Dad wants to take a break so he can pick up dinner. I put on the TV but nothing excites me. I write in my journal but it only makes me think more. I ask Mom what else Gavin said before he left the house this morning, but she doesn’t remember him saying anything. When the front door finally opens it’s just Dad with dinner.
I’m not hungry but Dad says we can’t finish recording until I eat something. He and Mom eat pizza while I force noodles into my mouth.
“I tried pizza,” I announce.
“You did?” Dad says. “When?”
“In the city with Gavin. It was the same day he took me around to all those John Lennon places.”
Dad nods and he takes a drink and now I’m feeling bad that I didn’t want to try pizza all those times with Dad but I tried it with Gavin.
It feels strange without Gavin here because for two weeks now he’s been eating dinner with us and he cleans up the dishes and takes out the trash and fixes the Internet when it stops working. I don’t like what Dad said about Gavin being flaky and not showing up when it seems like Dad is the one being flaky because he’s the one who hasn’t been here lately.
I hurry up and clear my plate, but Dad needs coffee.
“How’s it going?” Mom says.
“So far, so good,” Dad says. “Just waiting on our singer.”
I know Dad was only trying to help when he offered to ask Christina to sing our song, but I don’t want someone else to sing it. Gavin isn’t just my singer, he’s my McCartney and he’s the blackbird and he can’t let me down. If he doesn’t get here soon I might have to ask Dad to bring me to Home Depot for some important supplies so I can slam my head against the concrete and get rid of my special memory forever, because I don’t think I’ll want to remember this day.
Mom puts the leftover pizza slices in the fridge. “What time do you think you’ll be done?”
“Hard to say,” Dad says, watching the coffeepot turn black. “You know how this stuff goes.”
She stands there with her arms crossed and she rubs her big toe along the gritty line between tiles. After doing her toe thing she takes two wineglasses out of the cabinet and puts them on the counter. She looks down at the two wineglasses and touches her chin and puts one glass back in the cabinet and fills the other glass halfway.
Dad’s equipment looks like the controls for a spaceship. Right now he’s putting a sound like a low siren in the background. “That’s so sad,” I say.
“Should I take it out?”
“No. Sad is good, right?”
He doesn’t answer but I already know that Dad thinks sad is good. He leans back in his chair and lets the song play and when it ends he plays it again. “The bridge could be better.”
I nod like I agree, but actually I want to bury my head between the couch cushions.
“Do you have any other ideas?” Dad says.
I play him the other bridge I wrote. It’s much simpler.
“We can work with that,” Dad says and then he sings it, “We can work with that,” to the tune of the Beatles song “We Can Work It Out,” which was written by Paul. I was pretty sure John wrote the bridge to that song but after talking to Gavin I’m not sure who wrote what anymore.
“Is it true that Paul wrote the bridge for ‘A Day in the Life’?” I ask.
“Yes. It’s amazing, right?”
Together Dad and I play through the bridge a few times and we try out different chords until the section feels right. It’s hard to impress Dad, but when he finally gets excited, you feel like you’ve done something really special. “Okay,” he says, “let’s record that.”
He leaves me in the Quiet Room and I practice playing the new bridge a few times and then I say, “I’m ready.”
I wait for Dad’s voice in my headphones but he doesn’t answer. Maybe he went to the bathroom. I look around the Quiet Room.
Saturday, July 18, 2009: Uncle Nick and Grandpa are finished building the walls for the Quiet Room and now I’m helping Dad paint them. Dad has to go over my areas a second time because I moved my brush in every direction instead of up and down like he asked. Dad lets me sign my initials in silver Sharpie near the socket.
I slide off the stool and find my initials. Seeing those letters makes me smile but my smiling can’t last because I start to think about what’s going to happen to my initials when Dad shuts the studio down. What if the new people paint over my initials? What if they turn this downstairs apartment into a hardware store like they did to John Lennon’s favorite café? I hate hardware stores.
I hear Dad’s voice in my headphones. “Okay, honey. Go for it.”
I climb back into place. I play the part until Dad is happy and he tells me to come into the studio. When I get there, I see someone on the couch. “Hello, Joan Lennon.”
He says it with a British accent and it’s hard not to smile. But I’m also pretty annoyed. “Where have you been?”
“I took a train ride,” Gavin says.
He sounds like Bob Dylan and I don’t like that at all because Bob Dylan is the worst singer in the world, besides Tom Waits, and we’re never going to win the contest with a voice like that. But at least he made it here in time. That’s all that matters. Well, almost. “Did you finish the lyrics?”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. “I did.” He unfolds the paper and says, “Let me hear the song.”
Dad plays the song and we watch Gavin’s face as he listens and reads the words on his paper. When the song is over he says, “It sounds great. The bridge is different.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I need a pen.”
Dad hands him one.
“Play it again,” Gavin says.
Gavin listens to the song again and he writes more words. This time when the song ends he stands up from the couch, and, without saying anything, he walks into the Quiet Room.
