October
Sam had not seen Robert since they sang together in that back stairwell, Robert sitting high up on the landing, Sam standing by the fire door, her back against the wall. They’d had their eyes closed most of the time, in what felt to Sam like a dream state, and they’d sung for the better part of an hour. It had probably felt different to Robert, because he was used to playing music like that. He was used to singing, to opening up to a song. What had been a powerful and intimate moment for Sam, a moment when she had exposed a vulnerable part of herself to Robert with her voice, that might not have felt the same for him. She’d lost herself in that simple song about a hammer and about freedom and about self-proclamation and self-determination. A song she did not even really understand. Tell him I’m gone, she’d sung. And that’s the way she’d felt, gone.
She’d felt gone in the way you felt the first time you got drunk and you thought that this was how drinking was going to make you feel. All happy and warm inside. And little did you know. But she’d felt in control of that amazing feeling while she and Robert had been singing. She had not given herself over to some drug. With her eyes closed in that stairwell and her head thrown back, she’d felt given over to herself. She felt as though that silly little song and that tiny, toy-like instrument she was playing, these things had helped her locate the best part of herself. The part that was willing to reach out to the best part of others. And not only had that part of her been well-hidden after the assault and all the terrible things that happened afterward, but the best part of her was something she’d never found before in her life. The closest she’d ever been was the peacefulness that used to come over her watching Morganne draw. And then, there it was, fluttering inside her like an awkward angel in her chest. And she’d opened her mouth to sing the next line and up it had gone into the air above her and that whole stairwell had echoed with what was best in her mixed with what was best in Robert.
And maybe that was something Robert was used to. But it had certainly never happened to her before.
So in the intervening weekend, she’d spent a lot of time looking forward to her next music class. She could not wait to see Robert again.
Maybe they’d pair up. Maybe the teacher would move them off to some private corner where they could sing again. Maybe they’d be doing some sort of book work all class and they’d only have enough opportunity to say hello. Or sit near each other. Maybe there was something, even some boring chart to fill out, that they could collaborate on and then when they’d finished, they could sneak out back to that stairwell again and sing till she felt better. Sing till she felt good.
She went looking for versions of “Take This Hammer,” and there were many to choose from. But there was a version by a Canadian named Harry Manx that she thought must have been the model upon which Robert had based his version. It was slow and spare with a funky groove. And just hearing that version, listening to it three or four times in a row, she felt much more prepared to attempt the song again. She had ideas for the song. A fun place for a dramatic stop. Different ways of phrasing the lines.
When she switched from listening to Manx’s “Take This Hammer” to Piaf’s “La Vie en rose,” the difficulties of the Piaf song were stark. The melody was all over the place. The chord changes were crazy. She could not keep track of them at all. And then there were the lyrics. She wanted to sing the song in French, even though she only really understood a word or two. There were English versions on YouTube she could have clicked on, but she did not want to waste her ears on them. The song. The singer. The language. These particular words. These specific things had gripped her and anything else seemed like fakery. Piaf’s voice in that song seemed rooted to the earth like a hundred-year oak. Bullets would have bounced off her when she was singing it. That’s what Sam wanted for herself. It was a goal so obviously ridiculous and unobtainable that there was no way she’d ever describe it to anyone else in those words.
Singing with Robert had connected her to some deep secret. The secret of inner power, inner strength. And the Piaf song seemed to have connected to the possibility of an even greater power, a power currently outside of her, but that she felt it might be possible to gather in and claim. Just listening to Piaf bend the whole universe with her voice brought Sam close to something important. But it was singing it herself she wanted. She wanted the power to bend the world. Singing so sweetly with Robert had brought her a step in that direction. She wanted to ask for his help to bring her the rest of the way.
Monday morning Sam sat in music class anxiously awaiting Robert’s arrival. The chart for “La Vie en rose” was carefully folded up and stuffed into the front pocket of her jeans, like something she might need in an emergency. She’d tried singing a few bars of the melody. She knew enough about chords now to fumble her way through playing just the root notes that accompanied the few phrases that felt within her reach. She had her head down and did not want to make it too obvious she was looking for anyone. But she’d scanned the room furtively on arriving and did not see Robert, so she sat where she could see the classroom door if she shifted her eyes a little.
The Piaf quotation and the drawing had been erased from the blackboard, but she looked down at her hand and saw the little tattoo in a new light. The girl on her hand was Piaf now, somehow, and somehow Becky, too. La Vie en rose. I want to smell La Vie en rose.
When the teacher called Robert’s name for attendance, someone behind Sam spoke.
“Did you hear what happened to that guy? Robert? Robot?”
In her anxious state, the room felt formless around her. She turned around and looked at the boy who’d spoken: a skinny metal guy with black hair dyed blacker, blue-black. He had an Illuminati tattoo on his forearm, an eye over a pyramid with rays of light spiking outward.
