CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The next weekend I went to the Beacon with Barbie on my mind, rather than Nikki. She was seated at her usual table, smoking a cigarette and watching Dream Weaver fiddle along to the music of some new piano player. It made me a little lightheaded, as Dream Weaver always did. A drum set was on the stage, and a young man kept a nice tempo.
I sat next to Barbie and she nodded at me, and I had the feeling she already knew what had happened in Birmingham. Nikki fed me a glass of white wine for a change, with a wink of familiarity that made me warm as though I’d already taken a sip.
I said to Barbie, loud enough so she could hear but not so loud that others would, “Don’t you want to know what happened at Grandmother’s house?”
She blew out a thin stream of smoke into the already smoke-filled room. “Mother wrote me. I got the letter today.”
“What did she say happened?” I asked.
“That she was embarrassed, that’s all.” Barbie watched the improv stage as Dream Weaver hit impossibly fast strokes of her violin.
I waited for more, and then prodded her. “Did she say exactly what happened?”
“It doesn’t matter,” was her answer.
I felt irritated at Barbie’s blasé response. “Don’t you even want to know my side of the story?”
“I can figure out your side from what she said. You told her she needed help and she flipped out. Isn’t that about right?” Barbie said.
I grabbed Barbie’s thin arm and she tensed. Maybe I squeezed too hard. I said, “She’s out of her mind. She says there are these ‘others’ that she can see and she thinks you and I can, too.”
Barbie shrugged out of my grasp and turned her blue gaze on me. “I was thinking all this time you’ve been spending up here, you would have learned to open your mind more. But I can see you haven’t.” She propped the elbow of her smoking hand on the table and took a long drag, examining me over her shoulder. “Why do you keep coming back?”
A million lies came dashing to my rescue, pushing each other to scramble for the front of the line. I decided to stay close to the truth, for it felt like she was seeing right into my soul in the way that only one who has seen your first childhood attempts at lies can do.
“At first, it was to find out more about Mother from you,” I said. “Then Cecil told me it was doing me good to get out each week and see people, have a good time.” Then I said something I didn’t even like to admit to myself. “I’m a bit of a hermit.”
She kept up that penetrating look. “Why are you a hermit, Cleo?”
I felt uncomfortable and wished she would quit with that interrogating expression. I was the older one. I was supposed to have that sort of control over a sister. I stuttered, not knowing how to answer. Finally, I said, “I guess I just don’t like many people. I prefer to be alone or with my family.”
“But not lately,” she added.
“Yes, lately.” I was getting angry.
“But you come here once a week now. You went to the beach. You’re not so much a hermit as you think,” she said.
“Being out of the house once a week for a few hours is hardly a blooming social life,” I told her.
She stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray and said, “No, it isn’t. But maybe you are like Mom. She never goes anywhere, either. You think of that?”
I opened my mouth to fight her observation, but closed it. Instead, I said, “I have a family who I talk to and interact with every day. She has Grandmother who talks to her like she is a raving lunatic ten-year-old. I guess I can see some parallels between Mother and me, but it isn’t the same thing. We don’t have the same reasons for our solitude.” I changed course away from me and back to Mother. “What are these ‘others?’ Has she told you? Are they spirits, or something like that? She said she sees our father.”
Barbie said, “She sees spirits, that’s right. So what?”
I said, “You believe her?”
“Of course I do.” She shook her head and said, “Really, I thought you would have figured all this out by now.”
“Figured what out?” I was staying all worked up. It seemed like all our conversations took me to the verge of screaming at her.
Barbie watched Reed replace Dream Weaver on the improv stage and he revved up his harmonica with a flourish of odd-sounding notes, a pied-piper ready to lead all the children to the stage. I hid my dislike of Reed’s style.
She said, “I’m not a clerical worker. I’m a spiritual guide. I can tell from your expression you think I’m as nuts as you think Mom is. But you have to understand. What you have or don’t have isn’t the issue. It’s what you do with it that is. Mom lives in that world instead of ours. I decided to be a go-between, to help people that I can.”
“For a fee, I assume,” I said.
“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said. I tried to hold my tongue from more derogatory comments after that because I wanted to hear all she had to say. She had paused to see if I would argue, but I put on my best listening carefully face and she continued. “You wanted the truth and I’m giving it to you. Our family comes from a long line of seers. Aunt Savannah traced the history back a few generations, looking for people like us and people who might have been institutionalized. They come from our grandfather’s side. You see, if you don’t know how to control the ability, then it can drive you crazy. And people who don’t see, don’t know it’s real. And it is real, can’t you tell by being here?” She gestured around the room.
Reed’s playing was fits of high notes and squealing screeches. It sounded like how I felt inside, that my family did have a history of something special, but this psychic business wasn’t it. However, I kept composed because I had Barbie talking and didn’t want that to stop. “Go on,” I told her.
“Go on about what?”
“What exactly are your spiritual services?” I asked.
