Bright Shards of Someplace Else Read online

  She listens for a few moments—but right when I’m getting to the nonsense about the CPR world record, she interrupts me.

  “I don’t think you should be putting this much energy toward him. Just don’t engage. If you tell him to leave because he’s on drugs, then he’s got to stay to show you he’s not. Attention will encourage him. Believe me, I know how this works. And it’s not as if Dee has a long attention span anyway—remember what you told me about his landscaping business? He’ll leave. Give it a few days.”

  She’s probably right, but I don’t like how she just rolls over the fact that I might be rattled at Dee’s sudden appearance, especially when I’m just now feeling ready to song-write again. But Natalie’s an emotional minimalist who doesn’t need the gory details to read a situation correctly. And she’s right about Dee—the landscaping idea, which occurred to him during a brief sober period, lasted less than twenty-four hours. He spent a solid twenty of those hours designing the tree logo that would go on his business cards—drawing and redrawing it in my living room, making it more and more fantastical and symbolic, using up every scrap of paper on a swirling design that incorporated the whole universe into a knothole in the tree’s base. For years afterward I’d find them: a bird’s nest scribbled on an old TV guide, a root system on a receipt, a bough creeping over the stamps in my passport.

  The next morning, the first thing I hear upon waking is a high, squeaky warble and the sound of a lazily plucked guitar. I recognize that I’m-afraid-to-sing-for-real falsetto—Dee. And the guitar, Levi. The studio is next door to my cabin, and the unwelcome sounds come through the open window. I get up and see my computer is still open from last night, when I tried to verify Dee’s story. Had he really set a world record for chest compression per minute and saved a man’s life? But even if was true, did it matter? The ridiculous turns of his life seem like just more evidence of his addiction—it’s like a stoner is writing his fate. I get out my notebook and try to remember some ideas I jotted down last night. After a while, Levi knocks on the door.

  “Danny-boy, get up and jam with us! We’re having a blast.”

  I step outside to talk to him.

  “Look, Levi, I’m not going to jam with him. He’s a junkie. I’m sorry he showed up here. You don’t want to get invested in anything he does; he’s not reliable. He needs to get back into rehab.”

  Levi looks me in the eye for a long moment. His gray hair stands up in a fuzzed swirl atop his head, like a novelty halo. He lifts his hand briefly and makes a loose cup around his ear, as if he misheard. Then he turns both hands up and speaks.

  “Are you serious, Danny? Didn’t you hear him last night? It sounds like he’s over all that. Why not give him a chance?”

  I can’t blame Levi for being charmed—I’ve been there enough myself—but his words make me think he’s unusually gullible. Dee’s story was the kind of improbable drama that users cling to. Real recovery doesn’t come from the flash-pop of some crazy encounter, and Levi should at least know that.

  “Levi, I’m serious. You don’t know him. He’s just pretending. This is some ruse, some ploy to get into my good graces or get money or I don’t even want to think about what he’s trying to do. You don’t know the history here—”

  “Danny, let him stay here for now. Come on. We’ll ask him to leave if something goes wrong, but otherwise? It might be fun! We’ve got plenty of room here. We need a young guy around to keep us two old goats fresh …”

  Levi glances at the main house, where Lucinda, blue scarves streaming off her neck, bobs past the window like an exotic fish. “Dang it, Lucinda’s waiting for me. Totally forgot! I’m supposed to take her to the garden this morning to harvest some stuff for tonight. Did you know we have a farm share down the road? It’s a great place—the old guy named Gregors owns it. When he learned I was a rock star, he said that originally Woodstock was going to be on his property but the hippies got a bad vibe from his sheep, since they all were so well-behaved and lined up for their feed. They thought he was fascist and split …”

  “Levi, I don’t want to get into too much detail but Dee—”

  “Hey, Danny, I’ve got to run. We’ll talk later. Lucinda’s giving me the eye. Women! You know what’s scary? Watching her weed. Ever notice how aggressive women are about stuff like that? They can be all butterflies and rainbows but let them loose on dandelions and they become these focused little wildcats all claw, claw, claw …” He continues talking as he backs away, his step so light on the autumn leaves that he could be mistaken for a bounding squirrel.

