"i know what you're thinking." said Mr. Sully, our art teacher. "Fruit is soooo dullsville." He was an older guy with a long beard and long hair pulled back into a ponytail. Or at least, the hair he had was long. He was mostly bald on top. He looked more like he should be guarding a pot farm with a couple of Rottweilers down in southern Ohio than teaching art in a high school. But he was nice enough and kind of funny—at least, when he didn't mean to be.
"But I want tell you," continued Mr. Sully, nodding his head up and down rhythmically, "that painting a fruit still life can be awesome if you approach it the right way."
We were all standing in a big circle facing inward, each with an easel. In the center of the circle was an apple, a banana, and an orange on a table.
"I want you to think back to last year," said Mr. Sully, "and just muse on all the different styles of painting we talked about. I want you to meditate on them until you pick the one that speaks to you." He lowered his head, as if to show the proper posture for meditating, then he jerked his head back up, blinked, and said, "Then I want you to paint in that style. Okay. Begin."
"Fruit," said Jen5. "I hate painting fruit." Today she was decked out in a gray tweed sports coat over a black lacy tank top and torn-up flared jeans. Her massive tangle of frizzy, nearly dreadlocked blond hair was pulled back in some kind of leather-thong-and-chopstick combo.
Jen5 didn't really have a specific look or style. You couldn't pin her into a group like goth or geek or punk. Sometimes she looked like an art chick, sometimes like a skater chick, sometimes even a little like a college professor. But most of the time she looked like all three at once. The first thing that people noticed about her was the color of her eyes. Just like her style, you couldn't really tell what they were. Sometimes they were blue, sometimes green, sometimes gray or hazel. On official forms where you had to fill in stuff like your height, weight, and hair color, in the eye-color line she usually wrote "paisley."
"Fruit, flowers, sunsets," I said with a shrug. "What's the difference? It's all painting."
Jen5 scowled at me. "Sure, for you. Because you don't like painting. If you did, you'd know that there was a huge difference." Then she turned her scowl on the fruit. "Maybe if it was organic fruit or something… then it would have shades and variations. Stuff you could play with. But the stupid Frankenfruit they pump full of chemicals now, combined with all the wax they pour on it… we might as well be painting fake plastic fruit. There's nothing real about that. Nothing alive." Then she sighed, squirted some paint onto her palette, and went to town.
Visual art was definitely Jen5's thing. Drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, you name it. She kicked ass at all of it. It was amazing to watch how she attacked the canvas like she was pounding the colors into it. Paint flew everywhere—in her hair, on her clothes, smeared across her hands and face. It wasn't so much that she didn't care. It seemed more that she actually liked when it got messy. But as much as the paint was all over the place off the canvas, the paint on the canvas went exactly where she wanted.
"Wow, Jenny! Fantastic!" said Mr. Sully as he gazed at her half-finished painting. "I am totally feeling what you are putting down! Impressionistic fruit! Right on!"
Jen5 grunted without looking at him and continued painting, but I saw a little smile on her lips. She'd never admit it, but Mr. Sully was probably the only teacher whose opinion she valued.
Then Mr. Sully looked at my sad little picture. The only difference between the apple and the orange was the color. And the banana looked more like a wilted, yellow green bean.
"Ah." He nodded and patted me on the shoulder sympathetically. "Well, you just keep at it, Sam. I know you have the fire. This just isn't your medium, man."
"No kidding," I said.
"But that doesn't matter, you know," he said, his eyes getting dreamy. "All art, all creativity comes from the same place. Painting, music, dancing. It all comes from the same well. We drink and we are full. Are you feeling me?" he looked at me expectantly.
"Sure," I said. "Sure, Mr. Sully."
He nodded happily. "Just keep at it! Follow your bliss!" Then he floated off to babble at some other student.
"Wow, Sammy," said Jen5, looking over my shoulder at my painting. "That sucks."
"Eat me, Niffer," I said.
"Hey, I'm sure you'd say the same thing if you ever heard me try to sing."
"I've heard you sing," I said.
"What? When?"
"Third grade. School play. I believe the piece was entitled 'Peanut Butter and Jelly.' I was spellbound."
"I'm even worse now," she said, then turned and attacked her canvas again.
I just watched her paint for a little bit, then I said, "I think my mom doesn't want me to be a professional musician."
"Imagine that," she said, not looking away from her canvas.
"What do you mean?"
"When I told my mom I wanted to be an artist, do you know what she said? 'Oh, I'll love you even if you work at 7-Eleven your whole life.'"
"No she didn't."
