“It’s not just a photography pilgrimage.”
“Wowwwwwweeee!” screams Walt, jumping up and down.
Beck stares blindly at the Reds program between his feet.
“Claire,” I say. “The phone call?”
He nods. “She’s my foster sister. Lived with us for a year in high school before she ran away. We were close, and the way things ended . . . I just need to see her again.”
I say nothing. I wait, listen as the pieces take shape.
“Kaaa—boooooooom! Hey, hey, that was a good one!”
“She’s near here,” continues Beck. “Just across the river. After getting kicked off the Greyhound, I was just gonna hitchhike the fifteen miles, but then I heard you guys trying to buy that truck.”
“Ha! Yeah, yeah! Ooooh!” Walt sounds like he’s about to have a heart attack.
“That truck,” I say, “has a name.”
Beck smiles, a movie star smile, a smile which my left eyeball takes a picture of and sends to my brain, which in turn, directs a lightning bolt straight to my heart, which melts on the spot.
“I called her six months ago,” he says. “Arranged this trip to come see her, but . . . she keeps calling back, telling me not to come. The whole thing’s been a disaster.” His voice is low, at once fleeting and infinite. “I don’t know what to do.”
For just a moment—just this one singular moment—we’re the only two people at the kids’ table.
I reach up and gently nudge his face toward the sky. “I think you do, Beck. And I’ll help. But right now, you’re missing one hell of a show.”
Together, the three of us watch the sky explode.
What I would give to see these fireworks with both eyes . . .
28
Devou Park
September 3—late at night
Dear Isabel,
I was eight.
Dad was drinking beer, working on his motorcycle. He never rode, just worked. This was one of the many missing pieces of my father, his aptitude for the unfinished. Whatever pleasure he found in the toiling means, he rarely found in the rewarding ends.
The three of us were in the garage. Mom was trying to explain how a record player worked. (I can’t remember exactly how these conversations went, because, well, I was eight. So I’m paraphrasing, but you get the gist.)
“Yes, Mom, but how does the music get from that needle”—I pointed my chubby little finger to the record player—“to my heart.” My earliest memories of music had nothing to do with listening, and everything in the world to do with feeling.
“Right,” said Mom, blowing the dust off The Doors. “That’s called the stylus. And it runs along these grooves, yeah? And then something else about vibrations or something, and an amplifier I think, and then there’s another thing, and then voilà. Music.”
Dad, who was now polishing his spic-and-span motorcycle, snorted.
“Frog in your throat, love?” said Mom, setting the vinyl on the turntable.
He mumbled something I couldn’t hear, sipped his beer.
“Get me one of those, will you?” said Mom.
Dad left the garage. We sat on Mom’s old College Couch and listened to Jim Morrison break on through.
“This feels weird,” I said. “Like he’s singing crazy.”
Mom nodded. “That’s because he was crazy. A lot of famous rock stars were.”
“Like who?”
“Well, remember Jimi Hendrix, the one who played Star Spangled Banner?”
God, did I. (Are you familiar with this particular rendition, Iz? Inspired.)
“Yes,” I said. “His guitar sounded like this man’s voice. Like”—I shook my head, pondering the nebulous intricacies of rock stardom, and how to wield such wildness into words—“like . . . just . . . crazy and good and crazy good.”
Mom laughed, and it was full of the Young Fun Now. She let her head drop back against the rough plaid of her beloved couch.
“The Jimi-man went crazy, too?” I asked.
“Yeah. Jimi-man went good and crazy.”
“But why?”
“Well, different reasons, Mary. Drugs and fame and I-don’t-know-what . . . I guess when too many people like you all at once, it can sometimes make you go crazy.”
“What are you doing?” interrupted Dad. His voice was quiet, but I remember it startled us. He was standing in the open air, just outside the raised garage door, a beer in each hand. I could see Mom wondering how long he’d been there, carefully choosing the words that followed.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just talking.”
Dad didn’t move. “She’s eight, Evie. What the hell?”
For a second, we remained still. No one said a word. Eight or not, I usually had a pretty good handle on things, but I remember being confused. I couldn’t figure what it was about our conversation that had angered him.
“I don’t mind,” I whispered, tucking my legs underneath my bottom, trying my best to look cute. Looking cute sometimes stopped the fights before they got bad.
Dad set the beers on the ground, then walked over to the couch and picked me up in his arms. “Not everyone goes crazy, honey.”
Mom stood to get her beer. “Blimey, Barry, I didn’t say everyone went crazy.”
“You said enough.”
Later in life, it would occur to me how strange it was that this obsession of my father’s—that something was wrong with me, serious enough to warrant serious drugs and serious doctors and a life full of serious remedies to avoid serious madness—was driving him mad in his own way. Later in life, it would occur to me that despite his actions, my father really did want what was best for his family. As to how he would accomplish that? He had no idea. Later in life, it would occur to me that this was the ultimate dichotomy: for a person to want what’s best but draw from their worst. Dad did just that. It wasn’t enough to help the old woman across the street. He had to produce a fucking firearm and tell her to haul ass. His methods weren’t just ineffective, they were insane. Such were the fates of good men once succumbed to the madness of the world.