To Be Someone (22 page)

Also enclosed is a snapshot of my family: my husband, Scott (he’s a PT instructor); Scotty Jr., who’s six, and Cathey, four. My little angels!

I do hope you don’t mind me writing to you—Margie gave me your address. I know I could have gotten it from your mom when she still lived in Freehold, but, truth is, once you got real famous I just thought that you’d be too busy to want to hear from me, or else that you might think I was only sucking up because you were so big and successful!

It would be real nice to hear back from you, even if you think the missionary idea is dumb.… Next time you visit your folks (I hear their new house is beautiful), please do take a drive over to Freehold and visit us, I would love to see you again.

   Take care and God bless,

   Your friend,

   Mary Ellen Applebaum

P.S. Oh yes! I nearly forgot: I don’t know if you knew this, but I married my neighbor Scott, after he got back from the Marines. He always brags to folk that he got your career started when you bought his bass guitar! I feel kind of silly, almost, telling you—do you remember we used to think his family was so weird? (Well, his mom kind of was, but she died ten years ago. Not an easy woman to get along with, may she rest in peace!) Scotty’s sister Janeane turned out real well, though. Sells real estate in town. x

Even in the depths of my doldrums, I couldn’t resist a chuckle at the memory of the absent Scott and his Clampitt-esque family. Life was certainly full of surprises.

I flushed the toilet and trailed back into the TV room to reinstate myself in front of the box. There were now a lot of 1950s cars driving slowly around Piccadilly Circus, with pedestrians in hats and long overcoats striding past the statue of Eros. One of them looked like Toby, or perhaps Toby’s grandfather as a young man. I tried to get back into the plot but, annoyingly, my mind kept wandering back to the letter.

After a couple of years of living in America, I’d ceased to notice the Yankness of the place, but as soon as I left, it jumped out at me like a cowboy from behind a saloon door. My first thought after reading Mary Ellen’s letter was, How
American
. Everything about it: her hoopy American cursive, her name, her phrasing, her Scotty Jr. The photograph gave out the same message: Scotty Jr. in a baseball mitt and cap. Cathey in Kmart frills, with real ringlets. Scott in the background tending to a barbecue, on a deck. The fact that it made me cringe slightly indicated to me that America was another country I’d never really belonged in. It was merely a place going past outside the tour bus windows, or expectant faces in stadiums, or airport concourses and baggage carousels.

I sighed. It was nice to hear from Mary Ellen nonetheless. I reread the letter, paying more attention to the part about missionaries: “Some of the people … aren’t overly Christian … I’m sure you’d be great at it.” What did she know? She hadn’t seen me since I was sixteen. I wasn’t sure if I even still believed in God.

For a few moments, I wondered whether it
could
be an alternative. If I couldn’t face going through with the Plan, perhaps I could “disappear” from public view for a few years and become a missionary?

Immediately, however, I foresaw a few logistical problems. One, I hated hot climates. Two, I’d been known to throw a wobbly if my hotel suite didn’t have a spa bath and chilled champagne waiting for me. The notion of actually living somewhere without flushing toilets, air-conditioning, shopping by phone, or chocolate Hobnobs was too horrific to contemplate. I thought that I really would rather be dead. Three, I had extremely sensitive, and succulent, skin. A mosquito in a room full of three hundred people would always make a beeline right for me, sampling at least twenty-seven different parts of my body before declaring itself sated. Whenever we toured in hot, humid climates, I used to walk around practically shrouded in mosquito nets.

I remembered doing an MTV interview in the Dominican Republic, during the rainy season. I had bought a new, natural mosquito repellent made from tea tree oil and citronella, and had smeared it on every exposed inch of skin I could reach. It hadn’t smelled too bad in the tube, but somehow it reacted with the heat of my body, and within minutes of my leaving the hotel room, people were behaving as if I had appalling body odor. The interviewer, a beautiful, haughty Cherokee Indian girl, had moved gradually further and further away from me, and eventually began to snigger so hard that the interview had to be suspended. I found out later that Justin had whispered to her beforehand that, although I had good fashion sense, I had the most hideous taste in perfume, and insisted on wearing the cheapest, most disgusting brands, which I thought were divine.…

Which led on to four: I was the most squeamish person in the world. It wouldn’t just be mosquitoes, would it? There were all manner of creepy crawlies: scorpions, hornets, blood-sucking flies and poisonous spiders … urgh. And as for crapping in holes and having to kill my own food—forget it.

