The young salesman has been flirting from the moment I came through the door. He’s spaghetti pale and about as skinny, smiles at me like we’re already intimate. His hair is done up in spectacular dirty blonde dreadlocks — they bounce as he talks. We’re back in the music store’s drum department, surrounded by an arsenal of strange-looking instruments. I recognize tambourines and maracas — and there are rows and rows of drum sets — but some of these things could be garden tools for all I know. “Ma’am, what you’re looking for,” my young salesman says, hoisting up a wooden, hourglass-shape drum, “is this.”
This music store is warehouse-sized, busier, louder, and more intimidating than the fleabag places August dragged me into before he began his perpetual tour. Clusters of longhaired boys mill around, occasionally picking up guitars and other pieces of equipment to produce various skronks and squalls.
“That looks familiar,” I say hesitantly.
“It’s called a djembe,” my young salesman says, “It’s from Africa. Totally authentic. And check it out, the skin on top–” he kneels and pounds out a rhythm — “real animal.”
He looks up at me mischievously, says, “Let’s ring it up.” At the register, he tries selling me on a traveling bag, a carrying strap, an instructional book, some kind of special oil to treat the skin. About the only thing he doesn’t ask for is my phone number.
“It’s a surprise going away gift,” I finally tell him. “For graduation. My daughter, Senna.”
“Oh,” he replies, “right on.” He looks so deflated by the knowledge I’m a mother I feel obliged to continue the conversation.
“So, what do you play? Drums?”
He laughs. “No, I’m a DJ.”
“Oh, a disc jockey.” I wonder if this makes him a musician or a radio personality. “What kind of music do you… do?”
He breaks into a grin. He’s still in the boyish part of his mid-twenties and all swagger. A handsome kid in his way, and doesn’t he know it. He gives me a long, rehearsed answer, but it’s all too hip and technical — “house” and “funk” are the only words I even recognize. When he finishes by telling me that he plays a club called Subterranean every Wednesday, that I should come out sometime, he’ll put me on the guest list, I can only offer lamely, “You know, my husband is a musician, too.”
My salesman walks me and the drum to the front door. “If you need anything else, Sue,” he says (got my name off the credit card, clever), “call and ask for me.” I look down at his nametag. It reads “Dave.”
“There are five Daves here,” he says, “ask for Trance. DJ Trance.”
“Of course,” I say, bewildered again.
“Oh, one more thing.” He slides a pad and pen from his pocket. “It’s for our records. Can I have your phone number?”
I took off early from the office, hoping to miss rush hour on Lake Shore Drive, but the drive up to Rogers Park is brutal. I have the drum — the djembe – buckled into the passenger side. Its skin is ringed with fur and the wood carved with designs of stickmen dancing and hunting with spears. I’ve never seen these drum circles Senna and her friends drive to on the southside, and like any mother would, I worry about what goes on at them. But I like the idea of Senna taking her own instrument along. And, really, drum circles seem pretty innocent next to what August and I did in our late teens.
Traffic is nearly at a standstill. The thought of dragging myself up three floors of our greystone and finding nobody home is making the waiting seem both excruciating and a sort of blessing. I give the top of the drum a thump. A note booms out so deep and resonant the rearview mirror shakes.
When I get home and get the drum hidden in my closet, I find a note from Senna on the kitchen island. With Cindy. Conga Beach. Back 8pm? 9pm?? The note isn’t even signed.
Seeing it… I’ve had some bad evenings lately, but this one… I don’t know, suddenly I’m overcome. There are no new messages on the answering machine. The dishes in the drying rack tell me Senna was home and cooked herself an early dinner. When I peek in the fridge, the snap peas, shallots, mint leaves, half a bottle of chili oil, and a jar of peanut sauce have disappeared. Cooking is one of the few things that keep me distracted these days; I’m almost angry at Senna for feeding herself. When I open the cupboard, all I find is a box of brownie mix from, well, it must be years ago because it’s not “organic” but merely “all natural.” This gives me an idea I already know is a bad one.
