The tape of The Edge was in the deck, the one he practiced with. He knelt down and replaced it with the rock group Mike and the Mechanics, fast-forwarded it to the song he wanted. Forward, back, forward again to the band between songs. The intro came on and he plugged in his earphones, put them on and sat at his drums, holding both sticks in his one hand, too bummed out to use them.
The words started.
Every generation
Blames the one before . . .
It was a song written by someone after his father had died. “The Living Years.” A rueful, wrenching song.
And all of their frustrations, come beating on your door . . .
I know that I'm a prisoner to all my father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage to all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him
In the living years.
Randy sat through it all, listening to the plaintive call of a son who waited until it was too late to make his peace with his father. He sat with his eyes closed, his drumsticks forgotten in his hand, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.
* * *
That evening, The Edge was playing at a club called The Green Light. Randy was unusually quiet while they were setting up. Through the cacophony of tuning and balancing he let the others go about their BS'ing without him. There was always a lot of give-and-take at this time, part of the ritual of getting up for a performance.
When the lights were set and the instruments ready, the filler tape playing for the crowd and the amplifiers humming softly, the guys put their guitars in their stands and went off toward the bar to get drinks. All but Pike Watson, who stopped by Randy, still sitting behind his drums. “Heya, Rimshot, you're a little low tonight.”
“I'll be okay once we start playing.”
“Got trouble with some of the songs? Hey, it takes time.”
“No, it's not that.”
“Trouble with your girl?”
“What girl?”
“Trouble at home, then.”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“Well, hell . . .” Pike let his thought trail away, standing with his hands caught on his bony hips. Brightening, he asked, “You need something to pick you up?”
“I got something.”
“What, that jimmy dog you smoke? I mean something to really pick you up.”
Randy came from behind the drums, heading for the bar. “I don't do that shit, man.”
“Yeah, well, I just thought I'd offer.” Pike sniffed. “Those drumsticks can get mighty heavy at times.”
Randy had two beers and a hit of marijuana before they started the first set but the combination only seemed to make him lethargic and tired tonight. They played to a desultory audience, who acted as if the dance floor was off limits, and after the second set he tried more marijuana but it failed to do the trick. Even the music failed to lift Randy. The drumsticks felt very heavy, indeed. During the third break he went into the men's room and found Pike there, the only one in the room, sniffing a hit of cocaine off a tiny mirror through a rolled-up dollar bill.
“You really ought to try it.” Pike grinned. “It'll cure whatever ails you.”
“Yeah?” Randy watched as Pike wet his finger, picked up any stray powder and rubbed it on his gums.
“How much?”
“First hit is on me,” Pike said, holding out a tiny plastic bag of white powder.
Randy looked at it, tempted not only to get out of this low but to spite his mother and father. Pike wiggled the bag a little bit as if to say, Go on, give it a try. Randy was reaching for it when the door burst open and two men came in, talking and laughing, and Pike swiftly hid the bag and mirror in his pocket.
* * *
After the night Randy discovered them in bed, Michael quit calling Bess, and though she missed him horribly, she, too, refused to call him. Deep summer came on: in Stillwater a time for lovers. They came by the hundreds, teenagers over from Minneapolis and St. Paul, flooding the town in their souped-up sports cars; the town's own teenagers, cruising the length of the quay on Friday nights; college kids off for the summer, dancing to the canned music at Steamers; boaters down for the weekends, setting the river agleam with the reflection of their running lights; sightseers out for an evening, walking the riverbank, holding hands.
At night, the volleyball court in front of the Freight House was a maze of tan, young arms and legs. The riverside restaurant decks were crowded. The old lift bridge backed up traffic several times an hour letting boats beneath it. The antique stores did a landmark business. The popcorn wagon put out its irresistible smell. The wind socks in front of Brick Alley Books waved a welcome to the cars streaming down the hill into town.
One hot Saturday Bess was invited to a pool party at Barb and Don's house. She bought a new bathing suit, expecting Michael to be there. He wasn't; he'd been invited but had declined when he'd learned Bess was coming.
A man named Alan Petrosky, who introduced himself as a horse rancher from over by Lake Elmo, kept up an irksome pursuit until she wanted to dump him into the pool, cowboy boots and all.
Don and Barb noticed what was going on and came to rescue her. Don gave her a brotherly hug and asked simply, “How have you been?” She found tears in her eyes as she replied, “Very mixed up and lonely.”
Barb caught her by a hand and said, “Come up to the bedroom for a minute where we won't be disturbed.” In the cool green bedroom with the curtains drawn and the party sounds distant, Barb asked, “So how are things between you and Michael?” and Bess burst into tears.
She broke down and called him in early August on the pretext of advising him about some nice pieces of sculpture on display at a gallery in Minneapolis. He was brusque, almost rude, declining to ask anything personal or to thank her for recommending the gallery.
She submerged herself in work; it helped little. She told Randy she wanted to come out some night and hear him play; he said no, he didn't think the kind of bars he played in would be her style. She attended a shower for Lisa, given by Mark's sisters; it only reminded her she would soon be a grandmother facing old age alone. Keith called and said he missed her, wanted to see her again; she told him no, smitten by a wave of mild revulsion.
