Nine Volt Heart (28 page)

JASON

B
EING THE
SUPERIOR-TO-SOME-ASSHOLES guy that I am, I did not snivel, whine, or beg when
she had to go to work. I got up and went to work myself. Besides, there’s no
coffee in Ian’s house before nine. Whereas at the studio, even though it was
only seven-thirty, Martha had hot coffee, fruit, protein bars, and hard-boiled
eggs.

While I ate breakfast, I made Martha listen to the recording
Susi and I had made the night before. “Just the last two songs,” I said,
realizing in the middle of the second that it would take some getting used to,
letting others hear these sounds. If I succeeded in convincing Susi to sing
live with me, we’d have to make this music in front of other people. I buried
myself in email, pretending I wasn’t watching Martha’s reaction.

She didn’t respond when I kept looking over. When the music
ended, she sat back down at her own laptop to finish whatever business I had
interrupted. The third time I encountered her eyes, she bent her head over a
pad of paper with her pen. Then she held up the paper: 9.5.

“The point-five represents my unfamiliarity with the form. However,
you don’t need reassurance. You know it’s good. By the way, Zak called at seven
and said he won’t be here until eight-thirty.”

I settled down to work. We had hit on something the night
before. I started singing an old Hank Williams piece and then transmuted it to
something of my father’s, to show Susi where the song was going. It reminded me
of a piece I’d read in a thesis or lecture I borrowed from Susi’s house. I
found the lecture notes and copied a portion of the text into email I was
sending to my select little group of Americana musicology friends, thinking to
prove this deeper line about Hank Williams’ influences on the Lost Sons. Also,
I was thinking about the fox and the Little Prince, and accidentally clicked
Send before typing the attribution for the quote I used.

My little fox sat in the sun as I crept closer and closer, and
then—what? The fox turned out to be a friendly she-wolf? Where else could I go
with the analogy that would make compelling lyrics? Chinese medieval poets
speak of she-foxes that hide in the tall grass, waiting to suck a man’s soul
dry, like succubae. Definitely not those little foxes in this case. Though
after thinking about onomatopoeia and the word succubus, I had to stop
remembering the previous night to keep from embarrassing myself.

Before I could pull myself together to start new email to
attribute the quote in the last email I sent, the instant messenger light
popped on.

 
Chas1933: What city are you in?

Sebastian: Seattle.

Chas1933: I think that’s my library you’re browsing. Are you
sleeping with my daughter?

What can one say in such a situation—besides ‘oh shit’? I
pondered that and answered, as truthfully as possible.

 
Sebastian: Not at this moment, sir.

Chas1933: The last one was a fool. I’ve been hoping it wouldn’t
be a pattern.

Flipping to the book plate at the front of the text, I
understood that my friend [email protected] was Charles Neville—not the
saxophone player from New Orleans, but a local music professor who wrote
multiple treatises on the effect of Anglo-Celtic ballads on the music of
Appalachia and the Acadia musical influences on early jazz and rock. I had
embarrassed myself before a scholar I admire. Just like starting on the wrong
foot with his daughter by being the incorrect Jason.

 
Sebastian: She has the most beautiful voice in the world.

As if blurting it aloud, I clicked Send, with no option for
clicking Retrieve and therefore breaking a promise, telling the only secret
about Susi that I knew and which she had made me promise to not disclose.

 
Chas1933: She’s singing?!?

Sebastian: I wasn’t supposed to tell. She’s shy about it, but
it’s a travesty the world doesn’t know her. I’d love to get her in front of an
audience.

Chas1933: You can try, I suppose. Just don’t let her get hurt
doing it.

I took that as a mission. Zak and Ian arrived at the studio
together, so I had to sign off and plug in. It was noon before I thought to wonder
how someone could get hurt singing.

Or to realize that I had given my father’s papers to my
lover’s father.

SUSI

“T
HERE’S
YOUR BOYFRIEND.”

Randolph laid an aged, dusty file on my desk, shaking me
into complete wakefulness.

Jason Taylor
.

“I know.” I closed my email, since it contained only bad
poetry and more fictitious screeds from Dominique about how Jason stole songs
and abused women.

Randolph said, “I found out from the students. They’ve been
talking about it ever since your little fundraiser. How could you put an
imposter in front of the trustees? In front of my grandparents?”

“I didn’t know it. There was a mix up. Neither of us
understood at the time.”

“How long were you going to let the confusion go on?”

“It doesn’t matter at this point, does it, Randolph?”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Then you are? I thought all you cared about was teaching.
For God’s sake, Susi, he never even graduated from high school.”

Randolph stalked out, leaving the folder on my desk. I let
it sit for a long time before yielding to temptation.

The transcript stopped one quarter short of graduation.
Fantastic marks in the arts and math, A-minuses in science and history. A “B”
in one subject every term, usually the subject that any other student would use
to skate through in order to carry enough credits: Photography, Household
Economy, Health Education, Ceramics.

