My phone rang, and it was someone I didn’t know. She said her name, Marjorie Something, but it didn’t mean anything to me. “Jeanette’s daughter,” she said.
“Oh!” I said, “How’s she doing? We’re looking forward to getting her back! The kids made a sign and everything!”
“My mother passed away last night,” she said. “In her sleep. She didn’t suffer. There wasn’t any pain.”
“No,” I said. “Jeanette? No!” And I started to cry right then and there. I had only recently realized how attached I was to Jeanette, and now she was gone.
The daughter was saying, “… very fond of you and Robin. She’s at work now, I guess? I tried to reach her, but… Anyway, Mom was so grateful for all the help you gave her at the… at the end of her life.” Now she was crying.
“I’m sorry,” I said, all choked up. “I’m so sorry.”
“Well,” she sobbed. “She was old, but, but I wanted to keep her!”
My heart broke for this woman I had never seen. Death was just a bad idea, and there was far too much of it around. The daughter said she’d get in touch with us about the funeral.
I had to tell Robin. She would want to know. I drove down to Vons. She was at lunch, but I told Alex, the manager, that it was important that I find her.
“She usually eats by the fountain on the lower level of the shopping center,”
“Thank you,” I said.
She was sitting by herself, eating a salad out of a clear plastic container. She didn’t see me at first. I stood, there a few seconds, thinking about how I should say it, what words I should use. She had on her Vons shirt and her name tag and her black uniform pants. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun for a minute. Then she went back to her salad.
“Robin?” I said.
She turned her head and looked at my face. After just a second, her whole expression changed. Her eyebrows went together and her mouth opened. She said, “Jeanette?”
I nodded.
She put down her plastic fork, put the salad container down next to her, dropped her face into her hands. When she cried, her whole body shook with each sob.
I sat down next to her and put my hand on her back. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry. I know she really liked you, and you did so many things for her.” I handed her some tissues that I had brought with me for this reason.
She blew her nose. “I have to go home, Good,” she said. “I hate this job, and I have to call my mom.”
• • •
Sometime after The Awful Thing happened, Adam Blackburn from Point Blank called. He needed a song for a telethon to raise money for the children of the victims. He had tried to write one himself and came up empty. He asked if I had anything. “Maybe,” I said, and I played “A Minute or Two from Now,” the song I wrote about my brother, for him over the phone. He liked it, and he asked if he could use it, “Sure,” I said, “be my guest.” I taught him the song. I didn’t think much more about it. One curious thing about transformation is that often when the biggest shifts occur, it doesn’t seem like anything much is happening at all.
• • •
I was in bed asleep when the phone rang. “Honey?” My mother. “Well, it was wonderful. It was a beautiful song. You’ve really done it now, kiddo.”
Slowly, it dawned on me what she was talking about. “Mom?” I said. “You’re watching MTV?”
“Oh, Ellen told us your song was going to be on.”
“Oh,” I said. “How did she know?”
“Sweetheart, you told her.”
“Did I?”
“Of course you did. Now, I’ve got to go. I need to call in my donation. I love you, sweetie.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
We hung up.
Someone was knocking on my door. I opened it, and Mike was there. “Good, you were on TV!”
“What are you doing up so late?”
“A guy said your name! He said, ‘This song was written by our old friend Tom Good.’ I was watching with my mom, and they told your name! It was the best song on the show! It was about a boy who wasn’t home yet. Can you sing that for me? Tomorrow, because I promised my mom I’d go to bed right away if she let me watch the whole show.”
“Of course,” I said. “Tomorrow. Night, Mike.”
“Oh, wait. Mom liked it too, Good. She said to tell you. Night, Good.”
And for that, it was all worth it—all the pain, the hiding, the bad choices and false moves I’d ever made in my life seemed OK to me, because I had started to move forward. I had turned some of my life into a song. A real song that people liked.