Don't Blame the Music Page 5

  I had never asked anyone to stop calling me Beethoven. Not even Cindy. But now it seemed imperative. As long as they could use a silly inappropriate nickname, I was a silly inappropriate person.

  “Susan,” repeated Anthony. “Got it. Won’t make the mistake again.” He waved at the waitress. In spite of the appalling price we all had a second pastry. I took my first quarter and nearly gagged. What had I done? I had committed myself to interview Crude Oil. Whit Moroso and his scummy friends and their cheap tough girls. Carmine with his gruesome complexion. Tommy, who used to have a Mohawk, but let it grow out a little, so now he looks like a man who cuts his hair with an ax. Probably butters his bread with an angle iron and doesn’t write with a pencil—just sprays obscenities on water towers. And Luce, who drums as if his drums are victims and his sticks the instruments of torture.

  I pushed the rest of my pastry toward Anthony. “Want this?” I said, and of course he did, and wolfed it down, and thanked me profusely. Shepherd frowned. I thought, I have to round up the Slippery Six? The Broken Ankles? Scary sick kids who straddle their guitars and amplifier wires as if they’re going all the way with them?

  Shepherd suddenly looked pleased with herself. It was not a good sign. She had something. “A yearbook, Susan,” said Shepherd carefully, “is hardly a newspaper, you know. What are we supposed to do with interviews after you get them? We are not a booking agency for amateur rock groups. We are not doing journalism here either. You need to keep in mind that we are putting together a yearbook, Susan.”

  Good point. What would I do with my interviews? Even supposing the Slippery Six didn’t laugh me out of the room—then what?

  “I think,” she said kindly, “that your sister’s return has had an adverse effect on you.”

  “It hasn’t been too positive so far,” I agreed, and I too smiled. It wasn’t easy. Creamcakes. I’d like to cream Shepherd all right. “But we agreed on ten days, Shepherd, and you’re going to have to remember your commitment. I’ll have the game plan for you at the next general meeting of the yearbook staff.”

  I smiled into her eyes. She had no retort. Crunched at her own game.

  Anthony said how wonderfully it was all working out.

  Anthony squeezed my hand to show me how much he liked it when things worked out.

  I don’t know which impressed me more—the depths of my crush—or the depths of Shepherd’s jealousy.

  Six

  WHEN I FINALLY ARRIVED home, my mother was indeed at the kitchen table sipping her herbal tea, but my father, next to her, had opted for Jack Daniels. No sign of Ash. No indication that dinner preparation was underway. Perhaps we were going out to dinner to celebrate Ashley’s return. Perhaps Ash had already vanished, as quickly as she had come.

  “So how was your day?” I said.

  My parents looked at me. Older daughter insane. Younger daughter thick as a brick. “That good, huh?” I said. “What happened?”

  “What didn’t happen,” said my father. “Your mother had a doctor’s appointment this morning, but Ashley wanted the car.” His voice was very grim. “I refused to give Ash the keys, so she took a kitchen knife and went out and sliced through the fan belt.”

  I gaped at them. What kind of message was that? Get out of my way, folks, or I’ll cut you, too? I shivered. “Really and truly?” I said. “You’re not making that up?”

  “No, we’re not.”

  My mother took another sip of tea. My father tilted his glass and glanced down into it.

  “What did you do to Ashley?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I stared at them. They seemed so calm. “How can you just sit there?” I demanded. “Ashley couldn’t get the car keys so she starts destroying the car? And you didn’t do anything?”

  “I drove your mother to the doctor’s in my truck,” said my father.

  “You don’t think it was serious? Her doing that?” I cried. It made my skin crawl. I imagined that fragile wrist, flicking sharply under the shadow of the hood, eyes glittering as she—

  I shuddered violently. “You can’t let her behave like that.”

  “What are we going to do?” said my father. “Spank her? Tell her she can’t have dessert?”

  I thought about it. Eventually I said, “Why were you going to the doctor, Mom? Are you all right?”

  My mother brushed it off. “Just another infection,” she said. She’s always getting bladder infections and she won’t talk about it, she hates them.

