The Lonely Hearts Club (3 page)

I adjust the mike and sing.

3 - Call Me

“I am going to kill him. This time I am really going to kill him.”

“Mom?” I say into the telephone. Even though it’s well past 11
A.M
., I’m still dead asleep. Ah, the joys of being unemployed. The morning light is pouring into the bedroom of my Soho loft. Well, my father’s Soho loft—the loft he bought for a song in the ‘80s (parking space included) so that he could crash on the nights he taught night seminars at NYU Medical School. But I’ve been staying here ever since I graduated from the NYU dorms and he hasn’t exactly kicked me out yet, so I sort of consider it mine.

“Your stupid father,” my mother says into the telephone. “This time I am really going to kill him. The nerve that man has!”

“Mom, it’s okay,” I say, reaching for the glass of water that I left at my bedside the night before. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.” I roll over and see that Jesse is already out of bed. I can smell the coffee wafting into the bedroom from the kitchen. I take a deep breath and try to figure out if he’s brewing the Costa Rican dark or the Columbian medium roast.

“That man claims that you can’t balance a checkbook,” she says. “O
f course
you know how to balance a checkbook!”

“Babe,” Jesse says, walking into the bedroom, planting a quiet kiss on my cheek, “I’m going into the studio. Can you spot me some more cash?”

“I mean,” my mother continues into my ear, “who doesn’t know how to balance a checkbook?!”

“Babe, I just
gave
you money for that demo last month,” I whisper back, careful to put my hand over the telephone.

“You know, technically,” my mom is saying into my ear, “I own half of that practice.”

“Well, the band needs another demo,” Jesse says, pulling on the jeans he wore last night. “Cassie’s going to talk to IMC for us, and we need a new demo to give her.”

“If I divorced him tomorrow,” my mom says, “I could take him for half of that damn practice.”

“Mom, you’re not going to divorce Dad,” I say to her. And then to Jesse: “Who the hell is Cassie?”

“The lead singer for The Rage,” Jesse says. “You met her last night. They just signed with IMC, but it’s on the down low. No one knows about it yet.” He puts his fingers to his mouth to make the international sign for “shhh.”

“Didn’t you just meet her last night?” I ask Jesse. “Why is she telling you about their deal if it’s such a big secret?”

“You don’t think I would divorce that man?” my mother asks me. “Because I can divorce that man if I want—”

“I’ve got to get going. So, the money?” Jesse says, pulling a fresh T-shirt over his head. I cannot believe he is asking me for more money. Was he not there last night when I told everyone that my father fired me? I’m pretty sure that he was, since I distinctly recall someone calling my father a dick. And as tired as I am, I’m also pretty sure that he is the person now asking for money from said dick.

My mother is still ranting on the other end of the phone as I talk to Jesse. “I just don’t think that I should be throwing money around right now,” I say, and Jesse’s mouth tightens into a pit.

“Throwing money around?” he says. “Is that what you call it? Don’t you believe in me? In my music?”

“Yes,” I say, as my mother’s voice rises an octave as she details how much her friend Linda recently got in a divorce settlement. “But you were just saying how I should be focusing on my music right now. What if
I
need that money for studio time?”

“What if
you
need that money?” Jesse says. “Well, when was the last time you sat down and wrote a song? What exactly do you think you’d be recording in that studio?”

I feel my face begin to burn. “Why don’t you get the money from someone else’s girlfriend for a change?” I say and Jesse storms out of the apartment. As he makes his exit, I can hear him say “I didn’t just meet her last night” under his breath. As if that justifies this whole prior exchange or something.

“Jo?” my mom says. “Jo?”

“Yes, Mom, I’m still here. Of course I’m listening to you.”

“Well,” she says, letting out a sigh, “don’t think about all of this unpleasantness for a while. Have you given any thought to what you would like for your twenty-second birthday?”

“A record contract?” I say, rolling out of bed and padding toward the kitchen with the portable phone tucked between my head and my shoulder.

