Chapter Twenty-six
But it’s not the Gods of Music who rouse me at three in the morning. It’s Hammerstein, the oldest of the border collies. He’s licking my face, asking to be let out to pee. I wonder why he doesn’t wake my mom. He’s practically her familiar, following her wherever she goes. He even came to the show tonight, hanging out backstage, curling up his little black-and-white body in the wings, knowing the routine from years of practice.
If I don’t get up, he’ll spend the rest of the night pacing back and forth around my bed. I pull on a sweatshirt and follow him downstairs. When we reach the front door, he nudges my sneakers. I stick my feet into them, push open the door, and let my mom’s dog outside. He stands on the front porch, then runs a couple circles around me as if he’s herding me.
“Fine. I’ll come with you.”
We walk down the steps and into the yard, padding across the grass, thick and spongy. The last vestiges of winter remain in the form of scattered spots of hard, packed snow from a few days ago. The snowfall that blanketed Manhattan hit the whole Eastern Seaboard, too. Crunching through a small patch, I follow him, enjoying the sound of the snapping beneath me.
Then Hammerstein starts yapping, high-pitched yapping, right there in the middle of the yard. I shush him, but he doesn’t listen. He turns up the volume, transforming his yap into a full-throttle bark, before he takes off for the lake in a sprint. His tail is a blur, his legs cyclones. As he races to the edge of the water, I picture Matthew’s dog chasing the poodle in Central Park. Only Hammerstein isn’t chasing another dog; he’s interested in a family of geese swimming along the lake’s edge, taking a moonlight dip. When he skids to a stop, continuing his battle cry, they scatter, flying away, their brown bodies soon blending into the dark night sky so I can no longer see them.
Content with his work for the evening, Hammerstein trots back toward me, stopping along the way to push his nose against something. He prods it some more until I can see it’s a green apple. He knocks the apple one more time, displaying the half-eaten side. My dad must have eaten it for lunch some afternoon. Then tossed it into the yard instead of the garbage can, preferring to leave food for squirrels rather than add to landfills.
I’m ready to return to the front door, but the border collie scurries to the back of the house. I follow him to our sprawling back porch, where he quickly spreads out on the wood, his back legs stretched straight behind him and his front legs crossed. I sit next to him in one of my dad’s signature deck chairs, and watch the moon. After a minute in the quiet, the cool of the night, with no sounds but Hammerstein’s breathing and my own breathing, I start to feel the slats on the back of the chair making their mark against my back.
Just like they do at home in New York. When I sit on my deck in the same chair, this chair’s doppelganger. When I sit on my lucky deck.
My lucky deck. My lucky deck.
Suddenly, I sit up straight. I start humming, very softly, practically under my breath. The words are there, the music is there, the melody is there.
I’ve got a lucky deck of cards tonight…
It’s rough and it’s just a few words but I kind of like it, and it’s kind of me. I do have a lucky deck. I do have a lucky life. I am a lucky gal, and I now have the start of another song.
“Want to go inside, girl?”
Then it hits me. Hammerstein isn’t a girl; he’s a boy. But I’m thinking of The Doctor chasing the poodle in the park when I told Matthew I wanted to break down his resistance, and then the half-eaten apple here and the sun-kissed fruit Matthew extolled at the farmer’s market, and then the patches of crunchy snow here and the fresh, falling stuff from when I told Matthew I was writing again.
Suddenly words and notes and melodies and bits and pieces of songs are crashing around in my head, clanging their symbols, beating their drums, like a symphony, a chorus. I don’t even try to parse them out, I just let them come rain down on me—the sounds of a voice, a girl and a phantom, neurons and synapses, wisps and fingertips. Glorious, brilliant sounds and chords ringing in my head over and over and over.
All the sounds of the last few days that were playing faintly in my head are now loud and clear.
I feel like that girl in a music video. She stands outside in a bright green field, holding her arms out like she’s flying. She turns in circles, her face to the sky, the summer rain beating down on her, a smile as wide as the sea. She’s getting soaked to the bone and she doesn’t care. She’s happy, deliriously happy.
I bend down and kiss Hammerstein on his wet black nose. Tonight Hammerstein is a true guide dog. He helped me get out of my own way.
I bounce back inside through the back door, Hammerstein at my heels, and head into my mother’s study, clicking on her computer to look up flights from New York to Portland tomorrow. Then I buy a ticket and reach for the phone. I call the one person I can call anytime of day, anytime of night.
He answers, with nary a trace of sleep in his voice. His mantra is “I’ll sleep when I’m dead and until then there’s caffeine.”
“Hi, Mom. Everything okay?”
“Owen, it’s me.”
“The prodigal son returns. Well, daughter.”
“Guess what you’re doing tomorrow.”
“An ‘I’m sorry’ would be nice.”