"You better believe it."
"What does that even mean?" I asked. "That she thinks you'll never make it as an artist?"
"What she's really saying is that, in her book, being a successful artist is right up there with being a success at selling cigarettes to old ladies."
"Honestly, Fiver. Does she even get how bad that sounds?"
"Are you kidding? That's just her trying to be funny. If she actually thought I was serious, instead of just going through some teenage phase, she'd probably take away all my art supplies and ship me off to boarding school." She continued to dance around the easel, raking raw colors across the canvas. "As far as she's concerned, I'm on my way to a brilliant career as a doctor or lawyer."
"Yeah, that's totally ridiculous," I said. "But for your parents, in a weird parent kind of way, it makes sense. I mean, your mom is a lawyer. So of course that's what she wants you to be. But my grandfather was a professional musician. It was good enough for him, right? Why can't I be one too? I mean, most people our age don't even know what they want to do with themselves and they don't really care. But I care. I really want to be a musician."
Jen5 didn't say anything, but her brush started hitting the canvas hard enough for me to hear it.
"What?" I said.
She stopped painting and looked at me. "Do you think they really care about what we want, Sammy? Do you really?"
"Hey Sammy, I figured out how to play 'Peter Gunn'!" said Alexander.
Rick, TJ, and I had been friends a long time before the band got started. The other guy in our group was Alexander. He was brainiac smart and really good at soccer, but he didn't hang out with either the nerds or the jocks. Maybe it was because he was one of the few black kids in our school. Maybe it was because he was also a skater and had worn oversized clothes for so many years that he didn't even know what his normal size was, and he had the biggest and most perfectly shaped fro that I'd ever seen. None of that fit in too well in central Ohio. But it was more than that. He was like a walking, talking They Might Be Giants song. He was always cheerful, always goofy, and just so weird that most of the time nobody understood what he was talking about. He was kind of like the weirdness mascot for our freaky little crew.
"What's 'Peter Gunn'?" asked Rick. We were all sitting around our lunch table. Rick looked even more out of it than usual. He had dark circles under his eyes, he looked like he hadn't showered, and he was slumped so far over the table that it made you feel like he needed it to keep from falling off the bench.
"You know," I said. "'Peter Gunn' was that Spy Hunter theme from the old-school Nintendo."
"Oh." Rick nodded. "I didn't realize it had another name."
"I think it was the theme song for a TV show in the fifties," said TJ.
"Huh," said Rick. "Was the Mario Brothers theme from something else too?"
"I don't think so," said TJ.
"Surprising," said Rick. "It was a catchy tune."
"What do you mean you figured out how to play it?" I asked Alexander.
"With my hands!" said Alexander.
All three of us groaned.
Alexander had really sweaty palms. Now, this was gross enough all by itself, but Alexander, in typical Alexander fashion, made it even worse when he figured out that by squeezing his sweaty palms together, he could get them to make a farting noise. Most meathead jocks would have laughed and maybe done it in Ms. Jansen's English class once or twice, then left it at that. But not Alexander. He didn't really even think it was funny. He thought it was interesting. So he kept experimenting with it until he realized that by applying different kinds of pressure, he could produce different tones. Since then, he had been attempting to play a song with hand farts.
"Wanna hear?" he asked now, his hands poised and his face eager.
"Not really," I said. But I knew it wouldn't do any good.
"Here goes!" he said, and began. His face screwed up in concentration as he worked his hands together, and sure enough, slowly we started to hear wet, squeaky notes: phfipphop phfip-phop phfip-phop phfffip-phfip!
"Wow," said TJ. But he couldn't help grinning a little bit.
Alexander was getting warmed up now and the song was building momentum. It really did sound like "Peter Gunn." All three of us were nodding our heads in time, and Rick and I couldn't resist coming in with the second part over top:
"Baaaaa bah! Baaaaaaaaaa beeebah! Buh-buh-buh bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah boo-buh-du!" We busted up laughing as Alexander continued to happily squeak away with his hand farts.
Then a velvety female voice cut through and said, "Hey, Sammy."
Silence. The speaker was standing directly behind me. I could see TJ and Alexander across from me with faces like deer in headlights. But I didn't need their expression to clue me in to who it was. Oh, God. I couldn't believe that she'd just witnessed our stupid freaky spectacle. I wanted to curl up like a pill bug and hide until graduation.
"Hi, Laurie," I said, trying to sound tough but only managing to sound hoarse. Then I turned around to look up at her.
