Deep Cuts

The Heart of the Matter

The Heart of the Matter

Once the idea arrived I followed it dumbly, taking the subway straight from Brooklyn to Port Authority and boarding a 1:30 a.m. Greyhound heading west. I rubbed my arms for warmth the whole night, staring out the smeared window. A bruise ripened slowly on the heel of my right hand. When the sky lightened over Ohio I called my parents, who agreed to pick me up in Indianapolis once they recovered from their surprise. “This is so unlike you,” my mom repeated the whole drive from the bus station.

“It’s really helpful how you keep pointing that out, Mom,” I said.

My bedroom had become the treadmill room. This was new: on my last visit the walls had still been lined with my music posters, most of them from record sleeves and CD cases, their fold lines still visible. I didn’t ask where they’d gone. My brother’s room had been left untouched, right down to the life-sized Michael Jordan poster and assorted winner medals hanging from the curtain rod, clanging lightly in a breeze through the open window. If they’d known I was coming, Dad kept saying.

“This is fine,” I said. I entered his room and closed the door on my parents’ strange faces. I scanned the shelves of team photos—those other families he kept, his easier siblings—then sat on the bed and opened the nightstand drawer, where I found a framed glamour shot of his high school girlfriend resting in a cloud of gum wrappers. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Maybe some clue to the stability my brother had always embodied—the self-belief that seemed to ballast him against emotional highs and lows—as if he’d won it in a deal with the devil. But his room was the room of a good person.

Mom knocked on the door with the only two pieces of my high school clothing she’d saved, a sundress made by my aunt and a pair of Christmas pajamas from a matching family set. I put on the pajamas and instantly fell into a sleep so deep it took me minutes to remember where I was when I finally woke.

Dinner was vegetables from the garden and a bland chicken breast. There was talk about salt, cholesterol; I told them I was glad they were thinking about these things. Dad tried to veer into politics a few times and Mom changed the subject. We called my brother, who still lived in his college town, had some assistant coach job that seemed anticlimactic only to me; after hearing about my surprise morning arrival, he whooped so loudly I took him off speaker.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just think of you as my nerdy little sis, and this—is this an epic walk of shame?”

“You know I don’t do things halfway,” I said. “Which, by the way, is basically what it is to be a nerd.”

He laughed and asked me to put Dad on; the two of them had money on the game that night.

After dinner, Mom and I did the dishes while Dad watched what turned out to be college football, hanging on every toss and fumble of a bunch of teenage boys. I gave Mom the rough outline of the wedding, though I left out the part about the girl’s giggle in Joe’s hotel room—I told her the bruise was from falling down the stairs at Port Authority.

“So you’re torn between two men,” she said flatly as she dried a ceramic platter. “Less dramatic than I was expecting.”

“I’m not torn,” I said. “I decided.”

“Did you? Sounds to me like you just picked the impossible option. The option you ruined. Which means you decided on neither.” Her mouth set into a grim smile I’d seen more times than I could count. When emojis became a thing, years later, the one with the straight line for a mouth always reminded me of Mom. “Doesn’t mean it was the wrong decision. Maybe it was a great decision. There’s still soap on this.”

I rinsed the platter again, leaning my elbows on the edge of the sink. I felt, as I had all day, like I couldn’t find my sea legs. “Can’t a person make a mistake?”

She clucked her tongue. It rang an unpleasantly familiar bell, like when she’d discover I’d cleaned my room by shoving everything under the bed.

“I’ll finish later,” I said, and walked outside to the front porch, drying my hands on my pajama bottoms. The old porch swing was still hanging on; I sank into it, enjoying its creaking music. Otherwise it was unbearably quiet outside. The houses in our neighborhood were all set back far from the road, a stretch of lawn around each standard-issue rancher, but I didn’t remember this level of stillness. Where were all the kids? Had we not been replaced? There was a chill, fall arriving, streetlights on already.

Mom came out and sat in her favorite chair with the worn cushion. “How’s the writing program?”

“Fine. I feel a bit out of place there, but I guess I do everywhere.” I pushed my toes against the deck, activating the swing. “Actually I hate it.”

“Really? I love the idea of you as a music critic.”