It obviously wasn’t such a good idea after all. My squeamishness also meant that the actual suicide was, technically speaking, going to be a bit of a dilemma. I knew there was no way I’d be able to blow my brains out, which was a shame really, since that would have the biggest impact, thus creating the maximum of publicity for the manuscript, and the best prospects for my future place in rock history.

Slitting my wrists would be too messy, as well. There were no bathtubs or showers at New World. So that left pills and booze. The best way to go, I supposed, if not the most dramatic. I’d just have to lock myself into my studio and do it.

God, this was all such hard work. It was tempting just to stay in my house for the rest of my life. The TV could be my friend. I’d be safe. I could get everything I needed delivered via the phone and Internet.

But then I realized I’d never be remembered. Nobody would hear my story, or Sam’s. I felt I owed it to Sam for people to read about our friendship and how brave she had been.

It would have to be the original Plan, then. I’d treat today as a day off before knuckling back down to the manuscript tomorrow. Settling into the sofa again, I channel-hopped until alighting on
Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook
, grateful to Ainsley Harriott for reminding me that life really wasn’t worth living.…

Robert Wyatt.
SHIPBUILDING

T
WO YEARS LATER BLUE IDEA PLAYED NEW YORK AGAIN, THIS TIME
at the Academy on Forty-seventh Street. It was five times the size of the venue Sam had seen us at, and there was no question of us hanging out at the bar before the show, or of having to load our own gear into the van. We had two roadies to do that for us now, and Troy, rather unnecessarily, had a walkie-talkie to coordinate them. There were fans hanging around the stage door after the gig, and a limo to take us to and from the hotel.

I hadn’t seen Sam for ages, apart from a long weekend we’d had in Paris together the year before, which I’d organized as a birthday treat for her. She was well into her law degree in London, working in the holidays, too, so the days of her being able to accompany us on tour were long gone.

She had returned home after her abortive round-the-world trip not speaking to Justin because he’d given her crabs, but otherwise having had a fantastic time, she assured me. After four months of her continuous company (except when she was off shagging Justin somewhere—a casual but apparently mutually satisfying relationship), I missed her even more than when we’d first moved to New Jersey, but I was too busy to indulge the hollow ache of her absence. Four days in two years felt unbearably meager to both of us, but we coped with it by speaking weekly on the phone.

The Academy show went pretty well, although I couldn’t really remember it that clearly. With a few exceptions, our gigs had all blurred together over time.

Aunt Sandi had come to the gig and partied with us afterward. On a drunken whim, and to her delight, we invited ourselves back to her place to crash that night. It was a lot less comfortable than our suites at the Royalton, but we felt quite sentimental about Sandi’s apartment, the epicenter of the action when we were first signed. Plus the appeal of hotel accommodation, however smart, wore very thin after a few weeks of a tour.

I remembered waking up, staring at the orange flowery wallpaper of the spare room, and feeling rather queasy. It had probably been way past four by the time we’d finished at the party Ringside had thrown for us after the gig, and the limo had driven us over the vast glittering peaks of the Brooklyn Bridge. In the end, Sandi had had to accommodate only Joe, David, and me, since Justin had left with a pretty student he’d met at the party; he was such a cliché—on average he went through two groupies per month.

At first I’d kept this fact from Sam, in case it upset her, but she was remarkably nonchalant about their whole dalliance. “He’s cute, it passed the time. We were never planning to keep in touch or anything,” she said. I was surprised at her attitude—I’d always assumed that she’d take these things much more seriously. It was a part of her life I didn’t really know that much about.

I got up and got dressed, sandpaper on the inside of my eyelids, feeling like I’d woken with a squid on my face. Stepping over the prone sleeping figures of Joe and David in the living room on my way to the kitchen, I glanced at the incongruous Superman clock on Aunt Sandi’s kitchen wall and noticed with horror that it was already 12:45.

Simon, Ringside’s radio promotions guy, had impressed upon us that we needed to be at the office by three
P.M
. for a couple of radio phoner interviews in the Ringside conference room. Our third album,
Spin Shiny
, had just come out, and the promotions machine was at full throttle.

