“I’m sure Julian can handle it,” I assured her.
“So, your songs,” she insisted. “Please play me one of them.”
I don’t know if it was because Debra had just revealed that Tom was a secret fan of S.I.T.A. or what, but I felt something open up in me. I volunteered, “Okay, so the only original songs I have are ones I wrote with Harlow.”
Debra nodded.
“I wrote the music,” I explained. “And we would write the lyrics together and then Harlow would sing while I played the piano.”
Debra nodded again. “Sounds lovely. I’ve always been partial to girl bands.” She gave me another conspiratorial tilt of her head. “Don’t tell Julian.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” I said, smiling. “But the thing is, Harlow . . . well . . . she . . .” I paused for a moment because I wasn’t sure how open my long-lost grandma was to lesbian relationships. I decided to try Debra. “You see, Harlow recently started dating this girl Quinn.”
“Oh,” Debra said. Her eyes registered surprise, but she said, “Go on.”
“And Quinn,” I explained, “is much cooler than me. And I think Harlow started to feel that our little music project was nerdy because Quinn is in, like, a real band. A very scene band if you know what that means.”
Debra gave me a thoughtful smile. “Not sure I do exactly, but I think I follow.”
I felt my cheeks warm. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.”
“Baby girl,” Debra said, stretching her arm out so she could gently squeeze my shoulder, “I want to hear anything you’re willing to tell me.”
I bit my lip. “I guess what I was trying to explain is the song I’m about to play might sound a little weird. Like it’s missing something since Harlow isn’t here to sing the lyrics.” I glanced up at the ceiling and sighed. “I guess that’s been the whole problem. I’m going to have to figure out how to write songs without Harlow that don’t feel like they’re missing something.”
“Well,” Debra said encouragingly, “let’s hear one of these songs.”
I readjusted my seat on the bench, placing my feet squarely on the floor. I took a deep breath and placed my fingers on the keys. I decided to play a song Harlow and I called “Snow Drifts.” It had partially been inspired by Arcade Fire’s song “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).” We wanted to capture the same type of romantic whimsicality. But the song was also a little bit jazzier, a nod to the punk cabaret that we were aiming for.
We’d written the song on a snow day. It had been a long, lazy day, full of bottomless mugs of hot chocolate and lounging around in pajama pants. I smiled as I got into the meat of the song, remembering how comfortable and easy that day had been.
I played the last few notes and looked up to see Debra watching me intently. Tears were glistening in her eyes.
“Was it that bad?” I said meekly.
She laughed a little as she blew her nose with a tissue. “Don’t be silly, sweetheart. That was beautiful. I just . . .” She stopped talking, her eyes zeroing in on the other side of the room.
I turned around to see Julian standing at the edge of the foyer. His arms were crossed and he was leaning against the staircase’s railing. I rubbed my forearms self-consciously and scooted down the piano bench. “Oh. I didn’t realize you were here.”
“I snuck in when I heard the piano. And I’m so glad I did.”
We all froze there for a moment in uncomfortable silence. It was one of those times where I knew we all wanted to say something, but words seemed to be lacking. It seemed impossible to say what we really wanted to say. We could’ve tried to construct elaborate metaphors or pithy condolences and compliments, but none of them would get to the heart of the matter. So instead, we all stood there, feeling the moment instead of speaking about it.
And somehow that felt like enough.
“Should we go?” Julian finally asked.
I nodded, and as we walked out the door, Debra called out, “Hey, Taliah?”
“Yeah?” I said, turning my head.
She flashed me a mischievous smile. “Your song didn’t sound like it was missing anything. Not a damn thing.”
II.
Julian took one hand off the steering wheel and pointed to the left. “See that hill over there?”
I craned my neck and saw a noticeably tall hill off in the distance. “Yeah.”
“That’s the hill I told you about earlier. The one your mom and I used to climb when we were younger. It overlooks the tarmac of Oak Falls’s local airport. Hardly any flights come in and out of there, only personal planes. We used to pretend that someday we’d have a private plane that would take us far away from Oak Falls.”
He turned the car and the hill faded into the distance. “A while ago, I actually did land in a private plane here. When the plane hit the tarmac, I looked up at that hill and almost lost my shit.”
“Why?”
“Because Lena wasn’t next to me.”
An itchy feeling crept up my throat and I swallowed. I stared out the window in silence for the rest of the drive.
Julian parked the car on a curved, tree-lined street populated with small cafés and independent shops. He hopped out of the car and I followed him into a store called Willowy Records.
“Willowy Records,” I said as we walked into the small, cramped space filled with rows and rows of vinyl records. A small fan was doing overtime in the back corner, but it did little to remove the musky scent or make the place less unbearably hot.
“Best record shop in Oak Falls.” Julian reached for his sunglasses, but it was too late. The scrawny boy behind the counter leapt over it and marched toward him.
“Holy shit!” the kid exclaimed. He had dyed black hair that was shaved on the sides and mussed up in the front. His gray T-shirt, which featured an octopus playing the drums, had several sweat patches, but that was forgivable considering the tropical climate of Willowy Records. “You’re Julian Oliver.”