Even though he hid it (he hid it!) last time he was home from tour, I still find August’s stash quickly enough. It’s stuffed in the sound hole of his prized Martin acoustic guitar, looking very stale after three months sitting there unsmoked. Half an hour later, I’m sliding a hot pan of brownies out of the oven. Standing there holding it between oven mitts, I say aloud to no one, “Throw it away. You pathetic woman, throw it away.”
Instead, I cut myself a generous piece, take it into the great room, and kneel in front of August’s hi-fi. One of Senna’s CDs is sitting on top of the player. I put it in, press play, and move myself and my brownie to the couch.
The first bite is awful, even worse than I remember laced brownies tasting. And though I would love to surprise Senna sometime with my deep appreciation for her music, the badly tuned guitars and vague, wandering melodies miss my auditory synapses by a few generations, even with the buzz from the brownie creeping up on me. I change Senna’s CD for Neil Young, “After the Goldrush,” which at least matches my mood — maudlin, nostalgic, reasonably reckless….
The latch on the door clunking open wakes me. First thing I see is the record still spinning on the turntable, then the digits on the VCR clock come into focus. Eleven pm. I hear Senna kicking off her shoes in the hallway. When I stand, I realize I’m still high.
I get myself to the kitchen counter and seize the bake pan. My first thought, a thought that feels like a holdover from ten years ago, is, Hey, calm down, Mom. Why not just offer Senna some? My second thought: I am not that sort of mother. Christ, if I ever become that mother, I’ll–
“Sorry I’m late,” Senna calls out, “We went back to Cindy’s to play Scrabble.”
I throw open the back door, rattle down the fire escape, and pitch the brownies, bake pan and all, into the dumpster behind the building. “Hey,” Senna says when I get back up, “what are you doing?”
“Mouse,” I say. “A big one. I trapped it.”
“Damn,” Senna says as she puts on the kettle for a cup of tea, her nightly ritual, “you let it go, right?” She’s wearing her favorite white peasant dress, has her blonde hair in a braid, and smells of cigarettes. She is not some tiny, delicate thing, and while I have worried that it hurts her to know this, the presence she brings to a room is irrepressible. She’s been experimenting, since age thirteen, with piercings and dyeing her hair, but tonight she is unadorned and radiant. When the track lighting catches a thin line of hair above her lip, I’m almost proud to see it’s been months since she last waxed.
I prop myself against the kitchen island; standing fully on my own power, pretending I’m not stoned, and holding a conversation with my daughter at the same time is feeling near impossible. AP History paper? Got an A-, but going to revise and turn in again. Cindy? Is good. Conga Beach? Fun. Who was there? Cindy, Justin, Stephen, Shane, Mark K., Mark T., Marco. Who’s… Mark K? You remember, Mark T.’s friend, from Orland Park, he broke his arm jet skiing but he wouldn’t wear a cast and…
When I’m down to leaning on my elbows just to stay vertical, Senna fixes me with a curious look. “Everything okay, Mom?”
“A little sick. The air quality today…”
“Hey,” she says, “some kids at school were asking about getting their copies of the new album signed. Think Dad would mind?”
No, he wouldn’t. Getting them to him, wherever he is, is the problem. “We’ll ask Rick,” I woozily tell her.
Then I excuse myself off to bed, where I quietly vomit in my wastebasket, pass out on top of the sheets, and dream vivid dreams about I don’t remember what.
Work the next day… less than stellar.
Part Two
You know, my husband is a musician. A famous musician, actually. “The August Rawling Band,” says the most recent Sun Times clipping stuck to my fridge with a pickle magnet, “began with a chance meeting that is quickly becoming the stuff of legend. In ’71, Rawling spent two months in Cook County on charges that he conspired to raid, and allegedly burn down, the offices of Mayor Richard J. Daley. In County, Rawling met the notorious local drug peddler, poet, and musician Wildcat John Jackson, who, with a contraband guitar smuggled into their shared cell, taught Rawling the songs of Woody Guthrie, Howlin’ Wolf, Phil Ochs, and Big Bill Bronsy.” (This is only part true. August met John several times, but he learned all those songs off the radio and his mom’s 78s.)
