From then on, Abbey Irene Butler grew up in Santa Barbara, where her mother first taught at University of California, Santa Barbara until—because of a sincere lack of appreciation from her students, her colleagues, and the community in general—Isabella concluded that folk and classical music made a better hobby than a career. She began making candles and lost faith in higher education.
According to what Isabella had managed to tell Zoe (Abbey, it seemed, disliked for her mother to talk about her childhood), Abbey was the type of little girl who loved to wear her mother’s clothes, and, since Isabella was lenient, also her mother’s makeup.
Abbey was precocious and preferred the company of adults; she went with her mother everywhere. Clomping behind Isabella in size seven high heel pumps, little Abbey was evidently a cute spectacle—with red rouge smeared on her cheeks and forehead, an assortment of jeweled cobs in her long brown hair, and a string of her mother’s love beads dragging on the ground.
In grade school, Abbey had a vocabulary twice that of any of the other students, yet her marks were poor. During parent-teacher conferences, Abbey’s instructors often told Isabella about how Abbey wasn’t working up to her potential.
“She’s just a child,” Izy liked to retort. “Why pressure her?” It was a mind game, Izy confided, if the teachers had responded with intelligent answers, she would have been happy to listen. But the teachers would merely parrot the rules.
Abbey actually liked this part of her childhood story, and adored her mother’s superior attitude toward public education. Zoe related how Abbey sometimes chimed into her mother’s reminiscences in a lofty, baritone voice:
“Our educational standards are based upon national averages for varying intellectual student-competencies,” they’d say. “It concerns us that Abbegail’s performance always lands on the left side of the bell-shaped curve, even though her I.Q. presents scores well above normal.”
“So what you’re telling me,” Mother would say, “is that you don’t like her getting C’s and D’s because some silly index, based on her I.Q. and national statistics, says she should be getting A’s and B’s.
“Exactly, Mrs. Butler,” they’d say. “We’re so glad you understand.”
“Fiddlesticks!” was Mother’s reply to that horseshit!
Oh, my.
Anyway, Izy had a unique conception for Abbey’s education. As far as Isabella was concerned, if one knew how to play a musical instrument, and read and write, one was adequately prepared to brave the world. She wanted her daughter to be a survivor like her, rather than someone obsessed with getting A’s, “gold stars,” and “happy faces” on her homework.
Abbey grew to be a free-spirited teenager, although she continued to love her mother and home life. After school—that is, when her mother didn’t write her a note and Abbey had to actually go to school—Abbey helped Izy at her leather shop, or she studied her music and read gossip columns and racy novels. Abbey proclaimed that she and her mother were best friends. She felt that she could talk to her mother about anything, and, since she was as precocious a teenager as she was a child, she did.
Around most of the other teenagers, Abbey looked different because she preferred to dress like famous singers she saw in the rock ‘n’ roll tabloids—rather than like a Barbie doll or cheerleader. The regular kids bored Abbey, and the few kids that looked like her were too rough for her tastes; so Abbey did her own thing. She joined a local band of older kids who dropped out of the university to play rock ‘n’ roll.
Abbey’s first band, Katrina’s Taxi, developed a big name around town fast. Especially popular was the group’s dynamic teenage songstress. Around Izy and her artist friends, Abbey was witty and outspoken, yet around other people, for most of her life, Abbey had been quiet and subdued. Onstage singing with Katrina’s Taxi, Abbey Butler opened up to the world. She discovered that holding an audience in the palm of her hand was her niche.
She also discovered that she could employ her flamboyant onstage persona offstage as well, and, with that, she became a young woman who had a reputation for being wild and bizarre. Izy was fully aware of the coming-of-age of her daughter and approved of the new Abbey, all except for Abbey’s cigarettes. Izy’s disapproval of her daughter’s one vice was subtle. When Abbey smoked, her mother would call her by her middle name, Irene, the name of Izy’s deceased mother.
“Stop it, Mother,” Abbey would retort. “Oh stop it, Izy.”
Oh my.
