“Sure I do.” Yes, yes! I’m flailing inside. Finally.
“There will be some boring parts. I’ll have to make nice with some industry people. But you can watch the concert, and there’s a party after.”
“Okay. Done. What’s the other thing?”
“Well, that one’s a little more complicated.” He stops playing. “There’s going to be a baby.”
“What?” Did he just say baby?
“Norah and I are going to have a baby. In October.”
I feel suddenly dizzy. “I thought you just met her.”
He strokes his chin. “It depends on your point of view. We’ve been together since the fall. But also, Rachel, we’re old. After you turn forty, it’s like dog years.”
My throat is tight. Congratulations are probably expected of me. “So…I guess you’re staying in Claiborne, then.”
“That’s the plan. Is that okay with you?”
Does it really matter what I think? “Sure.” I almost choke on the word. “Sorry, I’ve got to run.” I grab my backpack. Thank God for Spanish class. I can’t wait to get out of there. “Did you tell Grandma Alice?”
“No.” He’s quiet. “I will. Soon.”
He catches my hand as I pass him. “Good work today.” He taps the guitar.
“Thanks,” I say, breaking for the door. “See you next week.” I run up Maple Street, toward school, taking gulps of the cool March air.
* * *
That night I knock on Jake’s door, feeling low.
He opens up, wearing jeans and a look of surprise, but nothing else. “Hi,” he says. “Come in?”
Once inside, I have to work hard to keep my eyes from lingering on all the bare skin of his chest. I glance around his space. “Sal and Arin actually left the room?”
“I know, right?” He cups the back of my neck, one thumb stroking my shoulder. “How was your guitar lesson?”
I’d come upstairs intending to tell him, in excruciating detail, about Frederick’s awful announcement. But that’s not what happens. Instead, I move quickly, pasting myself to Jake as tightly as a bumper sticker. Then I kiss him. Hard.
Jake makes a noise of surprise, which sounds something like “armf.”
But he recovers speedily, taking the kiss deeper, then steering me down onto his bed. All his velvety skin draws me in. I close my eyes and let my fingers enjoy the solid warmth of him. I love the way we fit together, wrapped around one another, legs entwined. We kiss as though planet Earth has only a few precious minutes left, and we’re trying to make the best of them.
Under my hands, Jake’s heart beats quickly. His body is warm and tight, his mouth worshipful. I pull him even closer, extinguishing all the empty space between us. He gives a low, happy growl that lights me up, shoving aside all the ragged worries of the day.
Everything is great until he rolls on top of me, his body fitted against mine like a jigsaw puzzle piece. That’s when the little frightened voice in my head says: now what?
My breathing stutters. I try to ignore my fear, to shove it back into its drawer. But soon my pulse is ragged and I just need air.
I push Jake off, gasping for oxygen.
For a moment, his eyes are wide and startled. But then he raises himself on one elbow, studying me. “Rachel,” he whispers. “Are you okay?”
I nod like a bobblehead. But it’s a lie. My heart is going a thousand miles an hour. And I’m mortified. A half hour ago I’d knocked on his door. He’d asked me a question. I hadn’t even answered him. Instead, I’d launched myself at him.
Then, when he was really into it, I pushed him off. Like a psycho.
And Frederick is having a baby.
“I think we shouldn’t do this anymore,” Jake says, his voice low. “Not for a while.”
I sit up, instantly afraid. “Not do what?”
“Not do this,” he says, pointing at the two of us, sprawled on the bed. “This is stressing you out. That’s no good. I don’t want to be the thing that freaks you out all the time.”
My eyes got the message faster than my brain. Two tears ran down my face even as the truth hits. He’s breaking up with me.
“Oh boy. I’m not trying to make you upset, I’m trying for the opposite. To take the pressure off. You’re just so…” He frowns.
“Just so what?” I demand.
“Hard to read. Everything is great, and then all of a sudden it’s not. And I’m like an ogre you have to escape from.”