Life felt humdrum to Bess while, by comparison, it seemed everyone around her was living it to the fullest, having the gayest summer of their lives. She found a batik piece depicting sandpipers that would have been stunning in Michael's dining room, but she stubbornly refused to call him for fear he'd again treat her as if she'd just peed on his shoe. Worse, what if she herself broke down and suggested their getting together for an evening?
Sexuality—damn the stuff. Bess would have thought, considering impending grandparenthood, that she'd be immune. She was not. She thought of Michael in a sexual regard as often as in a nonsexual. She fully admitted the reason she'd been repulsed by the idea of reviving anything with Keith was because, by comparison to Michael, he was a vacant lot. Michael, on the other hand, was a lush orchard—but hardly enough reason for a woman of forty to make a fool of herself gorging on ripe fruit. As she'd told him the night they'd last made love, they weren't teenagers anymore. Still, all the platitudes in the world couldn't prevent her from missing him immensely.
On August ninth Bess turned forty-one. Randy forgot all about it, didn't even give her a card before he left for a three-day gig in South Dakota. Lisa called and wished her a happy birthday but said she'd ordered something that hadn't arrived yet; it should be here by the weekend and they'd get together then. Stella was gone with three of her ladyfriends on a two-week vacation in the San Juan islands north of Seattle and had sent a birthday card that had arrived the day before, along with a postcard from the Burchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia: wish you were here.
Bess's birthday fell on a Thursday; she had appointments all afternoon long but rushed back to the store before Heather left for the day, asking if she'd had any calls.
“Four,” Heather answered. But none were from Michael, and Bess climbed the stairs to her stifling loft telling herself she had no right to be disappointed. She was responsible for her own happiness, it was not the duty of others to create it for her.
Still . . . birthdays.
She found herself remembering certain ones while she'd still been married to Michael. The first one after they got married, when he'd taken her tubing on the Apple River and had pulled a Pepperidge Farm cake out of a floating cooler tied between them while they were bobbing down the stream on inner tubes, scraping their hinders on rocks and burning the tops of their knees and loving every minute of it.
The year she turned thirty, when he'd arranged a surprise party at Barb and Don's house and she'd sulked all the way there, thinking she was going to a birthday party for their daughter, Rainy, who was turning four the next day.
Another one—she'd forgotten exactly which. Thirty-two? Thirty-three?—when Michael had given her a particular bracelet she'd admired and had pulled it out of his vest pocket on their way out to dinner, the way rich men did in movies. It had been in a black velvet box, a simple gold serpentine chain, and she had it still.
No bracelets today, though. No black velvet boxes, no cards in the mailbox at home, nobody to float down a river with, or go out to dinner with, or surprise her with balloons and cheers.
She stopped at Colonel Sanders's on her way home and picked up two pieces of fattening chicken and some fattening potatoes and gravy and a cob of fattening corn and one of those little fattening lemon desserts, which she ate on the deck while watching the boats on the river and wishing she was on one of them.
Birthdays . . . oh, birthdays.
If there was any day when a lonely person felt more lonely, when a single person felt more single, when a neglected person felt more neglected, she wanted to know what it was.
With dusk approaching she puttered around the yard, plucking weeds in the rock-lined perennial beds she'd once tended meticulously but which had fallen into a state of neglect after she'd gone back to college. She broke a fingernail and got disgusted, went inside and took a long bath and gave herself a facial, examining her skin critically after washing the mask from it.
Forty-one—lord. And her skin getting a little droopy and soft like a maiden aunt's.
Forty-one and no gifts, no calls.
Tiny lines lurking at the corners of the eyes. A faint jowl beginning to show if she forgot to keep her chin high.
At 11 P.M. she turned off the television and lamp in her bedroom and lay with the windows open, listening to a thousand crickets and the bishop sleeves fluttering faintly against the sill, smelling the dampness of deep summer thread in from the yard, recalling nights like this when she was sixteen and went with mobs of kids to the drive-in theater. Always, there was company then.
The neighbors across the street came home, Elaine and Craig Mason, married probably forty years or more, slamming their car doors and talking quietly on their way into the house. Their metal screen door slammed and all grew quiet. Bess had stacked up her pillows as if knowing sleep would be reluctant, and reclined with her eyes wide open, intent upon the fretwork of shadows on the opposite wall, cast through the maples by the night light in the yard.
When the phone rang her body seemed to do an electric leap that shot her heart into fast time. The red light on the digital clock said 11:07 as she rolled over and grabbed the receiver in the dark, thinking, Let it be Michael.
“Hello, Bess,” he said, his familiar voice at once raising a sting in her eyes.
“Hello.” She went back against the pillows, touching the receiver with her free hand as if it were his jaw.
Outside, the crickets kept sawing away, their song throbbing in the summer night while on the telephone a lengthy silence hummed. She knew it meant he was not entirely pleased with himself for having broken down and called her after vowing he would not do so again.
“It's your birthday, huh?”