“Music writer.” I tried not to be too annoyed, since I’d never worked too hard to disabuse her of the idea that I was trying to become a music critic. I lacked the patience, or the clarity of mind, to explain to her that writing and music could be combined to create something other than criticism. Maybe I wasn’t sure that they could.

“You know criticism is its own form of art,” she said.

“Why do people always say that?” I snapped. “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘That Robert Christgau takedown of the Eagles really changed my life’?”

Mom adopted her bewildered “how did this child come from me?” face.

I decided to change the subject. “Where did you live, when you lived in New York?”

“Different places. Hell’s Kitchen for the longest stretch.”

“Uptown, ever?”

“No. Lately after dinner I’ve been enjoying a nice Perrier in a wineglass with a lime wedge—would you like one?”

The is how it was to talk to Mom: like one of those old-fashioned dances where your partner steps back whenever you step forward, choreographed to maintain distance. “Sure.”

She stood up from the deep chair and I noticed she straightened her legs a bit slowly. How awful, to get old. As if it wasn’t bad enough being young. At least our knees responded to our commands.

The Perrier was, indeed, nice. We sipped in silence awhile. The insanity of my visit seemed to demand a Big Conversation—she was clearly waiting for it—so I asked, “Do you ever regret making the safe choice?”

“What makes you think that’s what I did?”

“It seems obvious. You were in New York. I’m sure you had some excitement there, hot flings and career prospects, and then you came…here.” I gestured to the empty tree-lined street. “To him.” I jerked my thumb at the living room window, lit by the green glow of an on-screen football field.

“If by ‘hot flings’ you mean conductors putting their hands down my shirt while they adjusted my bow positioning,” she said. She snorted. “As if my bow wasn’t always perfectly positioned.”

I winced with sympathy.

“Of course I wonder about the road not taken, honey. That’s part of life. But I don’t regret it nearly as much as you think I do.”

“How do you know what I think?”

“Your disdain for my life choices has been palpable to me since you hit puberty.”

I twisted the swing so I could see her better: she was squinting out at the street like there was sun in her eyes, but the sun had set. “I’m sorry,” I said. I hadn’t known how obvious it was. “I guess I just wanted more. Maybe that was silly.”

She met my gaze finally. “Depends what you mean by more.” And when I didn’t immediately answer—I meant more, more! —she stood up and ambled inside.

—

I sat at the computer table in the corner of the living room, rolled out the keyboard tray, and signed in to my email. Raj was trying not to worry.

Hi, I’m back. Boston bros weekend was fun. Got home last night and something felt off, I guess because you left no message or note (where’s the red notebook?). I hope you had a good time with Joe at the wedding or whatever it was. I know he’s important to you. Just let me know if you want to connect, otherwise I’ll see you in seminar on Wednesday. Can’t believe the summer’s over. It was lovely, spending it with you.

I didn’t labor over my response; I felt like I owed him the courtesy of speed, at this point. I read it over once and pressed send:

Raj,

Your off feeling is right, because I did things I regret at the wedding and I’ve been paralyzed ever since. I don’t know how much to tell you because I’m scared you’ll hate me forever. Yes, Joe is important to me, foundationally important, and I suppose that’s my excuse for making this mistake. But by the end of the night I chose you. If you’ll have me.

I love you,

Percy

We’d never said the L-word before, and it had a whiff of too-late desperation about it, but I had to try. Was it true? I was pretty sure it was true, even though what I felt for him was so different from what I felt for Joe, it seemed like it should get a different name. What did this say about our culture, that we had invented only one word for all these feelings? If we truly valued it we would label it more precisely, like Eskimos and snow.

I busied myself in town the next day, running errands for my mom, buying some clothes at the Salvation Army—a shirt that said Indiana Science Olympiad 1982 , gray Dickies, and flip-flops. I hung Nomi’s dress carefully in a garment bag. I felt stunned, numb, like a pause button had been pressed down in my brain and would not pop up until Raj’s response. My next login yielded an email, but it was from Joe.

did you see the review?? you know i don’t get hippie about this stuff but it did kinda feel like the universe doing me a solid when i needed it most. look i’m not going to apologize for the other night, i was sad and she was there and she has a way of seeing the best in me- you wouldn’t understand. anyway it didn’t work because i’m still sad, and pissed, you probably are too. here’s an FTP where you can download all the mp3’s from that cd you broke. i have to know, are you still on my team with this second album, as a friend, a partner? this is big- i need you.

