Pike's Folly (22 page)

Marlene halted before the display. “If you don't mind, Mr. Pike, I think I'll get dressed now. I just . . . feel weird all of a sudden.”

Nathaniel withdrew politely. “Of course. Help yourself to whatever you need. It's all for the taking.”

She thanked him and went to find her size at the end of the sale rack. Her choices were all arbitrary; the important thing was to cover herself with as many layers as possible. With trembling hands, she tore open a package of plain cotton panties and put them on. Likewise, she picked out a bra, a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a cable-stitch sweater. Most of the items had security tags on them, so she brought them up to the salesgirl in the floral-print blouse. “Can you pull these tags off for me?” she asked.

The girl took the bundle of clothes and set it by her register. “You're Stuart's wife, right?” she asked. “Marlene, the nudist?”

The question startled Marlene, who took a closer look at the salesgirl's name tag. Hers wasn't gold, like Pike's, but a blue and white plastic card that read Allison Reese, Sales Associate. Marlene felt embarrassed at meeting Allison under such awkward circumstances. Having spent so many weeks hearing about her from Heath, Marlene wanted the real Allison to like her. “That's me,” she admitted softly.

Like Nathaniel, Allison appeared unfazed by Marlene's nudity. “Hey, don't look so freaked out. This isn't Providence. No one's gonna call the cops.”

The thought hadn't occurred to Marlene until now. “My husband might,” she said.

Allison laughed. “Stuart? Nah. He might be a little uptight, but he's not an asshole.”

Marlene found it strange that anyone would think of Stuart as “uptight.” He'd never been uptight with her, only patient and understanding.
She
was the problem, not him. If he'd ever acted uptight, it must've been because she'd done something to upset him.

Allison took off the security tags and passed each item across the sales counter to Marlene, who gratefully put them on. “Is Heath around?” Marlene asked.

“I don't know. He was supposed to meet me twenty minutes ago for dinner.” Allison frowned. “How do you know Heath?”

Marlene explained as best she could the many weekends they'd spent working on the video that Lucien had offered to buy from Heath. Allison listened attentively, feeling intensely betrayed that Heath hadn't told her any of this.

“I knew that I shouldn't have gone to England,” Allison said. “Bad things happen when I'm not around. That's why my parents got divorced, because I went off to college. I've gotta learn to just stay put. My father's lived in Providence his whole life, and he's happy enough.”

Marlene couldn't understand why Allison had to take the blame for anything. This was
her
fault, no one else's—her fault that she'd been arrested and lost her job; her fault that Stuart wasn't talking to her anymore, and even that Allison's parents were divorced; her fault about 9/11, and the recession, and every bad thing that had ever happened since the day she was born, April 7, 1969, and probably even before that, too.

“We'll get your videotape back,” Allison assured her. “Heath's not going to do anything with it, anyway. He's a total type A personality. Or type B. I always forget which one's which. But the one that never gets anything done.”

After Marlene finished getting dressed, she and Allison found Heath in the sporting goods department and led him out of the store to a copse of tall grass growing on the leeward side of the building. The evening air hung heavy with a kind of blue, suspended mist.

Understandably, Heath wasn't pleased to hear about Lucien. “Who is this guy, anyway?” he asked Marlene. “I mean, if he's a
producer,
that's one thing.”

“What do you mean, ‘That's one thing?' ” Allison snapped. “It's her body. Don't be so fucking . . . what's the word?”

“Paternalistic?” he guessed, and she rolled her eyes at him.

“Lucien would pay you for the video, Heath,” Marlene said. “He's a decent, trustworthy man.”

“See?” Allison said. “He's a decent, trustworthy man. This sort of thing happens all the time. Like in that musical,
Rent,
where the kid shot the video and CNN wanted to buy it, but he was stupid and said no. Don't be stupid, Heath. You'll make other videos.”

He didn't want to argue with her. After many days of careful consideration, he'd finally decided that the raw footage that he'd shot with Marlene and Stuart was too good to waste. He had larger designs for it, though he wasn't sure exactly what. But he certainly couldn't do anything without Marlene's video. The core element of his film had to be genuine for the rest of it to carry any weight.

Allison nudged him. “Come on, Heath. That video camera doesn't even belong to you. It's Pike's.”

He hated being reminded of this. “I know, it's just . . . I wanted to finish that project on my own,” he said lamely.

“Why? What for?” Allison folded her arms, clearly prepared to reject whatever reasons he might propose.

“I can't tell you,” he muttered.

“Why not?”

“Not when you ask me like that. You're just going to make me feel stupid.”