Then there were the letters, the ones teachers write to help
students get into college. I’d spent November, December, and January writing
the same kinds of letters, praising the student’s talents and accomplishments,
making weaknesses sound like assets. In Jason’s recommendations:

 
Brilliant creative mind, which he chooses to apply with great force of will.
Popular with classmates in spite of a tendency to be withdrawn at times.
Dynamic presence in the classroom when he chooses to engage.

 I found the letter that Paul Harris wrote buried amongst the
others.

 
He came to us with strong recommendations from his previous
teachers, but as an emancipated minor, which is usually a sign that the legal
guardian has elected to put the child on the streets to live by his own wits.
When he came, Jason was still recovering from his mother’s death, which he
responded to by burying himself in music.
In spite of being abandoned by the adults in his family, Jason follows the
iron-bound guidance of an inner adult that seems to serve him well, though
perhaps it leads him to drive himself harder than a youth should be allowed to
work. He will succeed in any music program that allows him to exercise his
natural assets. He will not, however, submit to any teacher who applies lessons
as a task master. But he makes a noble, courageous, and gracious sparring
partner for any teacher who chooses to engage him as an equal.
 

Alongside these were acceptances: Cornish, Berklee, the
Curtis Institute. A request from Juilliard for one more interview. Another
letter that was sort of a rejection: a note that said, “I no longer attend
Prescott,” in a handwriting I now recognized as well as my own. Finally, a copy
of a bitter letter that Hector Henderson had sent to Jason’s grandfather,
complaining that Jason’s failure to participate in the state-wide contest for
jazz ensembles had cost the school the championship. Bitterness from the same
teacher who wrote recommendations that praised Jason as the leader and key
talent who led the jazz ensemble in his junior year to a state championship and
then on to respectable recognition at the national level.

 
He let the band and the school down just to play
rock-and-roll in Europe.

~

I’m afraid to say this aloud. I told someone I loved him when
perhaps the reality is that I have no business being with him. I wasn’t lying
when I said it, but there were such strong influences—my chest and head filled
with his music, the blandishments he uses while begging me to let down my
guard, those fingers stroking his guitar. Singing is clouding my judgment.

Or something else is happening. Jason touches my lips after
we sing and I fall into a fugue state, from which I cannot rouse myself until
considerable time and physical distance separates us. Even now, hours later, I
can feel his fingers on my lips while my whole body throbs, and the sensation
threatens to pull me back into that state, so that I can’t listen to my own
logic or heed internal warnings that tell me this might be dangerous.

As much as I needed to talk about it with someone, he’s
become friends with Angelia, so I can’t talk to her. I thought about calling my
brother Steven, but he had discounted my concerns when I tried to talk to him about
the same issues in relation to Logan: “Logan wasn’t ever worthy of you. It just
took that accident for you to see what everyone else knew. He wasn’t on the
same level as you for talent, brains, or goodness.”

Maybe I don’t want to talk to Steven, because I don’t want
to hear the same thing about Jason. Maybe I don’t want to look at the same
problems all over again.

Then again, perhaps it’s not true this time. Before, when I
thought Jason was Angelia’s cousin, I thought that this man was my equal. He is
beyond merely smart. He’s kind and aware of others around him. Yet he’s not the
whiz-kid Jason Ferran. He’s Jason Taylor, the high school drop-out who plays in
bar bands. Who doesn’t own a car or have a place to live.

Yet he has these warm, intelligent friends who care a great
deal for him. He has a beautiful voice and plays his instrument with the same
skill that Orpheus must have had. He’s considerate. I love singing with him—it
feels as satisfying as great sex, though we have had more practice singing than
we’ve had with the other.

Still, he’s a pop musician who never graduated from high
school. Who in the world could be so foolish as to not take the fantastic
opportunities that going to a school like Berklee would allow? Why choose to
drop out of high school?

I find myself attempting to smother reprehensible feelings,
because this makes me aware of my own bias, as much as I hated feeling like an
outsider myself when I was at school. What in the world does a college degree
prove, for that matter? Is it like kennel papers for a dog? Does it make for a
better dog? Look at Randolph, who has an Ivy League degree, but didn’t inherit
even a modicum of noblesse oblige, much less a sensible view of life.

When I was with Logan, I worked to ignore the inequality between
us, feeling guilty for my snobbishness. However, leaving school was yet another
sign of Logan’s lack of ambition and his immaturity. My attempt to ignore the
inequality was in fact an act of condescension on my part. Since the accident,
people who can still exercise their talent in the world condescend to me. It’s
actually pity, and there is nothing I hate worse.

Early in the morning, a tectonic shift brought us into a
unison that both Jason and I seemed to be reaching for. Still, what if I am
repeating the same error as with Logan, surrendering for the sake of sex to a
relationship of unequal passions and unequal ambitions? What if I begin by
believing I’m in love and once again have to fight back a reprehensible
condescension?

Fundamentally, it shouldn’t matter to me whether Jason
graduated from high school. He is widely read, and nothing about him would make
one think of the stereotypical drop-out in need of remedial education. It
shouldn’t matter to me.

However, it made me think of Logan, so it did matter.