Don't Blame the Music (2 page)

Give me a crush.

Let it smother me

Let it cover me

“Susan,” said Shepherd, “I know you can bring excitement and originality to the role of music editor. You have a streak of creativity in you that has long intrigued me.”

Nobody looked at Shepherd as if she'd lost her mind. They just looked at me as if I were the last person in town to think of as creative. I was furious at them all. Did they think Ashley was the only interesting person in my family? “Fine, Shepherd,” I said curtly. “I'll get to work on it. I'll have a game plan for you in two weeks.”

Shepherd nodded like a general and turned to Emily to discuss advertising. “Did I actually say that out loud?” I muttered to Cindy. “About having a game plan?”

“Yes. Aren't you embarrassed?”

“Of course, but I'll probably be even more embarrassed in two weeks when I haven't thought of a game plan.”

We giggled. “Want to spend the night Friday and talk about it?” she offered.

“No. I want to go on a date with Anthony Friday night. But if he isn't pleading for my body I'm willing to stay with you instead.”

There had been no yearbook with Ashley's picture. At sixteen Ash quit high school and joined a rock band of men in their twenties wanting the life of free sex, drugs, and stardom she would never find in my mother's household. Ash got into things like setting fire to her clothing and living nude in a treehouse she built in the Congregational Church cemetery. Last time she was home—nearly three years ago—she had shaved her head. Very shapely if you like skulls. Instead of delicate gold earrings, she had mutilated her earlobes with large, vicious-looking screws.

How my mother had wept for Ashley. And because I have tear ducts of the same sort, we wept together. The Wet Duet, my father called us. He took out his grief with a wedge and sledgehammer, splitting cord after cord of wood—enough wood to keep a nation of Eskimos warm for years.

Shepherd was passing out old yearbooks so we could see what previous committees had done. I leafed through one eight years old. Under each senior picture in this volume were lists. Cheerleading, exchange club, basketball, student government, drama society. I loved all that stuff. I loved my life, my family, my friends, my school.

Ash threw it away without a single backward glance.

She wanted fame.

Not namby-pamby, turn your ankles in, take a little curtsy schoolgirl fame, but the real thing.

Million-dollar, magazine-cover, household-word fame.

For a moment she had it. A single song. Not even an album. And then it was gone, like a comet that flames but once in a lifetime.

Where are you, Ashley Elizabeth? I thought. Still flaming? Or have you burned away to nothing?

A
S IF A NOAH'S
Flood of memory was not enough, I was the only person in the entire trigonometry class who didn't understand the assignment. Everybody wanted to tutor poor stupid Beethoven. I like to be the smart one who does the tutoring, not the dummy who has to be tutored.

Somebody was passing a note around the room. It looked like Whit's handwriting to me.

I am afraid of Whit Moroso. He is the lead singer in a successful school rock group called Crude Oil. I don't know about the Oil, but they are definitely crude. Whit slouches in doorways, feet blocking the entrances, his cigarette smoke claiming the very air. Probably makes a market in stolen televisions and hits people with heavy objects if they annoy him.

Cindy likes him. I can't think why.

Everybody but me read the note without laughing out loud. I of course read it and couldn't contain my laughter and got caught.

“I am an alien from another planet,” Miss Margolis read out loud from the note. “You can't see me, but I am having sex with your little finger. I know you're enjoying it because you're smiling.”

The class collapsed laughing. “Susan,” said Miss Margolis stiffly, “perhaps the reason you're doing so poorly in trig is because your mind is on such trifles,”

“I don't think sex is a trifle,” said one of the boys.

“And it's a relief to know where Beethoven's mind is,” added another. “Up to now, we weren't sure she had one.”

I almost enjoyed the teasing.

Miss Margolis said, “You remind me of your sister, Ashley. You don't want to follow in her footsteps, do you?”

The laughter drained out of me. I think I literally paled. If I stray one inch, one thread—let's be honest, one molecule—from the straight and narrow, I panic. What if I did turn into another Ashley? Perhaps it was in my genes too. After all, I love rock music just as much. Look at all the rock lyrics I write. “I'm sorry,” I said quickly. “I'll study harder.”