I try to stop the tears from coming by looking up at the ceiling. “A man will do anything to get away from a woman who’s crying,” my mother had once told me.
“Rachel, can I ask you something?”
“What?” I gasp.
“Did something scary happen to you before? Because… It’s like you panic.”
“I do panic,” I mumble. “But it’s nobody’s fault.”
“So you weren’t ever…” Jake’s eyes travel to the floor, and he doesn’t finish the question. He can’t bring himself to say “raped” or “attacked” or some other ugly word.
“No,” I whisper. But I’m faced with an unwelcome realization. It isn’t Jake’s enthusiasm that frightens me. It’s mine. That zing I feel when he touches me is a dangerous thing. My mother proved it when she was only nineteen years old.
I can’t repeat her mistakes. It would be so easy to do anything—everything with Jake.
Jake’s face is flushed. “I hate scaring you. It makes me feel like Asshat.”
“You’re not an asshat,” I say, my voice cracking. Jake isn’t the problem. I am.
“What is it, then? I keep asking, but you don’t say.”
“I’m not afraid of you.” I barely get the sentence out, because my throat is closing up.
“If you’re not afraid of me, then maybe I just don’t do it for you. Is that it? Or, do you have religious objections?” He throws his hands in the air. “Something is the matter, but you don’t…” He swallows. “You don’t love me enough to tell me what it is.”
“That’s not…” I clench my teeth. Fair? True? I can’t think. All I know is that I’m so embarrassed I’ve begun to sweat. I jump to my feet, and so he stands up too. He moves close, as if to hug me, but I spin around and leave his room, flying down two flights of stairs and back into my own.
Aurora isn’t home, and so there’s nobody to hear me cry.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Instead of studying, I sit in the back of the bus, watching Vermont go by.
“You can bring Aurora to the concert,” my father offered yesterday. “There’ll be two beds in your hotel room.”
“I think she’s busy,” I’d told him, although it isn’t true. I’d wanted to go to a concert with him so badly, for so long. I wanted this trip to be mine alone.
Only it isn’t. I should have known better.
Norah has come along too, and it’s her first concert and her first time meeting the band. Naturally, they’re enthralled with her. Even before we’d boarded the bus, Ernie, Henry, and the rest circled Norah with the same curiosity they’d shown me, but with none of the strained awkwardness.
Across the aisle from me, Norah spreads a document on the bus’s back table, then pulls a calculator from her bag. “Sorry, I don’t usually geek out during happy hour,” she says. “But I owe someone a response by five o’clock.”
Ernie plops down next to me. “Don’t apologize! We’re fascinated. Freddy’s girlfriends don’t usually come with calculators.”
“Freddy’s girlfriends don’t usually come with brains,” the keyboardist puts in from one row up.
My father makes an irritated noise.
Henry hovers in the aisle. “What can I get everybody to drink? Norah, a beer?”
“Seltzer?” she asks. When Henry goes away, she drops her voice. “I might as well wear a sandwich board that says ‘pregnant girlfriend.’”
“Well, gosh,” I hear myself say. “There’s never been a pregnant girlfriend around musician
s before.”
Frederick’s laugh is a bark. “Good one, kid.”
Norah’s eyes flash in my direction. But I just look away.
* * *
Four hours later, we pull up at the hotel, and everyone gets off except for Henry. “The rez is in your name,” he tells Frederick.
“Where’s Henry going?” I ask.
“We’re a little late for our load-in,” Frederick says, without bothering to explain what that means.
“Bonjour,” the doorman calls. I’m about to discover how disconcerting it is to ride a few hours north and find that everyone speaks French.
“Good afternoon,” my father says to the woman at the desk. “Reservations for Ricks.”
“Oui,” she says, typing furiously into her terminal. While everyone watches, she frowns into the screen.
I see Norah duck into a door marked Femmes. And when she returns a couple of minutes later, the people behind the desk seem no closer to handing out keys. A manager has swooped in to assist the desk agent, and Norah puts an elbow on the counter to listen to their rapid French.
