Don't Blame the Music (15 page)

I giggled. “It wouldn't be you personally,” I explained. “She might be tense or upset and would only want family around.” Actually she might not be too thrilled about having one member of the family around either, but I wouldn't explain that much.

“Trust me,” said Anthony, and I trusted him.

My mother was at the kitchen table. Fingers fastened to a mug, but no steam rising. From the way she sat, I thought the tea had been cold for hours. “Hi, Mom.” I bent to kiss her. “Anthony Fielding came home with me. How about I make you another cup of tea?” She didn't look that bad, really. She had been doing more thinking than weeping.

“Hello, Anthony,” she said, smiling at him. He gave her a swift hug, which astonished me until she said, “You've certainly grown since you were a Cub Scout in my troop.”

“You still the volunteer of the decade?” said Anthony, sitting beside her and handing me her cold mug. He gave her a quick Cub Scout salute.

She beamed. What ability Anthony had to recognize people the way they wanted to be recognized! She talked a little about this year's volunteer work, and Anthony told her he was doing quite a bit of sailing, but he was into racing now more than cruising and he was trying to talk his father into getting him a new boat.

I got Cokes for the two of us and stood over the stove waiting for the water to boil for Mom's tea. They didn't need me in the conversation. I felt very happy. The kitchen was the place where I had lived for years: untouched by Ashley, filled with friends and contentment. I poured the tea and let it steep.

“Thank you, darling,” said my mother, getting up. “I have some phone calls to make. I'll do them from the bedroom.” She smiled at Anthony. “Flower Committee at church. I knew I shouldn't have gone yesterday. They roped me into it. I couldn't refuse.”

“Sure you could have,” he told her. “My mother is a terrific refuser. Saying no is what she does best.”

“Mom doesn't want to say no,” I explained. “Or she would, too.” I didn't want Anthony to think she was a wimp people pushed around. And right up until she winked at me I thought she really did have phone calls for the Flower Committee. Then I figured out that a girl who brings Anthony Fielding home is a girl who deserves a little time alone with him.

Anthony switched from sailing to skiing. “We have a nice little condo in northern Vermont,” he said.

I was willing to believe it was in northern Vermont, but it would not be a “nice little” place; it would be a sumptuous big place.

“You ought to come skiing with us,” he said. “First snowy weekend we get. How about it?”

I was thrilled. “Anthony!” I breathed.
And part of me thought, But Whit—what about Whit?

Anthony told me about snowy weekends he had known.

And Ashley came into the room.

We gasped in unison, looked at each other in total astonishment, and looked away to keep from laughing. The only good thing you could say about her clothing was that it wasn't mine.

Canvas drawstring pants. Torn. High-heeled sequined boots. Rose red. Exotic plumed feathers drifting down her shoulders and a blouse that looked as if it had been savaged by a pack of vultures. She had worked perhaps a dozen chains into her hair, fastening them to an almost hidden barrette, and they clanked and glittered.

She looked out of order, lost from a costume party.

It's the house, I thought. You can't dress like that in a house built in 1774. For that outfit, you need a wild, sophisticated stage set and bright lights and a background of throbbing loud music. Wouldn't Whit and Carmine, Tommy and Luce love writing the music for that outfit?

“Like it?” said Ashley anxiously, as if she actually valued our opinion. “Bob and I put it together. Wouldn't it look great on a stage?” Her voice was wistful. “I used to spend so much on costumes. Make a fortune on one tour and blow it all on costumes for the next.” She said to Anthony, “You're nothing if you don't look fantastic.”

Anthony recovered nicely. “You qualify,” he said. “That is some outfit! And with stage lights focused on it—fantastic.”

Ashley beamed and pirouetted, showing off like a child in dancing school. “Once,” she confided, “we had neon tubes put in a clear plastic keyboard. In the drumsticks, too, so that when we dimmed the lights, our instruments went neon red, blue, and yellow. Cost megabucks.”