“Guilty as charged,” Julian said calmly.
“I’d heard you were in town, man,” the boy said, clasping his hands together. “But I didn’t quite believe it.”
Julian nodded.
The boy bowed his head a little. “So sorry about your dad.”
“Me too,” Julian said. “So listen . . .”
“Mark,” the kid said, extending his hand. “I’m Mark.”
Julian shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mark.”
“Such an honor, man. Your music. Dude. Dude.” Mark made the universal gesture for “mind blown,” miming explosions. “It totally changed my life. Such a huge fan of every album. But especially Blind Windows.” Mark’s eyes lit up. “Would you be willing to sign a few of your records while you’re here, man? That would be huge for the store.”
Julian nodded. “Sure, man. But let me tell you what. I’m here right now with my daughter.” Julian unexpectedly slung his arm around my shoulder and tugged me close to him. “And I’d like to have some private time browsing some records with her. So do you think you could hold off on posting anything on—”
“Yeah, yeah,” the kid said, enthusiastically nodding his head, which seemed too big for his thin neck. “Def won’t post anything yet, man. You enjoy your time. And when you’re done—”
“I’ll sign those records,” Julian said without missing a beat.
“Yeah,” the boy said, still nodding. “Awesome.”
Julian kept his arm around me and steered me away from the front of the store. “Sooo, where do they keep the jazz records?”
I groaned. “I don’t only listen to jazz, you know.”
“I know,” he said agreeably. “So are all the songs you write jazz-inspired?”
An uncomfortable nervousness stirred inside of me. “I thought you said you liked my song. And that one wasn’t even that jazzy. It actually had more of an indie rock sensibility, I think.”
“I know. I did love it. It actually reminded me of—”
&nb
sp; I cut him off. “Can we not talk about it? I’m really not ready to talk about my music with you.”
“Fine, fine.” He raised his hands innocently in the air. “Can I at least ask you about other music you like?”
“Besides Nina Simone?” I gave him a teasing smile.
“Yeah. I mean, if you like anything else.”
“So bands that I like that you might’ve heard of . . .” I slid out from under his arm and walked down the aisles of records. I stopped and thumbed through a stack. I held up the National’s High Violet.
“Ah.” Julian nodded in recognition.
“Have you heard of EL VY?”
Julian drew his eyebrows together and wrinkled his nose. “I think so . . .” He rhythmically tapped his fingers against his leg. “That’s Berninger’s side project, right?”
“Yeah. It’s him and Brent Knopf, the guy from Menomena,” I said, fishing through the bin to see if I could find a copy of Return to the Moon.
“Didn’t Pitchfork recently eviscerate that album?”
I laughed. “Yeah. But I love it. But I was destined to love it. He’s singing about southern Ohio.” I found the record and held it up. “Plus, what does Pitchfork know? Didn’t they tear apart You’ll Never See Me Again?”
Julian let out a bark of a laugh. “Yeah, kid. They did. But let’s not talk about that.”
I fingered the EL VY record and then put it back in the bin. “I thought you didn’t read the reviews?”
He smiled wryly. “That was my last one.”
“It was also your last record. So when’s the next one coming out?”
He laughed again. “Why do you care? I thought you weren’t a fan.”
I shrugged. “I dunno. It’s been a long gap between albums, and lots of people on the internet have been speculating about when the next one will drop. Besides, I’m kind of interested in the band because I know the lead singer.”
His smile turned from wry to bright. “Yeah. I guess you do. So besides the genius of S.I.T.A., who else are you into?”
I gave him my usual litany of indie darlings—Joanna Newsom and her amazing stylings on the harp and Kurt Vile and his hyper-self-aware songwriting. I nervously rattled off Deerhunter and Beach House and Father John Misty. Julian said that as much as he appreciated modern indie rock music, his favorites would still always be classic punk bands and David Bowie. But as far as indie rock music was concerned, he agreed with me that Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields was a genius at tragicomedy, but he said that he thought Sufjan Stevens was overrated, which was basically a declaration of war as far as I was concerned.
“You’re just jealous that he not only is a world-class songwriter, but also has a perfect face.”
“Maybe,” Julian admitted sheepishly.
“Harlow and Quinn are really into this goofy band called the Front Bottoms. You might like them. I bet you’d get the humor.” I moved down another aisle in search of Talon of the Hawk. Once I found it, I turned around and held it up for Julian to see.
He took the record from me and ran his thumb over the cover. He was quiet for a moment, studying the record with such intensity that I wondered if maybe I’d overhyped the band.
“They’re pretty fun,” I offered. I was starting to feel a little insecure about my suggestion, so I added, “Like I said, Harlow loves them.”
He looked up at me. There was a new intensity in his eyes. “You love music, right, Taliah?”
I bit the inside of my lip. “Of course. But isn’t saying that like saying I enjoy breathing oxygen? I’ve never met someone who didn’t like music.”
“But you love it, right? Like really love it?” he pressed, his eyes still intense. I broke away from his gaze and pretended to be interested in browsing through the records.
“Sure,” I said.
