Nine Volt Heart (37 page)

JASON

W
HEN DOMINIQUE WENT TO fix her
ever-perfect face in the women’s room, Ephraim turned to me as if I were his
best friend.

“You’re doing everything right, Jason. When it’s this hard
and you’re doing this well, you must be feeling good about it.”

“Thank you.” My voice broke, because it was a giant lie that
I was doing well at all, and I didn’t want Ephraim to know even half of it.

“Dominique wants to get on to the next thing too, so we just
have to endure the next few weeks and keep it from getting bumpy.”

I was spinning through the worst turbulence I had ever
experienced, and Karl’s office didn’t have barf bags, so I just nodded.

“Listen, Jason. You have to acknowledge that I managed to
get you extraordinary freedom for your work. Albion let you choose the studio.
You can join the tour and still use your new band name.”

“I pay for it either way, so it’s big of you to let me spend
my money where I want.”

“You have your own engineers and technicians. I let you do
the arrangements the way you want.”

“Not exactly. You let me decide to give you what you want.”

“I only said no once, and you expected that when you
proposed songs she can’t sing, just to get under her skin. You still have
greater freedom than other labels would give you. If you took this same music
to record in Nashville, you’d never get out of town alive.”

“It’s still not the music I’d be writing and playing if I
didn’t have to compromise with Dominique and Albion Records.”

“She’ll be gone from your life in sixty days. Jason. Listen,
I told you I’m moving on as soon as we finish the business for this album. I’m
leaving Albion Records to join my brother’s label. It’s an opportunity for me
to help good alternative bands succeed in the market. I want you to sign with
my brother’s label.”

“So that my money stays in your family, one way or another?”

“If you want to disparage it in that way, it won’t bother
me.”

“How long of a leash does your brother give you?”

“Long enough to accommodate the entire range of music you
played on Saturday. Even the folkie stuff you played earlier that day. If
that’s what you want to do.”

“Do you have other musicians who want to give up the safety
of a big label like Albion for your brother’s little vanity project?”

“Let’s see. If my brother has his own label, it’s a vanity
project. If you go indie and ship CDs from the back of a bus, what is that,
Jason?”

“I didn’t mean to be insulting,” I said. “I apologize. But I
intend to go my own way.”

“Who is going to take care of your business?”

“I’ll see to the business myself.”

“You and who else? The lawyer who used to drive your bus?
The ever efficient Cynthia? You don’t have Beau now. Who’s going to be the bad
guy when you need it? Who’s going to look ahead?”

“How many times do I have to say no to you, Ephraim?”

At this point, spinning in free-fall the way I was, I could
still look Ephraim in the eye and see—what? He seemed almost hurt.

He said, “I heard you play last Saturday. I want you to
succeed. If I’m not part of making it happen, I swear I’ll die with regrets.”

“What we’re playing is just a logical progression of the
same music you screwed up last year.”

“No, it’s not, Jason. You know it’s more than that. Your
songwriting has transformed. And your beautiful new vocalist can make angels
weep. She makes me believe in angels.”

“She’s a guest of the band. She’s not in the band.”

“Screw it, Jason. I want to sign both of you. I’d work my
ass off to make sure North America and all of Europe hear what true genius
sounds like.”

Dominique stood in the doorway, having heard who the heck
knows what all.

“Are we leaving now, Ephraim?” she said. “Have you traded
away enough of my assets before lunch to satisfy yourself?”

“Yes. We’ll see you in the studio tomorrow, Jason. Ten more
days and we’re done with that and then rehearsing for the road, right, friend?”

~

“Sixty days and you’re free,
buddy.” Karl rubbed his hands, pleased.

“Dominique is supposed to show up in the studio tomorrow and
lay vocals down over our studio tracks.”

“Yes, but you can handle her now. Ephraim is being very
helpful.”

“Karl, my stalker friend stole the master tapes.”

“Oh shit.”

“So now I have to talk Ian and Toby into playing in the
studio with Dominique, because there isn’t enough time to both re-record and
work with her separately.”

“They won’t like it.”

“Nope. I’ve posted coded pleas on my blog, begging my
so-called brother to return the tapes. I’m not a big believer in luck at this
point.”