“Excusez-moi,” Norah breaks in after a minute. “Le nom est R-I-C-K-S, ne Riche.”
“Ah, merci!” the manager exclaims.
A minute later, six room reservations are located.
“I guess they’re not fans of yours, honey,” Norah says over her shoulder, while the band gapes at her.
“Gawd,” Ernie says. “Freddy’s gone upscale. First a smart kid, and now a girlfriend who speaks French. I fear for my own job security.”
“Trust me,” Norah says. “This is a rare use of my expensive education. I’m useful in Germany too.”
“Really? I didn’t know you spoke German,” my father says.
It’s Everyone-be-Gaga-Over-Norah Day.
* * *
I’m given the hotel room adjoining Frederick and Norah’s. Even after I close the pass-through door to change my clothes, I can hear muffled voices from the other side.
Frederick sings to himself, warming up. Then he breaks off to say, “Damn, you look sexy in that. How am I going to keep my mitts off you?”
“Just keep two hands on the guitar, cowboy.”
I go into the bathroom and turn the water on full blast.
Eventually my father knocks on the connecting door. “Rachel, Henry says the opening act is half done. Let’s head over.” The venue is just across the street.
I open the door. “Coming.”
He puts something in my hand, two little plastic balls with tubes in them.
“What is this?”
“Earplugs. You need to wear them if you’re hanging around me.”
“Really?”
“Don’t want to damage your hearing. I wear them too.”
Norah holds an identical pair. “We can look like aliens together.”
“Also, you need these.” He gives us each a lanyard with a pass on it.
“Thanks,” I say as casually as possible. It says, BAND. Tomorrow, it will go right into my keepsake drawer.
We cross the street, where Henry stands tapping his foot outside the back door of the theater. “Let’s go,” he says, leading us inside and then through the bowels of the building. We sail through a green room. The last door has STAGE printed on it. Then suddenly I’m standing in the wings of an enormous theater, with a roaring crowd filling every seat.
While techies swap the opening act’s equipment for Frederick’s, Henry paces like a jaguar at the zoo. “Are you ladies staying here, or do you want seats?” he asks Norah and me.
“I’ll stay here. If that’s allowed,” I say.
“Me too,” Norah agrees.
“Somebody bring Norah a chair,” Frederick says, tuning his guitar one more time.
Henry brings two. “Three minutes,” he calls.
A young man crawls around onstage, taping down Frederick’s guitar cord. The PA system plays a Springsteen tune. When I peek around the curtain’s edge, I can see the crowd. There are so many people, the rows seemed to stretch back forever. Yet Frederick referred to this place as a small venue.
I watch my father, who looks entirely calm. He hands his guitar to Henry, who walks out on stage to put it on the stand. Frederick puts his hands on Norah’s shoulders, his thumbs on the bare skin of her neck.
Norah looks giddy. “What am I supposed to say to you? Break a leg? Merde? Good luck?”
He slips an arm around her waist. “I already have the good luck.”
I turn away while he kisses her neck.
In the theater and onstage, the lights dim.
A warm hand lands on my shoulder, and it belongs to Ernie. Then Frederick says, “Let’s do this thing,” and Henry barks something into the earpiece he wears.
The PA system rings with an announcement. “Let’s hear it for Freddy Ricks!”
My father passes by me, the stage lights reddening his hair as he steps onto the stage. The audience roars when they see him, his confident walk bringing him center stage. The ferocity of their cheering startles me. It’s like a tsunami of love crashing over him.
He tosses the guitar strap over his head and waves to the crowd. Ernie and the others take their positions behind him. My father sets his hands against his instrument and begins to play the introduction to “Watching in the Rain.”
I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment. From the wings I can only see his profile. Between verses, he looks in our direction and smiles.
At Norah, probably.
But as he keeps singing, I forget everything else. I become a student of the look on his face during “No More Paradise,” eyes closed, squeezing out the high notes.