“Rawling describes the songs he wrote after his imprisonment as ‘full of rage, but still flailing about in the straitjacket of the system.’ Fifteen years later, the rage remains, but Rawling has found the venues for his activism. ‘We’ll play in front of 10,000 people one night,” Rawling says, ‘and then do rallies or fundraisers for 200 the next three. If I’m broke by the time The August Rawling Band plays its last note, I’ll be happy.’”
My husband says nearly the exact thing in the scores of articles written on this new album. Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, College Music Journal, The Nation. Even Newsweek ran a little sidebar. They all go on to mention his “tough times upbringing on Chicago’s west side,” the influence of his socialist parents (who named him after August Spies, of Haymarket infamy), and, of course, his near constant touring. All of it straight out of the press kit — August is as interested in making his myth as they are in propagating it. My favorite encomium from Rolling Stone: “The songs on Truck Stops and Troubadours are clear-eyed without being defeated. Rawling’s almost evangelical activist nature has been leavened by a new sense of road-worn wisdom.”
What the reviews don’t mention is the wife August met when they were both seventeen, who would’ve been along for the Daley sit-in if she hadn’t been pregnant, who bore him a daughter when he was off playing a UAW rally; the wife who got realistic (or maybe just tired) and gave up non-profit for a nine to five in PR; the wife who thought a “creative” career might still give her time for her painting and photography; the wife who actually likes having a decent, stable income; the wife who eats stale pot brownies at home alone and obsesses over the safety of their daughter.
In the article stuck to my fridge there’s a photo of August cradling his guitar. Despite the nose that got itself broken in two places by a cop and the male-pattern baldness tied back into a ponytail, August is photogenic. “Rawling’s electric live performances,” the caption reads, “which he often does for free or for charity, attract hardcore utopian commies and swooning teenage girls alike.”
My trouble: Whenever I read that caption, I go a deeply flattered shade of scarlet. I am the original girl in the audience, now shuffling through her mid-forties, imagining how much those girls in halter-tops would envy her if they knew the rest of the story.
* * *
Thursday night our friends come over for a drink — Saul, works for the record label that signed August; Rick, his manager; and Evie, Rick’s partner of the last seven months. Our friends: August’s friends.
“We hit two hundred thousand copies this morning,” Rick says before they even get through the door. He pulls a bottle of champagne out of a brown paper bag and pops the top right there in the hallway. “Kudos all around. Let’s drink this stuff up.”
I’m not sure if he’s congratulating me or Saul, but I certainly didn’t have much to do with the thing. Last time August was home, he was in the studio three straight weeks putting the finishing touches on. I think they added mandolin to one song and took it off another. Senna and I didn’t see much of him. He took her down to the studio a couple of times, but she said it was boring. I found that much out a long time ago.
We sit down in the front room. “All right, guys,” I say. “All right already. I call a moratorium on band talk.”
Evie takes my hand sympathetically. She’s thirty-eight and beautiful in that tanning bed sort of way. “All of this must make you wonder why you married the man in the first place,” she says laughingly. Rick used to have such good taste in girlfriends.
“Been down this road before,” I mumble. Eight albums, eight tours. I’m an old hand.
“But this one’s selling like crazy,” Saul says.
“Moratorium!” I protest. “Moratorium!”
“Come on, Susie,” Rick says. “Let us get a little excited for you.”
“No band talk. Let me show you what I got Senna for her graduation.”
I go into the bedroom, pull the djembe out of the closet. I hug it awkwardly to my chest. It’s heavier than I remember. Waddling like a duck, I bring it into the front room.
“In the deepest, darkest Congo,” Rick says in a hushed voice, taking the drum from me, “we heard the ever constant beating of the tom toms.” He leans over and pounds out a wild rhythm. The champagne glasses on the coffee table clink and rattle. Do all men feel the need to beat a drum when presented one?
“What a brute,” Evie says.
“Djembe,” I say. “It’s called a djembe.”
We finish the champagne, and I get a couple of bottles of white from the fridge. Despite me, it’s beginning to feel like a celebration.
Evie turns to me. “So, where’s Senna tonight? What’s Senna been up to?”
I don’t know. No note on the counter this afternoon, no messages on the machine, not even a whiff of cigarette smoke in the air. But I can’t tell Evie this. If Evie thinks she’s being bullshitted, she goes into interrogation mode, and you’re under the lamps of her mascara-ed eyes for the next two hours.
