CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sometime after we got on the Taconic Parkway, Sydney felt the need to turn the radio on for what is probably only the third or fourth time this tour. Now she’s singing along to schmaltzy Bing Crosby-like Christmas music and driving through a lazy little snow flurry. Thick flakes drift down, looking more like fake snow than the real thing. It’s enough to make a grown cynic like me wish for a spoon so I can gag myself with it. She probably thinks I’m asleep. I haven’t moved or said anything in a while. I roll onto my side on the leaned-back front passenger seat and look up at her. She’s singing about glistening snow and chestnuts with an incongruously serious expression on her face.
“Do you mind?” I say, and she jumps a little. “I’m trying to die over here.”
I make a vague arm gesture that is supposed to represent drawing a line between my personal space and hers.
“Am I somehow impeding that process?” she asks.
“Actually, if I hear Bruce Springsteen do Santa Claus is Coming To Town one more time, I might have to take matters into my own hands.”
“We can’t have that,” she says. “You don’t like Christmas music?”
I don’t dignify that with a response, just glare at her until she turns the radio off. Then I let out a theatrical sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t realize you were awake,” Sydney says.
“How close are we to Northampton?” I ask. From down here, the seat leaned back as far as it’ll go, I can barely see anything above the dashboard, just snow swirling past, and the tops of a few trees here and there, and lamp posts.
“About forty-five minutes away,” Sydney says.
A few days ago, I made the move from the back seat to the front seat. It stays warmer in the front, and there are fewer jolts.
I put my palm to my forehead and make whining sounds.
“Evil Christmas music,” I say. “I think it scrambled my brain. Quick, ask me a question.”
“Which planet has the greatest surface gravity?” she asks, without a trace of humour in her voice.
“Something I can actually answer,” I say.
“Oh,” she says, looking flustered. “Um, what’s your middle name?”
“My middle name is Ari. You’re really bad at this, you know.”
“Your brain is fine. And the answer was Jupiter.”
“And I was supposed to know that?”
I’m heavily amused at her, and she seems confused by it.
“You could have guessed,” she says.
“I wasn’t aware we were playing a game,” I say.
She steals a sideways glance at me, her face stern. She’s taken to wearing her summer clothes again, since I keep the heat going full blast pretty much all the time. Today she’s wearing the purple tank top from the night I first met her, back in September. We drive a little while in silence. You can tell she wants to turn on the radio again. I straighten out in my seat and adjust the back, making it more upright. Just the effort of doing this is exhausting, and I end up wishing it was back the way it started, but don’t dare adjust it again. I just sit back and watch the snow.
“Hey,” I say. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Good,” Sydney says cheerfully and leaves it at that.
“Do you want to know about what?”
“Sure,” she says casually, adjusting the strap of her tank top with one hand, the other sitting relaxed on the wheel. Looking at her, you’d think it was July.
“I’ve been thinking you should do the shows on your own from now on,” I say.
“What?”
“You should headline.”
“Ari,” she says. “I don’t think I understand.”
She sounds suddenly scared, like by saying this I’m announcing that I’m about to croak right there on the highway.
“You’re right,” I say. “I don’t want to play anymore.”
Sydney’s shoulders sag in what could be relief or disappointment. Her top’s right shoulder strap slips off again. She doesn’t say anything, just stares straight out at the tail lights of the car in front of us.
“I just want to watch you,” I say.
She nods repeatedly and makes a strange swallowing sound, still mute, so I keep talking.
“You should take my spot tonight, if it’s not too last-minute. You certainly have enough songs.”
Finally she manages to speak despite all the strange, involuntary movements her face is making.
“Why are you suddenly changing your mind?” she says. Her voice sounds precise, controlled.
“Is it that sudden?” I say. “You’ve been bugging me about it for days.”
Sydney lets out a quick burst of uncomfortable, self-deprecating laughter, and pinches the bridge of her nose. After a moment what she’s doing doesn’t sound much like laughter anymore. She puts both hands back on the wheel, revealing her face which is red and rapidly becoming tear-streaked.
“I’m sorry,” she says, still laughing at herself and shaking her head. “This is so stupid. I’m the one who’s been asking you to stop all this time. Why am I so upset?”
Frantically, I search my brain for the magic phrase that’ll make her stop crying. I’m worried about whether or not she can see the road.
