Have Mercy (Have a Life #1) (22 page)

Mrs. Yellow Hair said Houston was in the middle of a terrible drought and that’s why everything was brown and crackly looking and when I put down my window to feel the air, Mrs. Yellow Hair overrode me with her own controls and put it back up saying, “Mosquitoes.”   

              What I never could have imagined was that driving from one side of Houston where the airport was to Hockenberry Road would take two hours.  But it did.  The neighborhoods fanning out from the inner city to the airport were distinct developments.  Nearest to the airport were cracker box track homes that could use a coat of paint and had pieces of furniture and other stuff piled on the curb for the garbage men or the neighbors to pick through.  Then came middle class homes, a lot of them pretty big ranchers in developments with gates around them, and furthest out, where Mrs. Yellow Hair in her giant black SUV was taking me were immaculately landscaped acres dotted with humongous McMansions that you could only glimpse from the highway because they were encircled by high stone walls and had guard houses in front of gates that looked like they were copied from castles.  Mrs. Yellow Hair pulled into one of these. 

              “Give me that paper,” she commanded.

              I gave her the slip of paper with the address on it and she handed it to the security guard, who came out of his shack and peered in the window to get a good look at us.

              “I’m giving this young lady a ride,” Mrs. Yellow Hair said.  “She’s visiting her father who lives here.”

              “What’s your name, miss?” he asked, then went back into his command post and looked at a list.

              “Who
is
your daddy?” Mrs. Yellow Hair asked.  “This is a very expensive neighborhood.”

              “He’s a musician.  The Griffin,” I said.

              “The
Griffin
?” she said. She got a dreamy look on her face then laughed.  “I used to have the biggest crush on him. He was so handsome.  That was a long time ago, though.  Jesus, he must be, how old?”

              “He’s at the Toyota Center this week.  The show’s sold out.” I felt proud saying that, even though I didn’t know if it was true.

              “Well, you might actually have a shot at making it as a musician,” she said.  “Not like my Vera.  My husband’s a banker.  It’s all who you know.”

              The guard came out of the guard shack again.  “What’s your name, again?” he asked me, and when I told him he went back in and picked up a phone. 

              “I could just walk in.  How far can it be from here?  I only have this to carry,” I said, holding up my backpack and guitar.

              “They don’t let you just
walk
into a place like this,” Mrs. Yellow hair told me. “There are security guards with dogs in the back of jeeps patrolling the streets and you’d be stopped before you were out of sight of the gate.”

              The gate guard was on the phone for a long time and the awful thought occurred to me that The Griffin was home and he was telling the guard he didn’t want me let in.  Finally, the guard came out, walked to the back of the SUV, wrote down the license plate number, and handed me form on a clipboard for me to sign, write where I was going and what time I’d gotten there.  He pressed a button by the gate and it opened and we were winding our way past the greenest lawns I’d ever seen and shiny explosions of flowering trees and gardeners wheeling barrels of mulch and sprinklers were on everywhere which seemed really piggy considering that outside the gates there was a terrible drought. 

              Mrs. Yellow Hair stopped in the circular driveway of a giant mansion which I recognized was the house I’d looked at a thousand times on Google Earth—although the fact was that
all
the mansions in the neighborhood looked kind of the same. 

              “Do you want some cash for gas?” I asked.  “I have money.”

              “Save your money in case of an emergency,” she said. 

              “You can go now,” I said.  “I’m okay.”  I didn’t want The Griffin to see Mrs. Cowgirl.  He would split a side laughing at her yellow suit and big hair and she would probably blush because she used to have a crush on him.

              “I’ll wait to make sure you’re okay.”

              “I’m okay,” I said.

              And there I was.  In a giant circular driveway, looking at The Griffin’s house, as if I had entered the Emerald City and had an appointment with Oz the Great and Powerful.

              There was another driveway that shot straight back off the circle down the side of the house. I saw the band bus parked nose out halfway down it.  I put my guitar and backpack down on the lawn,
my
lawn, right? and walked back to look at it. A guy in white pants and no shirt was polishing the grill.  There was Bang on the front grill, and Raymond sneering his Cheshire cat sneer under one of The Griffin’s wings, and then there was a third figure leaning familiarly under The Griffin’s other wing.  I walked opposite it and stood back so I could see it whole.  It was a young boy in black leather pants and open vest. The boy’s hair was painted black as a crow’s and was braided down his back.  I was looking at it for a really long time I guess because I heard a horn honking. Mrs. Yellow Hair wondering where I was.  I knew who the new figure on the bus had to be without even having to think.  It was Isak.               

              I came back out on the lawn and waved to Mrs. Yellow hair to stop honking and I turned around just as the door opened and a boy was standing in it, a guitar dangling off his shoulders and earplugs on his neck.