“Senna,” I begin, “spends every waking hour with her friends, most of whom are boys, most of whose names all sound the same to me. And they spend all their time at a park called ‘Conga Beach,’ which is somewhere, don’t ask me, on the southside.”
Rick and Saul lean back into the couch. Both cross their legs. The room has gone suddenly quiet. What have I said?
“And why does Senna keep escaping to this beach?” Evie says.
“Because she loves these drum things. She talks about them all the time, all these people she meets. And the boys. All these cute boys, and apparently they’ll trade a kiss for a cigarette, just as long as it’s not menthol.”
Rick and Saul laugh, but Evie is intent on her probing. “Don’t cover up how you feel about Senna,” she admonishes. She leans toward me, hands held out palms up as if I were about to lay a baby or a ripe watermelon in her arms. “Don’t conceal yourself.” This from a woman who uses more petroleum on her face than I do in my car.
“Well, I feel like she’s finding her way in the world, and that I couldn’t stop her even if I tried, and that if I did try it’ll just hurt more when she’s gone.”
“Kids gotta leave sometime,” Saul adds in, though he’s never had any of his own. “Where’s she want to go to school?”
“What, college? She didn’t even apply, thinks it’s too easy, too obvious. Blame August for that one.”
Rick and Saul chuckle in knowing agreement.
“So now it’s New York, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, London… She keeps saying, ‘What do you think, Mom? How about Beijing?’ Christ, she’s an ambitious kid. I mean, she interviewed Studs Terkel for a book report. She and Cindy are going to strap on their packs and never come back. She wants to follow her father’s footsteps. No big deal, right?” I feel suddenly inflamed by this notion. My cheeks go hot, and I can’t keep it from coming out. “Blame me — wife couldn’t love him enough to keep him at home. If he was sleeping around you’d tell me, right? Saul? Rick?” Rick and Saul stare into their wine glasses. There’s something interesting at the bottom apparently. I break into a high laugh that sounds psychotic even to me.
“It’s just a bunch of smelly guys on that bus,” Rick offers.
“No girls allowed,” Saul intones in a deep voice.
Rick seems to think this an off note. “August is loyal,” he says firmly. “He’s committed. It ain’t rock and roll, but he is.”
Evie gets up and goes to the toilet. Rick and Saul sit there fidgeting. They try to ask me about work, but I’m clearly upset. Neither of them really understands what I do anyway. Evie comes back with her jacket on, ready to leave. “We’ll let you get on,” Rick seconds, as if I had a roast in the oven and needed to get back to basting it.
After I see them down to the front gate, I pick up the bottles and glasses, straighten the kitchen, and then burst into tears. I fold laundry, vacuum, put in my yoga video and do forty minutes. I’ve always tried to think of crying as a resource, the thing that makes you feel better when everything else is used up. Tonight I decide that’s the stupidest idea I’ve had in my life. When it’s time for bed, I borrow one of Senna’s teabags and put on the kettle. The phone rings.
I half expect it to be Evie calling to lob one last spitball of wisdom my way. Instead, a male voice calling itself a police officer. I don’t get the name, only hear him say the words “your daughter.” I’m down on my knees, clutching the phone like a lifeline. It’s like being hit with a wall of water. I’m drowning.
“What?” I manage to get out. “Sorry?”
The officer pauses to say in a slightly more tender version of his nasal accent, “Ma’am, she’s just fine, okay? Her friend — Ms. Taylor — might be talking with us awhile. Ms. Rawling just needs a ride home. This is her mother speaking?”
“Yes,” I say, “God, yes. What do I do?”
In my rush to the car, I leave the phone hanging off the hook, the back gate unlocked, and the kettle whistling a dying tune about negligent parenting.
Part Three
After I interrogate the desk sergeant, I’m confident that what happened involved Cindy getting picked up for dealing some pills at the park — though one thing I’ve learned about cops in my time, they never give you enough to make the complete picture. I wait in the precinct lobby an hour before a door opens and Senna shuffles out. She’s wearing a wildly improbable outfit — checkered skirt, hoop earrings, army surplus button-down — and looks like she’s just been very sick. I see a couple of figures milling around in the hall behind her and want to scream. But, unlike August, I don’t make scenes in police departments.
