Shout Down the Moon (11 page)

Willie has already had lunch; the dirty dishes are sitting on the kitchen table. I peek into my bedroom, where Mama is trying to rock him to sleep. When she sees me, she signals with her hand for me to be quiet. I think it’s too early for his nap, but I don’t interrupt. I know Mama loves to rock him.

I plop down on the couch before I remember the Mystery Train tape in my purse. My Walkman is in my room, but Mama has an old tape player in the kitchen. I’ll have to keep the volume low; at least I can get a feel for what Ron has written.

The voice on the tape sounds friendly. I assume Ron is talking to Fred. “We call this first song ‘Push Over.’ Hope you like it.”

It starts with a few loud guitar chords. Then the bass comes in, thumping a two-note line to a pounding drum beat. I don’t hear the keyboard player until Ron starts to sing. “I push you/ You push me/ Dealers push drugs/ Waves push dolphins out to sea/ It’s the land of the push over, honey/ What I want from you/ Be my little push over/ Let me push all over you.”

The words are silly but catchy enough. The music, though, is terrible. There’s almost no melody; it sounds like Ron is reciting a cheer for a football team. Or maybe he thinks he’s rapping. I remember Carl saying Mystery Train loved rap; the rumor is they even tried a modified rap version of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy.”

The second tune is better, but still nowhere close to good. It’s a slow song, so at least there’s a melody, but the refrain is as monotonous as “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” And this time the lyrics are beyond silly; they make no sense. They keep repeating, “Come down to my cabin/ The weekend’s meant for two/ Over in Havana/ I like to see it through.” But the verses have nothing to do with Cuba or traveling—unless the bit about some girl’s “banana yellow pants” is supposed to make us think of Havana.

I tell myself I’m being too harsh. After all, a lot of the songs we do have lyrics that are just as lame. If I can sing “Manic Monday” and “Like a Virgin,” I can certainly do these.

By the fifth song, I’ve realized what the problem is. I’ve been spoiled by my band. Even when we do something as basic as “Manic Monday,” we mess with it a little: add riffs that weren’t in the original song, throw in an extra stop or push past the stops already there, vary the tempo of the refrains. Of course by “we” I mean Jonathan. He does all our arranging.

Ron’s songs are average pop tunes. Nothing wrong with them, nothing great about them either. I guess I should be flattered. Fred plans to shell out big bucks for a studio; he’s obviously thinking that I’ll add the spark to make the record company people pay attention.

I’m wondering if I’m up to the task when Mama comes into the kitchen. She doesn’t have Willie and she’s smiling with her nap success. I tell her I’m amazed she got him down this early. I don’t say I’m sure he won’t sleep more than a half hour; he never does if he naps before two.

She picks up Willie’s half-empty yogurt cup and throws it in the trash, but I tell her to sit down. I’ll clean up. Ron’s tape is still playing, but I’m not paying attention, I’m looking at her. Every time I come home, I’m surprised by how old she seems. Her hair has been gray for years, but it’s only recently that the skin on her face seems to have crumpled like a tissue. Even her movements are cautious now, like she can’t trust her own body. She’s only fifty-one, but she’s led a hard life. Her doctor has told her many times that if she hadn’t stopped drinking, she’d be dead from liver damage.

When I’m finished with the dishes, I sit down across from her, and she lights a cigarette. I wish she would stop smoking too, but I haven’t been able to persuade her.

Ron is droning on about a tree that fell in the forest and nobody heard it crash. Nobody cares either, I think, as I hit the stop button.

“I thought I might get the hose out this afternoon,” she says, moving the ashtray by her elbow. “It’s pretty hot. Willie might like to water the bushes for me.”

“I’m sure he would.” I smile. “Before you hand him the hose, better make sure all the windows are closed.”

She points at the tape recorder. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” I rub my eyes. “One of Fred’s bands.”

I look away from her, let my eyes wander to the back window. The yellow swing she hung for Willie looks crooked. I make a mental note to check the chains, make sure she counted off the same number of metal links on the left and the right.