Marlene took pity on him. “Look, just forget it. I'm sorry I even came up here,” she said.

Allison turned on her. “Don't say that. Don't ever apologize for doing what you want to do.”

Heath stared at the ground as Allison continued to badger him.
What would Brian Wilson do?
he wondered but found no answer. This was the same kind of adversity that had finally killed off the
Smile
album in May of 1967. With the exception of Brian's younger brother, Dennis, who shared some of Brian's eclecticism, the other Beach Boys were by degree either perplexed by the tracks that Brian had assembled or else completely opposed to them. At any rate, the consensus was that he'd lost his touch, and in the months following
Smile,
a new, more democratic Beach Boys emerged. They recorded a very fine album in late '67 called
Wild Honey,
then another, equally fine, record the following year,
Friends.
The albums appeared regularly throughout the next decade before drying up in the early eighties. Dennis drowned in '83; Carl died of a brain tumor in '98; Mike, Al and Bruce continued to work the festival circuit; and Brian, the boy genius who at twenty-four had seemed invincible, came to regard his long-lost “teenage symphony to God” as “dated sounding.” If there was a moral to any of this, Heath didn't know what it was.

“Just think about it, Heath,” Marlene said. “I don't know what kind of money Lucien has, but I'll bet it's a lot.”

“It's not the money,” Heath said. “I don't need the money.”

Allison shouted, “What are you talking about? Pike's not going to support you for the rest of your life, Heath. I'm sure he's got other things on his agenda.”

“I know that. Look, let's not talk about this right now. I don't feel so good.”

“Whatever. I've got work to do.” Allison glanced at Marlene, then stormed back into the building.

Marlene gave Heath's arm an encouraging squeeze. She wanted to say something wise to cheer him up, but she feared that any advice of hers must be cursed.

Once both women had gone inside, Heath wandered away from the building and lay down in the grass. The ground felt cool and lumpy through his thin work shirt. As he gazed up at the darkening sky, another Beach Boys song came to him, this one from 1964. The song was one of Brian's miniature master-pieces, with harmonies so beautiful that Heath hadn't really thought about the lyrics until now. The title said it all, though:
Don't Back Down.

4

The next morning, Pike tracked down Heath in sporting goods and announced that he'd arranged a birthday surprise for him. Heath's birthday wasn't for another two weeks, but Pike insisted it couldn't wait.

At eleven o'clock, a helicopter landed at the staging area just north of the Kmart, and Pike went to meet it by himself. When he returned thirty minutes later, he asked Heath to follow him. “Quickly, now, we're on a tight schedule,” he said.

They crossed the parking lot and plunged into the outlying forest, where they followed a trail that the staff used to bring supplies in from the helicopters.

Pike stopped a few steps short of the staging area and pointed left off the trail. “Walk straight until you come to a clearing,” he said. “You'll see a couple of folding chairs. Stop and take a seat.”

“Then what?” Heath asked. As much as he trusted Pike, he felt uneasy about this.

Pike smiled mysteriously. “Just you wait.”

Heath followed his instructions and soon was standing between two folding chairs that were facing each other. As they were identical, he picked one at random and sat down. Ten minutes went by before he heard a rustling sound and saw motion in the trees. Someone was coming toward him. He watched apprehensively as the figure drew closer, stepping uncertainly over the rocks and tangled roots on the ground.

With a last push forward, a man emerged in the clearing and smiled at Heath. “Are you Heath Baxter?” he asked.

The blood drained from Heath's face. He nodded.

The man offered his hand to Heath, who felt so detached from his own body that he could hardly move to shake it.

“I'm Brian,” the man said. “Nate tells me it's your birthday.”

They shook hands, and the man took a seat in the other chair. He wore slate-blue, ultralight hiking boots, a pair of khakis and an oxford shirt with wide maroon stripes. Over the shirt was a tan windbreaker with a wrinkled hood that hung loosely from the neck. Heath knew from reading his biography that Brian Wilson was a few days shy of his sixtieth birthday, but he easily could've passed for fifty. His face was hard and thin, and his brown hair looked like someone had combed it for him. There was something monstrous about him, Heath decided. He looked a bit like Frankenstein, although human, more handsome. His eyes had the same tortured, lovesick quality, and they penetrated inquisitively from two craggy sockets. Despite his weathered features, his body was trim and muscular—a triumph of personal determination, dieting and exercise, pop psychology and, one would assume, a fair number of green and yellow pills. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, and one side of his face even looked slightly spastic, as if he might've had a stroke. Yet his voice was the same one that on Heath's
Smile
bootlegs told the musicians to make the percussion sound more “like jewelry.”