  It’s not particularly to my son’s credit that he’s seduced Levi with his storytelling. Levi, for all his sophistication as a performer and musician, is a strangely guileless man, the kind of person whose brilliance, you might say, comes from that ability to be seduced, to emotionally connect with anyone and anything. No matter what he sings, he finds something beautiful and authentic within the words. I’ve always seen him as a kind of idiot savant, a brilliant, complex performer unburdened by actually being brilliant or complex.

  Levi and I had a good string of hits from about 1973 to 1980. I’d even toured with him, generating new songs on the road. But by the eighties, our music had fallen out of favor, and we both used this as an opportunity to pursue other projects. Neither of us really recreated our early successes, but Levi did as well as an out-of-vogue folk rocker can reasonably expect, landing soundtrack work (“Cloud Tears” for that cartoon, “Davy Jones’ Lockdown” for that ridiculous pirate/prison film). He elevated even that schlock to the point where I had tears in my eyes when I took my kids to see them and heard Levi singing over the credits. I did okay too, for a while, and landed on the adult contemporary chart with one forgettable tune. Then my career stalled out on one particular song I’d been hired to write for an up-and-coming neo-soul songstress. Her manager was looking for a simple Motown classic that would show off the girl’s voice, but I became so taken with her tone and phrasing that I wanted to do something more ambitious, a little opus, a kind of Chapin’s “Taxi” with a high-flying bridge. I wrote pages and pages, fifteen minutes worth of bittersweet sentiments (nothing the girl could have sung convincingly—she was just shy of twenty), wrote long past when the manager needed the lyrics, long past when the singer put out her first and last small-label album, long past when she gave up her music career and got into real estate (last I heard). I planned on finishing it for someone else—or for its own sake—but it never got done. The longer I worked the more tight and convoluted it became, and the simple thread of loss I hoped to convey became a hopeless tangle of abstraction and symbol that I tried to unweave for years before giving up.

  Soon after that, Dee became a factor, and I just never got back to writing. I don’t want that failed song to be the last work I do. I want to write like I used to—for a performer who really connects with my work, who can elevate and transform it. There’s truly something magical in what Levi can do—when I hear my words in his voice, it’s as if I can see a pathos in myself that I otherwise can’t. It used to really help me.

  Soon enough Dee himself stops by. I can tell it’s him by the shave-and-a-haircut knock, a knock he never fails to use even when he’s a total mess and hardly knows his own name. Strange what the mind holds onto when everything else is lost. When I open the door, he begins speaking in a fast blurt, as if he’s memorized what he is going to say and needs to get it all out before he forgets.

  “I know you don’t believe me that I’m clean. I know you think I’m using even now, and I totally get that. I understand. But I am clean. I saved a guy’s life. And he saved my life. I came here because I wanted you to know.”

  I let him in and sit down at my computer while he sits on the edge of the bed, rubbing his hands together and clearing his voice between sentences, waiting for me to say something.

  “I truly believe some higher power put that man in front of me at the exact moment we both needed each other. I remember looking in his eyes and he
aring the click when I did the compressions. His eyes were just dead. He was gone. I looked into those black holes and just coaxed the universe back. I brought myself back. It happened for a reason. Everything does. I believe me coming here and you being here and working with Levi—it’s all part of a healing plan …”

  Coaxed the universe back. I find myself typing the phrase without meaning to.

  “Look, Dad, I’m sorry. For everything. But you have to believe what happened that night in Detroit was real—”

  “From what I gathered, the ‘uppers’ you were on are what gave you the strength to do those chest compressions. Seems like a great argument for doing drugs, not for quitting. And I don’t get, after all the shit you’ve done, why some freakout with a heart attack victim in the ghetto is what turned you around. What about all you did to me? How about the time you punched me and broke my glasses? Or when you cleared out my safe deposit box? None of that triggered an epiphany? And by the way, you still owe me that money …”

  I keep going in this vein, though the whole while I’m picturing how I would have responded just a few years ago, and it is as if that self is next to me, getting up from the chair, embracing Dee, laughing and talking to him, reliving his heroism in Detroit, sharing funny stories about ditzy old Levi and speculating on Lucinda’s relationship with him. I feel sorry for that ghost self—his fragile, temporary joys and more enduring disappointments—and relieved as hell that he’s not me.