I’m all set to start my scolding, but when we get close, I see how slack Senna’s face has gone and pull her into me so hard I feel her ribs against mine. If this is my new program of tough love… not a good start.
On the Kennedy driving back home, Senna reaches over and takes my hand. I ask if she wants to tell me what happened. She shakes her head no. A minute later, she says softly, “Cindy was just trying to sell some stuff she bought at the beach a few weeks ago. She didn’t want it anymore. She only wanted to… And then this big guy bursts out of nowhere flashing a badge, and then he’s got our friend Rainy in cuffs — just because Rainy’s black, mom. I mean Rainy was just…” She trails away until the only sound is the skittering of highway gravel against the car’s undercarriage.
“So what were they?” I ask.
“What were what?”
“Come on, the pills. Ecstasy? Uppers, downers, ludes?”
She lets go of my hand. “It was ecstasy.”
“Okay, well, ecstasy. Senna, you have to know how dangerous those–”
“And some PCP.”
“PCP!” I slow down so I can attempt to drive and glare at my daughter at the same time. “Senna, this means we’re going to have a very serious talk about drugs.”
She snorts. “Maybe Dad can help with that one.”
So I wasn’t fooling her in the kitchen the other night after all.
“Well, don’t listen, then,” I say. I choose to be angry now, angry in the overblown way you get when you stub your toe. “You won’t have to listen to me or your father when you’re gone, or follow any of our rules, so why listen now.”
“I’m not gone yet,” Senna says quietly.
“No, but I wish you’d tell me exactly when you are going, so I can get on with my fucking life, as pathetic as you probably think it is.”
“Shit, Mom…” Senna says. She falls silent.
It’s a clear night and despite the light pollution I can see two, maybe three stars. I look out, hoping for a sign, some kind of extra twinkle, even if from an O’Hare landing beacon. “Senna,” I say, my voice sounding in my head somewhere between sympathetic and defeated, “give me your hand.” She shrinks against the door. “Come on, would I hit you? Give me your hand again.”
I hold out my right hand, and she timidly offers me her left. I begin with the fingers, making small twists up and down each one in turn. I use my thumb to loosen the tendons on the back of her hand, then turn it over and work on the palm. I drive this way — one-handed, straining to see my beacon — all the way home.
There are nights I know I won’t sleep, nights that demand I acknowledge the imbalance of my life and apply a counterweight or two. By 3 a.m. I more or less understand this: My fear for Senna’s safety is just a front for my fear that when she’s gone I will be lost. I should have been careful. I married a man I knew would make a wreck of my heart. I told him, Yes, he did need to follow his calling. He had to stay on the road — the music was important — Senna I would make it through okay. We reasoned, we discussed. But in the end, the only compromise was mine. I’m afraid for Senna, and I envy her. She’ll never be this foolish. She got her father’s looks, but she’ll leave a trail of awestruck boys behind her like she was a tornado.
* * *
Allowing for the exception of God and Neapolitan ice cream, good things don’t come in threes. The second of my three phone calls finds me at work. The front desk sends it through without a name. I have to say cheerily, “Corporate Marketing, this is Sue.”
“Hi, Sue Rawling? This is Dave from–”
It takes me a moment. “Oh, yes, Trance. You’ve got my work number.”
He says he’s calling to thank me for my purchase, wants to know how it’s working out. I remind him that, actually, the drum is for Senna. He stumbles a little, but finishes his spiel: “And we’ve got a free class here at the store on the 30th, so if your…”
“Daughter.”
“Daughter wants to come check it out, it should be really…”
“Fun?” Okay, I’m being mean. I throw him a bone. “How’s the funk hop DJing going, Dave?”
Now he’s back in his element. “Subterranean, every Wednesday. Ten buck cover, but you get in free.”
I thank him, but no thanks. There’s a moment’s awkward silence. “Cool,” he says, “I’m out, Sue.” I go through the day with a smile at the corner of my lips. People notice, smile back.