“I meant, more like a party or a small dinner thing, or a big present?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” I say, grabbing the carafe from the coffeemaker. There’s no coffee left in it. Jesse must have made only enough for himself before he left for the day. I silently curse
him as I empty the filter and go about making a fresh pot. “I don’t really want anything. I just want the day to pass by unnoticed.”

“Unnoticed?” my mother asks. I know that she is appalled that I would let the opportunity to have a party or get a huge present pass me by. She would never let any opportunity to have a party or get a huge present pass
her
by. “You only turn twenty-two once, honey.”

“I know, Mom,” I say. “It’s just that I feel like it accentuates the fact that my life is not exactly going to plan.”

“Your life is perfect. You are beautiful and talented and very, very lucky,” she says. I know she doesn’t mean to patronize me, but she is, as usual, totally dismissing what’s important to me. We’re mere minutes from the conversation turning to why I’m not pressuring my live-in boyfriend to produce an engagement ring (little does she know that said ring would probably be financed by her husband’s money), so I have to clarify what the life plan is.

“I’m not where I want to be with my music,” I say, missing the filter as I pour coffee beans directly onto the counter.

“There’s more to life than music,” she says.

“Not for me, there’s not,” I say, cupping the beans into my hand and putting them into the coffeemaker.

“Why don’t we talk about this when you’re in a better mood?” she says, and hangs up the phone just as I’m telling her that my mood is fine.

The coffee machine whizzes and whirls, grinding the beans and beginning to brew. I stare at the coffee dripping down and think about how crazy my mother is making me with the emphasis on my birthday. It’s as if she doesn’t have a wedding to plan, so she might as well put
all of her pent-up “plan your only daughter’s wedding” energy into a birthday celebration for me. She doesn’t seem to care at all that it’s not what I want.

The phone rings again and I pause for a moment, deciding whether or not I should answer it at all. It would serve her right if I just didn’t pick up. If she doesn’t care about what I want, then I don’t care about what she wants.

The answering machine picks up the call.

“Miss Waldman? Uh, I mean Jo. It’s Vinnie, down at the garage—”

“Hello?” I say as I click the phone on. I silently chastise myself for forgetting to call the garage this morning to tell them that I wouldn’t be using my car.

“Oh, hi. It’s Vinnie, down at the garage.”

“Hey, Vinnie. I’m so sorry I didn’t call. I won’t be needing my car today. Actually, I won’t be needing it at all anymore during the week. Well, unless I have a gig. But I probably won’t, so how about I just call you whenever I need it?”

“Uh,” Vinnie says, “that’s not what I was calling about. Manhasset Volkswagen is here to pick up your car.”

“It’s not going in for service today,” I say as I pour myself a cup of coffee. “They must be there for someone else’s car.”

“Not for service,” Vinnie says. “It’s more like a repossession kind of deal.”

“Repo—what? My car’s not being repossessed,” I say. “There is no way my car is being repossessed. Put them on the line.”

I grab my apartment keys and race out of the loft, still holding the portable phone and wearing my PJs and no shoes. I hit the
DOWN
button for the elevator as a voice comes onto the line.

“Miss Waldman?” he says. “This is Matt Kassnove from Manhasset Volkswagen. How are you today?”

“You tell me,” I say as I hop into the elevator. Matt begins to say something back to me, but the call gets dropped as the elevator lurches down to the basement. I burst through the doors of the garage, and a man who I can only assume is Matt Kassnove is in the driver’s seat of my bright yellow Beetle, about to drive it out of the garage.

“Stop!” I scream, holding my hands out in front of me as I run to the front of the car. Vinnie is in the background, telling me he’s sorry over and over.

“Miss Waldman, this is nothing personal, you understand,” Matt says.

“Personal?” I say as I hop onto the hood of the car and lay down on it spread eagle. “You are taking my car, my personal car, and I am personally very upset, so this is very much ‘personal’ to me!”

“Miss Waldman, please get off the hood of the car,” he says.