She examined me, looking for the doubts I was hiding behind my curious mask. “I can tell you still think I might be crazy like Mom, but I’m not. Basically, when someone comes to me, I help them get in touch with their loved ones who have passed on to the other side. I charge a very small fee, just enough to get by on. I could charge much more, but I don’t believe in that. I would rather just do it for free.” She leaned toward me, seemingly convinced that I was buying into what she was saying. “And sometimes I do, if the person who comes to me doesn’t have money and the spirit of the person they are looking for is with them. I can tell. Then I do it for free.” She leaned back and lit another cigarette. I noticed the smoke shaking in her hand. I realized then she had been nervous about telling me all of this.
It was even more difficult to keep my thoughts organized with Reed’s unsynchronized music. Whatever the situation was, Barbie believed what she was telling me, as much as Mother had been telling me the truth about what she saw.
I had never given much consideration to these things at all. I rarely thought about death because it made me think of Patrick’s death and that of my father. Was it my place to tell Barbie that she was all wrong, that such things weren’t possible? I watched Reed sway back and forth as the piano music altered to a blues pattern. Reed changed his tune right along with it, making the room feel like it had just dropped off a cliff and landed in a delightfully cool pool of water below under the stars. I conceded that what Barbie and my mother believed could be real, yet I knew I didn’t think it was.
The people who frequented the Beacon were obvious believers of this sort of thing. I listened to Reed and the piano player make something beautiful out of nothing. No sheet music, no plans. They just meshed and got some vibes from each other and made a cohesive piece of music. Though I had rarely heard Reed play anything quite as melodic as this, he obviously knew his way around his silver box.
How did these people improv like they did? I could see now when people were thinking it through and when their actions came to them spontaneously. Could improv-ing actually come from some sort of gift or sight or special ability
? Or could it just be that they knew their arts so well that their minds could work out the actions without any forethought?
People called out “Reed!” and “Magic Man!” to the two players on the stage. The musicians didn’t seem to hear the small crowd and continued on in their trance, making a swaggering sound that neither slowed nor sped up, and never a sour note played. D.D. hopped onto the stage and tucked arms behind her knees, eyes closed and hair falling to the stage floor like red satin. I glanced to the bar to see if Nikki was watching, but he wasn’t there. The man with no name was staring right at me, and nodded. I quickly turned away.
People called out, “D.D.!”
She balanced her body on her hands and spread her legs out in both directions above her and held the pose for an impossible length of time without the slightest tremor. I didn’t want to watch her, but I couldn’t stop. The blues continued to build and build, like another cliff was going to fall out from under us all. The shaved head young man who played the acoustic jumped up and plugged his guitar into the amplifier that sat near the piano. Instead of the soft, string-strum he usually played, out came long, loud electric notes that hit every surface of the place and bounced around, echoing. The music went faster and louder, the young man picking notes with an inner force in his fingertips, and then the band exploded into music and rhythm. D.D. fell back on one leg and flipped over, back onto her hands. The energy level of the room was on fire.
Everyone in the Beacon stood up at once, screaming and clapping, and one person called out, “Dynamite!” Others caught on to this, and they began chanting, “Dynamite! Dynamite!” The young man with the new name didn’t seem to hear them. People danced together and chairs and tables were pushed to the edges of the room so that a makeshift dance floor was in place. I went with the furniture to the edges of the now packed and thrashing, swinging dance floor and watched. A new improver had been born.
Even I was tapping my foot when Nikki touched me on the shoulder and handed me a glass of white wine. “What do you think?” he shouted over the music. The harmonica and the guitar were trading electric licks that sounded like a lovers’ heated argument that would resolve itself in bed.
I told him I thought it was fascinating.
“When are you going to try it?” he asked.
“Improv-ing?”
“Yes.” He grinned down at me. The roots of his hair had grown out so much that half his hair was bleached and the other half black. He flicked a strand from his eyes as he waited for my response.
“I don’t do anything to improv with,” I told him.
“Everyone has something.” He smiled and told me to enjoy the show. I thought he would walk away, but he stayed with me, watching with an expression of supreme satisfaction; this might be what he lived for.
Even Barbie was dancing, up in the front with her eyes closed and hands in the air. She had a delicate, slow-step to her moves. I guessed that was getting down for Barbie. I probably wouldn’t see that again, I remember thinking.
I came home late and drunk again, and the next morning Cecil had a word with me about it. He told me he still thought it was great that I was getting out of the house, but could I just not drink so much?
I asked how he could know I drank heavily the night before, and he told me I smelled like I was still drinking the next morning. I made a mental note to brush my teeth and shower first thing and eat mints all morning. I didn’t tell him about Barbie’s choice of employment. I think it was because it might leak information to him somehow about where we went, what we did. Also, I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t want to criticize her anymore. However, my mind told me it was a cruel thing to do, to pretend to read fortunes and get messages from beyond the grave. Either that, or she was delusional. But my heart told me there might be something to it, especially after watching Dynamite improv for the first time, feeling the reaction of the crowd. This debate between head and feelings raged on all week, pushing my daydreams aside. On Thursday, I figured there was only one way to decide my opinion on the matter. I would have to try the improv stage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE