The Nobodies Album (10 page)

I’ve wished sometimes that the book Milo bought at the airport that day had been
The Human Slice
. Published just five months after the events of 9/11,
The Human Slice
was not my most critically acclaimed book, but it was my biggest seller. The popular theory is that readers were in exactly the right place to appreciate a novel about characters whose minds are magically wiped clean of trauma and sadness. Maybe this is true, and maybe it’s not; the reasons people buy books are personal and arbitrary, and trying to analyze it does nothing but clutter a writer’s mind. The fact remains that, for whatever reason, in 2002 people bought this book in droves. If four years later Milo had picked up that book, my gentle fable of forgetting and perhaps even forgiving, then he might have come away with a different understanding of my intentions.

But when he took his seat in first class that day and read for the five hours he had between taking his last breath of Boston’s air and taking his first of San Francisco’s, the book he was holding was not
The Human Slice
. It was
Tropospheric Scatter
, a messy, sprawling splotch of a book that had been nominated for two important prizes. And as he read, he wasn’t thinking about terrorism or firefighters’ widows or national tragedy. He was turning the well-worn pages of his own great loss, and mine. He was thinking about the day we lost Mitch and Rosemary.

• Milo Frost ACCUSED KILLER Autograph on Back of Envelope, $25.00
  

• “219 Sea Cliff” Replica of ACTUAL number sign from Murder House, Pareidolia, Milo, $7.99
  

• ORIGINAL copy New York Times, 11/10/10, MILO FROST front page, $9.00
  

Items listed on MurderAuction.com, November 11, 2010

Chapter Five

I follow Chloe to her car, which turns out to be a Checker, like the old taxicabs, but painted red. As I get in, I peek into the cavernous backseat and see a child’s car seat with a leopard-spotted cover perched on the red vinyl. I feel an unexpected pulse of tenderness at the sight.

“Nice car,” I say.

“Oh, thanks. I always liked the way these looked. Joe gave it to me. That’s kind of his thing, giving people cars.” She laughs at the way that sounds. “It’s kind of a pain, though. It’s hard to find a mechanic who can track down the right replacement parts and things like that.”

She turns the key, and a blast of music fills the car—nothing I recognize.

“Sorry,” says Chloe, turning the radio off. It’s a new stereo system, clearly not something that came with the original car. “I was listening to that earlier. Can you believe I still listen to Pareidolia by myself in the car? I’m such a groupie, even after all this time.”

“But that wasn’t Pareidolia,” I say. I’m certain I’m right, but it sounds like I’m asking a question.

“Yes, it was,” she says. “It’s ‘Traitor in the Backseat.’ You never heard it before?”

“No,” I say. I feel a little stunned. “It’s not on any of their albums.”

“Yes, it is,” she says. “It’s on
December Graffiti
.” She looks over her shoulder, pulls out of her parking space.

I’m more agitated than I should be by this, and I feel like snapping at her that it’s not on my copy of the album, or any other that I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot of them, because, crazy lady that I am, sometimes I visit the P section of a music store just to pick one up and turn it over in my hands), but I stop myself.

“Oh, you know what?” she says after a minute. “You’re right, it’s not on the American version. It was a bonus track on the European release. It’s one of those hidden tracks—you know what I’m talking about? It’s not listed in the credits, it just starts playing after the last song is over.”

I absorb this. Given the number and scope of the surprises I’ve had this week, this one shouldn’t even register. But it does. I thought I’d done such careful research. I thought I knew every song Milo had ever recorded.

“Why did they do that?” I ask. “Why didn’t they include it on the American album?”

“I’m not sure,” she says. She stops for a red light. “I don’t follow that stuff. Probably their label didn’t think it was commercial enough or something. It’s kind of a funny song for them. It’s about little kids, you know, like brothers and sisters on a car trip? It’s about how they create this little world apart from the adults, until one of them tattles and brings in the parents. Then that person’s the traitor in the backseat.”

She sounds so casual, as if this is something that may or may not be of interest to me.

“Can I hear it?” I ask. My voice sounds tighter than I’d like. I take a breath.