After a moment, she takes a long drag. “You upset about something?”

“I’m just tired.”

We haven’t been talking much since I came home. She keeps bringing up Rick, and I don’t know what to say. She tried to talk about him almost as soon as I walked in the door, and then again last night after Willie went to bed, and then again this morning over coffee. The first time, I told her, “Come on, Mama, I just got home.” The next time, I said, “Can’t we forget about him for a while?” And today, I said, “You know I have to meet Fred in an hour. Cut me a break, okay? Don’t dredge all this up now.”

What she wants is simple enough. I’m supposed to listen while she talks about how nervous she is. And then I’m supposed to reassure her that everything will be all right, like I always have before.

It’s simple, but I just can’t do it. Not after Omaha.

“What happened to all the pictures of Daddy?” I ask, a minute later. I’m thinking I’ve hit on a topic she’ll like. I noticed yesterday that the photos weren’t on the coffee table, where they always are. I figured she was having them reframed, cleaned, something.

“I packed them up, put them in the basement.”

“Really?” I can’t hide my surprise.

She shrugs. “Willie likes to do his puzzles and coloring on the table. Now he’s got some room to spread out.”

“Sounds good,” I manage, but I have to look away from her. Is it possible she doesn’t remember the fight we had about this?

I was seven or eight, and I had a friend over for the first time in months. Everyone wanted to play with Alison because she had dozens and dozens of Barbie dolls. When she suggested using the coffee table for the Barbie doll party, I told her no, but then she said it was creepy to have all these pictures of a dead guy around anyway.

“Your house is weird,” she concluded.

I was afraid she’d tell the whole school, so I carefully moved all the pictures of Daddy to the kitchen. I planned to move them back before Mama got home from work, but I was having too much fun. Alison had every Barbie accessory imaginable. Just getting all the dolls dressed for the party had taken hours. I’d lost track of time.

Mama walked in the door and told Alison to leave. Just like that. “Go home, little girl,” she said, and Alison started crying.

“You’re mean,” I said, when Alison was gone and Mama was putting the pictures back on the coffee table. I was holding a tiny pink Barbie shoe that Alison had left behind. I was surprised she hadn’t left more things; she’d been in such a rush to get away from my mother.

“Go to your room,” Mama said. “Right now.”

I should have gone, but I was too mad. I threw the little shoe at her and repeated that she was mean. I told her that every girl in school had a nicer mother than I did.

Then she started crying loudly, just like Alison had. She was crying as she shoved me into my room and shut the door. She was crying as she pushed the heavy cedar chest in front of the door, the way she always did, so I couldn’t get out.

I couldn’t stop saying it though. “You’re mean,” I said through the walls. “You’re mean,” I yelled, when I realized she’d turned on the TV. “You’re mean,” I said, over and over, until I was dizzy and hoarse and half crazy.

The click of her lighter startles me back to now.

“You sure you’re not upset about something?” she says.

I shake my head, and remind myself to focus on the important thing here. She packed up all the pictures of Daddy. I can hardly believe it. Maybe she’s ready to move on with her life, finally. And all because she wants Willie to have a place to play.

No question about it, my little boy is doing her a world of good.

When he wakes up from his nap, she insists on getting him. I figure he’ll yell for me anyway, but he doesn’t. A few minutes later, they come into the kitchen holding hands. He tells me Granny promised to give him a peanut butter cookie.

He’s grinning like he’s getting away with something. Normally, I make him eat grapes for his afternoon snack.

“You little goofball,” I say, and smile. “Your granny sure is spoiling you.”

He giggles and stuffs half the cookie into his mouth before he says Granny gave him a present today.

“He was tickled pink,” Mama tells me, as Willie dashes into his room to get it. “He must have played with it for over an hour.”

When he comes back, he’s lugging a black Casio synthesizer that’s almost as big as he is. It isn’t full size like Jonathan’s, but it isn’t a toy either.

