Ballads of Suburbia (5 page)

“G
OD!”
L
IAM GAGGED AS HE HIT
mute on Whitney Houston's “I Will Always Love You” video. “They call this crap one of the greatest ballads of all time?” he asked, mocking the VJ's introduction. “Have they ever heard a Johnny Cash song? Ballads aren't all sappy love songs. The truly
good
ones tell a story about real life.”

I vigorously nodded my head in agreement. My brother had become quite the music critic in six months' time. I definitely preferred discovering new bands and bashing crappy ones with him to talking boys with Stacey. She was preparing to break up with boyfriend number five. Luke, I think. All of them had monosyllabic names that would easily fit on the McDonald's name badges they were destined to wear. Stacey'd invited me to go to the mall that day, but I'd declined. Hanging with Liam was a lot more enjoyable than watching Stacey strut around in a short skirt and too much makeup in pursuit of Neanderthals.

“Switch it back to MTV,” I told my brother. He did, but since it was spring break, we were assaulted with images of overbaked sorority girls in skimpy bikinis dancing like fools for the camera. I rolled my eyes. “Put it back to Whitney on mute.”

Liam did as instructed, but he also smirked at me. “You're just jealous.”

“Of a bunch of airhead bimbos on a beach? I don't think so.”

“Seriously, you wouldn't rather be in Florida with a ton of friends than in our living room?” Liam asked without a trace of his usual flippant sarcasm. “I'd rather be anywhere in the world than here. Admit it, our home life sucks.”

He said those words with such intensity, implying that our house was an awful place. Our parents were busy, sure, but we were a happy family, goddammit. And why was he talking about this? I thought we had an unspoken rule: lighthearted music-video banter only.

“Our lives aren't
that
bad. Look at everything we have,” I objected, rubbing my slashed-up arm through my ratty blue cardigan, as I'd taken to doing when uncomfortable.

Liam's eyes drilled into me in such a way that my gaze drifted to my blanketed feet. Then he slowly looked around the room. It had been redone the year before when Dad had gotten sick of “living in a pigsty.” The creamy walls had been repainted to conceal the smudged handprints near the light switch. The wooden floors were kept neatly swept, and the area rugs were no longer stained by Kool-Aid and muddy shoes. All the furniture actually matched (spring green) and so did the vases (earth tones) and the picture frames that lined the mantel (silver).

Liam focused on the center photo, my parents' wedding picture, and said coldly, “Dad redecorated this house so he can pretend he has the life he wants. He's miserable. Mom's miserable. It's only a matter of time before the whole thing falls apart. I bet they'll be divorced within a year.”

My jaw dropped so low my internal organs could have tumbled from my mouth. “You're fucking crazy! Where would you get an idea like that?”

Liam glared at me. “I pay attention. They've been fighting in silence for two years now, ever since Mom said she wouldn't consider moving us to Texas for that job Dad wanted to take. She
tried to make it up to him by going back to work to finance this home-makeover crap, but they haven't been happy since. They hardly talk or touch each other. It's
so
obvious.”

As much as Liam wanted to convince, I wanted to deny. I didn't want to think about the dinners we'd had since the kitchen had been remodeled, how we barely spoke, Dad's graying head bowed, Mom's jade eyes focused on some invisible yet incredibly absorbing thing outside the kitchen window…

“Mom and Dad are fine! Everything's fine!” I insisted, tugging the blanket up to my chin like I could hide behind it the way I did when watching scary movies.

“Whatever! I've been stuck in this house with them while you had Stacey. I can't ignore it like you do by sitting in your bedroom with your headphones on, slicing your wrists or whatever!”

My skin went cold.
He knew.
The little sneak
had
noticed. Feelings of betrayal replaced the concern I had about my parents' marriage. This was worse than Stacey ditching me for boys. Liam had violated my most private act. And I'd been treating him like an equal, like a friend.

“Fuck you.” I flung the afghan to the floor.

I didn't even make it out of the living room before Liam shouted, “No, fuck you! You're gonna face it. You're not gonna abandon me like you did when we moved.”

I felt a slight twinge of guilt, but then the remote hit me in the shoulder blade. I whipped around in a blind rage, found the remote, and hurled it back at Liam. It would have cracked him in the cheek if he hadn't caught it.