Abbey was seventeen and graduating from high school when Katrina’s Taxi broke up. Much to her teachers’ dismay, Abbey graduated in the top half of her class. Isabella had done her job: Abbey was a survivor and could read, write, and play a musical instrument, which was more than most kids.
Despite Isabella’s cynicism toward college, she suggested that her daughter “go to college to experience its pleasures and pitfalls.” So Abbey moved to San Luis Obispo and enrolled in the state college there as an English major; what she really had in mind was to join another band. Her first couple of months away from home were horrible. She was homesick and trapped; she had no car; even if she'd had a car, she wouldn’t have known how to drive it, since both Abbey and her mother thought cars were obnoxious.
For a couple of quarters Abbey was a good student getting A’s and B’s. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t have anything better to do. Abbey and her equally studious roommate, Zoe, quickly grew bored of the dorms and moved into an apartment. Abbey had never had many friends her own age and tended, according to Zoe, to be rather bossy, as if she were Zoe’s mother; even so, the two became inseparable, going to numerous parties and drinking and smoking pot and getting smashed. Zoe maintained her grades; Abbey quit going to her classes.
At one of these parties, Abbey met Domino Gettsland, who said that he had once heard Abbey sing in Santa Barbara. He asked her to join a newly formed band called Bandit. Domino Gettsland was even bossier and wilder than Abbey, and she didn’t like him at first. But she did want to start singing again.
Bandit—with Abbey, Domino, Seth Collins, Jay Wong, and Uwe Vladt—was an even bigger success than Abbey’s first band. Bandit landed gigs at all the local clubs and played Santa Barbara and Ventura County as well. There was talk of a small, local recording studio doing an album. Domino and Seth, however, convinced the rest of the band to wait until they had further progressed with their originals. “When we’re ready to make a break,” Seth, the guitarist, told everybody, “let’s make it a BIG one.”
For some reason that was unknown to Abbey, she fell in love with Domino, and in the beginning she felt their relationship was just about as star-studded and flashy as any rock ‘n’ roll couple she’d ever read about in the tabloids. Things went splendidly until one month when Abbey misplaced her birth control pills. Soon after that she recognized that she was pregnant.
There was only one solution as far as Domino was concerned: abortion. Domino told Abbey he refused to be a father. “I care for you, Abbegail,” he said, “but man oh man, a kid would really get in the way.”
Domino had ambitious plans. He wanted to get his degree in music, then return to L.A., where he would join with some of his old music buddies who were equally talented and as ambitious as he was. His paramount obsession was to make it big-time in a rock ‘n’ roll band. To him, San Luis Obispo was an educational vacation. S.L.O. was much too smalltime for a permanent residence or career.
In Abbey’s mind there was only one solution also: having the child. She couldn’t imagine abortion. After all, she was an illegitimate child herself. But Domino had made himself perfectly clear.
Only Domino, Zoe, and Abbey knew about the pregnancy. The rest of the band figured Abbey’s sour, depressive mood would pass, like it always did when she over-indulged and became sick with a hangover. Before she began to show with child, she shocked the band and its fans when she announced she was quitting Bandit to move back home to Santa Barbara. Domino
was relieved to get rid of her.It was the saddest day of Zoe’s life.
When Abbey arrived back home in Santa Barbara, Izy assured her that she had made the right decision, and vowed that mother and daughter would get through this thing together.
Abbey occasionally spoke with Zoe on the phone, but other than that, she cut herself off completely from San Luis Obispo. Bandit continued to play. Domino never really admitted to himself that Abbey had their baby. He chose to believe a rather terse, flip letter from his ex-girlfriend. The letter read something like this: “In case you’re interested, I didn’t have the abortion, but there’s no need to get yourself into a tizzy. I had a miscarriage. Isn’t that convenient? So please, Dom, don’t bother to give me any more sympathy for all my problems. That would be sssooo uncalled for. You jerk, I don’t ever want to see you or Bandit again….”
An eight-pound, thirteen-ounce baby boy named Hector Butler was born on Groundhog Day, February 2, 1979. He received an overabundance of love from both Abbey and Isabella, but at his first routine checkup, the doctor discovered the baby boy would grow up to be mentally retarded.
