Sweeter Life (28 page)

He slumped heavily into a seat and closed his eyes as the train began to pick up speed again. He’d had a dull headache since rising that morning, and his body hummed with fatigue. For weeks now, Eura had been unable to sleep, and the way she’d been thrashing about and moaning, he seldom managed more than a few hours himself, usually in a chair or on the floor. They were both so bagged, they hadn’t played a decent set in a month.

They called themselves Tongue & Groove and were booked as a duo at the Laredo, a country bar in a dreary strip mall on the eastern fringes of the city. Cyrus played guitar and worked bass pedals with his feet. He’d taught Eura a few melodies on a synthesizer, but mostly she sang, badly. When it was his turn to carry the vocal, she played a tambourine and swayed from side to side in tight-fitting clothes.

No one went to the Laredo to listen to music. They went to get drunk. The beer was cheap, the pickled eggs plentiful, and at least once a night, the cops had to break up a fight in the laneway out back. Cyrus couldn’t imagine a worse gig, but it was the only kind they played anymore.

Their room upstairs wasn’t much better. It was freezing in winter, suffocating in summer; and it reeked of smoke and stale booze and the black mildew that seemed to appear overnight on the plastic shower curtain. He had ordered Eura to stay in the room until he returned from his errand, but he could have saved his breath. With the infection and the swelling and those full-strength painkillers, she was unlikely to go anywhere.

Two days ago he had taken her to a dentist nearby, who told them that a couple of her molars had broken off at the gum line. He could fix it as good as new, he said, but it would cost two thousand dollars—root canal, gold posts, caps, the whole deal. To simply clean it up, get rid of the infection and stop the pain would be six hundred, in two instalments. They said they’d think about it, but they had all of fifty bucks and owed money everywhere.

Cyrus had never dreamed things would work out this way. When the rest of the band went off to England, Cyrus and Eura headed for Chicago. She knew people there, and he liked the idea of being in the home of his favourite blues music. On his first day in the city, he made a pilgrimage to 2120 South Michigan Avenue, home of Chess Records. He got a postcard—a
collage of some of their bigger albums—and sent it to Janice by way of her parents. On the back he wrote: “Gypsy woman told my mother …” Eura found them an apartment not far from there, above an Orange Julius. She told him a hundred times that he was a fool to follow her, but she never said it with conviction. They lived on chili dogs that year.

Through a friend of a friend, Eura got them a booking agent, Max Fleishmann. It was Max who came up with their name.

“I see Tongue & Groove,” he said out of the blue. “Duos are hot right now. I see a Captain and Tennille thing with a bit more leg, more oomph. You, sweetie, let’s face it, we’re talking Greta Garbo compared to that mousy bit of fluff, Tennille, chenille, like the girl next door you wouldn’t boink if you fell on her. Tongue & Groove, I like it.”

He liked Eura is what he meant. He fronted them money for publicity shots, bios, the whole promo pack. He took them shopping for clothes, waxy-looking synthetics that created enough static charge to light Comiskey Park. And because they were pros with a track record and enough of a name that they might wangle some free press now and then, he started them in his topflight clubs—Holiday Inns mostly, a Sheraton here, a Ramada there—where they stumbled through “Proud Mary” and “Hey Jude” and whole medleys of The Carpenters and Neil Sedaka.

As sad as it was to contemplate now, those were the good times. Soon enough Max realized that Eura was not going to put out for him, and he rolled up the red carpet. “Let’s be frank,” he told them, “you’re not really Holiday Inn material.”

The fact was, even Max’s days were numbered. By the late seventies disco had done its damage, and clubs that offered live music were an endangered species. Over the course of seven increasingly desperate years, Tongue & Groove bounced from the Max Fleishmann Agency to Talent Plus to Greg Steckle (a.k.a., The Musicman, a one-time protegé of Nate Wroxeter who had done time for fraud and embezzlement). Greg did not come highly recommended, but neither did they.

It was thanks to Greg that they met Lonnie Carswell, the owner of the Laredo. Lonnie took a shine to Cyrus and Eura and offered them the house gig: four sets of hurtin’ music from Thursday to Saturday every week for two
hundred bucks. He gave them the room upstairs for nothing. “It’s not as if anyone else is gonna want it,” he told them. “This way, who knows, maybe you’ll buy a few drinks, a few meals.”