The La-Z-Boy rocked violently as he leapt up and lunged across the room, trying to slap me with the remote. I knocked it out of his hand and it skidded across the floor, bouncing off the metal grate in front of the fireplace. His hands flew for my throat and I attempted to knee him in the groin. He deflected my knee
with his own, but it threw us both off balance and we went tumbling to the floor.

We wrestled like we had as kids arguing over the same toy. Well, it was kind of like that. We didn't actually want what the other had. We hated our silent house, our empty, friendless lives, and the reflection of that we saw in each other's eyes. We slapped and scratched those feelings out. Liam's long legs-he was taller than me now, I realized midbattle-sent the coffee table careening into the La-Z-Boy, spilling my Coke onto a book of
National Geographic
photos. My flailing arms upset an end table, ejecting a lamp onto the couch. We rolled dangerously close to the fireplace and Liam's shoulder slammed into the wall, shaking the mantel.

Picture frames crashed to the floor, glass shattering around us. I instinctually covered my brother's body with mine as if a bomb had gone off. My elbow hit the remote and a roar erupted from the TV: the Nirvana video was on for the millionth time. I almost screamed, but ended up joining Liam in an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

He sputtered, hiccupping and trying to regain control of himself. I turned down the volume on the TV as he sifted through broken glass to retrieve a posed family photo that had been taken at Sears the Christmas before we moved to Oak Park. He smirked, handing it to me. “Maybe someone will actually yell tonight. Wouldn't that be a relief?”

I nodded, staring at another photo-one of my father with a wild beard and hair that hadn't yet grayed, grinning as he stood in front of a tent, squeezing Liam and me on either side of him. I reached for the picture, but Liam blocked me.

“Don't cut yourself,” he said gruffly, frowning again. His eyes drifted away like our mother's always did nowadays. I followed his gaze to the TV, to the mosh pit in the music video I'd used to educate him. We'd seen it so many times, but it still managed to strike inspiration in me.

“We should see some of these bands live,” I proposed. “You know, after we're done being grounded for this mess.”

“Pffft, grounded.” I expected another rant, but apparently my suggestion-or our wrestling match-had diffused some of Liam's bitterness. He wandered back to his chair, remote in hand, turning up the volume as the Red Hot Chili Peppers came on. “I wonder who's touring,” he mused, smiling. “You come up with good ideas sometimes, sis.”

L
IAM AND
I
SNUCK OUT TO
concerts on a weekly basis. We went to the Metro, the Aragon, the Riv, anything on an “L” line because we didn't want to deal with getting permission and rides from our parents-though we did help ourselves to their wallets when allowance money ran out. We saw famous bands, local bands, whoever happened to be playing an all-ages show whenever we happened to need to get the hell out of the house. That was the ballad of suburbia: give me loud to drown out the silence.

The summer after my freshman year, we saw our biggest show of all: Lollapalooza. We had to tell our parents about that one because we needed a ride; the venue was way out in the southern suburbs. Dad tried to say no. He was still frustrated at Liam for having to retake algebra in summer school and at me because I'd announced I wouldn't be taking any more honors-level science or math classes. Mom overruled him.

I got some pot from Stacey to ensure that we had the ultimate outdoor music experience. Shrouded in late evening shadows, we smoked up at the top of the hill at the New World Music Theatre. My brother nodded and smiled his way through his first joint, blissfully stoned. I liked pot, but I liked anything that gave me a buzz: beer, cigarettes, razor blades. Pot would become Liam's escape of choice, and even the first time he got
high, it made him introspective, not silly like it had me and Stacey.

He squinted at the dyed, pierced, and tattooed masses milling around the lawn and concluded, “If these people went to my school, I'd have friends.”

I played with a hole in the worn canvas of my sneaker. “Some of these people probably do go to my school and I still don't have friends.”

“Why?”