“It’s going to be OK,” I say like a machine.
She says, “I don’t want to play alone,” and the words come out in a kind of gasp.
“Syd,” I say, sitting up now and really seeing her. I’m getting nervous. “Pull over.”
“I’m OK to drive,” she says, sniffling and shaking her head more emphatically.
I lean over and grab her forearm off the wheel, a quick snatch, just for a second to get her attention.
“Pull over. It’s a snowstorm and you can’t see.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Do you want to kill us both?”
It sounds angrier than I’d intended, but it does touch a nerve of Sydney’s and she veers to the right and slows the car.
“Good,” I say, “Good.” I keep repeating it until Elizabeth is stopped on the shoulder. Sydney’s making strange, high-pitched gasping sounds that threaten to expand into full blown sobs.
Again, she says, “I don’t know why I’m so upset.”
She’s still holding the wheel with both hands, as if we’re going anywhere. Her cheeks have turned bright pink from crying.
I say her name in lieu of something intelligent.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats, rubbing the back of her hand against her nose and sniffling again. She looks like a little kid lost in a shopping mall, and I want to take her by the hand and lead her back where she belongs, but instead I reach out as far as I can and touch her face, as if to make sure she’s really crying. Her cheek feels hot against my skin. She scrunches up her eyes and lets two more tears slip through. One runs easily down the side of her face and pools on the back of my thumb.
“I don’t know what to do when you cry,” I say, feeling wooden.
She smiles and puts her hand around my wrist, looking embarrassed.
“You’re doing OK,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
The snow is starting to let up. It gets dark early now, around five, and the sky just before is a striking electric blue, despite the clouds.
Sydney takes my hand away from her face and squeezes it between both of hers, as if she’s the one trying to console me.
“You were right,” I say. “It’s time for me to stop playing. I can’t keep it together anymore, and everyone knows about the cancer and that’s not helping. I get too tired.” She nods, her eyes still watery, and clings to my hand as if it’s going to float away if she doesn’t hang on to it. “What’s the matter? Tell me.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s just you giving me your show would be… like a practice run for what it’ll be like when you’re dead.”
I have to smile. “You’re going to play all my shows for me when I’m dead?”
“No,” she says. “But I’ll have to play on my own when you’re dead. And I won’t get to hear you ever again when you’re dead. And I think I just caught a glimpse of how strange and lonely that’ll be. You know?”
“I wish you’d stop saying ‘when you’re dead’,” I say with a breathless, cynical laugh.
“I’ll just say it. I’m going to miss you, Ari,” she says. She lets go of my hand and I stiffen my jaw and look straight out at the highway sign a few feet ahead, a numbered arrowed mess. Cars zoom by us at high speeds. We’re not in the safest of spots. “It’s almost as if I’m practicing missing you already. Maybe so it doesn’t hit me so hard when you really are gone.”
“It’s funny,” I say, looking back at her, “That you’re preparing for something that I’m not going to exist for.”
“Yeah,” Sydney says, wiping fresh tears away with the palms of both hands. “Fucking hilarious.”
“That’s not the funny I meant,” I say.
“I know,” she says.
“It’s not like it’s your first gig, though,” I say, trying to sound encouraging. “You’ve been on your own before, right? You’ll manage.”
“Actually,” she says, her voice all over the place now, “Playing with you was my first gig.”
I wasn’t expecting that.
“Oh,” I say. I’m at a complete loss for words. I try to remember that first night in San Francisco, whether there were any clues that Sydney had never played in front of people before. All I can remember is her easy grace, her big hands ringing out those chords, her big voice commanding attention even from the damn cat.
She sniffles again and takes a long breath. She seems to be calming down. All this sitting up and worrying about her are making me dizzy.
“I know I’ll play fine,” she says. “That’s not the point. I could play my guitar in a hurricane. Wouldn’t make the hurricane go away.”
I think about the day my dad died, wondering if Sydney will feel the same push I did, exhilarating and frantic, to keep playing and playing, after I die. Imagining her playing in a hurricane is easy. It’s picturing her onstage after I’m gone that’s hard. Whenever I try to see it I realize I’m watching her from somewhere in the room. Really what I should be imagining is a lack of Sydney. A lack of room, of sound, of everything, but that vision never seems to come, no matter how much I’d like to follow her example and practice for what’s coming.