  Dee cuts me off in a low cajoling voice, as if negotiating with an erratic mental patient. “Okay, okay, I understand you’re still mad. I understand. But I’m going to show you. Believe it.” He pats my shoulder as he leaves, and the gesture is infuriatingly paternal, as if I’m the troubled son.

  Levi and I are outside the main house on the back porch, sipping wine at small café table. Lucinda has supplied a bowl of fruit, placing it down between us and then turning toward me as she left with what looked to me like a gently sardonic grin, the kind of playfully doubting look I’ve historically found sexy. She’s probably overheard her share of absurd conversations out here—moldering rock stars measuring the weathers of their inner lives with Dopplers of crystals and cleansing diets and tomes written by this or that bestselling seer. Front men gone to seed who gossip with such desperation you’d think old grudges were the sole fuel of some inner sustaining furnace. There’s no doubt a parade of eccentrics traipsing through here each summer, making music or art or pretending to.

  The yard is scattered with bits of refuse used as both sculptures and as seating for friends of Levi who come here to work. A metal horse trough, flipped over and bleeding rust, sits next to an old tractor seat jammed into earth. A lizard made from bicycle chains rears up next to a kinetic sculpture of a large bird, its Plexiglas and pop-can-ring feathers vibrating lightly in the wind. I’ve been telling Levi all about Dee—the long history of drug abuse, the uncanny way he maintains his sobriety just long enough to earn your trust before he breaks it, etc., etc. Levi nods the whole time, his brow scrunched between his dusky blue eyes. Levi looks so sympathetic, so wise, that I almost expect a profound discourse on the breakdown of familial relationships vis-à-vis art, but then he scratches his brush of gray blond hair and pops a melon ball into his mouth.

  “Well, Danny, all I can tell you is what I see. He seems like a great kid. We talked last night after you went to bed and he laid a lot of that heavy stuff out for me. Seems pretty self-knowing. We got to talking about the Zen concept of letting go … he’s real bright, you know? He gives off a nice energy …”

  The breeze moves Levi’s hair away from his forehead, exposing his oddly dewy, luminous skin. His looks have always pulled from history—he can appear as rosy and sunstruck as a cherub in the clouds or as stiff and shadowed as a daguerreotype of a nineteenth-century colonel. His speaking voice—unguarded and rich, with the slightest vulnerable tremor on long vowels—makes whatever he says sound thoughtful. With Levi, I always find myself hearing him out, even though I’d cut someone else off with a scoff if I heard such palaver. He has a way of making reason itself seem cynical, something only the spiritually bankrupt need bother with.

  I take a sip of wine. The dogs have been let out, and they walk out into the yard, stopping and posing among the yard art as if engaged in a challenging modern dance. Off in the distance I can see the light in Dee’s cabin. Most likely he is packing up his things now, or walking in circles holding up his phone, trying to catch a signal from Detroit. Dee’s inconsequential—coming to Chautauqua is about writing again, working with Levi to make something beautiful out of the pure belief of his voice.

  “And that was a pretty amazing story about him saving that guy. You gotta believe his good karma is off the charts right about now.”

  I’ve spent the rest of the afternoon trying to write, without much luck. I asked Lucinda to bring dinner to me in my cabin, thinking it would be best to focus on my work rather than let Dee’s dinner theater distract me. Who knows what the next installment will be? Maybe he rescued a baby at the bottom of a lake, buoyed by a few hits of nitrous oxide. But the less I engage the better, and now the thought of returning my plates to Lucinda as the evening winds down gives me something to work toward. When she dropped off my food, she tapped my forearm with her small silver-ringed hand and told me not to work too hard. That was nice.