“You shouldn’t have spent this kind of money, Mama. It’s not even his birthday.”

“I got it at a garage sale down the street. It was only fifteen dollars.”

“But still. He’s only two. He doesn’t need—”

Willie is yelling. He has the keyboard on the floor and he’s kneeling over it. He wants me to listen.

I’m surprised he knows how to turn it on. I’m even more surprised when he says, “Jingle Bells,” and pushes a button and it plays “Jingle Bells.” He plays along with it, hitting random notes with one finger and then taking his whole fist and pushing down five or six keys. When he’s finished, I clap and whistle and he’s beaming. Then he says, “I sound like Jonathan?” and I tell him yes, he’s a good little musician.

“He’s been asking me that all morning,” Mama says. She glances at Willie but he’s hitting buttons, not paying attention. She laughs and whispers, “He even asked me if he looked like Jonathan.”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes.”

I laugh. “You lied to an innocent kid? How could you, Mama?”

She frowns and crosses her arms. I tell her to lighten up, I was only teasing, but she mutters, “Say what you want, I’d sure rather that boy want to look like Jonathan than look like—”

“Stop,” I whisper, nodding at Willie. “I don’t want him to hear this.”

“Now you’re defending that man?”

“No, but Willie does look like him. You know it. And I’m not going to let you imply there’s something wrong with that.”

I walk over to Willie and sit down on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mama stomp out of the room. I know I should follow her and apologize, but I’m not sorry.

Willie is telling me what the buttons do. Then he says he’s going to be in my band when he grows up. I smile. “You’ll be my keyboard player.”

“Me and Jonathan. I sit with him on the big stage.”

“Sure, buddy,” I say, patting his back.

All morning, I’ve been forcing myself not to think about how much Willie likes the guys. Even if they don’t deserve his affection, it’s real and it’s understandable: he’s known them for almost half his life.

This is another reason Fred’s plan is depressing: Willie will have to adjust to a whole new group. Maybe Ron’s band will be nicer to him, but I doubt it. If anything, they’ll probably resent being turned into my backup band after all those years as Mystery Train, and take it out on my son.

I tell myself I have no choice, make the best of it. About an hour later, I listen to the rest of the tape and try to convince myself it’s not that bad. And then, while I’m eating a cheese sandwich, I run through all the reasons I wanted to leave Jonathan’s band. But it doesn’t work; I’m still depressed. Finally, around four thirty, I ask Mama if I can use her car again. I have to talk to Jonathan.

She says yes, and I thank her. I’m digging in my purse, trying to find the car keys, when I realize she’s staring at me.

I know she wants to say something. We haven’t spoken more than a few words to each other all afternoon.

“Watch yourself,” she says, in an ominous voice.

“I will.”

“I mean it, Patty Ann. This is the first time you’ve been home since he got out of jail last June.”

“I know.”

“And if that parole violation didn’t stick, he’s back in Lewisville, only thirty miles from—”

“Okay.”

“He could show up any time. He could be out there waiting right now, for all you know. You can’t just—”

“You think I don’t know this?” I snap my purse closed. “God, Mama, I’m not stupid!”

I start to turn around, but then I catch a glimpse of her face. She looks both humiliated and confused, like a little kid whose parents have yelled at him for something he can’t even comprehend.

After a moment, I take a deep breath, tell her I’m sorry. And then I say the rest. I’ll be super careful. Don’t worry. I can handle this. Everything will be fine.

It works. Her shoulders loosen, her mouth relaxes into a weak smile, as she says she’s probably being silly. It’s only been three weeks. He had a gun. Of course he’s still in jail, right?

“Right,” I tell her. And then I force a smile, give her another confident “Don’t worry,” before I blow Willie a kiss and hurry out the door.

“Get gas,” she yells to my back.

I nod, put it on my list. Get gas, be careful, talk to Jonathan. Oh, and make a decision that could affect my entire future—if I even have a future, after the way I acted with Fred. Some holiday.