Writing Our Song (16 page)

*****

Despite his bold statement about not giving up, Jeremy didn’t call again and life gradually returned to some semblance of normal.  The paparazzi pretty much immediately grew bored of me when I wasn’t seen with Jeremy anymore and the rumors around the office died out without any more fuel being thrown on the fire.

Months passed and, day by day, the bright colors and emotions from my holiday-from-reality drained away until I was, for the most part, back in my grey world.  Something was different though.

Try as I might, I couldn’t make those protective walls inside me as complete as before.  I couldn’t feel that prejudiced hatred towards the wealthy and privileged.

Whenever I felt like I’d safely walled my vulnerability away, all those dangerous emotions, I’d get this vision in my head of Jeremy with a chair duct taped to his rear and have to bite the back of my hand to stop laughing or I’d feel this warm sensation on the side of my head and I could almost hear his heart thumping in his chest.

Rich people in general, well, there were undoubtedly some over-entitled and selfish apples in that bucket, but Jeremy wasn’t one of them so they couldn’t all be bad.  It was a wafer-thin generalization I’d used because I had desperately needed to.  I knew that now.

I still had that poison in me.  I could still be brought to breaking point and be crushed by guilt and depression at a moment’s notice.  I knew that too, but Jeremy had shown me that there were still good things in the world, things that could make me laugh.  Things that… I could love.

After I had woken up under the stairs at my apartment I had told myself I couldn’t live like that.  I was right about that much, but these lingering feelings told me that maybe I had chosen the wrong path to avoid that terror.

I wanted to pick up the phone, to call Jeremy and beg to see him, but two things held me back.  First, I was still an utterly broken individual.  What good would I be to Jeremy in any kind of serious relationship?  What if I accompanied him to some event that was important to his business and ended up a screaming wreck because of a few photographers and questions?  How could I possibly burden him with all my baggage?

Second, he hadn’t called me.  I was sure a guy like Jeremy didn’t have to beg for dates, he had probably moved on.  I tried to convince myself that I was happy for him, for that hypothetical-but-probable situation.

It didn’t work, but I had said one thing to him in that final conversation that still rang true.  He deserved better than what I could offer him at the moment.  The Jeremy Holt ship may have sailed, but I also needed to be better for my own sake.

The problem was that I didn’t know how.  After countless days pondering it between calls at work, I had a flash of inspiration.  I wondered if Elias Rothenberg still worked at my old school and whether I could maybe go see him and be a bit more open about my problems than I had been the first time around.

I had no idea if he would be able to see anybody but current students, former students who had forged their mother’s signature to leave school were probably prohibited, but the thought of starting from scratch and explaining everything to a new counsellor was harrowing to say the least.  Thankfully I saw that he had since moved on from his position in the school and was working as a partner in a private practice.

I set up an appointment quickly before I lost the nerve.

Chapter 16

When I entered Eli’s office, I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.  Eli was professionally non-judgmental when I came clean about everything I hadn’t told him in all our previous meetings, though the inordinately large number of timepieces in his new office was still as perplexing as ever.

The first session was taken up almost entirely with me filling in all the old gaps and then telling him what I’d been up to in the last few years, including the continuing panic attacks and what strategies, if you could call them that, I had employed to scrape together some kind of tolerable emotional existence for myself.  For some reason I couldn’t tell him about Jeremy but he didn’t ask any questions that I had to dodge, spending most of his time nodding, writing on a little pad and saying ‘go on’ a lot.

Regardless of that, I felt like I was getting a lot more out of it than I had when I was at school.  At the end of our third meeting he asked me why I chose now to reach out for help and I mumbled something about it just being time to put the past behind me.

It was a crisp but clear Saturday late-morning when I came out of that particular session, with that question still repeating in my mind.  Of course, the truth was that I’d met somebody special, a game changer.  My hero, really.

Every time I heard that question in my mind, another image of Jeremy popped up and as I was sitting on the bus heading back to the stop nearest my apartment I thought about what Jeremy had said on that beach just beyond Malibu.  It was his special place, and I tried to think if I had anywhere even remotely like it.

Instead of getting off at the planned stop I stayed on and, after changing buses, I found myself walking up my old street for the first time in over two years.  My heart started beating faster the closer I came to the old family house until I felt practically paranoid, looking over my shoulder for some unknown danger.

It was amazing how much the street had changed even in such a short time.  A couple of houses had been painted different colors, trees, bushes and hedges had all grown.  It was the street I knew so well, just under a veneer of strangeness.

When I passed the Jones family’s station-wagon and I could practically smell the wet-dog scent, I almost turned around and headed back.  This was playing with fire, what if I dredged up some feelings I couldn’t handle?