  I said, “But Ashley—”

  My mother interrupted me, setting the teacup down hard, and splashing the contents slightly on her hand. It must have cooled off. She didn’t even notice. “Last time she was home we got tough on her,” said my mother, remembering. “She left. For good. Without a word then or ever. Do you know what I went through, Susan?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was there, remember?”

  “You don’t know!” she cried. “I’m her mother. And I never knew, one night, one minute, if she was dead or alive, or hurt or safe, or starving or overdosing!” My mother was shuddering almost convulsively. “I can’t go through that again. I’d rather see the evil that Ash does than lie awake at night wondering if she’s dead.”

  The evil that Ash does.

  What a thing for a mother to say.

  I wanted to call Cindy. Tell her everything, share like best friends. But I didn’t. Evil? How could I talk about evil on the phone where we usually talked about clothes and boys and hair and boys?

  “And when we came home from the doctor’s,” said my father, “Ashley had—how shall I put this—redecorated your bedroom.”

  My skin crawled. Had she used a knife there too? Had she sliced something in my room?

  My lovely sunlit bedroom under the old sloping ceiling, with its tiny dormer windows and its pair of matching pencil poster beds? The portrait of my great-great-grandmother and the sampler that her daughter finished the month before she died of diphtheria? I didn’t want to hear about it yet. Trying to breathe normally, I said, “I thought you were taking her clothes shopping.”

  “She didn’t want to go. She said she’d wear your clothes instead.”

  I am a size ten. Thin as she was, I doubted Ash was more than a five. I could think of nothing I owned that would fit or appeal to her. I didn’t like to think of my clothes on her. Immediately I was ashamed. This was my sister, and she had nothing but the clothes she stood in. Of course she could have anything she wanted.

  “Brace yourself,” said my mother, her bright cheery front gone.

  Ash had been home twenty-four hours, and the bloom was off the flowers.

  A rhyme, but I had no urge to set it down in my journal. “Where is she anyhow?” I said.

  “It seems she has a boyfriend,” said my mother. She used the word boyfriend as if it meant sewage. “He came for her in a van. Bob is his name. They said they’d be back later.”

  Could it be the greasy creature with the layered heads? But he had not driven a van. Nor acted like a friend of any kind. Someone else, then. Or something else.

  “Go look at your room,” said my father. “I’m sorry, Susan.”

  Whatever had happened to my room was bad enough they had not cleaned it up, then. Perhaps it was beyond cleaning. I went upstairs, with absolutely no idea what to expect. I felt like someone in a horror film, stupidly opening the door she knows leads to mutilation and death.

  But it was nothing like that.

  The portraits and embroidery were gone from the pale flowered walls. Tangled black spiderwebs hung like fouled Christmas tinsel from the hooks, molding, and window frames. The movement of the door made a tiny breeze and the huge black fronds shivered like dying grass. When I took a step into the room my feet crunched on splintered glass.

  I forced myself to touch the hideous black tangle. It was cassette tape. Nothing but cassette tape. And the splinters on the floor were the clear plastic containers that had held my collection. She had sma
shed and ripped apart every single tape I owned. And I owned a lot.

  My hands were cold.

  And yet, it wasn’t as terrible as I had thought. Cassettes were hardly immortal heirlooms. The portraits and embroidery were lying on my bed, undamaged. My clothing still hung in my closet, the old quilts still lay neatly in their sea captain’s chest. She had simply made a statement to me, like the one involving the car. This room was hers too, and she was here to stay.

  I drew a deep breath. Okay, I told myself, it’s okay. It’s nasty, but it isn’t actually insane. It’s a lot of hard-earned money strewn on those walls, but it isn’t my life or anything.

  I turned to go back downstairs. Thumbtacked to the inside of the door was the jacket of Ashley’s one and only record. Her flash-in-the-pan hit. Ashley’s face and neck, upside down, her features grotesquely altered, music pouring out of her slit throat like blood.

  Had that ever been in style—that vicious evil kind of music? Or had Ash succeeded by momentary shock value?