She put the radio on. Mom had it tuned to the local station (she likes Swap Shop, the Tidal Calendar and Shoreline Newsline) which merited a glare from Ashley and a quick whiz through the stations back to rock. I didn't know the piece they were playing. Ash began dancing to it: clumping, really. More convulsions of the skin and limbs. Nothing graceful. And yet she looked very effective doing it: charged with electricity. I thought she probably had been very good on stage.

If she hadn't been my sister, I probably would have loved it, too.

Anthony was mesmerized. You Fieldings have four Mercedes, I thought, but you don't have an Ashley. Bet you're jealous, huh?

“You're the one who loved my show,” said Ashley.

Anthony was nothing if not gallant. “Yes. I can still remember it so clearly.” Every cue line she gave, Anthony responded to. He practically had her purring at his feet. He had told me he was the most sensitive guy in town, but anybody who could figure out the right moves with Ashley Elizabeth Hall went beyond mere sensitivity into mind-reading.

“Wait a second,” said Ashley. “I have to get something.” She smiled at Anthony excitedly, and clicked speedily up the stairs. By the sound of her steps I knew she was in my parents' room. Now what piece of costuming could she possibly expect to find in my mother's staid tailored wardrobe?

“Life is pretty exciting around here, isn't it?” said Anthony, in what I thought was a classic understatement. I smiled at him and nodded, but I thought exciting was hardly the word to describe it. Anthony kept his eyes on the door through which Ash would return. He was fascinated by her. It must all be very romantic to him. The fallen rock star, come home to lick her wounds. The girl who had been everywhere, done everything, dancing for Anthony Fielding.

“You know, I was really impressed by your idea for the yearbook,” he said. “So was everybody. But what I couldn't get over was the picture of you going to Crude Oil for help. That is one tough crowd.” He shook his head. “But now I see why it didn't faze you. You probably have that type of guy around all the time, huh?”

I had no idea what to say to him. Did he think Whit and Carmine were like Ashley? Did he think that Ashley was really very sweet under a rough facade? Did he think that Whit was really vicious under an expressionless facade?

But I was spared answering. Ashley came back—cheeks flushed, eyes bright. But it wasn't anything taken by mouth or by vein that had done that: It was the admiration of a handsome boy for her music. “How old are you, Anthony?” she said.

Oh, no.
She was going to proposition him.

“Eighteen. I should have graduated in last year's class, but I had to repeat first grade.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope. I was a six-year-old dummy. Had a real hard time with the alphabet.”

But what she had in her hand was our household's sole copy of her album, which my mother kept among the things like her eighth-grade diploma and her second-grade perfect attendance at Sunday School document. Ashley had really been doing some searching, I thought. And who had done it with her? Bob? Had Ashley and Bob crawled through my parents' things?

We keep the stereo in the dining room because we so rarely walk through there that it's safe from bumps and vibrations. We eat at the kitchen table because of the beautiful view. Ashley danced into the dining room to put her record on.

Conversation was impossible after she turned the volume up to her preferred level, so we sat and listened. Ash slid into a trance of happiness. Even for Anthony I could not take my eyes off her. She was listening to her greatest triumph and most lasting failure. Because this was what she had never duplicated. Success.

We heard the whole side. Most numbers were too harsh for me. They were no longer in style. The whole record had a very dated feel, as if we were dipping back into history. Maybe we were. Maybe Trash was history and the exotic exciting Ashley that Anthony thought he was dealing with really existed.

The music stopped. Ashley opened her eyes and focused on Anthony. Anthony responded as I knew he would. With compliments.

“I like that,” he said, smiling into her smile.

And then the guillotine dropped.

Anthony said casually, “Who did it? It was different.”

Ashley's brightness dimmed. “Who did it?” she repeated slowly.

“Yeah.” Anthony picked up my hand from where it rested on the placemat. My hand was cold. He held it flat between his two palms. “Interesting. A little unpolished compared to what people are doing now, don't you think? But it's nice to listen to the oldies now and then, isn't it?”

Ashley stared at him. Pain and rage fought in her features. I hoped that pain would win and she would creep quietly away and nurse her hurt in private. But with Ashley, temper surfaced before anything.