The class snorted. I saw both Whit and Anthony looking at me and I flushed. I know why I'm afraid of Whit, I thought. He reminds me of Ashley and her gutter friends. I wondered how Ashley was celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday. Had she thought of us? Had anyone baked her a cake? Or was she too stoned to recognize the date?

I don't even know if she's alive, I thought.

Once my father said the next time he saw Ash's name in print would probably be when we located her tombstone. I never knew how to react when he said something like that. My mother just cried.

After school I didn't go straight home. I knew Mother would only want to talk of Ashley and I had thought of my sister enough today. Sister. It had been a word of comfort and love. But now my sister was Trash.

I walked downtown for a Coke. The town has ordinances that forbid fast-food places. The local town powers (which include my mother, although I forgive her most days) say that McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell, and the rest don't fit into the New England atmosphere we all cherish. I personally do not cherish my New England atmosphere that much.

I went into Dom's.

Dom's does not have any New England atmosphere. It doesn't have any atmosphere at all that I can see. I sat at the counter between an elderly woman carrying a shopping bag and a cute construction worker with one arm in a sling. The three of us slouched over cold drinks.

“Hi, Beethoven,” said a male voice.

It was Anthony.

“Just wanted to let you know I'll be ready to help if you run into any problems as music editor,” said Anthony. “I'm going to be troubleshooting for Shepherd, you know.”

Sheppie could shoot her own troubles, but I would come up with almost anything to have Anthony around. “Thank you,” I said. There was no place next to me for Anthony to sit and I could think of nothing to say that would keep him standing in the aisle. The construction worker, bless his heart, grinned at me, dropped several quarters on the counter, and shifted to a booth. Some people are saints.

Anthony sat beside me. The nude calendar idea came back to mind. I squashed the thought. It was hard enough to breathe already.

Ordering a side of French fries, he said, “What do you think of Danenburg? She's supposed to be so terrific but so far Brit lit is the most boring class I've ever had.”

Poor Danenburg didn't know what to say about literature, so she just read aloud from the assignments. She was pitiful. “She just likes the sound of her own voice,” I said.

“Don't we all?” Anthony poured so much ketchup over his fries that they vanished.

“You eat your fries with a spoon?” I said.

He grinned. “Actually the fries are just a method of carrying ketchup to my mouth.”

We flirted, sharing ketchup-coated French fries and sipping Coke diluted with too much ice. I felt a crush coming on, and let it. Who deserved it more?

“Want a ride home?” said Anthony casually.

Anthony would flirt with any girl. But he would not offer just anybody a ride home. Heart pounding, I said, “That would be lovely.” I thought, this is Thursday. Perfect timing for Anthony to ask me out for Saturday.

He paid for my Coke and left a lavish tip. We walked out together, Anthony behind me, holding both my shoulders. He half massaged and half guided, keeping the physical connection he seemed to need with everybody. I winked at the cute construction worker and he lifted two fingers in a victory salute. The construction worker and I had plans, even if Anthony didn't.

Anthony took my hand and we walked to his car. It meant nothing to him. He was not capable of walking next to a girl without doing that. But it meant a lot to me.

We'd driven one block when he said, “But I don't know where you live.”

“Off Iron Mine Road.”

“I always wondered if there was a real iron mine.”

“Oh, yes. My sister and I used to play there.”

He stared at me. “Your sister? Ashley? I can't picture her playing anything but a guitar. She used to play outside, like in dirt and mud and stuff?”

“She was a real person once.”

Anthony shook his head. “I'll never forget that concert she gave three years ago. I swear that was real dried blood all over her. I was terrified of her. But she was so good! What a musician! And her act. Like raw sex. Must have been weird for your parents.”

“It was a little weird for me, too.”

Anthony kept shaking his head. “You're so conservative,” he said. “And your sister was so—so—”

“Unusual,” I supplied.

“That's one way to put it.”

“A safe way.”

