Shout Down the Moon (8 page)

Only Jonathan doesn’t participate. I assume he shares their attitude, which is why he hung up the phone before I could talk to Fred, but he can’t cut being friendly to me, not even to keep from losing the gig.

Sometimes he stands up for me; sometimes he seems to hate my guts. I’m sick of wondering what’s going on with him.

My eyes feel like burning slits; I don’t care about Jonathan; I don’t care about being praised; I just want to finish the night and go home. At twelve fifteen, Peterson says we can end early. It’s a typical light Monday. There are only two couples left in the club, and he says there’s no point in finishing the set. As soon as I put my mic back in the stand, I grab my purse and ask Jonathan for the van keys.

Jonathan says he’ll give me a ride; he left some sheet music at the trailer and he wants it for tonight’s jam. The rest of them say, “Good night, Patty,” almost in unison, as we walk out. I shake my head. It’s as if they have no idea how obvious they are.

As we pull out of the parking lot, Jonathan turns on the radio and I lean my elbow on the window. There’s a cool breeze blowing, even though it’s still three weeks from Labor Day. This feels like the longest summer of my life.

When we stop at the traffic light, Jonathan glances over and asks why I’m quitting.

I frown. “What’s it to you? You want to quit anyway. You almost did a few days ago.”

“That was a matter of principle. I thought Fred needed to know he can’t play games like he has with us. I wanted it to be the case, at least once in his life, that a musician stood up to him and said no. I don’t need your money, Fred; I don’t need your contacts. What I care about you’ll never appreciate and never understand.”

“Well, mine’s a principle too. The principle is, I’m tired of being treated like dirt.”

He goes through the light and turns left. After a while, he says, “You have options.”

“Like?”

“You could tell Fred you want another group. I’m sure he could put together a new band for you in a week. Every musician I know is desperate for steady work.”

I pause for a minute. “Why are you saying this?”

“I promised the guys I would have a talk with you before you call Fred. They’re worried about what will happen to the quartet when you leave.”

I look out the window. The night is clear and the stars are so bright, they seem close enough to reach out and hold in your hand. “But aren’t you supposed to talk me into staying? Isn’t that the point?”

“I told them I’d see what I could do. But I’ve come to the conclusion you’d be better off with another band.”

When I ask him why, he pauses for so long it occurs to me that he’s forgotten the question. But then he turns down the radio and says in a low voice, “I realized last night we’d been cruel to you. It wasn’t intentional; we justified it in the name of our art. But art is about finding beauty, finding truth. It shouldn’t coexist with cruelty. That’s not the kind of musician I want to be.”

Now I’m surprised. “This is because of what I said?”

“No, because I saw you.”

“What?”

“Before, you were just a symbol of what I hate. Commercial culture, anti-intellectualism, Fred. But last night, I really saw you for the first time.” He rubs his eyes as he drives into the trailer court. “It blew me away.”

I’m not sure what he means, but I don’t want him to be more specific. I don’t want to discuss anything about last night.

“Well, maybe you’re right. But I can’t work with another band.”

“It would be easy to make the transition. Fred would hire experienced people. The new group could be up and running within a month.”

“I just don’t think it would work.”

We’re in the driveway now. I can see the TV reflecting blue on the windows. I hope Irene didn’t let Willie fall asleep in front of it again.

Jonathan doesn’t get out. He pushes his shaggy hair back, turns to face me. “You should at least consider it.”

I think about how often he covers for my weaknesses and mistakes. Obviously, he knows about this too. Does he think I’m such an idiot I don’t even realize I’m not that good?

That decides it. I want him to know that I know too. But when I tell him I’m fully aware of my weaknesses as a singer, he bursts out laughing.

I give him the finger and jump out of the van. I don’t need this tonight.

I storm into the trailer, and see Irene. Willie’s in bed, thank God. She says hi, but I walk right past her into the kitchen. I need a beer.

Jonathan is still laughing when he comes in. When I shut the refrigerator, I turn around and he’s standing right there. With my heels on, we’re the same height. I can see the amusement in his eyes perfectly. It makes me want to spit on him.

“Where did you get the idea you’re a weak singer? I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to.” I twist the cap off. “You’re always covering up my screwups.”

“But any keyboard player would.”

“Oh yeah, right.”

He shakes his head. “Patty, the point of a backup band is to make the singer sound good. You’re not weak. I’m supposed to accompany you… If anything, I don’t do enough to support you. I get bored playing the same simpleminded tunes night after night… unlike you.”

I was feeling enormously relieved until he got to that last part. I was almost grateful. That’s why I’m even more furious.

