Know Your Beholder: A Novel (3 page)

Of the four of us, Morris, our lead guitarist, pedal collagist, and minimaster of the Arto-Lindsay-No-Wave-inspired punk incantation (in one of the Third Policeman’s signature bits, his voice would break through an aurora of guitar shimmer like a mad dog barking down rabies), was that guy. He knew it but didn’t like it. I could have been that guy, but I was too in love with Sheila Anne and my priorities were shifting away from the band and toward the false ether of married life. For seven thousand reasons, Glose most certainly wasn’t that guy, and Kent, despite his genuine Third Policeman enthusiasm, had a hard enough time simply balancing his checkbook.

Sitting here, at this very moment, it’s somehow Morris I miss most. Morris “the Cat” Sparks, who ran a 10.8 100 meters in high school and was the first white male to win the state of Ohio in that event in almost thirty years. Morris turned down Division I track scholarships to three Big Ten schools to attend the nonathletic, cannabis-saturated Reed College in Portland, Oregon, for the sole purpose of studying with the poet Gary Snyder. Morris, the left-handed “white Hendrix.” The enigmatic master of the upside-down imitation Danelectro with which he could make more exciting noises than a guitar jock with a five-thousand-dollar axe and nine-hundred-part loop station.

Morris came to Pollard by way of the Wicker Park area of Chicago. He wanted to live cheaply while writing prose poems about power stations and dirty Midwestern children and the encroaching dominance of what he called the “Great Digital Eye.” He was a graduate of the U. of Chicago (he transferred from Reed after his sophomore year), and I happened upon him playing an open mic at Pollard’s lone independent coffee shop, Hello Hi Coffee on Plano Street. He had long dirty-blond hair and a reddish beard, and was busing his solid-state imitation Danelectro through a delay pedal and triggering some other low-end sound bed with his left foot while performing selections of his poetry. It might sound like utter pretentious nonsense, but it was one of the purest forms of human expression I’ve ever heard and witnessed. His face did honest things, as did his voice. It was as honest as milk from a cow squirting into an aluminum pail. He performed barefoot, and his slender, surprisingly clean, feminine feet, which he didn’t even bother tapping time with, seemed honest too. When I later asked him why he chose to perform barefoot, he said it was important for him to feel the vibrations come up through his heels. The thing about Morris is that he meant it when he said and did stuff like that—stuff that, coming from anyone else, would likely seem affected or snake-oily or just plain random.

He rented an apartment above the coffee shop and survived by working as a barista at Hello Hi Coffee and giving guitar lessons. For nearly a year I courted him to form a band with me, and when he eventually caved, I thought I’d acquired a great secret that would solve perhaps .3 percent of humankind’s foibles.

After Slowneck Records was absorbed by a soulless industry monolith, they dumped us; at least that’s how I’ve managed to arrange that narrative. The truth is, we sort of dumped ourselves.
Imploded
is a good word. Before Slowneck made the move to the big leagues, they actually tried to rally us to stay together and keep grinding it out. But unfortunately things were already too far gone.

After the band split up Morris stuck around Pollard and we jammed in my basement for a few months, trying to work up new material, but there was something missing that the four of us had had together—something intangible and tense and roundly inspired—something that made jamming feel necessary, even religious at times.

Morris eventually left without a good-bye, which would continue a recurring theme for the Third Policeman.

He currently teaches language arts at a junior high school in Durham, North Carolina. I imagine him barefoot in the classroom, still long-haired, clad in chinos, a plaid button-down and navy knit tie, reading Edgar Allan Poe to eighth graders by candlelight while scoring it with one of his guitar collages. The kids probably love him.

All four members of the Third Policeman had always held day jobs. Glose was a technician’s assistant at Pollard’s lone stand-up MRI clinic. Morris eventually became the lead barista at Hello Hi Coffee. Kent, a certified librarian, worked at the Pollard District Library re-shelving books and on the sly sold vintage rock ’n’ roll T-shirts to the kids who would frequent the library’s surprisingly sophisticated, Kent Orzolek–curated Young Adult section.