“Then I’ll pass out on the sidewalk,” I said to nobody, gritting my teeth and forcing myself forward.

There it was, the house that I grew up in.  It belonged to another family now.  In the window of my old room I saw what looked like it might be a homemade dream-catcher, and in the living room window I saw a crystal of some kind hanging down by a piece of string or fishing line, catching the sunlight and throwing rainbows on to the wall.

Was
this
my special place?  My life in that house hadn’t been all bad, far from it actually, most of the time I had felt like I had all love and support I needed.

I remembered those movie-nights snuggled up between my parents on the couch, how special I felt to be in charge of holding the bowl of popcorn.  We’d laughed, gasped and even cried together and I loved being in the middle, almost like a physical symbol of their connection, like I was important.

Things like that and so very many others had all happened here.  Unfortunately… so many awful things had happened in those final years too.  The place was… tainted by those things.  The little girl that had sat on that couch and felt so perfectly in-place could never have dreamed of the concept of being thrown away like a piece of trash.

I glanced at the road over my shoulder.  Right there was where I had my first kiss… but right there was where I first saw that Ferrari parked, the first day I met the man whose car most certainly did not say ‘family’, the one who whisked my mom away.

No, this wasn’t the right spot.  After a few more minutes of reminiscing, I turned and headed back towards the bus stop, wracking my brains to think of where my special place might be.

The next place I ended up was the park where the Seattle Days festival had been held.  It was all but empty now.  The weather was not yet warm enough to attract many people besides those few that ran around or through it, blowing out puffs of steam with every breath.

I looked around at the trees and whatever buildings I could spot around the edge of the park, trying to find enough landmarks to figure out where the stage had been that day.  Eventually I settled on a spot that was as close as I could tell and looked out across the empty space.

Nobody was there now, but when I closed my eyes I could hear that noise when I had walked towards the microphone, I remembered those little kids bouncing on their mom’s hips, the
feeling
.  I even heard my dad whistle and yell ‘encore!’ and almost whipped my head around to look for him.

This place
was
magical in a way.  I’d never felt anything like it, my dad had been there, and the boy who would ask me out on a date later that night.  There were no bad memories here, only exhilarating ones.

Something didn’t feel quite right about it though.  It was a great place, a memory that I would hold deep inside me forever and hold on to like a life preserver, but there were so many people there sharing that moment with me, even if they didn’t know how special it was.

If I was looking for an equivalent of Jeremy’s day at the beach with his family, this was lacking that exclusivity, that intimacy.  Had I ever been anywhere like that?  Where I had thought ‘this is just for us’?

I kept trying to think of something from my earlier life that fit, but my mind kept on coming back to the recent trip with Jeremy.  It was a special place shared with just one special person, unmarred by anything horrific or depressing.

Sadly, it was a difficult place to revisit, but I guessed the important thing was simply that it existed in the first place.  That was certainly some kind of comfort.

After all those years of teetering between crushing guilt and trying to deflect it, Jeremy had changed me in only a couple of weeks.  He’d lifted me up and out of the noise and pain and put me somewhere quiet and safe where I could try to remember who I really was.

Then, after everything, out of fear, I’d done my best to crawl away again.  I’d probably hurt him in doing so too, the one person who deserved it least.

Thinking about what I’d done to Jeremy caused a cascade of memories to jostle for attention at the forefront of my consciousness.  I’d been dealt a pretty crappy hand since my dad died, but I was no saint myself.

Had Blair been hurt when I cut off contact?  Had my friends?  It was entirely possible.  It was a sad circle to be a part of.  I’d been pushed away, so I’d pushed everybody else away too.

However, there was a line of questioning that Eli had been steering towards in the last couple of sessions that was ringing true.  Of everything I’d felt guilty about, there was one that outweighed all the rest combined.

“This is our last song of the evening, we hope you’ve all enjoyed yourselves.  We’re Apollo Gone, and this is a Pink Floyd song called ‘Comfortably Numb’.”

With one last look around the imaginary crowd, and one last bask in the cheering that echoed from the past, I walked off the remembered stage and went back to the nearest bus stop.  There was one last place I had to go to today before the sun went down.

*****

Henry Hampton

Husband and Father

Taken tragically and missed forever.

10/26/1963 – 06/15/2003

I stared down at the tombstone and the muscles in my jaw were practically cramped up with the strain of resisting the urge to apologize the way I always did.  I had something else I needed to say today and it felt like I was fighting against myself to get the job done.

“It’s…
not
… my… fault!” I squeezed out through clenched teeth, my voice breaking on the ‘not’.