I made coffee and took it in to the others to herald the start of their long, drawn-out waking process, which was accompanied as usual by much moaning and groaning. Eventually we were all up, showered, and in a chauffeur-driven car that would drop us at the office only a little past three. I was desperately hoping Justin had not forgotten the commitment, and to my surprise and relief he was already there when we arrived, lounging on Ringside’s visitors’ sofa looking peaky.

He grinned weakly but proudly at me and shoved his hand in my face as if he expected me to kiss it. “Look, see, bet you thought I’d forget!”

He had
R’SIDE 3 PM in faint
but thick, wavering blue letters on the back of his hand.

“Very good, Jus, well done, we’re all impressed,” I told him, not entirely sarcastically.

Tom and Simon ushered us into the conference room, plying us with more coffee and welcome bagels, as we had had neither the time nor the stomach for a proper breakfast, let alone lunch. They conferenced Joe and Justin in with the first radio station, and myself and David with the second. After a few minutes we switched round and talked to the other station.

When we were finished, Tom had us sign some posters and CDs to give away as prizes in competitions, or as incentives for record store clerks. We were working away at the conference-room table when I had a sudden thought.

“Oh, my God—what’s the date today?”

Being on tour for so long seemed to have confounded our time clocks. None of us had a clue what city we were in half the time, let alone what day it was.

“It’s August twenty-eighth,” said David. “Why?”

“Shit, it’s not, is it?” I wailed as the door opened and Willy came in with a fresh supply of posters.

“Hi, guys. Tom’s on the phone, so he asked me to bring you these. What’s the matter, Helena?” he asked, looking at my stricken face.

“Oh, nothing … It’s just that I’ve missed someone’s birthday, that’s all.”

It was Cynthia Grant’s birthday, and I always sent her a card. I had thought about it the week before but had promptly forgotten again.

Willy put down the posters, and they fanned out in a graceful arc across the shiny surface of the meeting-room table. “Do you want to call them?”

“Really? But it’s long distance.” I felt faintly cheeky at the thought of running up Ringside’s phone bill, until I remembered that they were about to move to new, much more palatial offices, the upgrade funded in no small part by the sales of our records. They could stand me the price of a phone call to England, and hopefully I’d be able to chat to Sam, too.

“It’s no problem, honestly. You can use the phone in my office if you like.”

He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I’m always on the phone to my mates in London—but don’t tell Rob.”

“Well, thanks. I’d love to.”

I stood up, calculating that it would be only nine-thirty in Salisbury, and the Grants should be around on a weeknight. Cynthia might be working, but would more likely be having a few birthday rum and Cokes in the saloon bar with her girlfriends, and Sam would probably be there, too. I knew that she was working in a Salisbury solicitor’s office during her summer break. Either way, I didn’t think it would be a problem. There was a phone at the bottom of the stairs where they kept the boxes of crisps, and I knew that it could easily be heard from the bar.

Willy led me over to what he had laughingly called his “office” but which was in reality a desk in an odd corner cranny of the open-plan but terribly cramped label workspace. I had to climb over several boxes of Blue Idea T-shirts and a huge and perilously unstable pile of records to get to his chair. A Big Star album was blaring from speakers in the center of the room, and I wondered how I’d ever be able to hear anything. There was a stack of black-and-white eight-by-tens of us on Willy’s desk, and I turned the top one facedown so I wouldn’t have to look at my monochrome face looming up at me while I talked.

With the receiver clamped hard against my ear to try to block out the noise, I dialed the Grants’ number. It rang for ages.

Eventually an unfamiliar woman’s voice answered, and I put my finger into my free ear. “Prince of Wales, hello?” she said faintly.

“Hello, can I speak to Cynthia Grant please?” I asked.

There was a pause. “I’m sorry, she’s—not around at the moment.”

“Well, could I speak to Sam instead, then?”

A longer pause. I heard the sound of a hand being put over the receiver and a muffled question in the background. Then a kind of scuffling noise. The woman, whom I assumed must be a new barmaid, came back on the line.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Helena,” I said, starting to feel worried. Something did not seem right.

