Nine Volt Heart (25 page)

SUSI

L
OGAN MADE HIS PLANE with time
to spare, so he wasted my time trying to kiss me goodbye, complimenting me once
again about how nice my face looks. I had gone as far from the airport as the
feeder road that goes to I-405 when my car lost power and stopped working.

When you are trying to force a car to the side of the road
without power steering you forget everything else you were thinking of, instead
just hoping you aren’t killed by another vehicle. A roadside hero—an off-duty
cop—stopped to help, and then called AAA for me when she couldn’t. She waited
for the tow truck with me, and only cautioned that a person shouldn’t be
wandering the highways alone without a cell phone.

The tow driver fished—mostly steelhead, and mostly standing
under bridges between Monroe and Carnation, just to watch the river flow.

“Like Bob Dylan says,” he joked.

I know who Bob Dylan is, though I don’t know that song.

At the repair shop on Stone Way, he left me and waved
goodbye. I called my brother Steven for a ride home, all the while trying to
not think. I needed to find the same mental and spiritual space I found when I
left the burn ward, where I no longer hated Logan with each breath I took.

Ashes. There is nothing left from that fire but the ashes to
sweep away. I thought it had all been swept clean, and I didn’t like learning
that it was still possible for Logan to open the door and let the ashes blow
back in. While waiting for my brother, I stood at the edge of the car lot,
singing so that I wouldn’t waste time thinking about my lost afternoon, and
then slipped into singing one of Jason’s songs, but turning it into a wail
instead of a thoughtful folksong.

I thought of walking over to Ian and Cynthia’s house, but I hadn’t
been invited and changing plans would just create a problem for Steven. It was
well past too late to go to the church on Capitol Hill. When Steven appeared,
he insisted on taking me to dinner after hearing that I hadn’t eaten since
noon.

“You should never have given him a ride, Susi. You should
have called me then. You are tough enough to say no.”

“Steven, please don’t lecture me.”

“You scared the hell out of me when you called and said
you’d been with Logan. You aren’t letting that snake back into your life, are
you?”

“No. I gave him a ride to get rid of him. Twenty minutes to
the airport would be faster than thirty minutes waiting for a cab.”

“Promise me you aren’t thinking of starting up a
relationship with him again. Too many people return to destructive
relationships.”

“Steven, in all honesty, I don’t think I was in a
relationship with him for the last four years we were married. Something slimy
tried to crawl into my house today. I think he’s either still using or on the
edge of falling back.”

“Just so you aren’t involved. I don’t care if Logan flushes
himself down the toilet.”

I took a large breath to change the subject from the
unbearable to the unreportable.

“I’m sort of involved with someone else.”

True to his usual self, Steven didn’t probe or beg for more
details, but just sat quietly, waiting for me to reveal more.

“He’s a musician. I met him by accident, thinking he was
Angelia’s cousin. One thing led to another and we’ve been—” I couldn’t make myself
say it straight out. “Listen, promise you won’t tell Dad. This is bound to
upset him.”

“We must be talking about a different father. Don’t tell me
what you’ve been up to if it’s too intimate.”

“It feels like such a secret, I have to tell you. We sing
together.”

He took it about as badly as I expected our father would,
his spoon clattering on his plate. He grasped his hands together, trying to
look cool.

“So, what do you sing?” His voice cracked. His nervousness
seemed to have the reverse effect on me, however, and I felt free to speak.

“We started with bluegrass—he has a beautiful, smoky tenor.
Then we played traditional music and cowboy material. Old hillbilly swing, like
Dad has in his library.” I took a breath again. “And songs he writes.”

Steven laughed. “Susi the folkie, huh? It goes well with all
that bread-baking and gardening you took up.”

“You won’t be mean about it, Steven? I mean, it’s silly of
me, but at the same time it’s thrilling to sing again.”

“What’s this resurrecting lover’s name?”

“Jason. But we aren’t lovers. It’s different from that.”

“You started out saying you were ‘sort of involved.’ When
does that not mean ‘lovers’? Did you fall for him, but he didn’t fall for you?”

“No. He wants to marry me. That’s what he keeps saying
anyway.”