Laurie was the hottest girl in school. She had straight, glossy black hair that hung to her shoulders; pale white skin; deep, mysterious green eyes; and full, pouty lips that were always covered in a dark burgundy lipstick. Today she was wearing a halter top, jean skirt, black fishnets (with a few artful rips), and knee-high black patent leather boots. In short, she was a goth goddess. And I was totally, helplessly in love with her.
My throat dried up as I tried to think of some way of explaining what we had just been doing that didn't make it sound even worse than it looked. All I could come up with was "How are you?"
"Okay." She smiled ever so faintly, but it was enough to send shivers down my spine. "Have you seen Joe today?"
My heart flopped down around my knees. Rick, who had listened to my miserable sighs and heartache for over a year now, choked on his soda.
"No," I said in a way that I hoped didn't sound as sad and desperate as I felt. "I think he skipped again today."
She sighed and bit her lip. "You guys have rehearsal tonight?"
"Uh, no," I said.
"Oh," she said. "Okay." She shifted her weight uncomfortably, then said, "Well, if you see him, tell him to call me."
"Sure," I said and valiantly attempted a smile. "Sure I will, Laurie."
"Thanks, Sammy." She gave another faint smile and then hurried off to sit with her girlfriends.
Our table seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief.
"Dude," said Rick, giving me his most serious look. "Why didn't you invite her to sit with us?"
"Why would I do that?" I said.
He shrugged. "Hey, she's totally not my type, but I have to admit she's smoking hot. And anyway, you've been mooning over her our entire high school lives."
"Really?" asked TJ. "You have a thing for Laurie?"
"Never mind," I said. "It's just lame and depressing to talk about. And anyway, she's clearly not into me, so just let it go."
But I was the one who couldn't let it go.
"Why Joe?" I demanded. "What's he got that I don't?"
"He's older," said TJ.
"He's tougher," said Rick.
"He's the frontman," said Alexander. "Don't they always get the hot chicks?"
"Thanks, guys," I said. "Consider my ego boosted."
Then Jen5 flopped down next to me, spilling books and notebooks from her army bag in a cascade across the table. "What did Vampirella want?" she asked.
"She was asking where Joe was," said Rick.
"Ha," she said around a bite of salami sandwich. "Aren't they a match made in heaven."
"That's not what Sammy thinks," said Alexander.
"That's 'cause Sammy's a retard," said Jen5 without looking at me.
"I don't know why you don't like Laurie," I said. "I don't think you've really given her a chance."
"Oh, I gave her a chance all right. Back in junior high, before she'd discovered goth and was just another snobby prep girl. We were supposed to sell Girl Scout cookies together and—"
"You were in the Girl Scouts?" asked Alexander.
"For one year," I said.
"My parents were concerned about my antisocial behavior," Jen5 said with a shrug. "They thought it would bring me out of my shell. But as the case with Miss Vampirella illustrates, a year of merit badges, cookie sales, car washes, and memorized slogans may have made me more social, but it didn't do much good for the 'anti' part."
"So what happened?" said Rick. "Did you slap her or something? Pull her hair out?"
"Grow up," she said.
"Never!"
"Anyway, we were supposed to sell cookies together, and I was trying to talk to her like she was a normal human being and not some brainless Kewpie doll until finally she turned to me and said: 'Uh, hey, Jen. My friend's mom just pulled into the parking lot, so if you could just, like, not talk to me until she's inside the store and can't see us anymore, I'd really appreciate it.'"
"You are lying," I told Jen5.
"You wish," she said.
"You know what I heard about love?" TJ asked suddenly.
We all stared at him.
"Uh, no," I said, wondering where this came from. "What did you hear?"
"That everyone has an image in their mind of the perfect girl or guy. And whenever someone fits eighty percent of that image, we block out the rest. We just don't even see it. And we continue to block it out until we get to know them so well that we're comfortable with them. Then we finally see the other twenty percent and it could be the worst thing in the world and we just never noticed before."
"Well, by all means, then," said Jen5. "Let us hasten this connection between Laurie and Sammy so that he might see the idiocy of his desire more quickly! Hopefully he won't get crabs in the process!"
"Jesus, why do you have to be like that?" I said. "TJ's trying to talk about something serious and you can't even…"
She was just sitting there smirking at me. Maybe she was one of my best friends, but she also pissed me off a lot.
"You know what?" I said. "Just forget it." And I got up, grabbed my bag, and left the table.
As I walked away, I heard her call to me, "Come on now! Sammy! Don't be such a spaz! I was only kidding!"
But I knew she wasn't. Jen5 only smiled when she was dead serious.