“Sure,” she says. She turns the stereo on again, presses the back arrow on the CD panel.

The song begins, and I see what she means about its being a departure for the band. It’s softer, more melodic than most of their other work, and it has the same sort of rhythm as a waltz. It’s the kind of song you enter like a corridor; from the very first notes, I’m inside the music, traveling toward an uncertain destination.

Milo begins to sing, his voice vibrating in my chest.

Dad drives, like always
Mom asks, “Did you pee?”
Look over the guardrail
down to the bright sea
We might stop for ice cream or some other treat
if no one turns traitor in the backseat

Yesterday Disney
,
Tomorrow San Fran
Remember the guy with
the bright orange tan?
My side’s a mess, but you keep your side neat
It’s a whole separate world here in the backseat

We laugh and we fight and
we ask every minute
when we’ll get to the house
with the mystery in it
Up front they use phrases like “power elite”
And for now there’s no traitor in the backseat

I stare at my hands in my lap. I’m hardly breathing.

You call me a retard
I call you a gnome
With both of us here
we’re not far from home
We play license plate games till I see you cheat
It’s my turn to be traitor in the backseat

There’s an instrumental bridge here; the music swells and then drops away for one final quiet verse:

Now there’s darkness and firmament, water and foam
With only me here, I’m a long way from home
And I’m wishing you were here to notice me cheat
It’s your turn to be traitor in the backseat
.

Chloe switches off the CD. My throat aches. I focus on the registration sticker in the corner of the windshield, reading the backward letters to keep myself from crying.

I’d like it if Chloe wouldn’t talk right away; I need a minute. But she asks, “So what do you think? It’s a good song, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say. “It is.”

“Milo’s good at capturing those kinds of little moments,” she says. “I totally remember what that was like, going on road trips with my family.”

I look at her. Does she not understand my own connection to the song, the emotional undertow I’m fighting? Perhaps not. She’s very young still, and I don’t know how much she knows about Milo’s family history. He’s made it a rule not to discuss it publicly.

But I’m wrong. “How old was Milo when he lost his dad and sister?” she asks.

“Nine,” I say quietly.

“Poor kid,” she says. And already she’s understood something I was not entirely willing to see when we were in the midst of it: that Milo’s loss was at least as profound as my own. For all the energy I’ve spent in my writing life considering the taxonomy of human pain, for all the times I’ve told students that the key to creating a sympathetic and three-dimensional character is compassion, I turned out to be spectacularly unsympathetic when it actually mattered. My grief was proprietary. I wanted it all to myself.

“I can’t even imagine,” says Chloe. “I mean, I sort of can—I know what it’s like to lose someone you really love. But now that I’m a mom …” She trails off. “You know, I guarantee you, that’s something that people are going to try to use against him, now that all this is going on.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Oh, you know, that he suffered this huge loss when he was little. Like that might’ve warped him or something. I’m sure people are looking for ammunition to explain why he might’ve killed her. I remember reading once that some huge percentage of serial killers had traumatic experiences going to their grandparents’ funerals when they were at a formative age and seeing the bodies in the caskets.”

I stare at her. “Lots of children lose family members and don’t grow up to be murderers.”

She laughs, which startles me. “Oh, God, I know. I wasn’t saying that
I
thought that. Just that, you know, people are ruthless about this kind of thing.”

I sigh. “I’d like to talk about something else, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, sure. Sorry.” She gives me a rueful smile. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s all right.” I wait for her to change the subject.

“So what was Milo like when he was little?” she asks. “I’ve heard some stories about his teenage years from Joe, but I’ve always wondered what he was like as a little boy.”

I try to think how to answer. As a little boy, Milo was many things, and he was not the same child at eight that he was at eleven. If it were possible for me to sum him up with a few adjectives, our relationship might be simpler. I settle for generics. “He was a great kid. Funny. We never knew what was going to come out of his mouth.” It’s all true, but it doesn’t begin to tell the whole story.

She grins. “Sounds like not much has changed. Any embarrassing anecdotes I can torture him with? Pants wetting or thumb sucking or whatever?”