Abbey and her mother took the bad news well, as they were both survivors. But it was sad all the same. Hector had Minkinson’s Disease, a rare condition resulting in minimal higher cognitive functioning due to underdevelopment of the frontal lobes of the brain. To put it simply, Hector would grow old without learning how to read, write, or play a musical instrument. Hector would not be a survivor. Someone would always have to look after him.
Zoe finished relating all this information around the time we turned off Interstate 5 onto Road 41 heading toward Paso Robles and the coast. After mulling it all over for a while, I said to Zoe, “One thing is for sure. It all adds up very nicely. A lot of things make sense that didn’t before.”
“One plus one certainly equals two,” she replied.
It was hot and dry outside, and though it was October, the coastal foothills were still scorched brown from the summer months.
The unseasonal heat gave my voice a lazy edge, “No more guessing. No more And/Or logic. It’s friggin’ time to throw the ole Boolean Algebra out the window.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” she said.
The vinyl seats in my truck were uncomfortable in the heat. She bent forward to give her back some air. Her blouse was damp, and the outline of her bra strap raised the sheer fabric. A whiff of her moist skin whisked past me and blew out the window; her sweat smelled like pollen from a fresh flower.
“I was just thinking.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing really.”
“Oh my, don’t you know the line: ‘Only fools keep their thoughts at bay.’”
“Yes.”
“Really, Danny.”
“I was just thinking,” I repeated, “what would it have been like if you and I got together, instead of Abbey and me.”
She smiled demurely. “You’re awfully sweet, Danny. But you’re not my type.”
I had to laugh. “You’re not really my type, either,” I said. “It’s just that sometimes I wonder why.”
“That’s an easy one to answer,” she said. “You’re too much of an absolutist at heart. You fail to see that reality is subjective. I’m a humanist. I believe that our values, our laws, our history, our future, our situations, none of those are cut and dried. You’re sweet, but a bit tilted, Danny. Most of the time one plus one doesn’t equal two. Do you see?”
“You read that in a book?”
“I’ve gleaned portions of it from many books and put it all together.” She gazed out the truck window at the dry brown grass on the hills. Still looking away, she said softly, “No matter what happens, Danny. It’s okay to love her. She’s sweet, but a bit tilted too. Oh my, it’s okay.”
None of us had heard from Abbey since we left her at the Tahoe City Greyhound Bus Station three weeks before. She told us she didn’t want any company on her trip to take care of things for her mother. Abbey had been brief in describing her immediate, as well as future, plans. We didn’t know if she was coming back.
In the meantime, Zoe had finally gotten Bandit another audition at the Lake Club, and we were not ready to do it without Abbey. Perhaps it was selfish—we needed our rock ‘n’ roll diva to fulfill the band’s destiny—but the rest of us had talked about it—we felt Abbey needed us, too.
Zoe and I were headed to Santa Barbara to tell Abbey this.
* * *
We stopped in San Luis Obispo for a cold beer before continuing on to Santa Barbara and ran into Spook and his roommates.
My eyes locked on Spook the minute I walked into Aces, after all, he was the only person in the place wearing a top hat and a black pullover with a glow-in-the-dark skeleton painted on it. It also appeared that he had shaved his head; pink scalp shined beneath the rim of his top hat. Good ole Spook, I thought, you’ve gone further off the deep end.
For what seemed like a long time, he stared cautiously at Zoe and me, before starting toward our table. Behind him, he pulled a whip-like strand of leather, which was fastened to a plastic model of Godzilla. The green monster stood on a homemade wooden platform with wheels. Godzilla’s head came nearly to Spook’s waist. As the mobile beast rolled behind Spook, its wheels hummed like an insidious Tonka toy.
Spook took off his top hat awkwardly; he sort of curtsied rather than bowed; the top of his head was equally as pink and shiny as the sides. “Do you remember Jane and Leslie?” he said, acknowledging the two girls at the rear of the parade.