  Well, she had shocked us. I hoped it made her happy.

  Today the fan belt and the cassettes.

  Tomorrow …

  From the street came the sound of an unmuffled motor. A van that could only belong to Ashley’s boyfriend was pulling up. Holding the curtains at an angle so I couldn’t be seen I peered out. The boyfriend was very very fat. I could not imagine Ashley, who had said such dreadful things about my poor mother’s thick waist, being around such obesity. He was fat to the point of revulsion.

  My skin crawled. I ran downstairs. I did not want to be alone when Ashley and this person walked in.

  My mother was still clinging to her teacup. “But why did she come home?” she cried.

  “A place to stand for a while,” said my father. “To regroup. To get ready to try again, I suppose.”

  My mother set her cup down. She straightened herself up, and like a little girl repeating a pledge or a memorized prayer, she said, “I will always give my daughter a place to stand.” It reminded me of a lot of prayers. A last-ditch attempt to postpone reality.

  Very quietly my father said, “No, Janey. Not always. Sometime or other we will not give her another chance.”

  I hung on to the table. I actually felt as if I would faint.

  My father, who has coached adolescents all his life, helping them through drugs and failed grades, humiliation on the field and parents getting divorces—my father writing off Ashley like that.

  His daughter.

  My sister.

  He’s wrong, I thought. She cannot be that bad. I said, “The bedroom isn’t so bad. I can get used to tape on the walls, I guess. Maybe Ash and I can talk tonight and sort it all out. Don’t make a big issue out of it, okay?”

  Ashley walked into the kitchen with the obese man. All thought of tangled tape left my mind. Chins rippled under Bob’s mouth and stomachs jiggled under his T-shirt. She certainly liked her men in layers. If not extra heads, then extra chins.

  I had no idea how old he was. I just knew if he sat on one of the kitchen chairs, the legs would snap.

  “Hello, Ashley,” said my father quietly. “Hello, Bob.”

  She smirked at us.

  I gasped. “Ashley!” I cried out. “What are you wearing? What is—is that—oh, Ashley, that’s my sweater! That’s my designer sweater!”

  Ashley laughed. She pirouetted before me, like a model on a runway. She had taken my best sweater, so expensive it took all my birthday money, and sliced off the sleeves. Violet and teal blue yarn dangled from the cut edges. She’d tugged the threads to roughen it. She was wearing my seashell earrings, but she had both pairs in one ear and none in the other. A thin length of leather was wrapped around her neck, rather like a noose.

  Actually, she looked very striking, like a high-fashion model wearing things real people don’t wear. Things that appear and exist exclusively for expensive glossy magazine pages.

  My clothes, I thought. I found myself wanting the sweater more than I wanted Ashley. Was it wrong to care so deeply about a sweater?

  It’s just a sweater, I told myself. In the great parade of life, it’s nothing at all. It doesn’t matter.

  It mattered.

  Ashley smiled into my eyes and said, “I didn’t like the sleeves that length.”

  “Two-year-olds behave better than you did,” said my mother fiercely.

  “Really?” Ash laughed. “I behave any way I want.”

  There was a triumphant glitter in her eyes. She had proven several things to us. She had the power to destroy and frighten. She might not control twenty thousand fans in a coliseum, but she controlled Warren and Janey and Susan Hall. I licked my lips. Ashley saw and was pleased.

  “No, I think not,” said my father. “I will have to ask you to leave, Bob. We are going to have a family conference.”

  Bob made no move. His eyes glittered like Ashley’s and a dreadful little puckered smile appeared in the fat jowly face. I was afraid.

  My father stood up slowly. If Dad was slender or short, getting to his feet would be meaningless. But Dad is a big man in terrific shape. Bob decided to leave after all. His flesh shivered and his clothing shifted. We waited silently. When he walked out the floor trembled beneath the thuds. At last the roar of the muffler told us he was gone.

  It was a nightmare. The grip was intolerable. “So what are we having for supper?” I said brightly.