Anthony gave me a very gentle look, and for a moment I felt something beyond physical attraction between us: real understanding. I had been floating in a daydream I knew I was a daydream, but now it was pierced by hope. How often does a relative stranger understand a problem as intense as mine? Truly there could be something between Anthony and me—something that was …

But the moment ended too quickly to be sure and I did not know how to continue it. Anthony was totally occupied with locating Iron Mine Road. We don't have signs in our town. The feeling is that you should be born knowing where the roads are.

A rusted-out dark green car drifted toward the same turn. Its back left door was gone, and the hole was covered with black plastic that had torn and was flapping. The license plate was a piece of cardboard with numbers carelessly Magic Markered on. The exhaust pipe dragged on the asphalt, sending out sparks of fire and clouds of smoke.

“I hate cars like that,” I said, shivering. “It's like evil, driving into your life.”

Anthony grinned. “Well, you're safe in here with me, Susan.”

Susan. Not Beethoven, that unsuitable nickname, but Susan. The real me. I felt very attached to Anthony, our real names holding us together.

We passed the repulsive car, which was having difficulty negotiating the curve. The driver was filthy and sickening. He was wearing several sweatshirts and the hoods were stacked up at the back of his neck, as though his heads were layered. His passenger was an emaciated-looking woman with stringy blonde hair, wearing a thin blue sweater and a necklace of pearls that appeared to have been torn apart on purpose, so they hung in silver shreds on her flat chest.

“Here's Iron Mine,” I said.

Anthony turned.

Memory stabbed me like knives. I turned swiftly to glance behind us.

The emaciated woman in the awful car behind us was Ashley.

Anthony talked of twisting narrow Connecticut roads and deep dangerous Connecticut potholes. We hit one, and the car lurched like my soul.

I kept staring behind us.

“Don't worry about that car,” said Anthony. “Driver's probably on something. He's going slow—we're ahead of him. Nothing's going to happen.”

Nothing's going to happen.

The words of a person who did not know Ashley.

We approached our neighborhood. The road widened and a dozen houses sprinkled the rocky valley. Mrs. Bond was weeding her budding chrysanthemum bed, soon to be a shower of vermilion and gold. In his driveway Timmy Ames was trying out the training wheels on his new bike. Behind the house Timmy's sister was trying to sink a basket in the hoop attached to their barn. A kid I didn't recognize was mowing the McLeans' lawn.

All so normal.

Behind us the rusty green car wove a crazed pattern down the wrong side of the road.

I didn't know which would be worse—the homecoming of Trash or Anthony's witnessing her arrival.

Anthony's life was one of predictable wealth and position. His mother had been a Shepherd in her day. His father was a colleague of Emily's father, and equally successful. Anthony knew nothing of the underside of life. He probably thought having a sister like Ashley was romantic.

The real Ashley was another thing altogether.

I had approximately twenty seconds in which to get rid of Anthony.

Right now, I suddenly perceived, I was the woman of mystery I had pretended to be in front of the mirror. A girl whose older sister was a vanished rock star; a girl to whom Shepherd Grenville deferred, saying she was full of hidden creativity.

Dear God, let Anthony keep thinking of me that way, I prayed. “Wonderful of you thanks a million Anthony got to run look there's my mother in the door worried because I'm so late see you tomorrow.” I flung myself out of the car, slammed the door hard against his last words and ran up the path beside the overhanging lilacs.

My mother, in the dark behind the screen door, looked confused. But not as confused as Anthony. Down the road the rusted-out car was gaining. Anthony stared at me and did not drive away.

I turned my back on him.

Wonderful. Wonderful ending to my fantasies.

Girl flees company of boy. Boy senses he is not wanted. Romance will not continue in this episode or the next.

Anthony drove away. I would have wept if I had not already been bracing myself for Ashley. I was going to warn my mother, I was going to hold her first, and say it carefully, but there was no time. The green car landed in front of the house. It did not actually stop, but just paused, as if my sister were just so much flotsam and jetsam to be dumped. At least the soiled person with the layered heads was not going to stay with us.