“He got the shit beat out of him. Yeah. He’s in the hospital… Dragged him out of his house in the middle of the night…I heard he’s bad. Like. Broken up. I don’t know. I heard it was a bootlegger or something. I would not mess with Robot. He fuckin killed that guy? Gink? One punch. Did you see that video? I’ve got that on my phone.”
“Everybody’s got that on their phone.”
“And they spray-painted him. Kicked the shit out of him, then tagged him with spray paint. My friend who lives over there told me it was the word shame. They left a mark. A smear of paint right out on the pavement on Lemon Street. Right out in front of his house.”
“What’s wrong with that girl?”
Sam’s heart was pounding in her chest. She closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. She lowered her head until it rested, sideways, left ear on her thigh, down in her own lap. Hearing of Robert being assaulted had made her want to cover her own body, to fold up and protect herself from the blows that flashed through her mind, that came pummelling in at her from all directions.
“Sam? Sam? You okay?” It was the music teacher’s voice. He’d come to her side. His voice was right up against her ear.
She had to get out of this room.
“Sam?”
A lightning storm in her head. All sounds mashed together into a sweeping roar. Faces had flipped through her mind at first, movements, gestures, threatening grunts. But now there were no distinguishable shapes, just a rapidly blossoming brightness followed by a collapse into black.
“I’ll be okay.” She hoped that’s what she was saying. She could not hear her own voice above the thundering of her mind. But she was fairly sure her lips had moved. She’d felt the buzzing of her voice down in her throat.
“I need to get out of this room.”
She opened her eyes and it was like a video shot from a camera swinging at the end of a rope. A swath of floor, the material of the leg of her jeans, every thread and dent in the fabric like a landscape of craters. Chrome of chair legs, the beige of painted cement blocks. She stood and the path to the doorway was a blur of dark objects, lighted background, toothy grins as assholes enjoyed her distress. Someone was probably posting about this right now. Using her panic attack for clout.
When she reached the hallway, she felt the extra air. Her lungs opened up. Her head was down, her eyes were open. The teacher was at her side, but he was nothing more than a blur of motion in her periphery. “I know what to do,” she said dismissively, waving him away like a nuisance fly. “Yes. Yes. I’m going to student services.” She felt him drop away, jettisoned like the used-up stage of a rocket in a launch. She took a few staggering steps down the hallway, one hand against the high-gloss paint of the cement block wall. By the time she got to the front of the building, she felt her legs strong beneath her. But she did not go to student services. She walked right past its glass doors and continued out the front door of the school and onto the street. The chill of the autumn day was invigorating.
While she was still in range of the school Wi-Fi, she got out her phone and looked up Lemon Street. It looked kind of far away but easy to find. Up the street. A left, a right, another left.
She walked through the town in a decreasingly delirious state. The walking was good. The breathing she had to do. The sense of going somewhere.
By the time she got to Lemon Street her emotions had calmed. The internal noise and ruckus had quieted. There was an ambulance on the street, and for a moment she felt confused. The lights of the ambulance flashed in red and blue against the daylight. Most of her brain understood that Robert had already been taken away in an ambulance. If what the boy in music class had said was true, it would have been hours ago. The middle of the night she was sure he’d said. She stood at the bottom of the street as paramedics came out of the front door of a house on the left. They had a wheeled stretcher that they rolled and lifted, professionally, calmly, out the door and down a walkway to the ambulance. There was a woman on the stretcher. A bony face and a tuft of grey hair above where the thin ambulance coverings were folded back. The woman’s eyes appeared to be closed. The body was still and helpless-looking. When the ambulance pulled away, there was a single blast from the siren and the vehicle came rushing down the street, lights flashing.
Sam walked up the sidewalk with some hesitation. At the house the ambulance had just left, there was a cloud of fresh white spray paint on the street. She made out part of a handprint. There was a rounded, angular outline that could have been a knee, drawn up. If something had been written with the paint, as the boy she’d heard in class had said, it could not be deciphered from this mess.
A woman stood in a doorway in the house beside the one the ambulance had attended to. The woman in the doorway was standing with her arms folded in a self-protective way. Her face was on the young side. Her expression betrayed no emotion, but she looked haggard, tired to the point where she might be ready to cry. Her hair was dyed a brown that did not suit her skin tone. She had a child on one hip. An older child stood by her side and her free hand rested lightly on the top of this child’s head.
“Bad luck day,” the woman said to Sam. “First the son, then the mother.”
Sam took a few steps closer so she would not have to shout in response.
“Oh my god,” she said. “Was that Robert’s mother?”
The woman nodded slightly, as though that’s all she had the energy for. “I called 911 for him. Not sure who called for her. Landlord maybe.”