On its own, the seven-year decline of Tongue & Groove brought Cyrus a level of disappointment he’d not been prepared for. When coupled with periodic updates about the Jimmy Waters Revival, however, it was enough to send him into weeks of depression.

As Ronnie had predicted, the band returned from England with a much higher profile. They recorded two more studio albums that each made the
Billboard
charts. They toured Europe and North America almost non-stop, recorded a concert album in London,
JWR Live at the Royal Albert Hall
, and just nine months ago had returned to the United States for what was meant to be a blockbuster summer tour. Then, on the eve of an appearance on
Saturday Night Live
, Jimmy had another meltdown, disappearing into thin air. Some thought it was a publicity stunt, setting everyone up for the tour. But no one had heard from him since, other than a cryptic notice published in
Variety:

Cyrus switched trains at Yonge Street and went south to Queen. He then walked east to Church where four pawnshops stood side by side. He walked into the first one, nearly sick to his stomach. A man in a baggy grey sweatsuit sat behind the counter, smoking a cigarette and reading
The Daily Racing Form
. Before Cyrus could work up the nerve to clear his throat, the guy looked at him and said, “Don’t want it.”

“But it’s a Les Paul.”

The man feigned weariness and peered over the top of his reading glasses. “You blind? You don’t see I got three hanging in the window?”

“Remakes,” Cyrus countered. “Those are shit. This is a collector’s item, a 1954 Les Paul Standard. Check it out.” He hoisted the case onto the glass counter and opened it.

The man looked dully at the golden instrument and said, “I’ll give you two hundred bucks.”

“But it’s worth a thousand at least.”

The guy shrugged. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. One thing I know about collector’s items, about the only thing they collect is dust. Two hundred bucks, take it or leave it.”

Twenty minutes later, Cyrus was on the street, the money feeling cold and lifeless in his clenched fist. With the fifty they already had, and the fifty-dollar advance he was sure he could wangle from Lonnie, they had enough for the first instalment at the dentist.

Eura wept when he told her what he’d done. She fell back on the bed and curled into a ball and would not be comforted. “You are so stupid,” she said. “You do not even know what is happening to you.”

He left the city the next morning in their ’69 Chevy Impala. Because the floor of the car had pretty much rusted through, Cyrus had to keep a window open or risk carbon monoxide poisoning. It didn’t help that a cold hard rain was falling. Even with the heater on high, he was frozen; and in a matter of minutes, the rugs and his shoes were soaked. That was a minor discomfort, however, compared to the pain he felt when he approached Spring Creek and saw the new stretch of paved road that led to the brand new concrete bridge, so out of place and proportion that it looked like a piece of L.A. freeway fallen from the sky.

When he arrived at Orchard Knoll, Ruby stepped out of the house and partway down a new ramp attached to the side porch, drying her hands on her apron and squinting at the unfamiliar vehicle. It was only when Cyrus was out of the car and moving toward her that she recognized him, not with a shout of joy or excitement but with one hand covering her mouth, the other clenched into a ball and pressed to her belly.

“Do I look that bad?” he asked playfully.

“Oh,” she said, almost a sob, “what have you done? Look what you’ve done to yourself.” And because she couldn’t bear to look at him, his lank hair, his gaunt ashen face with the dark circles around his eyes, his threadbare clothes, she pulled him into her arms. Then she led him into the kitchen. “Let me make you something. A grilled cheese.”

But he held her by the shoulders, guided her into a chair and pressed a soft kiss on her forehead. “Please,” he said, “be still. Let me just look at you.” He pulled a strand of grey hair back behind her ear and smiled. “It’s been so long. How’s Clarence?”

She watched his every move, mesmerized by the complicated image, at once so familiar and so strange. “He’s feeling better,” she said at last. “But then you wouldn’t know, would you? Just before Christmas they had to remove part of his colon, Cyrus.” She rubbed the table with her thumb and added, “We never know how to find you.”