My third call is waiting for me at the apartment — a message from August. They’ve had a few cancelled shows. He’s coming home in a week.
Part Four
Is it enough to say that I’m paralyzed? Exactly how can I get up each morning, go through the usual choreography as I’ve done for months and months, and still the day doesn’t pass? The life I lead on my own suddenly feels irrelevant, impossible even. Can I call August a “significant absence” when I’m the one who no longer seems present? I try to get a hold of Rick, to find out where August is and when, more precisely, he’ll be arriving. August doesn’t carry his keys on the road; he loses little things easily.
Senna has the good sense not to go out. We cook and eat in silence, watch rented movies in our sweats, but most of the time she camps out in her room listening to music and knitting. On Saturday night she meets a boy for Thai food in Uptown, but comes back in less than two hours. “He was kind of low key,” she says, “and the food sucked.”
“Low key,” I say, “what does that mean exactly?”
“Oh, he was fun, and really cute, but just… boring. No ideas, I guess. No plans.”
I try not to sound derisive: “Aren’t you a little young for plans?”
She pauses, seems to seriously consider this. “I’m looking for someone special.”
“Special can wear you out. You’ll learn to appreciate boring.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he has a girlfriend, too.”
“Nothing boring about a two-timer.”
She rolls her eyes. “They’re the most boring, Mom.”
When Senna goes to her room, I sit on the couch staring at the wall. I keep turning over something August said once in an interview. His proudest achievement? His band. Because everyone who played sideman for him also had his own thing–some group, some project where he was frontman. August Rawling has no hired hands.
Yes, but when their CDs come out, if they ever do, there’s always a little sticker attached: “… of the August Rawling Band” or “… formerly of…”
Thirty years ago, people bragged about their sister or uncle or brother-in-law being personal secretary, gardener, golf caddy, you name it, to such and such city alderman or some big wig down at Montgomery Ward’s. Now everyone wants to be lauded on their own merits, adored if possible. Does getting by, and maybe just a little more, no longer constitute a life? Thirty years ago, you were proud to be a janitor, to scrub toilets in a good building, work for a good company. Now you despise yourself for missing the chance at something better, something that might have gotten you featured in a magazine. Fame is never out of reach; you just didn’t grab it when you could have. You didn’t quit your day job, couldn’t get noticed, no one understood you, you were ahead of your time, or behind it, weren’t pretty or charismatic or lucky or hungry or desperate enough, didn’t have money, or didn’t fall in with the right people. And then you see someone like August Rawling and it makes you sick, because he got everything you didn’t and has the bald nerve to talk about “frontmen” and “sidemen.” Now everyone has plans, and almost everyone is disappointed.
Sunday morning, I feel so antic I make an emergency massage appointment at the second most expensive place on the northside. When I arrive, my usual masseuse is on vacation. I get a new woman who uses so much oil I come out feeling like a glazed ham.
* * *
In the clamor of my office, I only hear one voice — the voice you take out driving with friends on Friday night, sing along to in the shower, the voice that gets you through yet another bland, featureless day. A voice the taste and color of rich, dark tobacco, of earth, of opium — the voice that’s been with me my entire adult life.
“We’re in Oklahoma. Gonna try to push through and make it in tonight. If not, we’ll do something at one of these universities. Stop downstate somewhere. Give them a thrill… Hey, Susie…” the voice says, “am I coming through?”
I can’t move, think, talk. I’m in love with him. That’s the problem.
“I had a fight with Evie. Rick and Saul, too.”
Something rumbles by. They’re at a truck stop. “I talked to Rick the other day. He didn’t say anything.”
“Senna got in trouble.”
“Shit, what happened, baby?”
“She’s okay,” I say brusquely. “We’re okay.”
“Susie, I know this whole thing…” The sound of air brakes releasing in the background drowns him out for a moment. “It’s been a whirlwind. For you guys, too.”
It hasn’t been. Not at all. I’d take a whirlwind any day.
Either August or the truck lets out another long sigh. “I am exhausted…. Played four and a half hours last night. Be nice to sleep in my bed. But these kids, Susie… I mean, they’re really hearing it this time.”
“I’m glad.”
“I know I always say that. But it feels different this time.” When I don’t reply, he says, “We can sock it all away this time. We could retire on this one.”
