This Song Will Save Your Life (20 page)

My question seemed to hover in the air between us, while I wondered what it would be like to have a real boyfriend. Someone who you could make plans with. Someone who called you when he thought of you. Someone who would say that he wanted you to come over. I wondered what it would be like to be Sally, and to have Larry Kapur tell you that he wanted to take you to a formal dance. Someone where you didn’t have to guess.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Char said. “Not tonight. It would just upset Pippa even more if we went home together.”

“You’re right.”

Char reached out and squeezed my shoulder briefly. “Thanks for covering for me, Elise. I owe you.”

Then he went to the bar to handle Pippa, and I went to the booth to handle the music, and that was the last we spoke all night.

I liked being up there in the booth, separate from everybody. Pete was right: I was good at it, and it was safe. But on a night like tonight, it was lonely, too.

*   *   *

When I was done, I walked home for the first time in weeks. When I reached my mother’s house, I eased open the front door into darkness and then closed it behind me as quietly as I could. I leaned back for a moment, resting my head against the door. Home safe.

Then someone screamed.

I bolted upright.

“Alex?” I whispered.

A pause. Then my little sister emerged from the shadows, brandishing an empty paper towel roll like a sword.

“Are you okay?” I asked softly.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed. “You scared me!” She didn’t quite lower the paper towel roll, like she still wasn’t sure whether she would have to physically fight me or not.

“I’m sorry, honey,” I said. “I just went for a walk.”

Alex stepped forward so I could see her better. “Now?” she asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”

It was much later than the middle of the night. “I couldn’t sleep,” I explained.

Alex blinked a few times, then asked, “You’re not sick again, are you?”

And I knew we were both thinking about September, when I was rushed to the hospital and then had to miss weeks of school, because I was “sick.” I felt a sudden surge of love for my baby sister. Even if no one told her what was going on, she was no fool.

“No,” I said. “I’m not sick.”

“So why—” Alex began, at which point I decided that the best defense was a good offense.

“What are
you
doing up?” I asked.

Alex twirled the paper towel roll around in her hands. “Working on my poetry castle,” she said. “Come see.”

She led me into the sunroom. The cardboard castle sat proudly in the middle of the room, flags flying from its two turrets. Paper and markers were spread out all over the rest of the floor.

“It looks great,” I told her.

Alex looked at it critically. “I still need to paint the front,” she said. “And I need to finish writing the poems. I’m going to sell poetry, and I don’t know how many people will want to buy them. I need to be sure I have enough. Everyone in the whole school is coming, even the fifth graders. And all the parents. You’re coming, right?”

“Of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

“How many poems do you think people will want to buy?” Alex asked.

“Well, I’ll want to buy at least ten,” I told her.

Alex nodded like she had expected as much. “I need to write more poems,” she concluded.

“But, Alex,” I said, “you don’t have to write them
now
. You have two whole weeks. It doesn’t have to get done at three o’clock in the morning.”

“I know that,” Alex said, picking up a piece of paper and carefully setting it on top of the stack inside her castle. “I wanted to do it now.”

I looked into her gray-blue eyes and saw myself in them, as clearly as looking in a mirror. Building a miniature record player for my dollhouse long past bedtime. Teaching myself to code a Web site under the covers, so my dad wouldn’t come in and tell me to go to sleep. DJing alone in my bedroom in the dark. These things could always wait until daylight, but I wanted to do them in the night.

“I’m going to bed, Poet Girl,” I said. “Want me to tuck you in?”

Alex tapped the end of a marker to her teeth, considering. “Okay,” she said at last. She put down the marker and followed me upstairs.

“Alex?” I whispered in the darkness of her bedroom. “Can you not tell Mom and Steve that I went for a walk tonight?”

“Okay,” Alex said, snuggling into her covers. “Don’t tell them that I was working on my castle either.”

I wrapped my arms around her and she kissed my cheek. It wasn’t the person who I’d thought would be kissing me at the end of tonight. But it was better than ending the night alone.