  Nothing’s come so far; the page in front of me is still empty. I think about calling Natalie, but her hyperpracticality wouldn’t be useful now. She wouldn’t understand what was going on here anyway—the skillful way I’m juggling Levi’s sensibilities with Dee’s presence wouldn’t register with her. Subtleties don’t interest her—the broad strokes do—will this student pass, is this student off drugs, how can I keep this one from getting pregnant. Good for her line of work, but not for art.

  I write out a phrase—the stars are a scrolling readout—and I start to relax. It’s a good line, good enough to perhaps build something from it. Then it hits me. This is a Dee phrase. He called a few months ago and started talking about how the stars seemed like some kind of electric readout, describing his state of mind as he wandered down the beach. I immediately scratch it out, bearing down on the paper so even the contours of the words can’t be seen. I’m breathing hard and I put my hand on my heart and feel it flutter. I take a drink from the chilled white wine Lucinda so thoughtfully left, then I try again.

  I watched her aurora eyes … Not so good, but okay, a start. I put my pen to my lips and concentrate on the line, thinking of where to take it next. Then I remember. Dee said this one when he called to describe his breakup with his waifish girlfriend, the one with the shoots-n-ladders tattoo that covered her whole left leg, winding from her ankle all the way up to the exposed white pockets of her cut-off shorts, and I presume, beyond. She was blinking out after a binge of some sort, and Dee had stayed up watching her, willing her mind to change about their future. This time I scribble the words out so roughly that the paper tears. I rip the whole sheet off and start with a fresh one.

  By the flipped silhouette, I regained a planet in you, the shimmer of relief … It keeps happening. Everything reveals itself as Dee’s. It’s as if his lovely phrases have colonized my mind and pushed everything out. I don’t want to use these words. I don’t want any part of Dee in this work. The whole point is to move fully past all that. Back to the time before the kid was even born. But it’s as if, through some sinister telepathy, Dee keeps interrupting. I try writing terrible phrases, stupid things, or just gibberish. No dice. Everything seems to pull from something Dee once slurred, mumbled, or shouted. There’s not an unsullied thought in my head.

  I haven’t touched my food—some kind of thick pasta with flecks of fish grows cold next to me. I take another drink. Dinner is probably over by now. I could return my plates, talk with Lucinda and commiserate about the crazy talk she is forced to bear witness to around here. That look of hers—quiet, ironic, and warm—makes it clear that she has a high sense of the absurd, no d
oubt honed by watching Levi and the excesses that unfold around him. We could have a glass of wine and laugh at the strangeness of our companions. That will be as good for her, I’m sure, as it will be for me.

  I leave the cabin and see that the studio light is on, as if Levi and Dee might be getting together for a postdinner session. Fine, fair enough. I fling the dinner off my plate into the woods. Wouldn’t want to offend Lucinda with an unfinished dinner. It’s dark and somewhat chilly. The crisp margins of the half-moon above look like a surgical excision in the night, a bright wedge of proud flesh. It’s incredibly quiet, except for the dampened bustle of nocturnal animals waking and beginning their rounds. And a long squeak, a curse and a laugh—something being moved in the studio, someone stubbing a toe.

  Lucinda joins me for a drink in the dining room. The lights are all dimmed, and a candle, still burning from dinnertime, weeps wax between us. She’s lovely in this light. Her face is wide at the top, with large, heavily lidded eyes, while her mouth is small and overstuffed with a jumble of teeth, the sliver of an overbite showing even when she shuts her lips. A messy dark braid falls over her shoulder. She’s the type of woman who seems ageless—there’s no trace of youthful plumpness in the flat planes her face, nor is there a wrinkle. She tells me about her life in a small village in Portugal, her culinary schooling in the States, and a story about smuggling saffron in the lining of her bra on a flight after a visit home. When she laughs her rumbly low laugh, she shakes her head and winces, as if being amused is a little painful, something to shake off.