A Song for Julia (26 page)

“We need to talk about your mother.”

Crank’s eyes darted to Sean, and he said, “I don’t see why.”

Crank stood and walked to the refrigerator, took out a beer and opened it. He was tense, his motions aggressive. Finally, he returned to the table, setting the beer on the table too hard. It hit with a loud crack. I stopped pretending to be interested in my laptop. 

“All right, Dad. Talk.”

Jack closed his eyes and sighed. “I think she’s ready to come home. We talked about it last night for a long time.”

Sean flipped the page in his book, too quickly. The page tore. Crank’s eyes narrowed and darted to his brother again. “We don’t need her. She hasn’t been here in years. Why should she come home now?” As he asked the question, he twisted the top off his beer and took a long drink from it.

Jack’s face twitched, a mixture of unexpressed anger and sadness on his face. Very quietly, he said, “She’s your mother.”

“No,” Crank replied, his face set. “She’s the woman who left us.”

“Don’t you ever speak about your mother that way, Dougal!” Jack’s voice had a hard edge to it.

“Why the hell not?” Crank responded with a raised voice. “She left you, Dad. She left us all!”

Jack closed his eyes. His face had turned red, and he was visibly making an effort not to blow up. Finally, he said in a tortured, grim tone, “Would you rather she be dead? Because that was the choice we had.”

“What are you talking about, Dad? Why would she be dead?” Crank was leaning forward, every line in his body rigid. I’d never seen him like this. But this was part of his core—the anger that drove his music and drove the life he’d lived.

“She left because it was that or commit suicide! She didn’t leave, I made her go!” Jack shouted. 

Sean looked up suddenly, his face shocked, and I raised my hand to my mouth. Crank was still leaning over the table, his eyes wide with shock and rage. He gripped the edge of the table with both hands, his entire body shaking.

Jack’s face shifted. Instead of rage, his face was twisted in grief. His eyes went red, bloodshot, watering, and he went on, and I wanted to tell him to stop, to please stop, don’t say another word. Not about suicide. Please, no. But he kept going. 

“The stress was killing her, all right? I came home one night, and she was in the bathtub bleeding out! So I let her go. Because I love her, and because she’s your mother, and if you ever say another word against her, I swear I’ll beat the living shit out of you!”

Crank was stunned into silence. He let out a loud breath and whispered, “Are you shitting me?”

Jack shook his head. A tear ran down his face, and he angrily wiped it away.

“Why?” Sean asked. His voice was the same as always: loud, monotone. But he spoke quickly and louder than usual. “Was I that bad?”

“Oh, God no, kid,” Jack said, no longer able to hold back his tears. “She just loved you too much. Both of you. Look … your mom always had … depression … sadness. Even when I met her. Before you were born. But she was good at everything. Everything she’d ever done was like gold. And she thought she could cure Asperger’s. She thought she could be the perfect mom. So … you know what it was like. Doctors, more doctors. Treatment. It’s not that she didn’t love you—it’s that she loved you too much. She wanted to give you—everything in life. And when that didn’t work … it just got to be too much. Way too much.” His voice dropped. “She stopped taking care of herself. Your mother … she wrapped up everything she had into curing you. And you can’t cure autism. But she was going to do it if it killed her. And … it was. Autism was killing her.”

His face twisted in sadness. “That sweet, lovable, wonderful woman. She was my life, she was everything to me, and I was watching her die before my eyes. I couldn’t let it go on.”

Crank whispered, “She really tried to kill herself?”

Jack looked away, his face looking … old. Sad. Grief-stricken. “Yeah,” he said. “She did. So … I had to put her in the hospital. That day … she sent Sean to Mrs. Doyle’s. And she went upstairs and sliced her wrists open.”

As he spoke the words, I stared down at the heavy bundle of bracelets I wore to cover the scars on my own wrist. I don’t even know what I was feeling. I’d never even thought about what it would have been like for my family. If Carrie or Alexandra or one of the twins had been the first to walk into that bathroom and find me, floating in the water, bleeding to death … I never even thought about them. Even my mother—as much as we fought, as much as I wanted her out of my life—I would never wish that kind of pain on her.