Bird-like Jane and saucy “Flipper”—both girls noticeably drunk—plopped themselves into a couple of vacant chairs. Spook carefully put his top hat back on and sat himself properly, then attempted to roll Godzilla underneath our table. The monster didn’t fit, and Spook had to bend it forward on its stiff, socketed hips.
“I can take his head off,” he told us, “but I always have trouble getting it back on.” He glanced under the table. “I don’t really like to bend him, either. His joints get loose.”
“Why’d you put him underneath the table anyway?” I said. “Good God, he’s very entertaining.”
Spook’s expression was bland. “The bartender already warned me once before. He says the fire marshal doesn’t allow monsters on carts to block the aisles. Personally, I think Aces is prejudiced.”
“Hummm,” I said.
Zoe searched for something to say. “Tell us, Spook. What is your monster’s name?” Her tone of voice sounded more appropriate for a business lunch than drinks with Spook and company.
“His name is Ken,” Spook said.
“Isn’t that a cute name for a lizard?” Flipper said.
“He takes Ken everywhere,” chirped Jane. “Even to class.” She was still thin and pretty. I smiled at her, and she angled her blue bird eyes away.
“To class? Oh my,” Zoe said. “That’s rather a breach in academic protocol, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. It won’t go on forever. It’s my and Ken’s last year…and then I’m leaving.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yes, I’m going to medical school, just like I planned,” Spook replied.
“He’s getting a full scholarship from Stanford,” said Flipper. “All he’s got to do is cruise through a couple more quarters.”
Spook proudly rolled Godzilla out from under the table. “Ken has become my mascot, my good luck charm,” he said. “Ken helps me to keep straight and studious.”
“And what does Stanford think of Ken?” Zoe asked.
“Of course they’ve never seen him,” Spook said. “Do you think I’m hhoorrrr-ibly weird?” He showed a sliver of yellowish teeth. “Do you think doctors must conform to a certain stereotype?”
I certainly did, but I kept quiet.
“Oh my, I hope you don’t intend to be a pediatrician. You would frighten the little kids and give them nightmares,” Zoe s
aid.
“To confess,” Spook said, “I want to become an expert in organ transplants.”
“Isn’t that gross?” Jane said.
“He wants to be a Dr. Frankenstein,” Flipper said. She held up her beer mug and some beer sloshed out of the mug onto the table. “Here’s to the Doctor,” she said.
Zoe sat in silent disbelief and unconsciously rubbed the side of her neck, as though she feared that she, herself, might be making a nightmarish transformation and neck-plugs were beginning to push through her skin.
We finally got around to talking about Bandit, and we passed on the bad news about Abbey’s mother but said nothing of Hector. Zoe had already made it clear to me that it was up to Abbey to expose Hector to the outside world, if she wanted to.
Good ole Spook was sympathetic of Abbey’s plight and extremely complimentary of Bandit’s success in Tahoe. He promised to come watch us play the Lake Club if we got the gig.
I wasn’t sure if Tahoe was ready for Spook. I wished I had a camera to take pictures of him and his monster, Ken. It would make a nice photograph for my father. “Here’s your goddamn man around Stanford,” I’d write on the back. “P.S.—Medical School, top of his class.”
The more I thought about it, Isabella Butler was right. The most important things were the basics—to read, write, and play a musical instrument. Since I had graduated from Cal Poly and gone into the world, I hadn’t come across one—not one—practical situation where I required Boolean Algebra, Laplace Transforms, Differentials, or Vectors in Three-Space. I knew significantly more than I needed to know to be a survivor. I should have been more than prosperous and content. I had all my answers: one plus one equaled two. But I didn’t have Abbey Butler, did I?
* * *
When people die there is first grief, then resolution, followed by fond memories and decisions about what to do with their stuff.
My freshman year I, like most students, lived in the dorms, and my roommate was a nice, unassuming kid by the name of John McDonald. John had the strong, wholesome build of a farm boy. He wore glasses, had furry eyebrows, and always seemed relaxed. Another distinguishing characteristic was his dark, closely cropped hair which he shampooed once every three days and styled wetly with hair tonic.