I wrote a column for the local alternative weekly, the
Pollard Pigeon
, mostly charting my experiences, opinions, and attitudes about the regional and national music scene. I would occasionally embed a record review in my generous thousand-word allotment, which was no problemo for my editor, an old hippie who called himself Chuckie Skyhawk. I’d been a writing major in college (Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa), so my byline gave me the false sense that I was actually applying an otherwise wasted higher education.

My column was called “Notes from a Rock ’n’ Roll Windsock,” and I had a good readership and a modest but lively online dialogue that would follow each entry. I thought about continuing the work as a blogger after the
Pigeon
, like so many other small-town weeklies, folded, but I couldn’t get beyond the pride-spurning, reductive fact that I would no longer be getting paid for my important, expectant work. Despite the
Pigeon
’s meager circulation (2,500), the byline was surprisingly good for my ego.

For reasons I don’t completely understand, my Sheila Anne did not take Dennis Church’s unfortunate last name, so it is a consolation to me that she did take mine, the unlikely Italian cognomen Falbo, which translates as “fair-haired” or “blond of beard.” Unlike Lyman’s prior to midlife, my hair is not fair, though my beard is sort of reddish. I believe I inherited most of my external physical attributes from my mother’s side. She was a hundred percent Polish, dark-haired and pale-skinned, with icy blue eyes. I got the dark hair and pale skin from her, and the tired, grayish eyes from God knows where, as Lyman’s hound-dog-sad eyes are one of his best, most lovable features.

Perhaps my eyes are simply Pollardian?

Sheila Anne and I were Mr. and Mrs. Francis Falbo for exactly three years, eleven months, and twenty-two days. I arrive at my number based on the Thursday evening she walked out of the house, not the postmarked date featured on the top left corner of the divorce papers, which arrived by way of certified mail not even two months after her leaving. In official terms, our divorce was based on “irreconcilable differences,” for which Illinois law requires a two-year separation before the divorce can be completed, but the separation can be reduced to six months if the proper waiver and stipulation are filed correctly. And, yes, I somehow agreed to all of this, always the gentleman, always the fool.

The summer following our elopement, in an effort to satisfy both sets of parents, we held a Commitment Ceremony in the backyard, where we recited carefully composed vows to each other under Cornelia’s copper beech. While I know Cornelia and Lyman would’ve preferred a Catholic church, they were more than happy to host. Sheila Anne and I were staunch agnostics, so we didn’t want to go anywhere near a place of worship.

Cornelia’s cancer treatments hadn’t become too debilitating just yet, so she was in great spirits, making her signature paczki (Polish donuts) and welcoming everyone with smiling eyes, offering shots of Nalewka Babuni, an ultrasweet Polish liqueur.

Sheila Anne’s parents and several members of her extended family drove down from Minnesota. They were a tall, hearty lot, some of whom looked Nordic, others more ruddy and Irish. They wore a lot of Ralph Lauren and liked to drink Budweiser out of the can and talk loudly about their baseball Twins and football Vikings.

This was the first time I met Sheila Anne’s parents face-to-face. Her mother, Erin, a beautiful former model
and
tennis pro, immediately hugged and kissed me on the cheek, welcoming me warmly to their family. Robert Farnham, on the other hand, a tall, broad-shouldered corporate attorney with unimpeachable silver hair, was more than a little circumspect. He was handsome in the same way sailboats can be, and when he shook my hand it felt as if I were being administered a gentle life-or-death warning.

Glose oversaw the proceedings wearing what appeared to be a white pleated muumuu that was supposed to be some sort of official-looking garment.

Our vows were embroidered with words like
eternity
and
collaboration
and
life-partnership
. And
humor
and
fun
and
devotion
.
Authenticity
was one particular word that seemed to hang in the air that night like a magic spinning platter.

Morris performed a genuinely moving ballad on his nylon-string guitar, and Glose played accompaniment, using only a brush and his fingers on his snare drum. After this, drinks were served and Morris and Sheila Anne’s brother, Bradley, sixteen at the time, took turns deejaying and both sets of parents lit tiki torches and citronella candles to keep the mosquitoes at bay and everyone danced under the copper beech. It all went down without a hitch in that no one tore an ACL or passed out in the front yard.

I spent most of the evening avoiding Robert Farnham’s stern, emasculating gaze, keeping within arm’s reach of Sheila Anne, who acted as a buffer between her dad and me after our tense handshake.