Doesn’t work either. August, retire? And why does everyone assume I loathe my job? Up until now, I’ve been the breadwinner.
He tries again: “Graduation is on the 13th, right? We throwing a party?”
“Cindy’s parents. Barbecue.”
“Maybe I’ll bring my guitar.”
“The girls are the main event, August.”
“Sure. No, you’re right….” Over the phone, I hear someone calling August’s name. He calls something back. “Look, we’ll make it in tonight. I’ll tell Charlie to put the pedal down, make some time. Miss you guys too much. We’ll push through, make it in tonight.”
The room swarms back in — my coworkers chattering, the coffee pot gurgling. Tonight. I even hear the whine of the fluorescent lights.
“Push through,” I tell him. “Try.”
The rest of the afternoon is like a toothache. At the end of the day, I put my head in my hands, stare at my desk calendar until the dates and all the scrawled-in little notes blur together. I pick up the phone.
“What’s up, Mom?”
I ask if she has enough cash for the bus, tell her to meet me at Halsted and Roscoe at seven. We’re going for some real Thai food. She starts to say goodbye, but I interrupt.
“Senna,” I say, “one more thing. Don’t forget to lock the downstairs gate.”
Part Five
Twenty years ago Subterranean would’ve been a corner bar and filled at nine-thirty at night with serious-looking men slouching at the bar, their heads slowly descending toward tumblers of whiskey. Now it looks like a boutique furniture showroom, the kind of yuppie place August would rather piss on than patronize. This suits me just fine.
Senna and I are still snuffling and red-cheeked, bellies full of Thai curry, hopped up on green tea. We find Trance at the bar. The dreadlocks are gone, replaced by a buzz cut. I can’t decide if he looks older or younger. “Hey!” Trance says, obviously unable to put my face with a name. Perhaps he meets a lot of forty-six year old women as a disc jockey. But, bless him, he does remember. “Miss Rawling… awesome to see you out.”
“Just ‘Sue’ is fine. And I told you about Senna, yes?” If I could read Senna’s thoughts, and at this moment I dearly wish I could, she’d be saying, What the fuck…?
The bartender looks at Senna skeptically. “It’s cool, man,” Trance says. “They’re cool. They’re with me.” He leads us to a couch. “Get you ladies anything to drink?”
“A little slow tonight?” I say.
“Early. They just put some CD on until eleven, then I get up and rock the joint. So, how do you two know each other?” Oh, my god, a pick up line.
“Trance,” I say, “remember? My daughter?”
“Yeah,” he says. He turns to Senna. “Yeah, I sold your mom a–”
“Two cherry cokes would be great, Trance.”
He saunters across the floor and leans on the bar, scans the room with an expression on his face he must think of as smoldering, but looks more like constipated to me. I turn and give Senna a conspiratorial nudge. “Look like a good time?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Let’s have a good time. I want to have a good time with you tonight.”
“Sure,” Senna says after a moment.
Trance returns with our drinks. “We like this place,” I say. “It’s got atmosphere.” I take a drink…. Predictably, it’s nearly three-quarters booze. I raise my glass to Senna. “Enjoy while it lasts, kid.”
Trance clinks our glasses, tips his beer bottle back, and takes a long drink.
The rest of the night lurches ahead. I don’t know where all the fresh drinks come from. I buy a few of them. Trance gets up in his little DJ pulpit and starts the room pulsing along to his records. I recognize snatches of old singles — reggae, R and B, soul — songs I know. But they’re all jumbled, sped up, slowed down, bent and twisted. Senna and I do our best to dance. Just before midnight, the room fills up with groups of men in untucked dress shirts and women in mini’s and furry boots. I suddenly feel like a Brownies leader on a canoe outing.
I lose Senna in the crowd and retreat to a booth in the corner. I look out into a little sea of knees, raise my drink and drain it down to the ice. A little tremor runs through me. My stomach turns over. I know it, I feel it, I intuit it — Christ, did I used to belief in intuition — that at this very instant August is getting back into a car — his bass player’s, his soundman’s — and driving away. I don’t know if he realizes I’ve locked him out on purpose, but he is leaving angry, confused, and, very likely, relieved. Why pretend? There is no me and August — just August and his music, me and my memory of him.