“What do you love about it?”
“What do you love about it?” I flipped the question back around on him.
“Everything,” he said.
“That’s a cop-out.”
“Okay. Well, for starters, I love the way music holds and enhances our memories. Certain songs can always transport me right back to particular moments in my life. It’s like magic.”
I pulled out a Sun Kil Moon record from the bin. “Your own songs?”
He shook his head. “No. Not really. Sure, I’ve cataloged my life by my own songs, but I’m talking about other people’s music.”
“Give me an example.”
He ran a hand through his messy hair. “Whenever I hear Neutral Milk Hotel’s ‘Where You’ll Find Me Now,’ I’m twenty-two again, sitting heartbroken in my room, trying to figure out how to convince your mother to give me just a little more time to get my shit together. Trying to figure out how to write a song with one–eight hundredth of the emotional rawness.”
I set the record I was holding back in the bin. I brought my hand to my mouth and nibbled at my fingernails. His face looked impossibly sad and I felt this sudden urge to make it better, but I didn’t know how. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. Except . . .”
“What?”
“Why don’t you try again?”
“Try again?”
“To tell me why you love music.”
I stared at the tops of my red Chucks. “Dude. I don’t know.”
“Try.”
I glanced up at him. There was an uncomfortable pause. “I don’t—” I started.
“Just try,” he repeated.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “This may sound weird, but there are certain songs, like really great songs—you don’t just listen to them, you know? They make you feel like they’re listening back. Like the person who wrote the song heard you. Music makes you feel less alone in that way. It’s proof that someone out there has felt the exact same way you do and they’ve managed to capture it in this perfect blend of words and sound.”
Julian was staring at me intensely.
“What?”
He looked away for a moment and shook his shoulders, like he was trying to shed himself of an emotion. Escape it and pack it away. I recognized the gesture because I sometimes did the same thing. As I watched him, I remembered what Debra had told me about him feeling things too intensely.
“Julian?” I said.
When he turned back to me, he gave me a playful smile. The seriousness was gone. He lightly punched my shoulder. “That’s my girl” was all he said, but it felt like so much more.
I shrugged him off, a heat creeping up my cheeks. But deep inside, something like pride, like recognition, uncoiled inside of me. As weird as it is to say, I was maybe, sort of, starting to fall in love with my dad. And he was maybe, sort of, starting to fall in love with me.
Most people don’t remember falling in love with their parents. It’s something that happens in between bites of pureed carrots and late nights in rocking chairs. But with Julian, it was different. It felt like a choice that I got to make. A choice we were making together.
“This is a moment I’m going to want to remember forever,” he said.
“Okay. That’s enough, cheeseball. Hallmark called. They want their lines back.”
He laughed and leaned in to nudge me with his shoulder. “No. Seriously, Tal. This is a monumental occasion. Our first trip together to a record store.”
“Right.”
“The first of many, I hope.”
“Sure,” I said, which sounded cagier than I meant it to.
But that didn’t seem to bother him. “And since I want to always remember it, we should pick out a song to attach to the memory.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “What did you have in mind?”
“Haven’t decided. Let’s hunt for something. What do you think?”
I hunched over another bin of records and started flipping through them. When I turned around to see if Julian had come up with anything good, I saw that Willowy Records was suddenly brimming with people.
&
nbsp; “So I think someone blew up our spot,” I whispered, taking in the clusters of people who were all excitedly hovering in proximity to Julian.
Julian sighed and pulled his sunglasses from their resting place in the V of his T-shirt. He grabbed my hand and we pushed through the crowd. People held up their phones to take photos. He politely waved in the general direction of the crowd but kept walking.
“I thought you told the kid at the register that you were gonna sign records.”
Julian didn’t answer that. We were quickly walking down the main drag. There were people staring at us, but Julian was ignoring them, so I followed suit. All of a sudden, he stopped walking. He pointed at a building across the street.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The diner I told you about. Where I met your mother.”
“The first one?”
“Yes,” he said with a sad smile. “The first one.”
“So are you ever going to tell me the rest of the story?”
He sighed and kept staring at the building. “I don’t know, Tal.”
“You don’t know what?”
He shook his head as if shaking himself out of a memory. He put his hand on the small of my back and steered me toward the diner on the corner of the street. “Let’s go in here and have a milk shake. And I’ll tell you the rest of what I know.”
New York, 2000
As Lena stared at the marquee lit up with his name, her breath caught in her throat. It had been almost three full years since she’d last seen Julian Oliver.
Her roommate Marcy wrinkled her pert nose. “I still can’t believe you know Julian Oliver. You’ve been holding out on me, Lena Abdallat.”
Lena brushed off Marcy’s comment and kept staring at the marquee. Just seeing his name felt like seeing a phantom—one she thought she’d previously exorcised—and she wasn’t sure she would be able to handle being in his physical presence. It would be like seeing a zombie. She shivered and pulled her jean jacket closer.
“Seriously. How could you keep a secret like that?” Marcy flipped her platinum-blond hair, cut in a series of choppy layers designed to make her already prominent cheekbones even more prominent.