Her voice is completely jovial—no edge that I can discern—but the question makes me uncomfortable. I don’t understand yet what we’re supposed to be to each other. She’s not a daughter-in-law by anyone’s definition, but we’re bound together by a child I didn’t even know existed until a few hours ago. And I still don’t know exactly how she and Milo get along. Do they act like friends or exes or something completely different?

“Well, since I’m hoping to stay on Milo’s good side, I think I’ll keep those to myself for the moment.”

“Wise woman.”

I need to put an end to this conversation. I can’t think about it now, not when I’m so close to seeing Milo. “Where does Roland Nysmith live?” I say.

“Near the Presidio. His house is amazing, you’ll see.”

“And what’s he like?”

“Hmm,” she says. “Not what you’d expect.”

I’m not sure what I’d expect. Roland Nysmith has lived a very public life, and I know as much about him as anybody does. I was in high school and college in the mid-seventies, when his band, The Misters, first started making headlines. The Misters were a progressive rock band from England—someplace south of London, I think. In 1977 they released a concept album called
Underneath
, which told the story of a futuristic world in which human beings have built domed cities under the sea. It was trippy music, ponderous, self-indulgent, very seventies: music to get high to. Everyone in my dorm had a copy. The following year a full-length concert film was released, documenting several weeks of The Misters’ tour of Japan. I remember seeing it at a midnight showing on campus—that was the kind of movie it was—and falling asleep partway through. Later, after the emergence of VCRs, I heard that the movie had gathered a cult following and that there was a drinking game in which viewers had to take a shot every time Roland Nysmith used the word “consciousness.” But by then I was older, married, and a mother, and my interests lay elsewhere.

Roland Nysmith now, in his fifties, is not someone I know much about. But he’s the kind of artist whose name evokes respect, if only because of the longevity associated with it. In more than thirty years, he’s never stopped making music that people like.

“It sounds like he’s been very supportive of Milo,” I say. During that last Christmas together, I remember Milo telling me that Roland Nysmith had taken an interest in Pareidolia; later I read that he had helped produce the band’s second and third albums. But that kind of involvement doesn’t automatically translate into housing an accused murderer. What I’m getting at here is,
Roland must believe Milo’s innocent, right? Do you think so, too?
But I can’t ask those questions straight out.

“Yeah,” says Chloe. “He’s a loyal guy. He also just likes Milo. He’s been kind of a father figure to him since early on.”

I think of Mitch—down-to-earth, wry man that he was—and wonder how he would feel to think that his role has been filled by a person who once appeared onstage in a bodysuit covered with fish scales. I suspect, actually, that he’d be amused, and I spend a moment trying to imagine what joke he might make, but I’m not as funny as he was. In any case, Mitch isn’t here, and for quite some time I haven’t been here either. I suppose I’m glad Milo has had someone to look up to.

“Were you …” I hesitate. “Were you and Bettina friends?”

Chloe shrugs. “We didn’t really know each other that well, in spite of Milo and Joe spending so much time together. She wasn’t … This sounds awful, but she wasn’t the type of woman who has many other women friends, you know what I mean? You kind of got the feeling she’d spill all of your secrets when she was drunk and hit on your boyfriend when you were out of town.”

I make a noncommittal noise. Something else occurs to me. “Did she know about Lia?” I ask.

“No,” Chloe answers in a tart tone that suggests she doesn’t like this piece of the story. “She did not.”

“Really?” I ask.

“I never wanted it to be some big secret,” Chloe says, “but the fact is, Milo did cheat on Bettina to be with me. She was a fairly possessive person, and I guess Milo didn’t think she’d react well to the news.”

I absorb this quietly. I’ve only just come into this drama, and I don’t feel it’s my place to comment on it.

“The weather’s changed,” I say. When we left Chloe and Joe’s, the sky was gray and overcast, and now there’s sun lighting the street and reflecting on the bay.

She shakes her head. “It’s not that the weather’s changed, it’s just that we’ve driven across it. This neighborhood is always sunny. Microclimates. We’re almost there, by the way.”