I left around four a.m. without even saying anything. I started
to write a note and then I just threw it out. I think I was hoping he wouldn’t remember. For sure I was hoping I would forget
it myself.

Declan came by the next day on the verge of a second breakup with Monique the Model, so we commiserated and I told him the
story of the preppy guy (if I knew his name, I’d use it; I’m pretty sure it’s Bill—he looks like a Bill, but I can’t say that’s
it for sure) and I realized halfway during the story, when he interjected a simliar tale from his drinking days, that he was
kind of comparing me to him, like this was
classically alcoholic,
I guess just in case I thought that my drinking had anything to do with it, which I didn’t. I mean obviously I wouldn’t have
gone home with him if I had been sober. I’m just saying I didn’t really see how that was alcoholic (actually he may not have
said that out loud at all, but it seemed like it was there); everyone does stupid things when they get drunk. Anyway, Monique
the Model took up with a woman, which I guess she didn’t see as a conflict, but which made Declan’s whole self-image thing
a gazillion times worse, considering now he wasn’t just competing with male models and Johnny Depp but with like, everyone.
He seemed kind of different than before though, like he was almost starting to see that he was maybe responsible for choosing,
you know, poorly, and he admitted to me that this wasn’t the first time he’d been cheated on for a woman and also that maybe
the age difference mattered more than he wanted to admit. Then he mumbled something about motives that I didn’t really catch
and when he left, he looked really blue and kind of like he wasn’t in the universe.

Bill, or whatever, did come back to the Pie, and neither of us mentioned anything about his having been naked, and it was
hard to tell whether he remembered it or not, but the sight of him made me totally queasy, so I went next door after work
and sat and talked to the ice-cream guy for a while.
Mike, are you friends with that guy Bill?
Mike got this grin on his face, like he knew exactly what happened or something, and he said he’d been a friend of Bill’s
for sixteen years, so I said,
Really? Since Bill was like, a kid?
Then he laughed and said,
Wait, Bill who?
I said,
That preppy guy I was with the other night,
and Mike totally cracked up and explained that in A.A., if someone says they’re a friend of Bill’s, it’s code that they’re
in the program. I told him I knew this other guy from A.A. and asked him if he thought sleeping with preppy guys was
classically alcoholic
and he said,
The only difference between an alcoholic and everyone else is that we drink too much. Okay,
I said,
but how do you know when too much is too much?
Mike laughed again and said,
Well, one way is when
your
wife leaves the state with no forwarding address.
He could see the wheels turning in my mind, and that this information wasn’t helping me personally as any kind of gauge.
Not that I was really thinking about it before Declan said those things, anyway.
How about this,
he said.
Shit happens when you drink that wouldn’t happen if you didn’t.
Well, of course I started reviewing my entire life right then and remembered the time I got lost walking home from a bar
that was a block away from my dorm and the time I tried to climb over the White House gates to try to talk some sense into
President Reagan and then also the whole almost flunking out of college thing, but I just couldn’t get past that image of
old men in tattered overcoats who drink all day. I don’t even drink every day. He could see I still didn’t get it and so he
said,
Look, I’m gonna take this beer away from you and give you a soda instead,
obviously to prove a point, and even though there was only about an inch left in the bottle, it still seemed like a waste,
but I let him take it away and give me a soda, and you know, it was fine. I had beer at home. I sat there and bullshitted
with him for another hour and it was no big deal.

* * *

About a week later Declan came into the Pie, not looking very good, and as soon as I saw him I remembered this terrible dream
I had about him just the night before where we were on this old boat, like an old slave ship but without the slaves, and he
was seriously drunk and then fell down this flight of rickety wooden stairs and either died or seemed like he died and it
was one of those dreams where you’re screaming and screaming but no one is really paying much attention. I told him I was
so glad to see him but he didn’t seem glad about anything right then and when I told him about the dream he said he wasn’t
surprised because the night before he was driving back from a concert at Giants Stadium and he had been thinking that a really
good idea would be to get drunk or drive his car straight into a tollbooth. During the concert some girl tore off her top
and jumped on the stage and was hanging all over him for a minute before the bodyguards pulled her off, but anyway I guess
she was maybe fourteen or something and he suddenly had this epiphany about Monique the Model, like it was morally wrong,
what he’d been doing, that he had to break it off, and that god surely had better plans for him but also somehow he felt like
Monique was also responsible, except I didn’t quite catch in what way. Something about women and calamity. It didn’t make
a whole lot of sense, and I felt like he wanted me to just listen and not offer any advice or anything. He said he needed
to work
a stronger program,
whatever that meant, and that his behavior with Monique
wasn’t in the spirit of love and service
and he just stopped short of saying sex is bad and it almost sounded like he was planning to join the peace corps or something,
because there wassomething really final about it. He thanked me for listening but when we were saying goodbye I went to hug
him and he said,
Um, could we not hug?
and I thought, 0-kay,
hand-holder,
but I didn’t really take it personally, because it was obviously his problem, and I haven’t seen him since, except in
People
magazine.

I
T DOES NOT OCCUR
to her that anyone at LaGuardia might be concerned. At Gate K3, in a crisp flowered dress and matching (and reversible) raincoat
(both hand-sewn to perfection by her mother), Charlotte Anne Byers, age nine and a half, hugs her mom goodbye without tears.

About this lack of tears it should be noted:

a) Generally, she is not a big crier

I) It’s been established that there is a one member-of-the-family-per-household limit on weeping and that that limit has been
met

b) She’s excited about the trip

c) She’s excited about flying by herself, seeing this as further evidence of her independence, which is becoming her trademark

I) Which she will of course not realize until about thirty years later is not necessarily as useful a quality as she had imagined
at age nine and a half.

When the ticket agent announces the boarding of rows ten through twenty-six, Charlotte Anne looks at her boarding pass one
more time and boards the TWA plane unaccompanied. C.A. hands her boarding pass to the ticket agent, who escorts her down the
tarmac to the plane, and a stewardess shows Charlotte Anne to seat iiA by the window. Charlotte Anne, having flown before
(albeit never solo), stows under the seat in front of her a vinyl TWA flight bag filled with the necessary entertainment,
including a notebook, a book of games that has answers that get revealed with a special invisible-ink revealing marker (always
a little dry), a
Barbie
magazine (subscription copy), one copy of
The Horse on the Roof (C.A.
enjoys any book about city kids), one used and reused copy of
Mad Libs #1
(the funniest thing ever invented), as well as a nightgown (although she’s ready to move on to pajamas, as she hates the
way nightgowns bunch up) and a toothbrush in case her bags get lost (which will not happen this time but will happen about
every other time she flies anywhere in the future), plus also a Betty and Veronica comic book.