“I’m sorry. Really sorry. Terribly sorry. I’ll make it up to you somehow, I promise. I’ll get you a lifetime membership to Starbucks or something. But for now, I need you to come to Portland tomorrow. I booked you on the nine o’clock flight. I’ll pick you up at the airport.”
“Jesus, Jane. I’ll have to get up at six thirty to get to LaGuardia on time.”
“I booked you first class and there’s a town car coming to your place to give you a ride. Just put on a ball cap and roll.”
I hang up the phone, but I don’t go to sleep. Instead, I root around in my bedroom closet, hunting quietly for the old acoustic, so the rattling won’t wake Ethan. I find it on a shelf in the back, a little bruised, its body bearing the scratches of time. I pull it down, then head back to the deck. Hammerstein follows me.
I tune the guitar, a task that takes several minutes due to its long-time lack of use. But once I start plucking at the strings, they sound just the same. They make music just the same. So I stay up all night, writing songs, sometimes scraps of songs, sometimes a refrain, sometimes an open. The sun rises, pink and shimmery over the lake and I keep playing. I’m not even remotely tired. I am beyond energized.
I take my dad’s car to the airport, picking up Matthew at his hotel. Ethan elected to stay behind and help Grandpa build a boat. I call Haley from my cell phone.
“Is that studio of yours booked for the weekend?”
Matthew pops a CD into the car stereo. I spy a handwritten white label on the front of the CD that says, “Pink Floyd, Hamburg, 1972.” I give Matthew a thumbs-up for his music selection, figuring it must be a copy on one of those bootlegs his dad traded for when Matthew was a kid.
“Not this weekend. Have someone in mind for me?” Haley asks.
“Why don’t you break out that red Les Paul you were feeling up yesterday and put a closed sign on the shop? We have some tracks to cut!”
…
I feel like I’m in a garage band again. It’s like I’m back in high school recording “Sweet Summer Mine.” ’Cause it’s me and Owen in a tiny little studio in our hometown that’s nothing like the one we’re used to in New York. This one barely has any padding on the walls. The equipment is old, scratchy, rough around the edges. The soundboard could use some WD-40 and the microphone smells a little musty.
But none of that matters because we’re making music. The three of us hole up in his studio, Haley playing lead guitar, delighting in placing the recording in session sign on the door of the studio. Being the dutiful small-business owner, he would never just shut his store for the weekend. His youngest daughter Camille is home for the weekend, so she’s manning the front.
Oh, and Matthew’s here too, taking notes furiously the whole time. He is writing an article, after all. And, I have to admit, it’s a pretty good story when the singer in question bangs her head against a brick wall for two months, flees her New York studio, runs off to Maine, and finally realizes she doesn’t have to write from pain anymore. She can find inspiration elsewhere. Maybe even—what a crazy thought—from happiness.
We continue on like that all weekend—Friday, Saturday, and into Sunday, starting early, playing all day, giving Haley enough time to make the Tommy curtain. Then Owen, Matthew, and I stay until the midnight hour, replenishing our caffeine supplies every few hours at the AM/PM a block away. Ethan spends the entire weekend with his grandparents, telling me Sunday afternoon that they want him to read The Hobbit next, so they can carry on with their intergeneration ad-hoc book club.
I bid adieu to Haley, thanking him for his studio, for his time, and most of all, for his wisdom. Then Owen and I head back to the house, have a final meal with my parents—trout that Ethan and my dad caught off the boat and salad my mom made for me—and then head to the airport to catch a late flight to New York. Matthew caught an afternoon flight, since he had to finish up his regular weekly column that’s due tomorrow.
“I’m sad that we’re leaving, Mom,” Ethan says, not bothering to stifle a massive yawn as he lays his head on my shoulder after we have settled into our seats. “Can we do that every weekend?”
“Maybe not every weekend, but we can definitely do it again.” I pet Ethan’s hair and he’s sound asleep before the plane even leaves the ground.
I turn to Owen, who has a rough cut of our weekend jam session in a flash drive in his carry-on. “Not bad for a weekend.”
“Epic. It’s epic.” Owen adds a yawn of his own, the fatigue of the brainstorm setting in for him too. He reaches into his bag under the seat. “Here’s something for you.” He hands me his eReader, clicked open. “Figured you can finally read my book.”
“It’s about time.” I glance at the cover page on the screen—Tell Me A Ghost Story by Owen Michael Stanchcomb. “Ooh, you’re using your formal name. You poser.”
“You Mariah Carey wannabe.”
“You dick-lit writer.”
“I’m Jane Black and this is my Grammy and holy shit,” he mimics me in a high-pitched, girlie voice.
“Fine. You win.”
“Good.” He closes his eyes and tilts his chair back. “Don’t forget I won the bragging rights too. I finished my novel first. And you also owe my monkey a lifetime supply of food.”
I won’t forget either. Nor do I mind in the least paying up. But for now, I have a book to read.