“Hold on a minute please.”

The receiver clunked down, and I visualized it resting on top of a box of Worcester sauce crisps. The Big Star record, thankfully, came to a sudden scratching halt. Then Mrs. Grant came on the line.

“Helena, love, how are you?” She sounded terribly tired, not the festive person I’d expected at all.

“Happy birthday to you!” I chirped enthusiastically, as usual avoiding having to call her Cynthia. “How’s things? Are you having a nice day? I’m really sorry I forgot to send you a card, but our new album is—”

She cut off my apology abruptly, a terrible catch in her voice. “Oh, Helena, I …”

“What is it, what’s the matter? Are you ill? Has something happened to the pub?”

I felt fear begin to swoop down over my head like the corners of a black veil.

“No, worse—Helena, I’m really sorry—it’s our Sammy.”

The veil enveloped me completely and I thought I was going to faint. Mrs. Grant sounded completely devastated. She’s dead, I thought. Oh God, Sam is dead. Then she spoke again, as if from the bottom of a well. “She’s in hospital.”

A sensation like gravity’s pull assailed me, a strange mixture of relief and terror. Relief that she wasn’t dead, terror because this obviously was not an inflamed appendix or troublesome tonsils.

“What’s happened—has she been in an accident?” I managed to stammer. I could hear Mrs. Grant struggling for breath, or for strength, at the other end of the phone.

“Helena, I don’t know how to tell you this.… She wasn’t feeling well, so she had some tests.… They’ve found out that she’s got leukemia. Acute myeloid leukemia, it’s called. She’s already started the treatment.”

The wall in front of me rocked violently, and I had to grip on to the edge of Willy’s desk. My mind went completely blank for a second, and then out of a gray cloud emerged some tiny animated images, like frames of an old home movie: Sam and me as children cycling home from school on our little kiddie bikes, hers turquoise, mine pale pink.

“Helena, are you all right?” I heard in the distance. “Don’t worry, love. The doctors say she should be okay. There’s lots of things they can do for it these days. We only found out yesterday, and she’s started the chemotherapy right away.… ” Mrs. Grant’s voice broke, but she rallied herself. “And it should be fine, she should be fine. Really. Try not to worry. Say something—are you still there?”

Sam had had a little white plastic basket tied to the handlebars of her bike. It had pale blue ribbons that streamed out behind the fake wicker when she pedaled, and I had coveted it without shame. In the silence I could faintly hear the pub’s jukebox playing Robert Wyatt’s “Shipbuilding,” and a man’s deep, distant laugh. I swallowed hard.

“I’m here. But how is she? Is she in pain? Has she been ill for a long time?”

“Mike and I have just come back from the hospital now. She’s feeling dreadfully sick, but otherwise she’s not in actual pain. They’ve got her heavily sedated. We have to wait and see how she responds to the treatment.”

I think we may have talked for a little longer, but my mind had whirled off into a realm of grief somewhere else, and I couldn’t remember any more of the conversation. For some reason, I couldn’t get the image of that little white basket and the doleful lyrics of “Shipbuilding” out of my head. With every atom in my body I wished fiercely that I could be where Sam was, and not in that stupid, filthy office full of strangers. I sat at Willy’s desk for a long time, gazing dry-eyed at the wall, not having any idea what to do next.

A hand touched my shoulder. It was David. “We’re done, Helena. Are you ready to go?”

As I stood up, my stomach suddenly heaved and seemed to flip over. Aware of David, Justin, Joe, Willy, and half the Ringside label staff staring at me with incredulity and concern, I careered out of the room, just about managing to grab a nearby office rubbish bin on the way, and was copiously sick.

David came and rescued me from the women’s bathroom. Throwing up had also induced a flood of tears, so he tidied me up, clucking and crooning over me, listening to my sobbed-out story while wiping my face with a scratchy paper towel and stroking my hair clumsily. I allowed myself to be led out of the office and into a waiting limo, and taken back to Aunt Sandi’s apartment. I didn’t want to go back to the impersonal, empty hotel room.

When Sandi got home from work, she and the boys talked in hushed voices in the next room, then she came in and gave me a sleeping pill and a cup of hot chocolate. Fortunately there was no show that night, and I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep of grief and disbelieving.