It had just posted that morning, not a full review, but a paragraph-long mention on a massively consumed blog.

Real-Deal Alert: Caroline, Funny Strange

7.5/10

This impressive debut out of the Bay Area is a year old, but hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves in theUS despite fitting snugly into the new ’60s-tinged indie sound (though the title track owes more to ’70s rock; the influences are broad enough to surprise). Luckily they fared better in the UK and spent the summer on the European festival circuit. On the album’s twelve tracks, a tragically lo-fi production tries but fails to obscure the considerable pop sensibilities of lead vocalist and songwriter Joe Morrow; live, his potential shines even brighter. No word yet on a follow-up album, but we’ll be tracking it closely.

I smiled for a good ten minutes after reading it, but then the memory of the girl’s cut-off giggle returned. I didn’t reply.

Raj’s email came the next day. As soon as I saw his name, I knew it was going to be awful. My mom was right: I had chosen neither. I took a long, steadying breath before I opened it, but still, I was not ready.

Percy,

The idea of you choosing me is frankly hilarious. Why, because you like my air-conditioning? If my “one who got away” (you never ask about her, but she still exists) suddenly wanted to try again, I would not choose you. Why? Well, it’s not me, Percy, it’s you. (Cruel, but too good to delete.) You don’t love me. You don’t even love yourself. You’re too busy editing to write; no wonder you didn’t finish a single page all summer. You’re obsessive about inconsequential things, like song lyrics, and dismissive of things that matter, like food and sleep and other people’s feelings. Who can live like that? And now this. Your refusal to give any specifics of what happened with Joe leads me to presume the worst-case scenario, and this scenario makes me so angry that I am legitimately considering buying some sort of voodoo doll of you and stabbing it repeatedly. I don’t know what your problem is—girls have always found me sexy, all-the-way sexy, until you. But I am still a self-respecting South Asian man who grew up in America, and your twisting this particular knife isn’t something I expect I’ll ever get over. Fuck off. I wish you well.

Raj

I bolted out of the house, trying to outrun a horrible heat inside me. It was late afternoon and gray clouds were gathering, shutting down the sun. I saw Mom in her garden and ran across the lawn toward her.

“What happened?” she asked as I approached.

“Raj dumped me.”

“Ah.”

I glared at her, pacing the edge of her garden.

“What? You’re mad at me because I predicted that?”

“What the hell, Mom!”

“I know it’s hard, honey,” she said. “It’s hard to lose someone, no matter the reason. And you’re losing two people at once. I am sorry this is happening. I just want you to see that you chose it, because I think that might mitigate the pain.”

I whirled to face her. “Remember our piano lessons?”

She flapped away a bee. “Sure. You weren’t very interested.”

“Bullshit.”

We looked at each other a long moment, and then she resumed her hoeing, half-heartedly. “I didn’t have the impression that you had any great innate musical talent, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“When did you know? When did you make this decision, on my behalf, that I would be useless at the thing I loved most? That the best I could be was just a barren appreciator of music?”

She abandoned the hoe again and looked at me like I was a child. “Barren?”

“Yeah. I’m going to stick with ‘barren.’ It’s like the power of giving life, to be a songwriter.”

“You know you also have the actual power of giving life, don’tyou?”

“Mom, gross. I’m twenty-three.” I sat on a decorative stone stool in the mint bush.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get the music genes, honey,” she said. “But that was a relief to me. When music is your profession, everything becomes outer directed. It’s all about pleasing people—men, mostly. I wanted you to be inner directed. To know your own opinions.”

“My opinions have brought me nothing but problems!” I said it so loudly, my voice propelled me to a standing position.

She shielded her eyes to look at me; the sun had poked through the darkening clouds. “You’re so smart !” she said accusingly. “I never understood it! Why would someone so smart be so fixated on pop music?”

“I don’t know! We don’t get to choose what we love, any more than we can choose our talents. Don’t you get that?”

She looked down at her weeding.