14

By sundown the next day, I could barely keep my eyes open. I was curled up on the couch in Dad’s living room, holding a book but not really reading it. Mostly I was just staring at my cell phone, willing Char to call or text. I wanted to know what had happened between him and Pippa. I wanted to tell him that I was going to have my own Friday night party. I wanted to talk to him. But so far, nothing.

Of course, this was normal, I reassured myself. Char and I didn’t have a talking relationship. We had the other kind, the kind where you don’t talk. So his silence meant nothing.

My dad sat in his armchair, fiddling with his guitar. He strummed a few chords and mumbled to himself. It mostly sounded like, “Hmm, mmm, mmm. Yeah yeah yeah. Mmm la la. Yeah yeah.”

“New song?” I asked.

“Yeah. I was thinking the Dukes could play it at Solstice Fest, if I could figure out some lyrics. What do you think?”

What I thought, silently, was that no one at Solstice Fest, or anywhere for that matter, was interested in hearing a new Dukes song. They just wanted to hear “Take My Hand,” and they would put up with other songs if they had to.

I had traveled with my dad to a lot of his shows. The best destination concert was when I was twelve. I got to go on an oldies cruise to Jamaica with him. I got my hair done in dozens of tiny braids with beads on the ends, and I swam in the Caribbean.

But what I remembered most clearly about this trip was the Dukes’ set. They played a bunch of new songs and B-sides while the audience sat there politely. Then they played “Take My Hand,” and the audience went nuts for it, obviously.

Once the song was over, the lead singer said to the crowd, like it had just occurred to him, “Hey, do you want us to play it again? It’s only two minutes and twelve seconds long, after all.” The crowd roared its approval, and the Dukes started “Take My Hand” right back from the beginning.

Even as a twelve-year-old primarily focused on eating a pineapple popsicle, I felt that there was something heartbreaking about this. Because the Dukes knew the truth: that nobody at all gave a shit about what they’d been up to over the past thirty-five years.

The Dukes seemed just as happy to be playing their hit single the second time around, and the audience seemed just as happy to hear it. Somehow I was the only one who wasn’t happy.

After that, Dukes concerts just weren’t as fun for me. Mostly, I tried not to go at all anymore. It felt like watching a magic show after you’ve already learned how the magician does all his tricks.

“The song?” Dad prompted me now, as he strummed out the chorus again. “Do you like it?”

I checked my cell phone again. Still nothing. “It was nice,” I said.

“Oh.” Dad cleared his throat. “I’m still working on it.”

I had missed my cue somehow. I could tell. “I think it’s going to be really good, Dad. I think the hippies at Solstice Fest will eat it up.”

He half smiled and ran his thumb over one of the guitar strings. “Hey, do you want to go with me? To Solstice Fest.”

“Um, when is it?”

He gave me a weird look. “During the solstice.”

I guessed that made sense.

“We could drive up on Friday night and camp out. I think the Dukes’ slot is around noon on Saturday.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“Oh,” Dad said. “Of course, you probably already have plans. Are you and Sally and Chava going to that school dance?”

I had told my parents about Sally and Chava because I wanted them to know that I was a normal person with friends. I had never told my parents about the Freshman/Sophomore Summer Formal because I wasn’t insane. Apparently my father had been reading the PTA newsletter.

“The dance is that night,” I said noncommittally.

“Do you have a date?” Dad asked.

“
God
, Dad. No.” I thought about what that could possibly look like: Char showing up on my doorstep in a tuxedo, slipping a corsage around my wrist, posing for photographs in front of the fireplace? He wouldn’t even call me.

Dad nodded sagely. “We guys, Elise, are easily intimidated. When I was sixteen, I would not have had the guts to ask a girl like you to my school dance.”

This was a lie on multiple levels, since 1) the reason why boys weren’t asking me out was absolutely not because they were intimidated by me, and 2) by the time my dad was sixteen, he was already playing sold-out shows at his local concert hall, and any girl in Philadelphia would have given her left arm to go to a dance with a Duke.

“Dad,” I said, “would it be okay with you if I spend Friday night at Mom and Steve’s house?”

He paused in his strumming. “You mean the weekend that I’m at Solstice Fest? Of course that’s okay. I was going to suggest that myself.”