After school, I pulled the Boat up in front of my grandfather's apartment building. He lived on the first floor of a place just outside German Village, so it didn't have to keep that old-building look. I cut the ignition and waited while the Boat's engine settled, listening to the groaning tick of the radiator slow down to silence. I was stalling. I didn't really want to see him. I mean, I did. I loved my grandfather, maybe more than anyone else, but… well… he was getting a little crazy in his old age. I was tempted to skip it completely and tell Mom he was asleep or something. But I knew I wouldn't do that. It'd make me miserable all night thinking about it. So after another five minutes of staring at my dashboard, I decided to face the music.
Literally.
When I stepped through the front door, noise hit me like a brick in the face. The lights were dim, and as I waited for my eyes to adjust, I tried to figure out what was in the noise. The Oscar Peterson Trio. Billie Holiday. And something else more modern, probably Wynton Marsalis. Three totally different jazz artists being blasted from three different stereos at the same time. And there was something else that I couldn't figure out. It wasn't until my eyes finally adjusted to the gloom that I saw it was my grandfather playing the piano. That gave me a little hope, because these days he usually only played when he was in a good mood.
I walked through the living room and over to the piano, then stopped and watched him play for a minute.
He was mostly bald, and the little bit of white hair he had around the sides and back was frizzy, almost like cotton candy. He had a short beard, which I always thought was a good idea for an old guy. It covered up that turkey neck that most of them got. He looked skinnier every time I saw him. He had a nurse or aide or whatever they were called who came in and made him breakfast, but I don't think he could afford any more help than that, so the only other time he ate was when Mom or I came to visit and made something for him. Eating just didn't interest him very much anymore.
He didn't seem to notice me, or else he didn't feel like talking. He just kept playing. After a little while, I went into the kitchen. His freezer was filled with the same frozen dinners that filled ours. Mom just bought a ton of them at some warehouse club. I pulled out two and popped them in the microwave.
While I stared at the revolving plastic trays through the microwave door, I heard the Wynton Marsalis album finish. Right after the microwave timer dinged, the Oscar Peterson Trio stopped. While I was setting the tiny kitchen table for us, Billie Holiday stopped too. All that was left was my grandfather's piano. It was a little out of tune and it sounded like he couldn't quite make up his mind whether he was playing lounge or swing style. But I liked listening to him. It reminded me of when I was a kid and my mom used to take me to see him play. It hadn't happened a lot, because he usually played at nightclubs and other places my mom didn't think a kid should be. But every once in a while he'd have a gig at a regular concert hall, usually backing up some famous musician on tour. I'd also get to hear him when my mom was going to school at night to get her graduate degree. She'd drop me off at Gramps's place and we'd sit in front of the piano most of the night. He'd play lots of old big band tunes and teach me the words and I would sing along. He still lived in the same apartment, but it seemed brighter and warmer in my memory.
He was playing Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light." It was one of his favorites, so I knew it really well. I began to sing along:
"I never cared much for moonlit skies. I never wink back at fireflies."
I tried to remember what he looked like back then. He used to wear lots of beatnik turtlenecks and berets and heavy sweaters. I remembered that. But I couldn't picture his face. I knew he used to smile a lot, but I couldn't remember what that looked like. A year ago he had to retire from playing because he was having trouble remembering songs, and he hadn't really been the same since.
"Boy, are you going to stare at that food or are you going to eat it?" said Gramps.
I'd been so zoned out that I hadn't noticed he'd stopped playing. Now he was standing in the kitchen doorway glaring at me.
"Hey, Gramps," I said. "Dinner's ready."
"I can see that!" he said, and sat down at the table. "I'm not completely blind, you know!"
"I know, Gramps."
"Just mostly."
"Yep."
"Haven't lost my perfect-pitch ear, though."
"Nope," I lied. "Have something to eat." I nudged his tray.
He shook his head. "You first."
"Gramps," I said. "I swear I didn't put anything in it." My mom doesn't think he takes his medication regularly, so sometimes she tries to slip it into his food.
His eyes narrowed and he gave me a weird look, like he thought I might be lying. "How do I know for sure? Why don't you take a bite and prove it to me?"
I rolled my eyes to show him I thought he was being totally ridiculous, but I took a bite of his food and chewed slowly while he watched me carefully. I guess he was waiting to see if I keeled over and started foaming at the mouth or something. When he was sure none of that was going to happen, he sat down and started shoveling food in so fast I couldn't believe he had time to swallow.
"That damn McCarthy was here again today," he said between bites.