“You always have to throw in some dig about me, don’t you, Jonathan? Make sure I know just how stupid you think I am. Well, guess what? You have no clue. You think you’re bored now? Try working as a dishwasher. Try stuffing your hair in an ugly hairnet. Try standing on your feet for twelve hours scraping dried food off plates. Try being yelled at because you can’t keep enough glasses clean to satisfy the waitresses.” I take a big gulp of my beer. “You think I’m stupid because I’m not bored singing the same songs? Up yours. Compared to the other stuff I’ve done, this job is a dream come true!”

He’s leaning against the wall. I’ve been glaring at him, but he hasn’t been glaring back. And now he half smiles. So does Irene, who appeared in the doorway while I was yelling.

“What?” I ask, as I look back and forth at them.

She raises her eyebrows. “What you just said.”

I stand there for a moment before I flop down at the kitchen table with my beer. Now I get it.

No one says anything then. I’m lost in thought, remembering how I felt when Fred first told me I had the job. I blabbed the news to a total stranger in the parking lot outside Fred’s office. On the way home, I took my last ten dollars and bought a bunch of red and yellow helium-filled balloons that said Congratulations. When the clerk asked who they were for, I grinned and said me. I remember Willie started giggling when he saw the balloons—and when I told him what happened, he clapped his hands together like he understood, though, of course, he couldn’t have. He was barely eighteen months old then.

This is what I wanted. Even tonight, there were moments when it was perfect, moments when I felt that odd sensation of losing myself in the music and, at the same time, feeling so aware, so alive. It really is my dream come true. How could I have forgotten this?

After another minute, Jonathan turns to Irene and says he’s going back to the club now. He takes his keys out of his pocket, but he doesn’t get any sheet music.

I follow him to the door. I have to thank him for what he’s done for me. But I barely have the words out when he says it’s no big deal. And right before he walks out, he throws in, “I still think you should consider changing bands.”

When I turn around, Irene is frowning, shaking her head. “Why in the hell did he say that?”

“You’re asking me?” I say, and force a laugh.

“Brewer is strange, that’s all there is to it.” She rolls her eyes.

I nod, but I’m thinking about what he said. Maybe I should change bands, especially if Fred could put me with a band in another city. Supposedly, Fred has contacts for a thousand miles. He could put me in a band in Utah or Tennessee or Ohio. Maybe he could even put me on a tour of Japan, like Darla. Somewhere far away, so I wouldn’t have to keep glancing out the trailer window every time a car goes by, or the breeze shifts, or a harmless squirrel races up the branches of the harmless front-yard tree.

I
t’s Saturday morning, and we’re in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. The rain is pelting against the roof of the trailer; the wind is throwing trash can lids and lawn chairs and bending down trees, but the gusts are steady, almost 4/4 time; I can tell by the slapping of the branch of the willow against the back window. Willie is still asleep, but I’ve been awake since it started, around four thirty. It must be about six now, I’m not sure. The power went out after a bright white flash of lightning and a clap of thunder that sounded like the sky exploding. Incredibly, Willie barely stirred. The phrase “sleeping like a baby” was made for him.

I know I need to sleep, too; tonight is our last night in Omaha, and Peterson expects the club to be packed. But I can’t, and it isn’t just the storm. I’ve been walking around in a daze since Tuesday when Mama called. I haven’t even been able to think about the band, my future, what Jonathan said to me. When I talked to Fred, I told him it wasn’t urgent after all; it could wait until the end of the month, when we get back to Kansas City. Irene said I was doing the right thing. “You don’t want to make any decisions while you’re upset.”

Irene thinks I’m still upset about what Rick did to me— and I am. But she doesn’t know what Mama said.

She called at seven thirty in the morning. She knows I work nights; normally, she never calls that early. The phone rang and rang before I woke up and rushed out of my room to get it.

I didn’t have a chance to worry something was wrong: she blurted out the news as soon as I said hello.

“They put him back in. It’s in this morning’s paper. They found a gun and it seems that’s enough. Listen to this.”

Then she read me some of the article, her voice growing excited when she got to the part about how Rick may have violated parole by being in possession of a weapon. That he’d had a car accident seemed irrelevant to her, although I caught some disappointment in her tone when she said he wasn’t seriously injured. He could have been, according to the papers. He’d been speeding and he’d plowed right into the side of a building. The only thing that saved him was the airbag in his truck.

The truck sustained thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. The paper mentioned that it only had nine hundred miles on it, nearly brand new.

“Is he in the hospital?” I whispered, as I poured Willie his juice. He was up too now, sitting in his booster seat, eating Cheerios out of the box. His eyes looked bigger and softer than usual. Rick’s eyes.

“Weren’t you listening? He only got a concussion and a few scratches. He was released from Liberty Hospital yesterday afternoon and they took him straight to jail.”