“My birthday's comin' up, too,” Brian said. “I guess that means we're both Gemini.”

“June 20, 1942,” Heath said quickly, then added, “I mean you, not me.”

His nervousness amused Brian, who sang a few lines of “Birthday” by the Beatles. He laughed to himself, letting his eyes drift. “I remember wanting to do that song with the Beach Boys back in the seventies but . . . I just couldn't get my act together.”

Heath still couldn't believe that this was happening. “What are you doing in New Hampshire?”

Words came slowly to Brian, but he eventually said, “We're playin' a show down in Concord on the third. Nate bought a couple tickets for you and your girlfriend. Then we're playin' a double-bill with Elvis Costello on the fourth. I think you're really gonna like it. We've got a smokin' band this time, some of the best touring musicians in L.A.”

Heath couldn't resist asking, “Are you going to do any songs from
Smile
?”

Brian cocked his head slightly, as if trying to recollect the name of an old friend. “The problem with a lot of those songs, Heath, is that I don't remember how most of 'em go. I mean, I can remember the words, and the melodies . . . but that's about it.”

And then a miraculous thing happened. Closing his eyes, he leaned back in his chair, took a quick, shallow breath and sang,
“She laughs and stays in her one, one, one, wonderful.”

And Heath felt the mountain drop out from under him, and the wind was silent, and a sparkling firmament settled softly on the trees.

When he finished singing, Brian said, “It was good to see Nate again. We haven't worked together since the eighties. I've lost a lot of weight since then.”

“You look great, Mr. Wilson,” Heath said.

Brian pointed at himself, and those deep, Frankenstein eyes sparkled hideously. “Who's Mr. Wilson? I'm not Mr. Wilson.” From this, Heath understood he was to call him Brian. “Mr. Wilson was my father,” he said, “not me.”

Murry Wilson,
Heath thought: the Beach Boys' first manager and the man who, once Brian's talents began to outstrip his own, so berated his eldest son in the studio that on a 1965 session tape he could be heard screaming, “You see, Brian? I can be a genius, too.” It was Murry who'd done the most to undermine Brian's self-confidence. Two years after
Smile,
Brian produced one of his best songs from the late sixties, “Break Away,” and on the label, his songwriting partner was credited as “Reggie Dun-bar,” a pseudonym for Murry. It was almost as if Brian were saying, “You're right, Dad. I'd be nothing without you.”

Feeling uncomfortable, Heath asked, “How did you meet Mr. Pike?”

Brian had to think about it for a while. “Well, that was when my brother Dennis was still alive. Denny'd done some acting during the Beach Boys days, and Nate wanted him to be in one of his movies. We were all gonna produce it together. I don't remember if the movie ever got made, but Nate was fun to hang around with. He's a good drummer.”

Heath stared. “Mr. Pike?”

“Yeah! Nate always reminded me of Denny on the drums. Denny never thought he was a good drummer, either, but man, he could
swing
it!”

Brian went back to talking about his current band, his fans and some of the new songs he was trying out on tour. “I never thought I'd get so much enjoyment from playin' every night. I find it very therapeutic. For a long time, I didn't want to go out on the road because I was in so much psychological pain, and I didn't want to inflict any of that bad karma on the audience. You know, that's not good for the music, and it's not good for the soul either—and the
soul
is what's important. I always try to write soulful music. It's not ‘soul music,' but it's soulful.”

Listening to him, Heath wanted Brian to know that, as an artist himself, he could sympathize with what he was telling him. “I feel the same way,” he said, “when I'm working on a screenplay or writing a script . . .”
Same thing, you idiot,
he thought, then realized he'd inadvertently picked up Brian's rambling, redundant speech patterns, and even a hint of his southern California accent. He didn't want Brian to think he was mimicking him, so he spoke clearly and precisely in his regular voice. “I think that a lot of younger artists are afraid of expressing themselves,” he said, “because they think they'll be criticized for it. But I
want
to express myself. I want to make myself open to people, like you did with your music.”

Brian regarded him thoughtfully. He'd obviously done this as a favor to Pike, but he also seemed to be genuinely enjoying Heath's company. “I always tell people,” he said, “ ‘Man, I
still
believe in the power of music.' That's what the Beach Boys were all about. Every song that we ever recorded was about the same thing: love. Sharin' it, spreadin' it,
believin'
in it. And that's why those songs are still popular today.”

Heath saw an opportunity to ask a
Smile
question. “But what about ‘Cabin-Essence,' or ‘Child Is Father of the Man'? I mean, both of those songs seem a little abstract for pop music.”

Brian couldn't suppress a pained expression. Every successful artist, Heath supposed, had his own albatross to contend with, and this was Brian's.

