“Mommy” It was a cry a crying a solitary figure lost in the fog of
memories somewhere tattered and torn like fragments of old love letters. She
stood there and then.. “Oh God. I think
I’m going to be sick.” Nancy looked scared. She held that pinkish hue as if she
was going to be sick. I felt the rise of nausea, I
looked up at the stage lights behind the velvet curtains. “Randy, I don’t know
if I can do this.” Yes you can
and you will, you will be great, because of this, tonight what you are about to
do you – all your dreams will come true. Tonight I am your fucking Genie your
true love will kiss you, you will fall in madly in love, you will marry raise
children, you will laugh and cry and ten years from now …
“It’s
ok.” It just seemed to be the thing to say. I was with her physically and
metaphorically. I did not think I could do this either. Especially since of
course I was still trying to figure out what all of this was.
“But
we practiced so hard. You practiced so hard.”
“That’s
not the point.” Not that I knew what the point was. This moment was still coming
into focus, I glanced about us, the multicolored lights a halo in my head. “The
point was for me …” She didn’t let me finish, instead she retched into a
garbage can.
“Oh
Christ.” And she emptied her stomach.
I
reached over and held my hands to the small of her back, feeling the warmth
tender and curative. What was I
doing to her? How could you do this to her? Don’t you realize what this could
cost her? You know why she is doing this! Don’t bullshit, don’t be coy, naïve,
she loves you or at least thinks she does and will follow you to the ends of the
earth. Well you brought her here and now you are asking her to jump off with
you. “There’s only so much you should
try to do Kiddo. This isn’t your battle.” Christ! Where did that come from? I
squatted down a position relieving the strain on the back and able to let you
stand in the jungle for hours crouched and ready… it would be a position I would learn in the
military fighting in the jungles of Central America. It was a position you
could sleep in and yet be ready to spring into action at at the sound of a misspent breath.
It was raining. Christ when wasn’t it raining! My bare feet scrunched into the
mud. Exercise the feet, don’t let the position …
I
had a red bandana style handkerchief in my pocket and reached up to wipe her
eyes. “It’s ok. This is my battle. You helped me to get here that is more than
I should’ve asked of you.” This was something I would learn how to do early in
life – an adoption of personality that would haunt me continuously: stoic;
steadfast; adversary head-on with a wink, a smile a glimmer of something else.
But I also learned that the power of intimacy especially in crises would
overcome most things. I could see that Nancy was trying to pull herself
together, she kept daubing her eyes and wiping away at her mouth trying to
remove the phantom residual bile she thought must lie there. I remained in my
crouch balanced on the balls of my feet like I would learn. I knew it was what she wanted, what she had hoped for many nights
as we practiced, many nights that we were together. I wanted her to know that
she meant more to me than just a momentary lapse of passion. That I was sorry for killing her daughter. “I’m sorry
Nancy.” I rose slightly her eyes on mine and cupped her face in my hands, in that moment I could feel the
warmth of her passion rising through my fingertips; and my eyes swimming from
my own. “I’m sorry,” and tilted her head
and kissed her soft, her lips trembling but parting, our tongues shy and vulnerable.
I held her tightly before she would realize the moment, before she would come
out of the passion and back into a world of pretense and false respect. I
held her for all of the sorrow I would bring to her, for all the pain I would
burden her with because I simply … It
was but a kiss in time but for the moment I had found my anchor and was
grounded for an eternity.
“Randy
my god. I just,” and she rolled her eyes pantomiming with her hands towards the
garbage can, “y’know. Oh now I’m embarrassed.”
She toyed with her hair, trying to primp herself. But her eyes, the sighing of eyes I would
learn quickly that moment that no matter how brave a front you put up, no
matter how stoic, your eyes would show the sadness, the longing, the fear. The
poets have always said that the eyes are the windows to the soul and if you
stare through the window long enough you will see that moment you have been
waiting for. Can you let the
moment go? Can you just watch it observe it and wish your were there outside
the window, there playing, running in the sun, existing in the moment of the
chance awakening?
“I
can do this.” And she pulled her sweater down tight against her small hips.
“You
sure?”
Her
eyes lit with determination and focused on my own. “Yes.” She smiled, “They
asked for this.”
“Ok
darling.” I could always be the strength for others but what I did best was
bring out there own. Most times at my expense, my own haughtiness concealing,
denying – but never purging my fear: shrieked and compressing, sucking in like
a black hole swallowing all that fall within its gravitational fields. “Ready?” Nancy nodded, her smile not as
strong as it was but still just as bright and beautiful and for the moment I
think I actually was in love with Nancy also.