I’m lying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling. Gavin’s voice is coming through the speakers. I can hear when he clears his throat and when he does a little hum and when he coughs. The song starts and he sings his words, the new words he just wrote and the words he already had, and when it all comes together, it sounds like a song I’ve heard before, not in my room or in the courtyard, but on the radio or YouTube. It doesn’t feel like my song but it is my song. Our song. Dad’s song too.
Morning comes and you’re not here
An empty bed but I feel you near
Such a mess you left behind
Not so sure I’ll make it this time
I hate you more than you’ll ever know
Just come back and I’ll let it go
I feel the urge to cut and run
But you tied me up, can’t get undone
Keep running but I get nowhere
Keep swinging but I hit thin air
I hear you whisper in the back of my mind:
Start over, leave the past behind
Keep dwelling on what went wrong
Keep reaching for what is gone
I hear you whisper in the back of my mind:
Start over, leave the past behind
Life began when you arrived
What came before was a waste of time
Now I’m wondering where to go
Some answers I’ll never know
I could sail to the farthest place
But no one leaves without a trace
I think you’ve already sealed my fate
Can’t let you go, can never escape
Keep running but I get nowhere
Keep swinging but I hit thin air
I hear you whisper in the back of my mind:
Start over, leave the past behind
Keep dwelling on what went wrong
Keep singing the saddest song
I hear you whisper in the back of my mind:
Start over, leave the past behind
How do I go back home?
How do I go back home?
How do I go back home?
How do I go back home?
Alone.
I don’t know if it’s memorable but it’s beautiful and Gavin even used my line about singing the saddest song. After doing a few more vocal takes, he comes out of the Quiet Room.
Dad looks excited. “I forgot how rich your voice is.”
Gavin paces around the room. “There’s a line that’s still bothering me.”
It must be the same line from before. I notice he already changed it from get up and flee this place to sail to the farthest place. He’s walking back and forth through the basement and I’m busy thinking about the farthest place I know.
Monday, November 12, 2012: Mom is helping me make a model of our solar system and she makes sure I get Earth’s tilt exactly right so that the sun (an actual lightbulb) shines more on the North Pole than the South Pole.
Mom says, “This is just one solar system. There are billions of other solar systems in our galaxy. And there are billions more galaxies too. And each of those galaxies has billions of solar systems.”
I try to picture it all but it’s too much math.
Gavin is on the couch and he’s out of ideas.
“What about outer space?” I say. “It’s the farthest you can go and it rhymes with trace.”
Gavin looks up and Dad spins his chair around. Nobody’s talking.
And then Gavin says quietly, “Stars.” He turns to Dad. “When we look at them, we’re seeing the past, right?”
“That could work,” Dad says.
Gavin’s pen is moving fast. He jumps up off the couch and disappears into the Quiet Room. Dad gives me a wink and spins back to the computer. I lie down on the couch and shut my eyes and the song plays again and this time Gavin sings the new line:
I could sail into outer space
But even stars, they leave a trace
I’m feeling proud that Gavin used my idea even though the new line doesn’t make as much sense to me as the old one. But if Gavin is happy and Dad is happy, then I’m happy too. Actually, this is just about as happy as I’ve ever been in my whole life.
As soon as I realize how perfect it is, my happiness sinks a little, because I know this night will never happen again. After this, I’ll send my song into the contest and Dad will close the studio and Gavin will go back to California and I’ll go back to being alone. I know I’ll always have this night saved in my memory but memories are never as good as the real moment, just like a cover version of a song is hardly ever as good as the original.
But I have to tell myself to get out of my own head because the night isn’t over yet. The song isn’t finished. It’s all still happening and I better pay attention.
I listen to the song play over and over again and I never get tired of hearing it. Gavin’s voice sounds better each time. At one point, Dad says, “I like the double meaning of the word stars,” and Gavin says, “I didn’t even think of that,” and Dad says, “A guy at work asked if it was true that I knew you.” Gavin sings more and this time on the last chorus he changes part of the melody. And later Dad asks, “Everything cool?” and Gavin says, “I miss this, I forgot,” and Dad says, “What took us so long?” and I wonder the same thing. I never want Dad to leave the house again, or Gavin, and I wish we could all live down here and Mom could bring us food to eat and I’d even learn to like pizza if that’s what it would take. It’s like we’re a band, the three of us. We just need a name, something with a the at the beginning, like the Beatles.
And then Gavin goes back into the booth and he sings a harmony with himself and now there are two Gavins. The song gets fuller and fuller and it all plays like a movie that I’ll never get tired of watching. The song is so large now, it’s the most popular song in the world, and I see every baby and old man singing the words and the music is going deep into their systems. I’m above it all, watching it happen, floating in the clouds, or I’m on a city stage winning first place, or I’m in a golden slumber, I don’t know, I can be anywhere, because with Dad home and Gavin’s voice coming through the speakers, it’s so easy to drift away. But I don’t want to go too far, because this is exactly where I want to be.