“Ephraim will shit himself when he hears this.”

“I would prefer he didn’t hear.”

“There’s your other work. Once you get past this.”

“Sort of. Only a couple of those tapes turned up missing.
Nobody will hear that work unless our mysterious friend posts tracks from those
tapes on the Internet.”

“Nobody will complain about working with Susi to re-record.”

“No. Except she won’t work with us anymore.” I stopped
myself from including the band. “Me, I mean. She won’t work with me.”

“Oh shit.”

JASON

N
OBODY YELLED AT ME.

Nobody started one of those infamous fist fights that herald
the end of a band.

It was still early when I told people, and I hadn’t eaten.
The only question came from Angelia, who had phoned in sick to that school all
week so she could record with us in the studio. She wondered why I didn’t tell
people the night before.

“Because I hoped to wake up this morning and find out it
wasn’t true.”

Then Sonny said it was his fault the tapes were gone, since
he’d been hired to do security.

“Don’t pay me for the extra hours in the studio,” he said.
“I blew it.”

“No, it didn’t happen on the territory you are covering,
man. It just happened.”

Ian said, “We know what we’re playing, so it won’t be like
last year,” but the whole time he was staring at the floor and not at me.

Angelia and Toby spent a lot of time just looking at each
other, and finally Toby said, “I’ll be here in the morning. I know you can’t
control the Dragon Woman, so we’ll have to just fake our way through it.”

“Just so we get to play the new music afterwards with Susi,”
Ian said, still watching the floor.

Zak and Sonny were both silent.

I said, “We are touring as two bands, with separate sets.
We’ll be playing originals as the Jason Taylor Band. I’m hoping you will all
come along for that. The label is putting together musicians as Stoneway to
support Dominique. I’ll be playing the Stoneway sets. Anyone else want to share
that half of the gig?”

They all left me sucking wind, until Sonny said, “I need the
bread. I can’t be fussy.”

“Me, too,” Ian the floor-man said.

“I don’t,” Toby said. And Angelia’s instrument was never
part of the songs for Dominique.

“Thanks. I understand. And I apologize for asking you this
late.”

“It’s bearable because we still get to play with Susi,” Ian
said. “That’s worth paying a toll to the devil.”

“She doesn’t want to sing pop music,” I said, as calmly as I
could.

“I’ll talk to her,” Angelia said, simultaneously with
Cynthia and Sonny.

I shook my head, because I couldn’t say no out loud.

Ian said, “So we’ll just do the backporch stuff with her,
huh? A mostly acoustic set? That’s cool. We can make the twang and fuzz work
almost as well without—oh crap.”

Ian can read my face. For that skill, he didn’t need an effing
high school diploma either.

~

I made it through that rehearsal. I’d be a liar if I didn’t
say it was Ian who led us back to the music, starting with a rage piece I wrote
when I first learned that Uncle Beau was ill. We were recording each instrument
on separate tracks, of course, so it will be easy to cut out how badly I played
and replace it later. Everyone else knew how to stay professional, doing their
best the entire time.

Afterward, Zak came up to say how stoked he was that I
respected him enough to invite him on the road.

“Hey man, I think you should call home, though. I hear your
mother was pretty upset yesterday about you quitting school.” Which screwed up
Susi’s life and my hopes, I didn’t say.

Zak blinked. “I moved out of the house two weeks ago. She
just now noticed? It must have sunk in when Sonny and I moved the Hammond B3
out of the basement.”

At home in the evening, it was only Ian and me, picking at
the same material we had worked on last winter, as if we had to check that the
music still linked us so that harmony will occur on cue, no matter what.

“Think I’ll go to bed early,” Ian said after we had picked
the music to pieces. “Are we starting at eight tomorrow?”

“Not until ten. I have prep to do.”

“Cynthia could talk to her, Jason.”

“No.”

“Or Angelia.”

“No. When I have a better handle on this work with
Dominique, I’ll talk to her again. She came in right after I found out about
the tapes, mad at me because Zak quit school, and I sort of went berserk on
her. Lord, I need to get a grip.”

“Yeah, maybe a little. Jason, it’s better if you just ignore
what your stalker friend is doing now.”

“Ignore that our tapes are gone? How can I do that?”