“Something—something about her manner that morning scared me. For weeks, she’d been crying. All the time. She told me she wanted to die. She told me more than once. And I heard her … but I didn’t. I didn’t think she really meant it. I didn’t do anything about it. And then that morning, she was bright and cheerful. She said she was going to take you to the park, Sean.”

Crank’s voice was rough, and I could see tears in his eyes. “That was right after we got in that big fight. And I ran away.”

Jack looked at his older son, his eyes sad. “Yeah. That’s when it was. So I was worried. And I called home … but there was no answer. And I figured, well, she had Sean at the park. But I called again, half an hour later. Then fifteen minutes later. Then I turned my patrol car around and got my ass here. And I couldn’t find Sean, but the upstairs bathroom was locked, and I could hear the water running. I kicked the door in and found her.”

He closed his eyes, and his voice suddenly rose into a near wail, and he said, “She wasn’t breathing. I’ve never seen so much blood in my life. I yanked her out of there, wrapped the wounds and called the dispatcher, and I held that woman in my arms and prayed and prayed. 

His voice dropped to a whisper. “I thought it was too late. When the ambulance got there, they couldn’t get me to let her go. Tony showed up then, and he pulled me off her, and I clocked him one. He had to wrestle me to the floor.”

Jack dropped his face in his hands. “She was in the hospital for six months. And…you guys were too young. Too young to know what had happened. So … we just didn’t talk about it.”

Crank slammed his fist into the table. “We didn’t talk about it?” he yelled. “Why the fuck not? Our mother’s been gone for almost five years, and you couldn’t tell us why?”

Jack slumped. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked old, the lines in his face accentuated by longstanding grief. “I didn’t know what else to do, guys. I just didn’t. How do you tell your kids that you’ve committed their mother to a psych ward?”

“So, what happened after that?” Crank demanded.

“Her therapist believed that she needed more time. Time away … to heal, to get her mental health back. And I agreed. So, she spent a year in a group home, and then we rented her a little place in East Boston. And she’s been healing. Playing piano again. Learning to live. But she misses you guys so much it kills her. That’s why she started coming for holidays again last year.”

I’d been sitting behind my laptop, silently crying, but after that I couldn’t stay silent. “Tell us something happy, Jack. Please? Tell us how you met Margot.”

Crank and Jack both looked at me like I was crazy. Then I said, “You’ve told them the bad and the heartbreak. Now tell them something good. Tell them about the Margot you remember. It’s obvious you love her like nothing else in your life. Tell us why.”

“God bless you, girl. I hope you end up in our family some day,” Jack whispered.

I froze at his words. I wasn’t ready to think about the future. I wasn’t ready to think about next week, much less anything long-term.

“Tell us,” Sean said. “I want to know about Mom.”

“Me too,” Crank said. He reached out a hand and gripped mine, as if to say, thank you.

Jack spoke quietly, “Oh God, your mom was amazing. She was a pianist with the Boston Pops. One night, she was on her way out of the Hall and got mugged. And I got called. She was this tiny thing … and so beautiful. Oh, my God, your mother was so precious. She had these huge light-green eyes and almost black hair, and I knew there was no way in hell she would go out to dinner with me. But I asked her anyway. And we fell in love. Your mom … she believed in … in happiness … in changing the world. She believed that if you work hard enough and believe hard enough, you can do anything in the world. So even though it made her dad all bullshit, she married a poor Boston Irish cop.”

Crank squeezed my hand again, then said, his voice sober, “It’s my fault. I was tearing the whole family up then.”

“Oh, shut up, Dougal. Don’t you get it? It’s no one’s fault. It’s not Sean’s, it’s not yours—it’s not mine. Yeah, the stress at home didn’t help. But that was just the icing on the cake. You guys never really knew much about it, but her whole family cut her off after we got married. Fucking Brahmins. Plus, if I’d been a better father, I would never have let you go off the deep end like that, anyway. I knew what you were up to, from the very first time you got in trouble. But I was too worried about finances and my job and your mother to do anything about it.” 

Jack turned to me, but pointed a finger at Crank. “Do you know what this joker did? He got up in front of God and everyone when he had the lead role in the eighth grade play and shouts, ‘Fuck the police.’ Brought the house down, let me tell you.” He turned back to Crank. “I get it, kid. We weren’t there for you when you needed us. And you went wild. I bet you got laid a lot.”