He had never meant to be a bad person, yet that’s what he’d become. What else would you call a man who let others worry so much? The last time he’d seen any of them was in 1973 in Toronto when Izzy and Hank had come to see him play, and they had argued. He’d made a few awkward calls on a few of the more notable holidays, the last more than a year ago. He hadn’t even called at Christmas.

He took her hand in his. She said, “This time it seemed to hit him harder. With the lung, he bounced back so fast. But this, I don’t know.”

“But he’s okay …”

“Well, he had himself a scare. I don’t think he’s feeling too confident about anything right now. Moves slow, almost like he’s afraid to break something. Makes him seem older than he really is.”

Ruby looked out the window and down the road. “He likes to get out for a drive these days,” she said. “Goes to Clem’s every morning for a Seven-Up and a bit of gossip. You may have passed him on your way in.” Then she looked at him squarely and said, “You’re not doing drugs are you? You look like death warmed over.”

“Bit of bad luck is all.” He was tempted to mention Eura and the living hell of her teeth, how desperate they were for a few hundred dollars; but it was still too soon for that. Instead he said, “I was hoping you still had my other guitar.”

She led him upstairs to his room. The same bedspread. The same clothes in the closet. The same tube of Pick Up sticks on the shelf. The Harmony in its case, beneath the bed where it had always been. Nothing had changed at all, which he found both touching and creepy.

He fiddled with the guitar awhile, the strings so corroded and full of gunk that they felt like bits of wire fencing. The neck was remarkably straight, however. And it was a hollow-body electric, too, which meant he could play it unamplified and it would sound okay. Good for the room at night. Good for his soul, too. He couldn’t believe he had ever let this old thing slip from his grasp.

Ruby sat beside him on the bed, her hands folded in her lap. Cyrus looked up and said, “Is it going to upset Clarence, me being here?”

She grabbed his arm with surprising force. “You make one move for the door,” she said, “and so help me God I’ll brain you with a frying pan.”

CYRUS STAYED FOR DINNER
—pork chops baked in cream of mushroom soup, with mashed potatoes and peas—and Clarence greeted him with unmistakable joy. And why not? He had believed he’d never see the boy again (unlike Ruby, who had never lost hope). When Cyrus inquired about the cancer, Clarence made light of it, as though it were a minor inconvenience. He preferred to talk about the Tigers. He liked their chances in the upcoming season, he said, and liked the looks of that Kirk Gibson. Cyrus, who hadn’t watched a game in years, felt like a traitor and was glad when Ruby changed the subject. She told him what she knew about Janice, how she and her friend Jonathan travelled to Italy every summer.

Cyrus knew a bit about Janice’s career. He had read in a magazine how “her primitive figures recontextualized the relationships between our bodies and our emotions.” He had cut out her picture and stuck it in his wallet. He had even made it to one of her shows. Although he couldn’t begin to understand what she was doing, he was proud of her.

The three of them talked throughout the meal, with none of the tension they might have felt in the past. The most awkward moment came when he asked about Isabel. Ruby took the big serving spoon and carefully trowelled the leftover mashed potatoes into a smooth oval. “I guess you’d probably say she’s doing her own thing,” she said.

“But what would
you
say?”

When Ruby shrugged, Cyrus looked to his uncle for clarification. Clarence’s face darkened, which often happened when he thought about
Isabel, even though he had only the vaguest sense of what bothered him. She struck him anymore as a woman with something to prove. He didn’t know what, and he didn’t know why, but it gave her an intensity he had always disliked and distrusted in other people. If he were to put it into words, he would say she had become one of those women who make a clatter when they walk, the aggressive clip-clopping of the righteous, as if she was warning everyone to stand clear, that she was on her way. He said, “Your sister has done very well for herself, I’ll give her that.”

“But what’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. She’s very successful. Owns, I don’t know, four or five farms now, a handful of properties downtown. That girl has more business smarts than a lot of folks give her credit for. She’s turned some pretty sweet deals.”

Cyrus leaned back in his chair. “You’re leaving something out.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah, you’re telling me these things she’s done, only you’re using a voice like there’s something wrong.”

“Well, no, nothing’s wrong.”

Ruby chimed in. “We’re proud of her, Cyrus. That’s God’s truth. She’s doing just fine. And it sounds as though Hank is too. Why don’t we call right now?”