“For how long?”

“It doesn’t say. Not long enough, I’m sure. Unless they get him for something else. Whatever he was doing before he ran into that wall.”

“When did it happen?”

“Sunday night. I already told you that.”

She also told me it happened in Lewisville, but she didn’t say where. When I asked her, she said, “Let me see.” She took a drink of something, probably her usual coffee. “Oh, here it is. You remember that old schoolhouse over on the west side? Right past the park? That’s what he hit, the side of that old schoolhouse. It’s a wonder it didn’t collapse. It’s got to be fifty years old.”

My mouth had gone dry; it was difficult to talk. I mumbled that I’d call later and hung up the phone.

Sunday night. The same night he came here. He must have gone straight back from Omaha. Maybe he stopped at his apartment first, or maybe he drove right to it.

The old abandoned schoolhouse. Of course I remembered that place. Rick used to go there when he was a kid to escape his mom’s drinking. He told me that as we were driving there one night, a few weeks after we met. He also told me it was special to him.

“I forgot what a dump it is,” he said, when we were standing inside what had been the first-grade classroom. “I haven’t been here for years.”

He was holding a flashlight, shining it around the room. The dusty alphabet banner was still tacked above the chalk-board. There were a few broken desks scattered on the right side. And on the left, by the windows, there was a mattress covered with a tattered blanket, and next to it, a pile of empty beer cans. “I found that mattress in the trash,” he said. “The beer I used to steal from Mom’s boyfriends.”

It was a dump, no question, and yet it seemed romantic to me. It reminded me of the bombed-out places where couples hide out together in war movies. I could imagine fixing it up and the two of us staying here forever. We’d put flowers in every room. We’d write sweet notes to each other on the chalk-board every morning.

When I told Rick I liked this place, he squeezed my hand. “I’ve never brought anybody here before. I knew you’d understand.”

After a while, he went over to the corner by the mattress and pulled out two candle ends. He lit them and put them on the windowsill. Then he sat down on the mattress and motioned for me to sit next to him.

I walked over slowly and sat on the edge of the mattress, hugging my knees to my chest. I had on my heavy jacket, but it was still freezing. It was the end of November; it had been snowing on and off all day.

Rick planned to have sex here, tonight. He hadn’t said so, but I knew. The last time we were together, he’d said he couldn’t wait much longer. This was why he’d brought me to this place that was so special to him.

He knew I was a virgin. He could tell I was nervous. He scooted closer, put his arm around me, and kissed my cheek. “I’ll be gentle,” he said quietly, as he unzipped my jacket. It was so cold I could see his breath. “I won’t hurt you, Patty, I promise.”

It wasn’t as passionate as it would be later, but it was nice. He tried to be gentle; he took his time, and the pain was short-lived and no worse than a pinch. And most important, he wasn’t disappointed with my body, my inexperience, or anything about me. That was what I’d really been nervous about.

Afterwards, when we were lying under the ratty blanket, our legs and arms twisted together to keep warm, he explained why he’d wanted to do it in the schoolhouse rather than in his apartment.

“When I was a stupid kid, I used to flop on this mattress and dream I had a girl beside me. She was older, fourteen, fifteen. She had long blond hair and gray eyes. And she had a gorgeous body. I could tell just by looking at her that she would feel so soft. I didn’t want to have sex with her, I just wanted to touch her. I thought if I could just touch her once, she’d become real.”

He paused and placed his little finger on the mole next to my eyebrow. When he spoke again, his voice sounded small. “It’s true. You’re real.”

I lifted myself up on my elbow and smiled. In the candlelight, I thought I could see in his face how he would have looked as a kid.

All the rumors about him seemed ridiculous to me now. We’d been together every day since we met at the baseball field, and he never had any drugs, not even weed. And a bad guy wouldn’t take me to this schoolhouse. A bad guy wouldn’t look as vulnerable as Rick did lying on the mattress, telling me that he’d dreamed of this moment when he was a kid.

For weeks after that night, Rick called me his “real girl.” And later, he still said it sometimes—usually when he’d done something wrong and wanted me to forgive him.

The last time was only a few weeks before he was arrested. It was a Sunday in May, but it was unusually hot and so sticky the air itself felt dirty. For over two hours, I’d sat outside Zeb’s ugly shack, melting into the vinyl seat of the Lincoln, waiting for Rick to finish an important “meeting,” only to walk in and discover Zeb asleep on the floor and Rick sitting on a metal kitchen chair, snorting lines of coke off a TV guide with Karen, a stripper friend of theirs, on his lap. And the window air conditioner was on full blast. It was so cold I felt goose bumps poking out on my damp, sweaty legs.