The
auditorium wasn’t full but still there were a lot of people, some who had heard
wisps of tonight’s events some who anticipated and many who were there as
contestants waiting their turns. Nancy wasn’t afraid of the performance. She
was a class “A” competition singer and a piano prodigy. It was me that was making
her sick, her fear of getting caught in my gravitational orbit pulling
everything into a misshapen happenstance
of their existence. I had difficulty with Ms. Taylor our chorus director. She
was of the mind that only those who knew how to sing, not those of us who
actually wanted to learn, were entitled to sing in her classes. I challenged
her authority and she did not like that. I could not sing – not for lacking
ability but for lacking direction. I had the audacity to think the schools were
institutions of learning and I wanted to learn how to sing.
Nancy
would put my sorry poems to music. Creating beautiful songs that only she could
sing – she was the first woman to sing for me, not to me. I had stood up during
some school rally and read a poem reflecting an attitude unwelcome concerning
the current state of affairs in Vietnam. People at school began calling me the
“Poetryman” as if this was to be an insult. Phoebe Snow had a hit at that time
with a song by that title. And I was in lust with Phoebe’s voice. Nancy knew
this and one day as some after school practice for one thing overlapped with
another she saw me scribbling away in the corner (she had mistakenly thought I
was feverishly writing poems in my tattered sheaf of papers). I was trying to memorize
lines for the play, reviewing rehearsing: it was the last night of auditioning.
I had dropped from the football team. I had been a varsity starter since my
freshman year and had found more interest in the theatrical arts as opposed to
smashing heads in on the football field. Only now I was worried I would not
make the cut. I should have worried about making it.
Nancy
was seated at an upright piano near the stage and I could hear her plunking
away – a song not like the songs that were blasted daily on every song dial.
Nancy had a sultry voice for such a little girl. Her voice was lilting, smooth, she did not
trill or waver in tone, rather he voice was musky, warm and deep. “..
you bashful boy you’re hiding something sweet please give it to me, yeah to
me…” She would drop the ends of words at the end
of the lines as if forcing you to listen closely and carefully like she was
whispering in your ear and you needed to run after her to catch the words
before they fell to the ground and disappeared. And I knew she was singing to
me, for me, enticing me in with her voice, her wares… She sang facing the
piano, sans music, from memory adding minor and sevenths deliberating the keys.
“Talk to me some more you don’t have to go you’re the poetryman you make things
all rhyme…”
I glanced about the room absorbing everything in the singular glance
understanding the moment, cataloging the moment, no one else even seemed to
hear the song. But there it trailed across the room, roping me in its waif-like
grip “When I am with you I have a giggling teen-age crush Then I'm a
sultry vamp.” And she looked sideways
through the locks of sandy hair, holding my eyes in hers, glancing at me then
closing slowly, still facing me as if I
needed her to erase any doubt. As if I needed her.
My name was announced,
“Randy Hirsch, Class “C” Baritone with piano accompaniment.” This was to get
the judges ready for their scoring. Nancy walked upright the stage floor a well
known friend and took her seat at the black baby grand. I stepped out, “Mr.
Hirsch will be performing “Sinner Man” a Class “C” piece…” I cringed, they kept
announcing the Class “C” status, I looked out over the auditorium, the murmurs
were beginning That’s right I can’t sing your
way but I want to and I’m not going to let
some fat ass uptight choir director stand in my way. into the light my guitar in hand … I wasn’t
supposed to have a guitar…
I
drew the slide across the frets, my daddy’s aged steel Kay guitar crying along
the muted chords. Nancy’s smile was going to tear her pretty face in half. We
had reached the crescendo, the judges still frantically flipping through their
charts too polite or too proud to admit that they had made a mistake. Nancy
pounded they keys into a rollicking sea shanty ballad building between the
chords with minor fills and rising staccato, I strummed along in almost blind
panic, the strings whining a sad despair under the chrome spark plug socket. I
reached deep within my shower voice gravelly and growling spitting the words
into the audience with every ounce of theatrical fervor, “… and hashish
in a hookah pipe and bonny grass to
burn…” I winked at Nancy our little piece
d' resistance reverberating through the old
auditorium. For a moment we felt we were superstars and that nothing could ever
hurt us again, “Our mission is a secret but we’re fool enough to try…
we’ll sail the bloody ocean boys or drink the bastard dry.”