I sat back down on the stool and yanked off a sprig of mint to chew on, the roughness of the gesture sending pain oscillating through my bruised hand. “I co-wrote a song with Joe, actually. It’s going to be on his next album, which is already getting buzz.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said. “And you have other talents too.”

“Joe doesn’t talk about talent, you know,” I said. “It’s like the idea never occurred to him. He trained himself to sing in tune.” This last part was not true—Joe had come out of the womb singing in tune, I was pretty sure—but I had read it once about Sufjan Stevens, and it always fascinated me.

“Good for him,” she said, still concentrating on the dirt. “I do think these things are easier for men.”

I stared at the back of her head. She was right, of course. “Boys are less afraid of being wrong,” I said. It was a line from My So-Called Life —she wouldn’t remember, though we’d watched that episode together in high school: the sensitive redhead observing the boys in her classroom as they shouted dumb guesses at the teacher. This was why men got to run the world, even as it became slowly obvious they were terrible at it. But who was molding all these chickenshit daughters?

Mom said something about rain coming and pushed herself up to stand. But she didn’t walk away. She stood looking at me, holding her hoe in one hand and a bouquet of uprooted weeds in another.

“What?” I said.

“Oh, it’s just,” she said. “It’s the players. My friends. That’s what I gave up when I chose this life. My best friend, we lived together—her name was Jennifer, before everyone was named Jennifer. I think she still plays in the city. Miss her sometimes, that’s all. Nobody understands you like a violinist, what it’s like living up on that high wire. Odd ducks like me, all of them. But, honey,” she said, with a significant look, “that is not something you get from a man.”

My impulse was to scoff. Not men like Dad, I wanted to say—there were better men out there, interesting musical men who could talk forever. But the past twenty-four hours were making me second-guess my impulses. Maybe she was right—maybe even the most interesting men would always be too distracted, too fixated on the whole thorny realm of sex. So I met her eye, nodded. She responded with a hug, which I accepted. The hug felt good. I supposed, as I held her tighter, it was what I had come for.

Inside, I watched her cook dinner. I should help, I thought. Instead I wandered into the living room and gazed absently at its familiar brown furniture, my face on the wall alongside my brother’s in a series of school pictures—mine following a progression of “say cheese” smiles to more natural attempts to not smiling at all. A sadness took root in my bones, deep in the marrow. New York yawned like an abscess at the edge of my mind.

Some inner compass pointed me to the old CD rack, where I scanned the plastic columns for something nonclassical— Blue, or Kind of Blue, at least. I should’ve bought music at the Goodwill; I needed it more than I needed clothes. Finally I found a block of Dad jams and selected a Don Henley solo album, then poured myself a finger of scotch and sank into the recliner with the lyrics booklet.

On the cover Henley had long hair, lines in the face, a cigarette. The first track was grating, lots of that classic boomer hand-wringing for the world they were hell-bent on destroying. But the studio polish and his strained, weary voice felt just right. Finally I found the one I wanted, “The Heart of the Matter,” which I remembered vaguely as a good song, though I was not nearly prepared for how good. I couldn’t have understood it the last time I heard it. It was a grown-up breakup song with a central question ripped straight from my weekend: Why do we listen to those voices, calling from just outside our door, that tell us to reject contentment in search of something more?

My mom thought she had the answer; she thought the voices were simply to be ignored. Close the door, was Mom’s advice.

But old Don doesn’t know. He just throws the question on the table and lets it sits there, satisfied to have asked it so beautifully. He’s tired. He’s not sure he knows the heart of the matter, though he knows what it’s not: It’s not pride, or competition, or work. It’s something to do with forgiveness.

Rain was slapping the windows now. The smell of sautéing onions came from the kitchen. “Forgiveness, forgiveness,” called the background singers from a fading outro.

I refilled my scotch glass and sat back down at the computer table, opened Internet Explorer. I hit reply on the Raj email, but I couldn’t focus on the blank space where I was supposed to write; my eyes kept sliding down to what he’d written, and it made me feel so horrible I could barely breathe. So I opened up the Joe email and found it made me feel horrible too. I deleted both emails and logged off. I couldn’t imagine eating. I couldn’t even finish my scotch. I stepped slowly up the stairs and crawled into bed in my brother’s trophy room.