Kent, who was not in attendance for reasons I’ll get to, was sorely missed, of course. I e-mailed him the few digital photos that Lyman took with his iPhone, but I never heard back.

To bring things to the present, Sheila Anne now uses her maiden name—Farnham—and mine has been deleted from her identity like a smudge Windexed from a bathroom mirror. She has recently been hired onto the elite sales force of AstraZeneca, a leading pharmaceutical company that specializes in medications designed to combat, among other embarrassing afflictions, cholesterol, hypertension, and prostate cancer. It’s no coincidence that Dennis Church also reps for AstraZeneca.

I imagine my ex-wife walking around New York City in mannish suits and heels fit for a venture capitalist, talking to accounts on her Bluetooth headset, clicking across serious avenue pavement, the
Wall Street Journal
tucked under her arm, a to-go cup of barista-made cappuccino in her hand, some impossibly crafted foam art like President Obama’s face or a rare rhomboidal leaf keeping its shape through sips one, two, and three, Sheila Anne defying pedestrian traffic signals, hailing a cab on a whim, multitasking her tight little ass off, carrying an expensive but sleek leather attaché full of high-end sales materials and brightly colored pharmacological samplers that would probably do a world of good for Yours Truly.

Although she makes frequent visits to Milwaukee, Chicago, and nearby St. Louis, I haven’t seen my ex-wife in almost two years (688 days to be exact).

Sheila Anne and I first met after a gig in Louisville, where she was getting her master’s in health science at Bellarmine University. The Third Policeman had just played one of that particular tour’s best sets at the Rudyard Kipling, a small but indie-respected mom-’n’-pop venue that Slowneck had booked us at as part of one of our many meager six-city treks. While we were breaking our equipment down (we never got to the level that garners guitar techs or roadies), Sheila Anne introduced herself. Those eyes of hers were set against pale, lightly freckled skin and marmalade hair, and although she hid her figure under tomboyish corduroys complete with fob chain running back pocket to belt loop, and an oversized plaid button-down shirt that at one time might have been her uncle’s, there was no doubt that she possessed a killer, extremely feminine body. But in the grand scheme of indie-rock regional chilliness, which was infecting my entire life at that time, it was her engaging warmth that was almost shocking.

Later at the bar, after we’d loaded everything into our institutional-looking rental van, and following small talk during which I couldn’t really focus because I was so immediately smitten, she offered to take some photos of the band at our next gig in Cincinnati the following night. I hadn’t even noticed the digital camera around her neck. It was her spring break and she had some time off, and although she wasn’t a professional she’d studied photography as an undergraduate (College of Saint Benedict, MN) and had recently developed a passion for shooting the interiors of Louisville bars: those dank, old-school joints that still serve cheap bourbon and don’t give a shit about cleanliness, coolness, or closing time. Classic analog jukeboxes. Fading beer light signs. Bartenders donning flea-market wigs. Half-burnt-out Christmas tree lights twinkling sadly.

Sheila Anne was only twenty-five at the time, with long braided hair and those eyes that never seem to tire, age, or lie. I invited her to have a few more drinks with the band over at Freddie’s, another local dive bar that kept later hours—and one that she’d recently photographed—but she declined the offer, saying that her boyfriend wouldn’t approve and that she always got herself into trouble when she went to Freddie’s because the Maker’s was so cheap. The fact that she drank Maker’s was an immediate turn-on, but the mention of her boyfriend made it a bitter one. Profound disappointment spread through my limbs like nerve damage. I wound up going to Freddie’s with Glose anyway and drinking several consecutive shots of said holy bourbon, chased by cans of aluminum-tasting Miller High Life, whereupon I passed out in a vinyl booth riddled with duct tape, knife lacerations, and cigarette burns.

Nevertheless, Sheila Anne showed up in Cincinnati and shot much of what became the first images on the Third Policeman’s now semi-frozen website (it hasn’t been updated in well over a year). That night she decided to stay out late with us. We drank at a bar near the ballpark, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. While she was in the bathroom, Morris kept insisting that she was into me, which I didn’t believe, despite the fact that, as our resident chick shaman, Morris could suss out these kinds of things the way pigs can find truffles.