Someone sits down next to me. A hand brushes my thigh underneath the table.
“What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be–”
Trance points to the booth, where another kid is wearing a pair of headphones half on, half off and flipping through records.
“I wanted to sit with you,” he says.
“Trance, I’m a little… I don’t really–”
“What’s wrong?” he says — tender, but only interested in one thing.
“Please,” I say, “Trance…”
For a moment the crowd sways itself apart, and I see Senna dancing with herself, beer in hand, paying no heed to the young people preening and presenting all around her. I close my eyes and try to take myself, through all the booze and smoke and bad perfume, not just out of the room, but out of my body and out of this life. I try to go back to when I was her, standing in the audience staring up at the boy with the acoustic guitar and the crooked nose who, at that moment, looked and sounded like promise. I’m being silly, I tell myself. Hysterical. The second I see him, none of this will matter. I feel my legs readying themselves to lift me from this haze, to rush home, hoping I haven’t missed him.
The hand brushes my thigh again. “I’m glad you came tonight,” Trance says. I turn and look at him. When he touches me between my legs, I don’t stop him.
“Why don’t you go talk to her?” I say thickly. “Go dance.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Isn’t she… Isn’t she pretty enough? Go on. She likes boys like you.”
“I like you.”
I don’t feel a thing. I breathe more heavily. It’s meant to encourage him. No good will come of this moment, but it won’t be just another footnote in the August Rawling story. I lean over, kiss Trance once on the lips. His stubble is rougher than August’s.
“She’s plain,” Trance murmurs. “You’re special.”
It’s takes me a moment too long to respond, and in that moment all of my vanity, envy, and regret floods in. “Wrong,” I say, weak as water. “Wrong.” I put my hand on top of his searching hand and hold it there. I find my daughter in the crowd. She’s still dancing, lost in her own world. “Enjoy it while it lasts,” I murmur. The music keeps thumping away. I start his hand moving again, close my eyes, and wait until he thinks it’s over.
Tonight no longer matters. Endings are easy, it’s the rest — tomorrow, the months to follow — that terrifies me. Home is cool and quiet, Senna too drunk to undress herself. I hold her hair back as she vomits into the toilet. When I get her into bed, she’s very pale, but clear-eyed again.
“Senna,” I say, “stay with me another minute. I have something for you.” I go into my bedroom, shove some clothes aside, and pull the drum out of the closet. I wrap my arms around the thing, waver on my feet in the darkness.
“A gift from mother to daughter,” I say as I set it down beside her bed. “Something she can take wherever she goes.”
Senna smiles faintly. “I found it the other day. I was trying your dresses on.”
“I’ll get you a traveling bag. You can play it on the top of the Himalayas.”
“I love it, Mom…”
My mouth opens in protest before she even says it.
“I’ll have to leave it here. It’s too big.”
She’s right, I realize. I bought this thing hoping to anchor her, not set her free.
“I’m passing out, Mom. The room’s going egg-shaped.” Her eyes flutter closed.
“I’m going to go a little crazy when you leave. You know that, don’t you?”
She’s with me again. For some stupid reason, I expect her to be crying. She’s not.
“You and dad don’t have to stay together just for my sake.”
“Senna–” I say, scolding her. And then something in me folds up and packs itself away, and I simply tell her, “He’s not gone yet.”
August will come back. I can’t keep him out of my life. Maybe what feels like an ending now is going to seem, in a few months, like an episode. Nothing changes. We just have to remind ourselves, now and then, how to live with our lives. Maybe I’ve learned how to be the supporting cast so that Senna won’t have to. A nice thought, anyway.
“Why don’t you play drums, Mom?” She really is drunk. I have to smile.
“I’m too old,” I say softly and pull the covers over her. “It’s too embarrassing.”
Me, I wait backstage until the storm of applause finally withdraws, until the lights go down and they’ve all gone home. That’s me — the one who’s always there at the end of the night. And tonight I’m tucking my daughter into bed, and then in the morning I’m hauling myself up and I’m going to work. Someone gets to do that, too.