"Again?" I asked. He'd recently been talking about this guy a lot. Senator Joseph McCarthy was some freaky congressman in the '50s who went around trying to prove that artists, actors, and musicians were all communist spies for Russia. No matter what I said, Gramps refused to believe that the guy died in 1957. At first it had been weird the way he always went on about him, but after a while it got kind of fun. So now I played along with it.
"Do you think he's on to you?" I asked.
"Ha! I'm no commie, and certainly no spy." He stirred his beef stew around a little bit, then looked back at me fiercely. "I'm a socialist! But the distinction between a commie scum and a thoughtful socialist is far too difficult for an ignoramus like McCarthy to grasp."
I couldn't really figure out the difference either, but I still played along. "That's the truth," I said.
Gramps was getting more worked up now. "Last I checked, this was still a free country!"
"I don't think you have to worry about him, Gramps."
He placed his fork on the side of his nose and gave me a wink. "Damn right." When he took the fork away, there was a blob of gravy on the side of his nose. Then he frowned. "What about you?"
"Me?"
"Have you covered your tracks?" he asked, looking worried. "I can't have my own grandson in prison!"
"Gramps, I'm not a commie or a socialist."
"Ha! You think that matters to scum like McCarthy? He and his kind despise musicians. They can't comprehend living a life of creativity and individualism! They try to turn anything you do into some kind of anti-American statement."
"Really, Gramps," I said. "I don't think it's a problem."
He didn't look very convinced. Finally, he said, "Well, tell me what your set list is right now. That's usually where they start looking, to see what kind of songs you're playing."
I told him the set list we were working on.
"I don't recognize any of those songs," he said.
"That's because I wrote them."
"Wrote?" He blinked in confusion. "Why? Can't you play anyone else's songs?"
"Sure we could."
"Then why are you writing your own? Only people who can't play the standards have to make up their own songs."
"That's not how it is anymore, Gramps. Most people play their own music."
"That's ridiculous! Are you telling me that at your age, you're writing better songs than the Duke? Than Bird? I love you, kid, but somehow I think you've got a few more years before you're ready for that."
"Gramps, nowadays you only play other people's music if you can't write your own."
"An entire generation of arrogant hacks." He sighed. "Let me tell you something, kid. In all my years in clubs and bars, on cruise ships, and in festivals and concert halls, I was never forced to play anything that I had to make up."
"I know, Gramps," I said. There didn't seem to be much point in arguing with him. He wasn't even listening.
"So." Gramps gazed balefully down at me, his old eyes wide and a little wild. "When are you getting married?"
Like clockwork. Music and girls. The only things he could think about.
"Gramps," I said, "I'm only seventeen."
"SO WHAT? When I was your age I'd already met the love of my life. Your grandmother. Vivian…" He sighed and his eyes went unfocused. "You don't remember her, do you?"
"Not really," I said. "Although I think I remember her perfume, you know? I have this really vivid memory of sitting on someone's lap while I watched you play at some festival. And I know it wasn't Mom because of the way she smelled."
"God, I loved her," said Gramps, his eyes and voice drifting farther away until it was almost like he was talking to himself. "Viv. She was a real beauty. And kind, oh so kind. Your mother got her looks. Not too much of the kindness, though. Viv understood how hard it was to be a musician. She understood what a wretched, callous thing life can be to an artist. She was a singer herself, see. A voice like a fallen angel. And for a while, a short, sweet while, we were together, partners in crime, and we could handle anything…"
He was blinking away tears as he looked up at the ceiling. He really wasn't the crying type, so seeing him like that made me a little uncomfortable. Then, still looking up at the ceiling, his hand groped across the table until it found mine, and grasped it hard.
"Oh God, how I loved that woman," he whispered.
I patted the top of his hand, all liver spots and paper-thin skin, and said, "I know, Gramps. I know."
After that, I felt like I couldn't just leave after dinner. So I stayed pretty late and we talked about music and girls, like always. His mood swings kept me kind of off balance, the way he would be angry and ranting and then suddenly get all sad and teary. But he was in one of his poetic moods, so he talked on and on about Parker and Gillespie, Davis and Coltrane. Names that I had heard whispered throughout my life with absolute reverence. These were gods to him, and I loved hearing him talk about them and about their music. It wasn't just about his jazz. He would talk about how important all music was. How it took us—not just the people who played it but the people who heard it—to a place above the normal boring world. A place of pure beauty. And that would somehow always lead him into talking about beautiful women. And how they were the last refuge of the creative soul in this harsh, modern world.
Sure, he was moody and a little crazy. But how could you not love him?