“Love happens,” my mother says, “just like shit. I thought I’d be with Joe Sweeney forever. I really did. I believed it. My parents loved him. I loved him. I thought I did anyway. No I’m sure I did but who knows. I was what. I was twenty-eight. That was a while ago now. And I’ll tell you something. Afterward, after he was gone for good and it was just you and me and we were all set up in our one-bedroom in Jackson. After it was over I felt like I’d failed at something very important. Love. I felt like a failure. It took me a long time to feel anything else.”
We are at the Bayview. Bro’s band is in town. Says on the sign DREAM POLICE ALL WEEKEND ENJOY OUR RIBS BEST AROUND. Apparently they’ve done away with their wisdom nuggets. I think of the Titties of Invention and smile.
“What?” my mom says, smiling too.
“Nothing,” I say. “Mom, listen.” I move my empty glass around in a figure eight on the table. “I’m sorry about all that. What you just told me. It sounds bad.”
“Well it was. But it’s nothing to be sorry about now. Besides. I wasn’t really alone. I thought I was, sure. I remember one afternoon, sitting on the edge of the bed, numb and staring. I thought This is it. Now I’m done. Washed up at thirty-two. Alone forever. Then I heard you in the next room crying. What could I do? I got up and tried to get on with life. I had a baby. You. And then, you know, slowly things got better.”
It’s still early in the set and the Dream Police are playing the mellower tunes for the oldsters. “Margaritaville.” “Under the Boardwalk.” And the one that just ended that goes Give me the beat boy to free my soul I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away. Bro looks out from the stage after tuning his Strat and we exchange nods. Cherie is not here. I wish she’d driven down. Bro’s supposed to stay at our house tonight but who knows where he might end up? It’s hard to free yourself from your own history.
He does a solo harmonic intro high up on the neck, then the whole band breaks into “Sleepwalk,” the classic fifties love-song chords, C, Am, F, G, and it hits me again, like it does every time, that beautiful thing, music digging in, making me whole.
“You wanna dance?” my mom says.
“Do I wanna what?”
“Come on,” she says, pushing her seat back, holding out a hand.
“Mom, please.” I look around, trying to see who’s seeing this.
“Vim, come on. Enough,” she says.
I hesitate for only one more second before I take her hand and let her lead me out to the dance floor. We do the box step, slowly shuffling back and forth. I feel a strange peace wash over me and I become perfectly calm, as if everything I ever loved was here in this room. I see our waitress filling a drink tray over at the bar, all the people around us dancing, in love, never wanting it to end, my uncle playing guitar, making it weep, his fingers burning under the cheap red lights. I see all this as I dance with my mother.