“No, I meant, like…” I hugged my knees into my chest. “Every weekend.”

He set his guitar down. “So I would only get you on Wednesdays? And you would stay with your mother six nights a week? Every week?”

“Well … We could rearrange things so I could spend some other weeknight with you … like Tuesdays?”

“Why?” Dad asked, his voice raw.

I couldn’t answer that. I opened and closed my mouth, but I had nothing to say.

“Okay,” Dad said, “forget ‘why.’ How’s this? No.”

“What?” I stared at him.

“I said,
No
. No, you can’t stay with your mother six out of every seven nights. No, I am not going to rearrange my work schedule just because you feel like it. I don’t care if you don’t want to be here, or if when you are here you don’t want to talk to me, or if your mother’s house has all sorts of marvelous puppies and children and swing sets and fresh-baked goods. I am your father, and that means I am every bit as much your parent as she is. No, you can’t spend Fridays there, too.”

I stood up. “Look, this has nothing to do with Mom or swing sets or anything like that. It’s just that her house is a lot more conveniently located to … well, to … stuff.”

Dad stood up, as well. “I don’t really care,” he said. “What I’m hearing you say is that you don’t want to spend time with me. And what I am saying to
you
is, you don’t have a choice.”

I felt panic bubbling up in my chest, and my breath started coming out in short gasps. What was I supposed to do, go to Start next Thursday, hope that Pete was there, and tell him, “Hey, look, my dad won’t let me go out on Friday nights. Good luck finding another DJ!” I might as well just wear a sandwich board proclaiming,
I AM ONLY 16
. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t
want
to do that.

“You can’t stop me,” I said, my voice shaking. “Don’t you love me at all?”

“Don’t I
love you
?” Dad’s words got louder and louder. “Jesus Christ, Elise, are you kidding me?”

I felt my face puckering like a prune. “Mom wouldn’t keep me from doing something I care about.” And even as I said it, I knew it was a cheap shot. One of the unspoken rules that I
did
understand was that my parents were not supposed to criticize each other in front of me, and I was not supposed to play them off each other.

Plus, Mom would absolutely keep me from doing something I cared about, if it came down to that. The only reason why she hadn’t stopped me from going to Start was because she didn’t know that was happening. Not because she was the superior parent.

“So that’s why you want to spend Friday nights with her, too?” Dad asked. “Because she doesn’t get in your way as much as I do?”

“No!” I protested. “It’s just that … this is important to me. You don’t understand.”

“I don’t,” he said. “Explain it to me.”

He looked at me closely, and I thought for a moment about telling him everything. What Start was, why I needed it. After all, he was on national tour with his band when he was just two years older than me. Maybe he would be cool with it.

But what if he wasn’t?

I shook my head. “I can’t explain it to you.”

Dad kicked his guitar, and I flinched at the sudden atonal squawk as it hit the ground. “You know what, Elise?” he said. “Do what you want.”

I stood still, hardly breathing.

“You want to spend every single night at your mother’s house? Fine. I’ll be here if you ever decide that you need me.”

He lunged to pick up his guitar and lifted it over his shoulder like he was about to smash it into something. I clapped my hand to my mouth. Then slowly, painfully, he laid the guitar down on the armchair and walked out of the room. I heard his footsteps hard on the stairs to the basement. And a minute later I heard the sound, unmistakable to anyone who has heard it before, of a softball bat whacking a futon.

*   *   *

“Look, if you want to go to Start tonight, you should go,” Vicky said over the phone the following Thursday evening.

I lay down on my bed, my cell phone pressed to my ear, and glanced at the clock on my bedside table. Nine o’clock.

“I think I want to stay home,” I said.

“If you want to, sure.” I heard the sound of spritzing through the phone, like Vicky was putting on hair spray or perfume. “But you shouldn’t not come tonight just because of Pippa. You’re the DJ. You do what you want.”

“Does she want me there?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Well, whenever she’s mentioned you over the past week, it’s been as ‘that slag,’ so I’m thinking probably not.”

“What’s a slag?”

“I asked her that,” Vicky said. “It’s British for
slut
.”