“You lying, conniving, scummy
shit!”
she screamed, hurling the pottery sugar bowl at him. He jerked back and it caught his shoulder without really hurting him. He stared at me, frozen, willing me to tell him this wasn't happening. Ashley warmed up, calling him the most awful names she knew. Anthony was truly shocked. Ten days ago I would have been too, but now I knew all her awful names. I tried to keep holding his hand, but he was up from the table, standing, just as mesmerized by Ash the Trash as he had been by Ash the Sweet.

“Ashley,” I said, trying to calm her, “he just didn't recognize your band. That's all.”

“That's all! At the football game he told me how much he loved my group. He told me he remembered my music. He was just making conversation. He was lying.” She was spitting the words out at him, like nails from a power driver.

“It's okay to be polite,” I said.

Ashley ignored me. Her voice thinned, became evil. She hissed at him
“Get out of this house.”

Anthony looked blank, as if Ashley's curses had blinded him. “I'm really sorry, Anthony,” I said, not taking my eyes off Ashley either. “You'd better leave.”

He moved toward the door but not fast enough to suit Ashley. I tripped her. There was nothing else to do. “Mom!” I screamed. “Dad!” She slipped on the spiky heels and hit the sideboard without falling all the way. A candlestick toppled over and she saw it and grabbed it. Twelve inches of solid brass.
“Anthony, get out of here!”
I screamed.
“Ashley, put that down!”

My sister is democratic. Better to hit the girl you aren't mad at than chase after the vanishing boy you are mad at. But I had the advantage over Anthony. I had seen her try to bite, kick, and rip the cops who had held her. He had really thought she was a sweet person that the community had somehow misunderstood.

He fled.

I ran around the table to get away from Ashley.

My father took the basement steps three at a time. My mother almost fell down the other stairs trying to reach us. It is not fun, treating your sister like a rabid animal.

Whenever we loosened our grip, tempting, since she was kicking with her sharp little boots—she attacked the furniture. She hurled a chair, threw a clock and smashed some china. Finally my father—who in my opinion should have done this days ago—simply took her in a lock position with her arms behind her, twisted so that she could not move without considerable pain.

We stayed that way for a long time: my mother and I staring at Ashley, my father hanging on to her, Ashley's face slowly sagging with exhaustion.

My mother sank into her usual chair. “You're right, Warren,” she said dully. “I will stop arguing. We will have her committed.”

A
LL MY LIFE MY
parents have celebrated triumphs with dinner out at an Italian restaurant called the Open Door. It isn't much to look at, but we love it. It serves the hugest yummiest meals anywhere, in the friendliest atmosphere. If Dad's team unexpectedly manages to beat their strongest rival, or the Vietnamese immigrant Mom is tutoring passes a literacy test, we go to the Open Door.

I had just presented the most brilliant idea ever mentioned in a yearbook committee meeting and gotten a standing ovation.

But we didn't go to the Open Door.

I didn't tell my parents about the yearbook. Not because they wouldn't have listened, but because I had forgotten.

My sister had been home less than two weeks and she already had us at the point of putting her into an institution. To protect us, rather than to help her!

My father said, “The two possibilities are Valley Hospital for the Mentally Ill and Cherry Hill Home for Young Adults.”

“It's my fault,” said my mother. “The moment Ashley sliced up Susan's sweater and smashed her cassettes we should have gotten rid of her. But I couldn't bear it. To throw out my daughter in less than twenty-four hours? I couldn't bear it.” Her eyes were fixed in space. Perhaps she was seeing the Ashley Elizabeth she had always wanted to have: the one who existed now only in photograph albums.

“It's my fault,” she said again. “I'm too passive. I was the wrong parent for Ashley. It was easy with Susan. I could say
now, dear,
or
be nice, dear,
or
say you're sorry, dear
and that was all it took with Susan. But Ashley needed—” she stared vacantly at her oldest daughter. She had never known what Ashley needed. Didn't know now.

It is your fault, I agreed silently. You were too passive. And you did give only the things you felt like giving. But what does it matter now? Ash is twenty-five. She is her own responsibility.