I love watching him work. And it really is work. There’s sweat pouring off his face in rivulets. His fingers never stop moving on the guitar, and the songs just keep coming. I can see the crowd swaying before him, deep inside the sound.
I wish I knew what that feels like—to do a thing so well that thousands stand before you, drinking it in. It’s magical.
When he finally says goodnight to the crowd, they clap and stamp their feet until he goes back onstage for an encore. Now that it’s almost over, I remember to take out my phone and snap a blurry picture of my view from the wings.
Finally the curtain falls after his final encore. And after that, things aren’t as fun anymore.
There’s a party onstage, and I don’t quite know what to do with myself. Frederick is surrounded by well-wishers, and I don’t feel like introducing myself to strangers. I’m exhausted from the experience, and don’t want idle chatter.
A boy in a green STAFF T-shirt brings me a beer. He tries to talk to me in a thick French accent. Usually, I find beer repulsive. But this one has the benefit of being ice cold. I drink it and listen to the boy tell me about his job in the theater. I understand about a third of what he says.
When I finish my beer, he brings me another.
“You want to zee zeh catwalk?” STAFF asks me.
“Sure.”
Backstage, we have to abandon our drinks at the bottom of the ladder and climb. The theater looks even grander from the fly space than it does from the stage, a great oval under shimmering lights. My perspective on the partygoers shifts to the tops of their heads. My father is surrounded by what looks like a great flowering of people. At the center of the blossom are Frederick and Norah, in her vibrant red top, his arm around her. Music people ring him in layers according to some hierarchy I can’t understand.
STAFF says, “I have to take a pisse. You must come with me down from here.”
Descending the ladder makes me feel woozy. I wander the outskirts of the little mob onstage until STAFF brings me another beer. “Salud,” he says, and we clink our plastic cups together.
Time passes, and I have only STAFF and beer for company. But the more I drink, the less it matters.
“Oh… Rachel! Yikes. I think it’s time to go back.”
I squint upward, and it’s Norah’s face that swims into v
iew. I’m still holding a beer, but its predecessors have already done their work. I am half leaning on STAFF, who is whispering something in my ear. I’m not sure what.
“Rachel, come with me.”
I shake my head. “You’re not my mother.” One of the benefits of having a dead mother (and there aren’t many) is that any time I invoke her name, people always back off.
Except for Norah.
“That’s true, I’m not. Would you like me to fetch your father instead?”
Well played, Norah.
Unsteadily, I consider my options. Norah is not going to let it drop, and now that I feel so sloppy, it’s no longer half so appealing to have my father seek me out. “No.”
“Then come with me. Actually—stay here for just one second while I tell him we’re leaving. Don’t move from this spot.”
I watch Norah dart away. The sudden motion makes me feel more than a little nauseous. When Norah returns, I let myself be led away. Outside I gulp cold air, and Norah helps the situation immensely by not trying to talk to me. The hotel is only across the street, and I soon find myself in an overly bright elevator, the floor moving unevenly beneath my feet.
“I don’t feel good,” I say.
When the elevator stops on our floor, Norah scrambles toward our rooms. She flicks her key card against a door and sweeps it open for me.
I press my lips together and move as quickly as I can. But Norah’s room is the reverse of my own, and it’s confusing enough to delay my voyage toward the toilet. At the last second, Norah puts a wastebasket under my face, and I vomit into it.
“Shot scored,” Norah remarks.
“Oh, hell,” I groan.
“Been there,” Norah says with a sigh. “Come on. Let’s go to your room.”
When I cross through the adjoining doors and sit down on my own bed, I feel the slightest bit better. I hear Norah go into the bathroom and dump out the basket. She fills it with water from the bathtub and then dumps it again.
“Where’re your PJs?” she calls.
I wobble toward my bag. I can’t let Norah do everything. Although it takes forever to change, since any quick movement makes me want to throw up. “I think it might happen again,” I say in a small voice.