“I’m not ready for this,” I say in a dull voice, more for myself than for Sydney to hear.
“No, you’re not,” she says. “Me neither.”
We sit there trying to come up with something else to talk about. After a few minutes of being unsuccessful, Sydney says, “This is ridiculous.”
I lean back in my seat, dizzy and sweating.
“It’s pathetic, is what it is,” I say. “Let’s talk about you.”
“Um,” she says, looking awkwardly at the horn symbol in the centre of the steering wheel. “OK.”
“I thought when we drove through Vermont you’d want to stop and see your family. Didn’t you say you were homesick months ago? Way back in September sometime.”
My voice comes out weak and breathless. It seems like the more exhausted I get, the more I like to talk, and the harder it is to stop, even when my throat starts to burn and I run out of air. I turn my head to face her, my cheek rubbing against the head rest.
Sydney says, “At the risk of ruining your subject change…” and then pauses, as if I’m supposed to figure the rest out for myself. When after a few seconds I haven’t said anything, she continues. “I know they must have heard about you by now. I don’t know what they’ll think of me. I don’t think I want to know.”
“What?” I say. “Apart from the fact that you have extremely bad luck?”
“Yes,” she says. “Apart from that. I’m afraid my mom will think I’ve let myself get too close to you. She gets angry about weird stuff like that, like I’m intentionally letting myself get hurt. As if I could help this kind of stuff.”
She leans her head against the driver’s side head rest and looks at me the same way I’m looking at her. A strand of her hair, having slipped out of one of her pigtails, hangs in front of her eyes. All light’s nearly gone from the sky and with snow piling ever faster on the ground we’d better hurry if we’re going to make it to Northampton at all.
“Syd,” I say. “What exactly is this kind of stuff?”
She answers quickly, looking preoccupied.
“I won’t tell you,” she says. “You’ll hate me if I tell you. Or, well, you’ll be angry, anyway. And it won’t make any difference.”
She lowers her head, as if I could read anything in her eyes anyway, while I’m struggling to see in the growing darkness.
“Would it make a difference,” I say, feeling like a child, “If I said I felt the same way about…” I search my brain for an adequate code word. “… stuff?”
“Stuff,” she repeats, her glance returning to me as if she’s searching my face for something.
“Yes.”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t like maybe,” I say, and Sydney’s cheeks seem to flush even more than before. “Does ‘maybe’ maybe mean yes?”
“Yes,” she says. “It makes a difference. It’s just that I don’t think we should be discussing… stuff so openly. We both know it’s there. We should just leave it at that.”
Every time the word stuff is spoken, there’s a slightly comedic pause, even though we’ve stopped looking for other words.
“I agree,” I say. “This is very irresponsible of us. We shouldn't be toying with… stuff like this.”
I keep thinking of the way she came and found me out in Oklahoma. I’m wishing I’d had the resolve to just stay lost, then maybe I wouldn’t be here in this car, feeling like the biggest asshole in the world. And yet, I keep looking at her, at the way the stray strand of kinky red hair in her face glows whenever it’s caught in the headlights of a passing car.
“So we’re just not going to talk about it,” she says, her face an unreadable blank behind that wisp of hair.
“Right,” I say. “I think it’s best.”
“Me too,” she says. “Stuff… can get confusing and complicated and vague if it’s discussed too much. Better to just say, ‘Yes, there is… stuff,’ or, ‘No, there is no… stuff,’ rather than to elaborate on either point.”
“And there is stuff… right?” I say, partly for final confirmation that I’m really following this half-conversation, and partly because I just want to hear her say it again, for some reason.
She smiles and lets out a relieved-sounding breath.
“There is definitely stuff.”
“And you’ll play for me if I ask you?”
She reaches out her big root of a hand and touches mine again, her fingers drumming softly on the back of my wrist before she speaks.
“Of course,” she says quietly.
We stay like that for a minute, staring at each other in the dark and trying to understand everything we’ve just said. I keep thinking, How long after I stop playing?, as if it’s the playing that’s been keeping me alive all this time. And if it wasn’t the playing that’s been keeping me alive, then what was it? I’ve been keeping a secret count. My 4.2 months are up on New Year’s day, in less than three weeks now. If all goes according to averages, I should make it into the new year before breathing my last. For some reason, this isn’t much of a comfort at all. I’m not sure what I think of averages anymore.