“I am not getting off the hood of this car,” I say, arms and legs still splayed out as far as I can reach them. I’m grateful that the car is on and the hood is warm as the winter airs floats down into the garage from outside.

“Miss Waldman, with all due respect,” Matt says, “you are not the owner of this car. Your father is. And he told me to come and pick it up. I’m just doing my job.”

“My father is taking my Bumblebee?” I say, getting out of my most unladylike spread-eagle pose. I sit up on the hood and cross my legs.

“I’m sorry, Miss Waldman,” Matt says.

“Wait just one minute,” I say, and dial my father’s office number on my portable phone. The reception is bad, since we’re in the basement of the building, but we’re right near the exit, so even with the static-filled connection, I can still hear.

Nurse Barbie picks up the line and I demand to speak to my father.

“This is for your own good, Pumpkin,” my father explains.

“How is humiliating me in a different way every day of the week good for me?” I ask in a whisper, trying in vain to make it so that Vinnie and Matt can’t hear me. It’s a losing cause, though, because they are both listening to every word as if they were in the studio audience of
The Jerry Springer Show
.

“You graduated college in May. You’re turning twenty-two soon, Pumpkin. It’s time to grow up. And it’s my fault that you haven’t. I’ve coddled you for too long. I gave you a job. I let you live in the loft, rent-free. I even got you a car to drive to your job. I guess I thought if I gave you all the tools, you’d make something of the opportunity. Maybe if things worked out at my office, you could have your own business one day.

“You’ve been standing still for the last two years and I’m enabling it. But not anymore. It’s time for you to get a real job and start paying your own way. Once you do that, if you can afford it, you can have the car back.”

“I can?” I ask.

“If you can afford the lease and the rent on the parking space, yes.”

“I have to pay rent for the parking space, too?” I ask. No one can afford a parking space in Manhattan.

“But keep in mind, Pumpkin, you will also need to start paying me rent on the loft.” He wants me to start paying for the loft? Is this the part where I lose my home and I have to move into my car, like Jewel?

I must not let this Beetle leave the lot no matter what.

“I can’t afford a loft!”

“Well, then, I’d suggest you get a job quickly. I’ll give you a short grace period to get on your feet, but after that, we’ll be working out some sort of payment plan.”

I hang up the phone without saying good-bye and get that feeling of floaty weightlessness you have when you’re in a dream.

Or a nightmare.

“Are we all clear now, Miss Waldman?”

“Please just call me Jo,” I say, sliding down off the hood.

“Well, then, I’m sorry, Jo,” Matt says, and then drives my car out of the garage into the winter cold.

I stand there, shivering in the driveway of the garage for a few minutes, looking out to the street where Matt has just taken my car. My dad’s car, I should say. That distinction has now been made clear to me by the fine folks at Manhasset Volkswagen.

“Yo, Jo, your daddy paid for your car?” Vinnie says. “Damn! How do you get a setup like that?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure that out,” I say and walk out of the garage to the elevator. As I walk barefoot along the garage floor, a pebble gets stuck in the middle of my foot and I have to hop back up the rest of the way to the loft.

4 - Loser

I limp into my loft and hop onto the kitchen counter to clean off my dirty feet. Removing the rather large pebble that has lodged itself squarely into the center of my left foot, I begin to cry. I tell myself that I’m just crying because I’m in pain, but once I give myself permission to cry because my foot hurts, the floodgates open.

As soon as the tears start to flow, I immediately wash my hands and splash water on my face. I hate girls who cry. I’m sure that Deborah Harry never cried when she was living with her whole band in a studio apartment that only had one bed before they got their record deal. (She did have Chris Stein to keep her warm, though.)

I call Jesse’s cell phone and it goes directly to voice mail. I hang up and walk over to the couch, careful to baby my left foot as I walk. Distracted by the pain, I almost walk into Jesse’s drum set, and my right hip grazes his cymbal, causing it to ring out. Beck’s immortal words immediately spring to mind, and I take my guitar from its stand and begin to play.