The tears started to flow freely but just getting those words out seemed to bring the rest of my body under control and I took a few deep breaths, at least temporarily freed of some chest-crushing invisible binds.

“
It’s not my fault!
” I shrieked at the top of my lungs before collapsing to my knees beside the grave marker.

I reached out and laid a hand on the side of the cold stone, swiping away the big fat tears streaming from my eyes and the snot running from my nose with the back of my other hand.  That was the end of my short-lived control, everything else I forced out around shuddering sobs that made me stutter every wavering word.

“I… didn’t… want you to… die!” I gasped out.  “I… just… wanted you… to see… m-me sing!”

Speaking was leaving me as breathless as if I’d been kicked in the stomach by a horse and I doubled over in pain, pressing my face against the grass as I grabbed twin handfuls of it and heard the ripping sound of several blades being torn apart.  Finally every piece of grass I had a hold of was pulled from the ground and I beat my fists against the earth a few times.

“It’s all
fucking bullshit!
” I screamed, not caring about the outside chance somebody else was visiting the cemetery.

Eventually I ran out of tears and spent several minutes calming down to the point where I was breathing evenly again.  I sat up and blinked at the grave with my eyes all puffed up.

“It was an accident.  I loved you.  I still love you, I always did, and…”

I thought back to all the times I’d been embarrassed by the utterly unrestrained support he had always given me, even for stupid things like musicals in elementary school that didn’t matter in the slightest.  All the way up to the last time I had performed when he had whistled and yelled for an encore louder than anybody else.

“I know you loved me.  I… don’t believe what Mom said anymore.  I don’t believe you hated my singing.  I think she said it because she needed somebody to blame, somebody to hate, just like I did.  Dad, I…”

A lump rose in my throat and I fought it down again before continuing.

“I made some promises.  I thought I was doing the right thing, but maybe… maybe they were bad promises to make.  Maybe they were just hurting me and everybody else even more and not helping anything at all.  Can you believe that?  I want to be me again, Dad.  Where am I?”

No answer came, not that I had expected any.  Gradually I calmed even more until I actually felt borderline-peaceful.  The wind died down and the low-hanging sun warmed my back nicely, casting an elongated shadow over the ground.  It was time to leave.

“I’ve got to go now.  I miss you.  I’m going to go buy myself a dress made from duct tape.  I love you.”

He would have laughed about that, for sure.  As I stood and walked away I thought about all the times we’d had each other in hysterics and snorted some laughter at some of the sillier jokes.  I’d never hinted at anything funny on any of my previous visits, which was a shame considering how big of a role humor had played in most of our interactions.

“Thanks for that one, Jeremy,” I said into the sunset. “I love you too.”

*****

It was several weeks later on another Saturday morning when I was relaxing in my apartment listening to music and my phone rang.  I just about fell off the couch and had a heart attack when I saw what the screen said.

‘
Jeremy Calling’

I hurriedly muted the music and pressed the little green handset button with a trembling finger.  Words escaped me for a moment as I held it to my ear and tried to think of what people normally said when receiving a phone call.

“Hello?  Jeremy?”  I squeaked.

“Uh… Bumble Bea?” said a woman’s voice.

“What?  Who is this?”

“Sorry… sorry.  I’m Jeremy’s sister, Anna.  He’s got this phone number saved in his phone as ‘Bumble Bea’.  Who are you?”

“I’m Beatrice,” I said.

“Oh!  Beatrice from New Zealand?”

“From Seattle… but I went there with Jeremy.  Why do you have his phone?  Is something wrong?”

Anna was silent for a while but eventually answered.

“I’m trying to find Jeremy, he’s gone AWOL and left his phone behind.  I’m just going through all his contacts and seeing if he’s with them.  Um… I take it he isn’t with you?”

“No.”

“OK, thanks,” Anna’s voice broke on the last word.  “If you see him, tell him he has to come back right away.  The hospital and the funeral director have been trying to reach him.  They’ve got questions and I don’t know what to do!  Mom’s a wreck!  We need him back!  The funeral is tomorrow!”

“What’s happened?” I asked, one hand holding the armrest of the couch to brace myself.

“You don’t…?  Kevin’s cancer… he passed away on Wednesday.”

My hand left the armrest and slapped over my mouth in shock and I gasped air in through my fingers, letting it out in an incomprehensible choked sound.

“Oh my God, Anna.  I’m so sorry,”

“OK.  OK, thanks.  Just… if you see him tell him we need him to come back.”

“I don’t think he’ll be in touch with me, but of course I’ll tell him if I do.”

“Well… he might.  He wouldn’t shut up about you for like a week or two after coming back, before Kevin got sick.  He might.  Bye.”