“Yes.” She pointed one elbow to the ceiling, covering her eyes to stop them from stinging.
“Well, happy birthday.”
“Thanks.”
They remained silent for so long her throat began to ache. The crickets continued their rasping.
Finally Michael asked, “Did you do anything special?”
“No.”
“Nothing with the kids?”
“No.”
“Didn't Lisa come over or anything?”
“No. She said we'll get together soon, maybe this weekend. And Randy's playing out in South Dakota, so he's not around.”
“Damn those kids. They should have done something for you.”
She dried her nose on the sheet and forced her voice to sound normal. “Oh, what the heck. It's just one birthday. There'll be lots of others.”
Please come over, Michael. Please come over and just hold me.
“I suppose so but they still should have remembered.”
Another silence came and gripped them, and beat across the telephone wire. She wondered if he was in his bedroom, what he was wearing, if the light was on. She pictured him in his underwear, lying in the dark on top of the covers with one knee up and the balcony doors open.
“I ah . . . I got that mess straightened out down on Victoria and Grand.” She formed an image of him watching his own fingernail scratching a groove into a sheet while he spoke. “Building's going to get under way soon.”
“Oh, good!” she said, with false brightness. “That's . . .” Softer, she ended, “. . . that's good.”
Why are we in separate bedrooms, Michael?
If she didn't invent some perky conversation soon, he'd surely hang up. She stared at the indigo leaf shadows on the opposite wall and searched for some clever dialogue to keep him on the line.
“Mom's gone on a trip to Seattle.”
“Seattle . . . well.” After a pause, “So she wasn't around today, either.”
“No, but she sent a card. She's having a grand time with all her friends.”
“She always seems to manage that, doesn't she?”
Bess turned on her side with the receiver pressed against the pillow, her position going slightly fetal while she coiled the phone cord around the tip of her index finger. Her chest felt ready to splinter into fragments. Oh God, she missed him so much.
“Bess, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, listen, I . . .” He cleared his throat. “I just thought I'd call. Force of habit on this day every year, you know.” He laughed. Oh, such a melancholy laugh. “I was just thinking about you.”
“I was thinking about you, too.”
He fell silent and she knew he was waiting for her to say, I want to see you, please come over. But the words stuck in her throat because she was afraid all she wanted to see him for were sexual reasons, and because she was so utterly lonely and it was her birthday, and she was forty-one and dreading the possibility of spending the rest of her life alone; and if he came over and they made love she'd be using him, and nice women weren't supposed to use men that way, not even ex-husbands, and then what would she say afterward, if he asked her again to marry him?
“Well, listen . . . it's late. I should go.”
“Yes, me too.”
She covered her whole face with one hand, her eyes squeezed shut, her lips bitten to keep the sobs from falling out, the telephone a hard knob between her ear and the pillow.
“Well, 'bye, Bess.”
“ 'Bye, Michael . . . Michael, wait!” She was up on one elbow, frantic, her tears at last running. But he'd hung up, leaving only the throb of the crickets to keep her company while she wept.
Chapter 17
LISA CALLED THE BLUE IRIS at 11 A.M. on August sixteenth and said she had gone into labor. Her water hadn't broken but she was spotting and cramping and had contacted the doctor. There was no reason for Bess to come to the hospital yet; they'd call when she should.
Bess canceled two afternoon appo
intments and stayed in the store near the phone.
Heather said, “It brings back the days when you were waiting for your own kids to be born, doesn't it?”
“It really does,” Bess replied. “Lisa took thirteen hours but Randy took only five. Oh, I must call him and tell him the news!” She checked her watch and picked up the phone. Her relationship with Randy had been bumping along since the day she'd slapped him. She talked, he grunted. She made an effort, he made none.
He answered on the third ring.
“Randy, I'm so glad you're still home. I just wanted you to know that Lisa's gone into labor. She's still at home but it looks as though this is the real thing.”
“Yeah? Well, tell her good luck.”
“Can't you tell her yourself?”
“The band's heading out for Bemidji at one o'clock.”
“Bemidji . . .” Her voice registered dismay.
“It's not the end of the world, Ma.”
“No, I suppose not, but I hate your having to travel so much.”
“It's only five hours.”
“Well, be careful, dear, and be sure you get some sleep before you head back.”
“Yeah.”
“And no drinking and driving.”
“Aw, come on, Ma, jeez . . .”
“Well, I worry about you.”
“Worry about yourself. I'm a big boy now.”
“When will you be back?”
“Sometime tomorrow morning. We're playing in White Bear Lake tomorrow afternoon.”
“I'll leave a note at home if the baby is here. Otherwise call me at the store.”
“Okay. Ma, I gotta go.”
“All right, but listen . . . I love you.”
He paused too long before replying, “Yeah, same here,” as if pronouncing the actual words was more than he could manage.
Hanging up, Bess felt forlorn. She remained with her hand on the phone, staring out the front window, feeling like a failure as a mother, understanding how Michael had felt all these years, wondering how to mend these fences between herself and Randy.
“Something wrong?” Heather asked. She was dusting the shelving and glassware, working her way along the west wall of the shop.