“Whoa. We go from ‘sort of involved’ to getting married? How
long has this been going on and you haven’t told us?”

“Just a couple of weeks. It seems longer, and more intimate,
because of the music. I don’t want to marry again, as ideal as Jason makes it sound.”

“It’s difficult to start a relationship with two opposing
ideals.”

“That’s the problem, Steven. We’re too different from each
other, and it would never be suitable.”

“Meaning that he’s a hillbilly slob who sings twangy music?”

“No, we’re compatible around music, but we’re from two
different worlds. You know I grew up in the classics. And that I believe in
salvation through hard work.”

“You’re a presbyterian extremist, it’s true.”

“He plays and writes pop—sort of twisted rock-and-roll
versions of the roots material Dad has.”

“What about the hard work part?”

“That I worry about. He has no visible means of support.”

“Maybe he’s rich and can indulge a hobby. You knew plenty of
people like that in your former work.”

“He just plays in a bar band. From what I can tell, they
never have any engagements, because the whole band is free to rehearse every
single night.”

“You’re rehearsing with a rock-and-roll band?”

“Yes. They like my singing.”

“Ask him where his money comes from.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can. Just do it.”

“If I start asking him questions, then he can ask me
questions, too, and I don’t want that. I want him to like me for what I am,
without having to consider what’s missing.”

“You don’t want to marry him, but you want him to like you.
There’s an ‘and yet’ hanging in your voice.”

“After seeing Logan today, it’s made me conscious of why I
worry.”

“Do he and his friends use drugs? Drink? They must all
smoke.”

“Jason doesn’t let anyone drink in rehearsal, and no one
except the bass player smokes. He lives in his friend’s basement and takes the
bus everywhere or walks. I see him giving money to odd people on the street and
waiters in restaurants—a lot more money than you tip someone. He says it’s
debts from card playing. Friday night, the police had him in a patrol car for
ten minutes. I don’t know if it’s drugs, but it’s not how grown men behave.”

“Is he like Logan in any way?”

“No, he’s always alert.”

“I think I’d like to meet this man. I’m out of town all
week. How about Saturday?”

“He’ll be at my house when we get home tonight.”

“You have a date?”

“We were supposed to meet tonight. So I’m sure he’ll come
looking for me. Why don’t you come to my house for dessert? I’ll show you the
music we’re singing.”

~

When we came home, there were no messages or other sign that
Jason had come by. All I had to give Steven was a few of the lemon squares I’d
made to take to Ian’s. So we ate those and drank tea while we looked at the
lyrics and notation I’d made for Jason’s songs.

“What does this sound like when you sing it?”

“Perhaps not so interesting when it’s a cappella.”

“Let me hear.”

“All right. Promise you won’t tell Dad.”

I sang, and Steven listened thoughtfully.

“Susi, you have to tell Dad. It’s cheating that he doesn’t
know you’re singing.”

“I don’t know if it’s real yet. It happened so fast. Maybe
it’ll turn out that I can’t sing after all. I don’t want to break Dad’s heart
again.”

“You have never broken his heart, Susi. You’re projecting
your own feelings on him. Anyway, I want to meet your new beau, to see if I can
understand what’s going on with your mystery man.”

We said good-night, and I tried to calm down after taking
that risk, singing in front of Steven. I saw the lighted dial on the clock too
many times between midnight and three o’clock.

Jason never left a message, but I found the single rose on
my doorstep again in the morning.

SUSI

A
FTER SCHOOL, ANGELIA
DISAPPEARED when the bell rang, so I had to beg Randolph to give me a ride to
my brother’s, who wanted me to use his car while he was out of town. The ride
across town with Randolph was not pleasantness to stand on its own, without
comparison, and unfortunately my brother chooses to live on the north end of
lower Queen Anne, which necessitates driving all over creation to get to his
house.

Randolph began harassing me before we left the school
parking lot.

“Won’t you come for dinner this Friday, Susi? My grandmother
has been asking after you.”

“Friday? I don’t think I can.”

“Another night then? Thursday?”

“No, I’m engaged all week.”

“Doing what, Susi? You’ve been unavailable, ever since—”

“Yes?”

“Since Angelia’s cousin came to town. Are you having an
affair?”