“I reached a point when I was a lot younger,” he said confidentially, “when I began to question my own spirituality. It was . . . a bad scene. And I stopped seein' things clearly. I wasn't exercising, I wasn't eatin' right. And after awhile it began to affect how I heard things inside my head. Instead of writing spiritually joyful music, I was writing acid music and marijuana music. I wasn't thinking about God anymore.” He paused. “And then I realized that God isn't about what's in your head. That's not where God lives. God lives in your feet, and your arms, and your hands, and your muscles. God is what happens to you when you hear a Sam Cooke song on the radio and you have to stop what you're doin' and just groove to the music. That's a
spiritual
celebration. That's why I love disco music, because disco music is spiritual. Anything that makes you move your feet.”

Heath had to disagree. “But that's not what's so great about it, I mean, what you were doing on that album. I feel like when I listen to those songs—‘Heroes and Villains,' and ‘I Love to Say Dada'—that it
is
spiritual music, because it's so pure and strange and beautiful, and it makes me think about . . .” He stammered, aware that he wasn't making much sense. “About myself, and what I want to do with my life, and it . . .
inspires
me. I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong, because obviously you're not, but when I think about your albums—and I love all of them, even
Orange
Crate Art
—it's always
Smile
that I come back to, because it's more than just an album, it's this
thing,
this concept I can't put into words. It's pure experience. It's like this vacant space that swallows everything up.”

Heath felt dismayed that Brian didn't share his enthusiasm for
Smile.
On a purely intellectual level, he understood that artists were often the worst judges of their own work, but to apologize for something that had given him so much pleasure seemed almost obscene.

Brian looked wistful. “I sometimes think if I
had
finished that record, people wouldn't be so interested in it. As hard as I try, I can't write the perfect song. I can't say all there is to say in a three-minute piece of music. I tried once, and I almost went crazy doin' it.”

Heath wondered what song he might be referring to, but Brian didn't elaborate.

“A song is really just a means of communicating with people,” he said. “That's why I wrote those surf songs back in the sixties—'cause that's what kids were doin', and I wanted to write happy music about things that other people cared about, like surfin' and hangin' out with your friends. It wasn't art music per se, it was religious music.” He sighed. “But the fact is, once a song's over, it's over. You can listen to it as many times as you want, but you're never gonna get any closer to the
essence
of the song itself. The only way to get truly close to a song is to stop listening to it. There are some songs I won't listen to anymore, because I don't want to ruin them. I haven't heard ‘River Deep, Mountain High' in over ten years, but I remember every note of it.”

Heath asked, “So if you had to do it over again, you wouldn't have written
any
music at all?”

Brian gave the question serious consideration. “No. I couldn't live without music. Music's my big brother. I've always been everyone else's big brother, but music is
my
big brother.” This statement was made more poignant by the fact that both of Brian's brothers were dead, and that he probably could've used a real big brother when he was younger, instead of an intangible one.

“Believe me,” he said, “a day doesn't go by that somebody doesn't ask me about that record. And as much as that might upset me, it's also kind of cool. There's something mysterious about an unfinished work of art—‘mysterious' in the old sense of the word, meaning that which relates to the mystical or inexpressible. Because I couldn't finish the record, the music still belongs to God. And that's what I wanted to do in the first place. When I went in the studio to make
Smile,
all I knew was I wanted it to sound joyful, and childlike, and honest. I didn't have any idea what the single was gonna be, or even what any of the individual songs were gonna sound like. I just wanted to
play,
you know, like little kids play. Have you ever watched kids playin' in a sandbox, and they make a mound over here and another little mound over there, and pretty soon it's a castle or a dragon or, you know, a sports car? They don't sit down and say, ‘Now I'm gonna make a sports car.' They let the
sand
talk to them. And I wanted to do that with my music. Same thing with ‘Good Vibrations.' That was all about the
sand,
man. That was about listening to the sand and lettin' the music do its own thing.”

Heath appreciated what Brian was saying but couldn't relate to it himself. “It's hard to make a film like that, though. You need to have a plan of some kind—if not a screenplay, at least a rough outline.”

“That's not important. Don't worry so much about the process. Songwriting is all about discovering beauty, not creating it. And that's also true of filmmaking. If you can't finish something honestly, leave it unfinished. That's what I did with
Smile.
”

Heath, who'd been staring down at his shoes, looked up. “You did?”

Brian's face became very serious, as if he'd never spoken of this before. “
Smile
wouldn't have worked as a real record—not the kind that you hold in your hands and put on a turntable. It wouldn't have made it.”