Crank laughed, and I did too, and suddenly we were all laughing, even Sean. 

After a few moments, Sean turned to Crank. His eyes were wide, and he did something I’d never seen him do before. He met Crank’s eyes, dead on. “Crank … can we ask Mom to come home?”

Crank’s eyes watered suddenly, and he whispered, “Yeah. Let’s do it, little brother.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I love the song (Crank)

It was late by the time Julia and I headed out from my Dad’s. We huddled together on the train ride, then kissed goodbye at Park Street where I switched to the Green Line train to head back to Roxbury.

I slept like the dead that night. The next morning—well, that’s a relative term, it was almost noon—we loaded up the van and headed over to the studio.

I was taking a short smoke break when she called. 

“You’re not going to believe this,” Julia said. “I got a call from my sister Carrie last night.”

I shifted my phone to my right ear and waved a hand to Serena, signaling 5 minutes. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s all right. Ready to leave home, I think. She’s been accepted early decision at Columbia. She graduates in June. But anyway … here’s the thing. After I refused to go to San Francisco for Thanksgiving … my father bought tickets for the whole family. They’re coming here.”

My eyes widened. “You for real?” I said, as I shook a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. 

“Yes.”

“So will I be meeting your parents?”

“Are we ready for that?”

“Why not? Your dad was an ambassador? Doesn’t intimidate me. My dad’s a Boston cop.”

She laughed, a beautiful, rich sound that I’d love to hear a thousand times a day. But I was out of time. 

“Crank!” Serena called. “Time!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right there,” I called back. “I gotta go. Talk later?”

“Bye!” she said.

I slapped the phone closed and walked back into the studio. We were recording at Division in Somerville. We did our original EP at some crappy studio over in Jamaica Plain. This was more like it. World class, really. Expensive as shit, too. We had 4 hours to record, re-record, edit and perfect the new song. And I was determined to do it. This was our chance to make a serious frickin’ impression. 

Jon, the engineer, had called his buddy at Division records after he heard our first run through this morning. That had apparently generated another call, and shortly after, Jon gave us the news. Ron Murray, the head of Division Records, wanted to stop in and hear our final take.

I was sweating bullets. But we had it together today. We were as good as we’d ever been, and if there was ever a day for him to show up, it was today.

Inside, I switched my phone off and gulped back some water. Mark fingered his bass and then said, “Dude, something’s different about you.”

Serena looked over the top of her horn-rimmed glasses at Mark. “He’s in love,” she said. She’s been wearing the glasses for a couple days. Not prescription. She just liked them.

Mark rolled his eyes. “Whatever, man. Drugs are more reliable than that shit.”

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Everybody shut the hell up, and let’s play. Jon, you ready?”

The sound engineer, sitting at the panel on the other side of the glass, gave a thumbs up.

“All right … let’s do this.”

I pointed to Pathin to signal him, and he tapped the snare drum to count us in, and then we played. Serena had pushed this after the second time we played “Julia, Where Did You Go?” in front of a live audience. She’d argued that we needed to record a single right away. It’s not that our audiences hadn’t liked our music before. But they’d never reacted like this, and at least a hundred people had posted on our website, asking when we were going to release a single. No one had ever asked that before. It was good: a hard driving song, with an angry, tense edge, but highly sexually charged. I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that it’s the best song I’ve ever written.

The question now was—would Ron Murray agree? We hadn’t expected an executive from the record company to come down. He had the ability to get us released as a single, if he thought the music would go. So, I focused on the music and nothing else. But as I played, I thought of her. I thought of her, in the dark; shadow snowflakes running across the ceiling as she told her story, tears running down her face. 

As the last notes faded, I looked up. Jon gave another thumbs up through the window, and then I noticed, standing further back in the studio, behind Jon near the door: Ron Murray. Head of the label. I tensed up. What did he think? Was it good? He hadn’t walked out of the studio, so that was a good sign. He wouldn’t waste his time if he didn’t like the music. I could see Jon and Murray talking to each other, but the mics in there were off, so I didn’t know what they were saying.