“It’s not your concern, but no. I was unavailable before
then. You just chose to disregard what I’ve been saying to you. I’m not
interested in being in a relationship.”

“That doesn’t account for how you are at school. You’ve
missed most of your committee meetings. You haven’t been to a faculty meeting
since early April. You don’t have time at lunch to eat with any of us. It’s as
if you’ve abandoned your job.”

“That is not true. I don’t have time at lunch because I’m
meeting with students. The committee meetings are after school, and I don’t
have time after four o’clock for that right now.”

“What’s pulling you away? You said you couldn’t be with me
because teaching was your entire life. Was that just an excuse, like ‘I have to
wash my hair tonight’?”

This conversation did not end well.

The good things that happened while riding with Randolph was
that he was busy changing lanes and navigating through the Mercer Mess, even
cursing a driver who cut him off, when we passed Jason on the sidewalk,
standing by a police car, talking with two officers, gesticulating while they
stood shaking their heads.

~

Whatever was going on with the police and his other affairs,
it caused Jason to lose his natural ebullience. When we started work that
night, he listed the songs where he wasn’t happy with the results on tape. We
began working through each of them, with about as much enthusiasm as any of my
students taking a make-up test. Then he sent Angelia and me home early and made
the others stay to work harder. Cynthia watched us leave, with an expression
that made me think she found us both as interesting as insects looking for a
new rock to crawl under.

As Angelia and I started down the walkway, we heard Jason’s
voice.

“What is it about the concept of coming in on the upbeat
that is so freaking difficult?”

“I guess it’s because you’re so downbeat, boss.”

“Screw you, Ian. Are we playing or jacking around?”

“You tell us. You’re the boss.”

A thunderous chord rang out before Jason spoke again.

“We are doing this one without twang tonight. Follow Sonny
for the rhythm if you get effing lost again. Sonny, start with that skanky bass
thing you had on Sunday morning.”

I looked at Angelia. “I wonder why Jason is so on edge.”

“Yeah, I wonder.”

~

Rosemary, the school secretary, showed me again how to read
my email, since Andrew at Berklee and two other old colleagues had complained
that I’ve made myself inaccessible to cross-country communications. Andrew’s
email was easy to find and then answer. The others were harder to identify, but
I resolved those. Then I found that my father had amused himself a couple of
times, sending me email, but he gave up when I didn’t answer.

Then there were a whole string of emails from Jason, who had
written to me almost every day since—well, since he turned out to be Jason
Taylor, not Jason Ferran.

I confess, reading all of them in a sitting, I felt
disappointed. Some of it was like the lyrics in the songs we sang, but the rest
seemed to be out-takes from others’ poetry, without attribution, or doggerel he
had never evolved into songs. I’d seen or sung the lyrics to several of his
songs, and as pop music goes, they had far greater literary merit than his
email. I should be more romantic, I suppose, but I didn’t like reading them, so
I stopped, because they made me think less of him.

Then I found my first flame email—that is what they call it,
right? This was like the poison-pen letters that girls slipped in others’
lockers in high school. I shouldn’t have paid it anymore mind than trash of
that variety.

 I’m sending you this message for your own good. Jason Taylor wants one thing
from a woman. After he captures the essence of your soul for his own work, you
will hear nothing more from him except the repeated catalog of your perceived
inadequacies.

If that’s what you choose to embrace, do
it with foreknowledge. When he’s done with your voice, he’s done with
everything else.

Signed by Dominique.

“Someone we used to know but don’t anymore,” Ian had said.

Someone who used to sing with the band. Who slept with
Jason—for what other relationship could result in a malicious need to slander
him? Who therefore was his ex-wife.

I could respond to the email with questions. I could ask
Jason, when I ask him to explain his disquieting behaviors (though I had my own
disquieting former relationship, about which I did not want to answer
questions). I could worry about it, but it didn’t seem to warrant any greater concern
than the bad poetry in his email. Instead, I would ignore it. I couldn’t ask
him if he was using me for my voice, because I was using him for the
opportunity to sing. The relationship was progressing only as that of director
and performer. I’d spent a weekend without seeing him, with no stronger
feelings than a sort of existential ennui, fueled by overexposure to
testosterone.