“I mean ignore what he’s saying about Susi. You know, the
bit he’s been hammering on the blogs for the last couple of days, about how
Ephraim is hitting on your girlfriend after stealing your wife, because you
don’t know how to take care of your women. We all know it’s just B.S.”

JASON

I
FORCED MYSELF TO NOT look.
It was the week’s sole moral victory on my part. I turned on my laptop. I
logged on, but I didn’t go cruising anywhere that would make me mad. Or crazy.
I finished the notes for the next meeting with Ephraim and Dominique, giving
her every last thing she needed to prepare for the session. Then I tried to
relax by just cruising other blogs to find diverting information—not music
blogs, but news and art and people’s general craziness preserved for all time
through the glory of the World Wide Web. Or at least as long as they paid their
Internet service provider bills.

Nothing engaged me enough to either pacify my agitation or
divert my attention from the anxiety gnawing at my insides. I checked a couple
of my private lists and traded bland news about old musicians, their
influences, and their legacy. After about twenty minutes of proving to my
Internet friends that I was more intelligent than a doorstop, Chas popped an
instant message.

 
Chas1933: Steven told me who you are.

Sebastian: I hope you don’t take my artifice as a personal
insult. The only place where I can be myself right now is with my friends on
the Internet.

Chas1933: After poking around on Google, I can see the pressure
you’re under. Susi would understand if you tell her.

Sebastian: We aren’t exactly in communication now. Steven will
be relieved, I’m sure.

Chas1933: For myself, I’m sorry to hear it. I wanted to ask you
some questions about the Lost Sons material you got me access to.

Sebastian: I’ll try, but I confess that I haven’t studied up
much myself.

Chas1933: Guess I’ll ask the hardest question first. Why won’t
you acknowledge in public who your father is?

Sebastian: Of course you’d start with the most brutal question.
So you believe the rumors on the Internet?

Chas1933: It’s in the source material.

Sebastian: Somewhere along the line I came to hate Jesse Rufus
as an irresponsible bastard who hurt people. I don’t want to be like him, and I
don’t want people to think of me and Jesse Rufus in the context of music, which
is hard to achieve, since my voice sounds like his. Or in the context of life,
which is easy if I don’t say anything about who my father is.

Chas1933: It isn’t because you aren’t sure which brother is
actually your father?

~

Chas1933: Are you there? Did my last message get lost?

Sebastian: I’m here. I’m trying to think what to type in the
little box. I never once in my life considered it a possibility.

Chas1933: Even after seeing ten years’ worth of correspondence
between your mother and Beau? Now I’m stuck between a rock and the hard place
you’re in. I want to publish what I’m finding—about how Beau and Jesse worked
together on music and lyrics. Everyone has assumed that Jesse wrote the lyrics,
but with these letters, it is clear that Beau wrote poetry to your mother that
pre-dates similar material in their songs. I can’t point to my data, though, if
you don’t want the world to see it.

Sebastian: I have to confess right now that I’m hurting. I
don’t know how to think.

Chas1933: Perhaps you should start by reading some of their
letters. It’s pretty powerful stuff.

Sebastian: Do you have anything electronic I can look at?

Chas1933: I’m mailing attachments to you right now. Want to
read and then talk about it in the morning?

It was freezing cold in the basement. Cynthia had turned the
main heat off because it was supposed to be spring and she doesn’t like
sleeping in warm rooms. I tried to read lying in bed with the laptop, a blanket
pulled over my head.

My mother was in love with Beau.

She stopped singing in the band and wouldn’t go on tour with
them, because Jesse came onto her while she was secretly in love with Beau. For
all I can tell, I’m the result of a one-time date-rape.

She never told Jesse. From the scant evidence of the few
letters Chas forwarded, Beau wrote to her for years and came back to visit when
I was five. And wasn’t I a big surprise? He fell in love with her and then kept
coming back again and again over all those years, until she wasn’t there to come
back to anymore.

~

After I threw up, I wept.

Well, what would you do? How much machismo—or machisma—would
a person have to have in order to not hurl and weep?

I needed to talk it over with someone, and it was too close
to midnight to go looking for Chas1933.

~

“Did Beau ever say anything to you about my mother?”

Ian lay in bed watching dieselpunk videos yet again.