“It's not like I haven't tried. I go places with Stacey, but you know…”

I trailed off, thinking about a party that Stacey had dragged me to on the north side of Oak Park. I'd followed her and her metalhead boyfriend into some stranger's basement toward a keg of cheap beer. It was a hot evening and the room so packed that everyone dripped with sweat even though the air conditioner ran full-blast. Guitars screeched from stereo speakers mounted on the wall, but a blue-haired boy's voice was audible over everything. He shoved through the crowd, screaming “Penile augmentation!” like some cracked-out town crier. Stacey giggled, reaching for him, telling him she loved him, because of course she knew him. He probably went to
my
school, but
she
knew him. The combination of beer, humidity, and the loud strangers who all knew one another-who, in fact, knew so many people that they didn't need to know me-made me sick to my stomach and I went home after half an hour.

“I have all these leftover insecurities from grade school, I guess,” I told my brother. “I automatically assume people won't like me, so I don't talk to them unless they approach me first. I can't become a part of a crowd because I can't get past that feeling that I don't belong.”

Liam nodded sympathetically, but before he could say anything, the people around us rose to their feet, signaling that the
band was about to come on. We followed suit, but couldn't even see the giant screens that flanked the stage, we were so far back. Over the deafening roar around us, Liam bent down and shouted in my ear. “You need to conquer this crowd thing. Literally. Crowd surf with me!”

“No way!” I shouted back. At the shows we'd been to, I'd hung out in the balcony while he braved the mosh pit.

“I'm gonna do it and I don't know how I'll find you later.”

Though I was unnerved by his threat, I continued to shake my head.

Then he said what I, as the older sibling, should have said to him back when we first moved to Oak Park, and later on in life, too: “Come with me. I'll protect you.”

Reassured by his simple words, I let him take my hand and we waded into the writhing masses. Liam tapped a big dude on the shoulder and said, “Help me lift my sister.”

They hoisted me into the waiting hands of others. At first I was tense, afraid I might be dropped, but eventually I realized that passing me around was part of the fun for everyone else. I relaxed and let myself enjoy the experience. It was exhilarating, like riding a roller coaster made of people. I gazed up at the starry sky and sang along with the crowd. Liam followed my path, weaving through the audience so that he could be there at the end of my ride.

I shouted, “I wanna go again!”

Liam laughed. “See, you fit in here just fine.”

F
ITTING IN CONCERTS WAS COOL
, but when the music ended, so did the camaraderie. You'd see familiar faces at the next show, maybe even say hello, but you wouldn't hang out every day or form a permanent circle of friends. And though I liked going to shows with Liam and was pretty content just sitting on the couch watching TV with him, part of me still wanted a group. That's why I went with Stacey to Scoville Park when she asked me to at the beginning of sophomore year.

Scoville was a few short blocks from my high school. It was
the
hangout for anyone who didn't play sports or join clubs or fit in with the popular crowd. Metalheads, stoners, hippies, punks, ravers, indie rockers, skaters, and those really weird kids who seemed to elude all categorization-those were the people you found at Scoville.

When school got out, they all met up at the main entrance of the park, a small concrete plaza with a couple of benches, an ornamental water fountain that no one used, and a much more popular pay phone-one of the few in town that could still receive incoming calls. (No one had cell phones back then, but all the dealers and wannabe dealers had pagers.) After lingering for fifteen minutes, everyone wandered into the park, dividing into small groups, generally according to subculture.

The hippies played Hacky Sack in the sun. The punks chain-smoked near the bushes by the entrance. The stoners retreated into the deep shade in the southwest corner and smoked pot on top of a shit-brown wooden sculpture that had probably passed for some version of modern art in the late sixties.

The skaters trekked up the hill to a huge statue, its base blackened from years of skateboards grinding against it. This abused monument divided the grassy part of the park from the tennis courts and playground. It consisted of three soldiers-one dressed in navy uniform, one army, one air force-and an angel who looked out over their heads, as if keeping watch over the rest of the world, but ignoring the park at her feet.

The first time Stacey and I went to Scoville, we accompanied her drug-dealing boyfriend on business. We returned twice more when Stacey was trolling for new guys. She migrated toward the stoners and the metalheads. It wasn't really my scene, but Stacey wasn't up on the punk and indie bands I listened to. Boys had taken priority over music for her.

Even though I hung back the way I always did when I tagged along with Stacey, I knew that Scoville was supposed to be my place. The key was finding the right person to go with, and halfway through sophomore year I finally found her.