Also, seeing Logan extinguished any sense I had of wanting
to be intimate with a man. You just had to glance at that embodiment of utter
catastrophe to lose any desire to replace it. With a booster shot of revulsion
due to Logan, I made it through our brief Monday night rehearsal without
rekindling flames of desire for Jason.

When I closed that nasty email, another insipidly titled
email from Jason popped in my box. The senior soprano from fourth-period voice
class stood at my door, ready for her bi-weekly counseling and cheerleading
session, where I’d spend thirty minutes trying to convince her that only a dolt
would not go to Juilliard after being accepted.

~

“Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

I let myself have an oral tantrum after that girl left my
office, insisting that she wasn’t going to summer music camp in Michigan, and
she wouldn’t go to Juilliard in the fall. She asked, instead, what I could do
to get her into Sarah Lawrence at this late date. All of that irrational
hysteria on her part had been too telling, and by the end of the conversation,
I fear that I showed my profound annoyance at her utter stupidity.

“Are you all right, Miss Neville?”

Zak stood at my office door as if in mid-knock, but I hadn’t
closed the door completely, so his knock had pushed it open, so who knows who
heard my tantrum down the hallway. He held a rose in his hand—my usual morning
offering.

“This was outside your door.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I have a student who doesn’t want to go to college in the
fall.”

“You think everyone should, huh?”

“Not necessarily. However, talented kids who get a real
chance at a great school should at least try it. I’m just dismayed because one
of my students chose to not go to school because of her boyfriend.”

“You mean old Chastity, because she’s in love with Jeremy
Simpson?”

“Zak, you know I can’t share a confidence with you.”

“If it’s Chastity, tell her that Jeremy is never going to
marry her. In fact, after she said their souls were already married, he signed
up for summer school. He’s leaving for Sarah Lawrence the day after
graduation.”

“How do you know this?”

“Jeremy had to tell someone. He already told us that he
banged her, after we warned him not to go for Sunday-school virgins. Now she
thinks she’s in love with him. He’s too chicken to break up with her because he
has to see her every day so he’s just going to sneak out of town at sunset. You’d
be doing Chastity a favor if you tell her she hosed herself, telling a guy like
Jeremy that she loves him, for crissakes.”

“I can’t think of how I could do that gracefully.”

“Maybe I should help. I could write her a secret letter. Do
you think that’s a good idea?”

“Of course not. The only message she needs is that she
should make her own decisions about her future. It’s not good to decide because
of what someone else wants. Lord, we shouldn’t be talking about this. What did
you want, Zak? Can I help you?”

“No, I just wanted to leave that flower here before it got
stepped on.”

“Will you be in class this afternoon?”

“Class? Oh yeah, sure.”

“I have a copy of your Berklee acceptance in my email. You
said you didn’t get it at home. Do you want me to print it for you?”

“Yeah, sure. Great.”

Angelia poked her head in to ask if we were playing music
tonight. Zak turned on like an incandescent hundred-watt bulb. “Oh man, yes!
Jason has a new song. He showed it to me and I have this idea—but not for the
house tonight. At the studio. I believe it needs a Hammond organ instead of
drums. Do you think it will blow his mind?”

“Like Billy Preston and the Beatles?” Angelia said.

“Billy who?” Zak and I both said, just as the bell rang for
class. Zak left us.

“Rosemary tells me you’re doing email now,” Angelia said,
pointing to the screen behind me. “Is a cell phone just around the corner?”

“Never in this life. I did it to communicate with Andrew at
Berklee about Zak. I just printed his acceptance letter.”

“Want me to give you Jason’s email address?”

“Unfortunately, I have it. He’s sent me a host of mails with
bad poetry. It’s like that rose he sends every day. It’s embarrassing. I’m not
tempted to keep reading email, though. For some reason, his ex-wife feels
compelled to send email to explain that Jason is a terrible person. Look at
this one.”

“What a venomous witch. This doesn’t sound like Jason.”

“She strikes me as unbalanced.”

Angelia said, “Tell him about it, and ask him to make her
stop.”

“It’s not his fault.”

“Men are responsible for their ex’s excesses. He should make
her stop.”

“I’m just not going to read it.”