              “You’re lucky.  I almost didn’t hear the phone,” the boy said.  “I was practicing.”        

              I had known Isak existed, forever of course.  I had him stored in one of the smallest boxes in my collection.  His hair was even blacker than on the side of the bus and his face was broader and had stronger features than the painted face.  He had the same fuzzy hair on his cheeks and chin that Tim had. 

              I walked back to the SUV and Mrs. Yellow Hair opened the window.  “I’m okay,” I said.  “Thank you for giving me a ride.”

              “Who is that boy?” she asked.

              I said the words in my head to see how they sounded before I said them aloud:  “That’s my brother, Isak.”

              I walked back to where I’d put them down and picked up my guitar and backpack and stood for a minute staring up at Isak, thinking it was probably as curious for him to have a sister as it was for me to have a brother I’d never met.  Unless, he didn’t even know I
existed.
  But then, he sent me that text message when Jane was in trouble.  But how could he know what I looked like?  I walked up the steps and stopped in front of him.

              “I’m Mercy O’Reilly,” I said.  “The Griffin is….”

              “I know who you are,” Isak said, stepping out of the way.  “Come on in.”

The house was sparsely furnished, not in the way Jane’s and mine was sparsely furnished because we couldn’t afford much, but in a way that looked deliberate.  The floors were marble and shiny as an ice skating rink.  Isak led me through a couple of large rooms that didn’t look as if anyone ever used them to the kitchen. 

              “Are you hungry?” he said, opening the refrigerator and staring into it.  “I’m starved.  I’ve been playing all morning.”

              “Yeah, I guess I am.”  I put my Fender and backpack on the floor and climbed onto a stool at a giant granite island in the middle of the kitchen.  I hadn’t eaten much of the egg breakfast I’d bought at Nashville and before that nothing since our pit stop in Hagerstown.

              “ I guess you’re a vegetarian too,” Isak said.

              “No, but whatever you have is fine.  Anything.”  I could’ve eaten an entire side of beef—isn’t that what they
grew
in Texas?  Isak microwaved a giant plate of rice and beans and put it steaming in front of me. “Napkins and forks,” he said, going to heat up his own plate and pointing to a floor to ceiling wall of drawers. “Third and fourth ones.”

              “I didn’t know The Griffin was a vegetarian,” I said. “It’s always pepperoni pizza and Chinese take-out when he’s at our house.”             

              “You’re kidding?  He’s the one who insists on it.  I didn’t like it at first but I’m used to it now.”

              He pulled up a stool next to me.  “Do you like my Fender?” he asked.

              “What do you mean,
your
Fender?” I said.

              “
Was
mine,” he said.  “I like my Martins better. I’ve been working out on my D-28.  Got it as a present from Raymond.  Great resonance. Ever tour their factory? I did.  Last year. It’s a trip.”

              Did The Griffin actually give me Isak’s hand-me-down guitar?  And how come exactly did my half-brother come to the part of the country I live in to tour the Martin factory without me knowing about it? I wondered if Jane knew?  The Griffin probably dropped him at the Philly airport on his way to Milltown.    

              “I mean, the Fender’s a perfectly good guitar, but I said it was okay to move it along.  So it’s not like I’m going to confiscate it or anything.”

              “What wonderful news,” I said. 

              “I’m only kidding you,” he said.  “You don’t have a sense of humor, do you?”

              Didn’t I?  Here, I always thought I was a laugh riot.

              “But I’m not kidding about the Fender.  It was mine.  I’m just not going to confiscate it.”

              “
Okay
!
Okay
!”

              Now that I had something to eat I didn’t feel so spacey.  I looked around the kitchen for signs of The Griffin.  I couldn’t picture him living here.  Actually, the only place I could picture him living was in his band bus parked in our driveway in Milltown.

              “He isn’t here,” Isak said, reading my mind. “He’s at work.”

              “What do you mean, he’s at work?”

              “I assume that’s why you’re here.  To see him.  The thing is I don’t know when he’ll be home.  He’s like, getting ready for the tour.  They have a shitload of new songs he sprung on the guys at the last minute and they don’t have them down yet, plus he’s working out with a personal trainer.  He let himself get really out of shape.  He’s an old dude, you know, and he can’t spring back like he used to.”

              An old dude?  We were talking about The Griffin here.               

              “So, where does he practice?”

              “In town.”

              “He has to come home sometime. I can wait here,”               

              “I guess so. But my
mom
will be back soon.”

              “So?”

              “Where are you staying?  It might be better if you wait there.”

              “I’m staying here,” I said, surprised that he wasn’t taking that for granted.

              “I
personally
don’t care,” Isak said, “But my mom doesn’t like surprises.”

              “So, call her and tell her I’m here.  Or give me her phone number and I will.”

              “You don’t get subtlety, do you?  My mother doesn’t like you.”