  My parents looked at me in disgust. “We’ll order pizza or grinders or something,” said my father. “But first we’re going to talk.”

  “You may talk,” said Ashley. “I choose to remain silent.”

  “Then you choose not to live here. Ashley, we have done all we can for you. Always. We have forgiven, we have struggled, we have paid, we have …” My father’s voice trailed off.

  “You have not!” She was on her feet, a tiny thing, like an animal. She looked appallingly like the tortured girl on her album cover. “You never helped me. You gave me what you wanted. Piano lessons, because little girls ought to play Mozart. Ballroom dancing, because little girls ought to be graceful. I begged you and begged you for the guitar, the clothes, the jazz lessons, but it had to be your way or nothing!”

  My mother shrank before Ashley’s fury. Rage poured out of my sister like something volcanic. Like lava, it burned my parents.

  “No!” screamed Ashley. “You had this simpering little suburbanite in mind. You couldn’t tolerate anything else. Help me? What a laugh. You never did anything but obstruct and blockade.”

  The room was filled with her hate. Hate I had never dreamed of. I loved my parents. I had not ever thought of them as anything but loving and generous. She’s right, I thought. How can she be right? But she never got what she asked for. She got only what they asked for.

  Were my parents cruel? Or had they just made choices that turned out to be wrong? Or were the choices right, and was it Ash who turned out wrong?

  “I hate you,” said Ashley. She had stopped screaming. She spoke softly, intensely, like a hissing snake, and the venom sank into my mother and father. “I will always hate you. I would have been a success if it wasn’t for you.”

  My mother began to cry.

  It meant hours of crying, because she cannot stop herself once she’s started. I usually pick it up, like catching a yawn. But not this time. “Ash,” I said very slowly. “There’s one flaw in this.”

  She looked at me with loathing.

  “You did have success,” I said. “Remember? Your hit? You achieved it. Nobody helped you. Not Mom, not Dad, not expensive electric guitars, and not ballroom dancing lessons. You did it yourself.”

  “But it didn’t last,” said Ashley. The rage seeped out of her. She sagged in her chair.

  “Why is that Mom and Dad’s fault?” I said. “How can you go on blaming them for what happened years after you left them?”

  Ashley withered. Putting her head down on her arms, she melted like a snowman onto the pine table.

  I didn
’t look at anybody. I felt if I met someone’s eyes, I would have to be on that person’s side. I didn’t see how I could be on Ashley’s side, and yet I wasn’t sure I wanted to be on my parents’ side. Maybe there are no sides, I thought. Maybe all three of them did everything wrong.

  I was glad I’d been a little girl. I didn’t have to shoulder any of the blame. Or did I?

  Had I become Miss Sweet Suburbia so they would love me more? So I could fill the gap Ashley left, and take all the love that would have been hers as well?

  My father, who has to do something physical when he’s upset, began lighting a fire in the kitchen fireplace. It’s the warmest friendliest place in my world.

  Crumpling newspaper, Dad arranged kindling and added a trio of short split logs. He struck a match. The brief rasp of the match was the only sound in the room except my mother’s weeping.

  The fire caught and crackled. Flickering beauty filled the room. I felt safer. My mother’s tears dried and she held her hands, and maybe her soul, to the fire.

  “How about if I phone Village Pizza and get four grinders delivered?” I said. I have always felt that food solves the problems of the world. If I could order grinders for the starving children in Ethiopia I would. As it is, I could make a peace offering to my sister and my parents.

  “I’ll have meatball,” said Ashley.

  “Make mine sausage with extra peppers and onions,” said my father.

  I placed the order, spelled our last name twice, although Hall does not strike me as a particularly difficult name, and agreed that fifteen minutes would be wonderful. I set napkins around, with extras, because grinders are so messy, and Ashley actually got up, took the pitcher from the refrigerator, and poured iced tea for us all.

  We worked quietly. After a bit my father picked up the evening paper and read the sports section. Normalcy had returned so easily and so completely that it didn’t seem normal.

  It’s going to work out, I said to myself. We have to expect these little flareups. Ash just has to get all this anger out of her system.