By the time he caught up with me I was already out of Zeb’s neighborhood, walking through town. He drove along slowly, disrupting traffic, yelling for me to get in the car. Finally he parked the Lincoln in front of the dry cleaner and jumped out and blocked the sidewalk.

“Get out of the way.”

“Come on, Patty. You know how I feel about the slut. I was just—”

“Get out of the way!”

He did, and I walked on. But before I got far, I heard him. “Real girl, I need you. Real girl, don’t leave me.”

He was loud; it sounded ridiculous; people were staring at him. I used this as an excuse to turn back and tell him to be quiet. But when he put his arms around me, I didn’t pull away. He muttered an apology and whispered, “Don’t make me go back there. Don’t make me be like I was, alone in that schoolroom, only dreaming of having this. Of having you.”

After a moment, I walked to the car and got in. And a little while later, I told him I forgave him.

All those years with Mama had turned me into someone who could forgive almost anything. It wasn’t about being good or kind; it was about survival. Forgiveness allowed me to put the past aside and tell myself each night that things would be different tomorrow. Forgiveness let me separate out the bad thing that happened from the person who’d made it happen— and this way, the person could remain in my heart and mind, and in my life.

I always forgave Rick; I didn’t even have to try. Even when I was standing on the railing of the Lewisville River Bridge, the night I almost killed myself, I forgave him.

I haven’t thought about that night in years. But this week is different. This week, it’s just one of the memories I’ve had. It’s as if Mama’s phone call, and what Rick did, have broken down all my defenses, erased all the distance I’ve tried so hard to put between my life now and my life then.

I don’t want to think about the schoolhouse. I don’t want to think about that afternoon outside Zeb’s. And most of all, I don’t want to think about what I felt, who I was, that night on the bridge.

It was the worst night of my life. Even thinking about it now makes me feel like I’m becoming nothing again.

I was up on the railing. Rick was below me, holding out his hand. “Goddammit, Patty, cut this out! You know I didn’t mean all that shit!”

The night was so quiet. I could hear the water rushing below me. All I wanted was to let myself fall and be surrounded by that water. I thought it would feel soft, like the blanket one of the neighbors quilted for me after Daddy died. I thought it would cover me up, let me hide in it forever. I didn’t want to hide from Rick; I wanted to hide from my own mind. My mind was screaming at me. My mind was calling me names: slut, whore, nothing.

We’d just come from a party. It was all older people, his friends. Until after midnight, he talked to guys and flirted with other women while I sat in a chair in the corner, next to the blasting stereo, and pretended I didn’t care. But then he came over and knelt down beside me and mouthed the words, “Are you all right?”

His eyes looked so tender. I nodded, and he put his hand on my face. I turned my lips to his palm and kissed it. He reached up and traced the outline of my eyes with his other hand. Then he smiled and kissed me.

We were shielded by the music. Neither one of us knew the CD was about to end. Neither one of us knew that when it did, the room would grow silent and everybody would glance in the direction of the stereo. Everybody would see him on his knees in front of his little teenage girlfriend.

Rick usually didn’t bring me to these parties. He said they were bullshit; he said I’d be bored. Maybe he meant it, but I knew there was another reason. He didn’t want them to see how he was with me. He thought it would make him look weak.

When he realized everyone was looking at him, his face grew confused, but only for a second or two. He stood up and laughed. “What is it?” His voice was loud. “Are you horny?” He grabbed his crotch. “Do you need some of this?”

I felt tears spring to my eyes.

I know Rick saw those tears. But he’d been speeding for hours. And he was with his friends. He couldn’t deal with a blubbering girl.

Three guys were leaning against the wall not five feet away. They laughed too, and the whole room laughed after one of them said, “If she needs it, man, better give it to her.”

He jerked me to a standing position. My arms and legs felt weak and floppy, like I’d turned into a rag doll. And then he pulled my body against his, and started feeling me up right in front of everybody.

I was more embarrassed than I’d ever been in my life. I could feel their stares, hear their snickers. “Go for it.” “She wants it, man.”

After a while, I closed my eyes. I had to stop the tears and I couldn’t bear to look at him. I was too stunned to object when he lifted up my blouse. He turned me around so no one could see my breasts as he put his mouth on them, but everyone knew what he was doing. He was smacking his lips.

When he let me go suddenly, I stumbled and fell against him. He threw his arm around my shoulders. “You want me to take you in the bedroom now?”

I had to get away from all those eyes. I mumbled yes, and everybody laughed.

“She loves it,” he said, grinning, as he led me to the hall. “Jesus, she wears me out.”

As soon as he shut the door behind us, he slumped down on the bed and let out a curse. He was sorry, I knew he was. But it was too late; he’d cut my heart to pieces.