              “What do you mean she doesn’t like me?  How can she not like me? I never did anything to her.  She doesn’t even
know
me.”

              He shrugged.  “You want to see my set-up?  Maybe jam?  On
my
Fender?”

              “Possession is nine tenths of the law.”

              “Maybe you do have a sense of humor,” he said.

              We picked up our guitars and headed downstairs to what seemed like a whole other house.  I saw that it was actually the first floor and that the main entrance to the house was on the second floor.  Anyway, it was nothing like the musty old basement stairs that led into the Trap.  Isak turned on a bunch of lights.

              “Yeah, anyway,” he said, gesturing for me to go first. “Why do you call him The Griffin?”

              “Isn’t that his name?  What do you call him?”

              “Dad?” 

We entered a glassed-in room which housed electric guitars on stands, microphones, music stands, amps and speakers.  It was like a professional recording studio and I felt foolish, thinking how I had bequeathed the make-shift amps and speakers in the Trap to Tim as if it were some big deal.  Next to this stuff it was just a lot of junk. 

              “You have a sound board,” I said.  I had never actually worked one, but it was high on my list of things I wanted to learn as soon as my real life started, which I guess was right now.

              “For a good mix, it’s essential.”   He plugged his guitar into an amp. “And for when we record.”

              “You record down here?”  Tim could’ve just made his demo here. 

              “Well, you have to wear headphones for everything because the neighbors bitch.”  He tossed a set to me.  “Even though it’s soundproof.  Or as soundproof as you can make it when you’re surrounded by houses.  That’s why Dad does metal in town.”

              “We have bitchy neighbors, too,” I said, thinking of Mrs. Tudesco and her yapping Pomeranians.  “One of them’s always calling the cops on us.”

              “They wouldn’t call the cops.  They would throw us out,” Isak said.

              “They can throw you out of your own house?”

              “Technically they can.  It’s like a condo association, but Mom would never let it get to that.  She would be mortified. ‘I am so
mort
ified.’” He made his voice go soprano.             

              I laughed, but if that’s what Marjewel was like I was in big trouble.  Jane practically made a habit of mortifying people.  It’s what we
did.

              We both put on our headphones.  Isak switched on a microphone in front of him and gestured for me to do the same. 

              “Hey,” he said through the mike, “You might know this one.”

              He ran through the head, a stanza, and the bridge of
Hole in the Sky
.

              I felt my face get white.  “
Hey
.  That’s my song.  Our song.”

              “Don’t have a fit,” Isak said.  “I’m just fooling with you. Dad was singing your boyfriend’s praises.  No one’s going to rip you off.  It’s your boyfriend’s song, isn’t it?  What’s his name?”

              I strummed the bridge.  “Tim.”

              “Well, how about this?”  Isak started playing.  “It’s one of mine.”  It was like he was meandering through a field of wildflowers, going nowhere in particular but enjoying the trip.  He started singing.  I joined in on the bass.  It was a love song to the desert.  To water holes and poppies and sage and naked mountains.  It wasn’t anything like any relationship song I’d ever heard.  It was like a revelation.  Captain Kirby had said “Mom is not a people person,” when I met her at Kulick’s. Maybe you didn’t have to just write about people. It was so cool to think about having a brother I could explore with.   I had been defined against just Jane and The Griffin for my whole life and it had never occurred to me that that wasn’t the only way to know myself.  I could define myself, like right now, against a
brother
to whom I didn’t have anything to prove. I could see what having a real home had made of Isak.  He wasn’t in awe of The Griffin.  He didn’t have anything to prove like Jane did—saying she’d show The Griffin by doing something so unbelievably stupid that didn’t even make her happy.  Isak was at home with himself. 

              When he finished his song I smiled at him and started the head to the new song that Tim and I had been working on at Sunny Vale.  

                I close my eyes when I play and I did now too.  When I got to the end of where we’d gotten so far I looked at Isak.  He nodded.  “How about this,” he said and played a new bridge between the stanzas and kicked in with a stanza of his own. 

              We toodled around with his bridge and more words came shooting out of his mouth just like they did out of Tim’s and I could see that he was even better than Tim.  But how could he not be?  Tim had gotten more confident just jamming with Raymond and Bang in the Trap.  Isak
lived
full time with The Griffin for Pete’s sake.  That’s why I wanted to be here.   That’s why I was here.

              Isak segued into a Latin riff, made it rock and finished with some lyrics in Spanish that I didn’t understand.

              “That’s for my mom,” he said.  “That’s the part of me that’s a Latino rocker.”

              “What do you mean you’re a Latino rocker?”             

              “My mother is Mexican,” he said.

              And before I could ask him more about his mother and his Mexican heritage, Marjewel was knocking on the glass wall and smiling at Isak, her smile turning to disbelief, then anger when she saw me.