Sydney doesn’t break eye contact when she speaks.
“Can I drive now?” she asks, as if I have to give her permission.
“Yes,” I say, and close my eyes, hoping the dizziness will go away, but it doesn’t work. Sydney squeezes my wrist before putting the car into gear again and getting us back onto the road.
When we inform the Iron Horse people that their marquee needs to be changed, they’re a little put out, to be polite about it, but no one says anything because everyone knows. The guy taking tickets at the door explains to each and every person coming in that they won’t be seeing me tonight, just Sydney (that’s how he puts it), but the place fills up pretty quickly anyway, and everyone keeps a eye on me where I’m sitting, off in a corner booth with my winter jacket on and trying not to look conspicuous. The staff keeps bringing me hot, weak tea, even after I specifically ask them to stop. I must look cold as hell.
Sydney gets onstage and the lights kind of half-dim. It’s one of those places where there’s always a certain amount of light falling on the audience, so you get this sort of unofficial, grungy feeling. Everyone’s still talking and I think I’m getting paranoid about them looking at me. I’m the only person sitting alone at a table. Sydney steps up to the mic, adjusts it a bit. As usual, no sound check, no monitor, just her, and the sound guy does his best to keep up. She goes right into Whisper In My Ear, a slow, finger-picked waltz she usually saves for the end, and even then, only if everything’s going well. Everyone in the room shuts up like she just popped a balloon onstage and they weren’t expecting it. The song sounds phenomenal in this room, and her voice probably doesn’t even need the amplification. I find myself wishing she’d go off mic, just to see if she can do it. I’m sure she can.
She plays a couple of her regular songs next. People are really starting to get into it. I’m sitting near the edge of the booth, where I can watch her but still feel somewhat safe, not like I’m in the middle of a crowd of people who really came to see me and therefore are all staring at me wondering what’s going on. They are, of course, staring at me and wondering what’s going on, but from here it’s not so bad, and besides, I can see Sydney, and she’s kicking ass.
Somewhere around her seventh or eighth song, I finish off my third mug of vaguely flavoured hot water, and she starts to talk, which is not unusual. She’s already told the story of Carrot Top’s Snapple between two completely unrelated songs.
“So,” she says, tuning her guitar down to what sounds like either EBBF#BE or EBBGBE, I can’t quite tell just yet. “I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write songs lately. I’ve been kind of busy.” She gives the crowd a friendly smirk. “You know, actually playing my songs. But here’s one I wrote pretty recently. I guess I wrote it mostly in my head, which is something I do sometimes. What do they call it, when you stare at something for too long and you start to go crazy?”
“Paranoia?” a girl in the front says.
Someone else yells, “Dementia?”
“Stagnation?” A third voice.
“No, no,” Sydney says, laughing and waving her hands around, her guitar looking like it’s floating on its own in midair.
“Line hypnosis,” I say, and somehow there’s a lull and it carries to the front, even though I’m sitting almost at the back wall.
“Line hypnosis, yes,” she says, pointing like an auctioneer. “Well I go into these trances, when I’m driving, just staring at the line in the middle of the road, you know?”
Someone in the very front, probably the same girl as before, says something I can’t hear, and Sydney giggles.
“Well, no accidents yet, you know. Knock on wood.” Instead of knocking on wood she lightly bangs her mic stand onto the stage three times.
“Anyway,” she continues, “After a while when you’ve been driving for so long, looking at the same lines, and you know how they change around, like the line is broken on one side and then it’s broken on the other side, so you can pass – anyway, sometimes when I’m watching them the lines start to make a sound in my head. You know, like…”
She hums a sustained note, then repeats the same note over and over, moving her head like she’s watching traffic pass by. Everyone laughs, and I laugh too, because we all know what she means.
“Line hypnosis,” she repeats. “So this song was kind of born out of that. This is actually the first time I’m going to play… well, attempt to play it. Outside of my head, that is. It’s… kind of…”
She stops and licks her lips, looking up and to the right, into thin air.
“It’s kind of a song about… stuff.”
She starts to strum, and doesn’t look at my until she’s three lines in, well past the point of safety. Still, a few people turn around to look at me as the song starts, with a banging, repetitive chord and one of Sydney’s patented, haunting choruses that stick to me like glue and come back into my mind when I’m dreaming. Lately I’ve been dreaming a lot.