“I could build that,” he said.

Cynthia shook her head. “No, honey. Your hands aren’t
allowed near metal lathes.” She was idly rubbing his shaved head while reading
an Inspector Montalban story.

“Ian, tell me what you heard: My mom? Beau?”

Ian started channel-surfing before answering. “Did Beau ever
say anything at all? He was the quintessential silent bass player. The most he
ever said at any one time was when he ragged us for dicking around and being
late to a gig. Or to tell a waitress how he wanted his eggs. Or if he had to go
after a booking agent who was screwing us out of money.”

“I mean personally. Did he talk about my mom?”

Cynthia looked up. “Beau said she was an angel whom God
caused to suffer for no reason.”

“When did he say that?”

“I don’t know. You guys were rehearsing ‘Rhianna’s Song,’
and I made a comment that no woman could be as pure as the woman in the song,
and Beau said she was an angel. Et cetera. Jason, sweetheart?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re in bed. Even though we aren’t doing anything at the
moment, could you leave us the fuck alone?”

~

Huddled in my borrowed basement room, I switched off instant messaging
and couldn’t bring myself to check my email. How much weirdness can I stand to
have delivered to my own bedroom?

Where do you go for relevant information with which to frame
thought? Tolstoy’s MyUniquelyFuckedUpFamily.com? Is there a search result from
Google or KartOO or Bing that will help a person in a situation like this? How
do you even determine what to type in the search query?

“What if your father date-raped your mother and your uncle picked up the
pieces.”

“What did your lost family think when they were alive.”

“How to understand why your mother—”
 

What do I type here? There isn’t any joke to make. She died
when I was fifteen, and she spent the three years before that getting ready to
go, so I think she was a saint. She is not here now to explain it to me, and
she didn’t leave me with a guide to the inside of her mind. Uncle Beau, who
left me a complete map for how to deal with work and everyday life, didn’t
leave a note explaining that—what? It wasn’t me he did all that for—trying to keep
me in school, then traveling with me all those years while Ian and I were
living on the road and learning to play music. We were infants then, and we
never would have survived if Beau hadn’t stuck with us. I thought all this time
that he did it to make up for his brother having abandoned us, but it appears
Jesse never knew about me. Beau took care of me because he loved my mother.
Inordinately. Incessantly. Incandescently.

As a fourteen-year-old, I sat in lower Wallingford listening
for hidden meanings that my father might have buried for me in his songs. I didn’t
know I was listening to poetry that the man sitting at our worn kitchen table
had spawned for the woman who poured him a cup of coffee and asked if he had
kept himself well since last they met. The same man sat next to me in the van
we took to gigs, teaching me flat-picking country and bottleneck blues,
traveling chords and Reverend Gary Davis fingerstyle technique, and DADGAD
tuning for Celtic melodies. The whole while he loved my mother above everything
in life—and why in hell did I never wonder what he was doing playing bass in a
juvenile bar band if he could teach me all of that?

Frickin’ hell, you are supposed to figure out you aren’t the
center of the effing world when you’re what—twelve? Why am I so stunned that
these people had other motivations and other passions?

In my heart of hearts, I don’t think this sense of upset
comes from finding out I wasn’t the motivating focus for these two dear people.
It is learning that my mother and Beau had this huge burning thing at the
center of their lives. And they didn’t let me in.

I wanted to write to Chas and say, “Tell me where you live
so I can come read all those letters. Right now.” I wanted to run there. I
wanted to touch the papers and see the envelopes. I wanted to know what it
looked like when Uncle Beau poured his heart out on paper and cultivated the
seeds of a song. I wanted to read every word he sent my mother and what she wrote
back. For years now, since she has been dead for almost as long as I knew her
in life, I thought it the saddest thing that she didn’t have a true love, just
our lonely little life in lower Wallingford. I was wrong, because somewhere in
there they shared joy together. Even if they didn’t invite me to that party, I
wanted to read what it looked like between them.

There was no chance I’d find any answers floating around in
the giant bit bucket of the Internet. Without thinking it through, I swapped
jeans for running clothes and ran across town to Susi’s house. On a night like
tonight, she would have to let me in. There isn’t another person in the world I
could talk to about this.