21 EVIE
E VIE
I didn’t go back home again the next day. Or the one after that.
It was an initiation of sorts that took place that weekend.
They didn’t let anyone in easily, this band of brothers.
Even Fred had been with them since the early days, as much a friend as a road manager by that point.
It was new territory for them, and I hadn’t realized how rare it really was to have an outsider be a part of their story.
But moments were strung together over time, one by one, until I looked back at some point in the days, weeks, months that followed and realized I had become part of the fabric.
Woven in delicate moments until one day it ripped wide open.
But those first days at the beginning are bathed in a kind of golden glow, all of us together.
It was a cozy, picturesque little beach town, and it’s funny to think of the commotion they would’ve caused stepping out as a group like that years later.
But this was all still just the beginning, and most people didn’t recognize their faces yet.
Except for the accents, they could’ve been any group of wayward friends—a bit rough around the edges but boyishly so.
Carter and I strolled in and out of shops that lined the quaint streets.
I remember him buying a handmade leather-bound notebook.
I bought an uncharacteristic sundress. I still have it.
I’ve never been able to let go of it. I also have his notebook, amazingly enough, where lines of lyrics are scrawled in his swirl of thoughts, upside down, right side up, along with the many deeply scratched-over words he decided he didn’t like.
We’d been walking past a playground one evening, and when I close my eyes, I can hear the sounds of it.
Squeals of delight filling the air, mothers calling after their children, the high-pitched whine of a screeching swing.
A ball bounced out onto the sidewalk, and Carter tossed it back gamely to a little boy with a tiny voice.
The boy caught it clumsily in his outstretched arms, and his face lit up with glee.
“Ah, perfect catch!” Carter exclaimed.
He would have been a good father.
He took my hand in his again, and we continued walking. I couldn’t help but smile at him.
“You’re good with kids,” I told him.
“You think?”
“Yeah. I do.”
He looked off into the distance. “Maybe. Other people’s, I suppose. I don’t think I’ll ever want kids of my own.”
“Really? Why?” This surprised me a bit, a bold statement appearing from nowhere.
“I don’t have the personality for it. And I sure as hell don’t have the lifestyle for it.
I think I’m too selfish for parenthood.” He laughed a bit, looking over at me.
“I don’t mean that in a self-deprecating way; it’s just that I think you need to be willing to give so much of yourself and your time to raise children right.
My mind doesn’t work that way. I’m in my own head too much.
I get lost in my writing and in my music, and I like to live on my own terms. When I do something, I like to do it well, you know?
I wouldn’t want to be the kind of dad who leaves a kid at home.
I’ve chosen my path. If you don’t want to give it your all and be great at it, then don’t do it. ” An edge had creeped into his voice.
“Totally agree.”
“Really?”
I shrugged. “Some people just shouldn’t have kids, but they do.”
“I think I’m one of them—the ones who shouldn’t.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said, pointing a thumb backward toward the playground and smiling. “But I like that you’re honest enough with yourself to know what you want.”
As we walked, I began to learn more about the skinny boy and the rough father who had raised him. The gentle mother and the brother with the tortured soul who once inhabited the daily world of the man I was falling for. He didn’t mind being out on the road.
“I think I miss the memory of them more than the actuality,” he said.
“The way things used to be. My mum, I miss. But our family fell apart at some point. After my dad lost his job, we didn’t see much of him sometimes, which was a good thing.
He’s around now, and he mellowed a bit, I guess, after . ..”
“After what?” I asked.
“After Jacob.”
“Your brother.”
He nodded and looked away, and I reached over and held his hand. He never liked to talk much about Jacob.
“We don’t get on very well, though. My dad and me. Probably best I’m on the road.”
A bit of time passed as we walked. “I know a little about that kind of dad.”
“Ah. I’m sorry.” He brushed his thumb against my hand.
I shrugged in agreement. “Me too.”
I should have known then—that we were completing each other in all the most dangerous ways. Trying to heal old, deep wounds in a shared sadness of the past together with the hopeful belief that we would somehow fix each other. Two puzzle pieces, matched together from lifetimes before.
I remember sitting across from Carter’s father, years ago, and wondering how it was possible that he had been responsible for someone like Carter.
I can see him sitting across from me at a pub in York, talking in mumbled tones, his mannerisms so very unlike Carter.
He wore deep, etched lines in his face above layers of wools and a quilted vest, and I had to strain to understand him through his gruff accent.
He had a habit of looking down at his raw, weathered hands while he spoke, as if beneath the layers, perhaps he shamefully remembered the dark presence he had been in his family’s life.
He was worn and tough as leather, but having mellowed with age, he noticeably drank nothing stronger than one single pint of beer in the afternoon we spent together.
“So this music thing is working out for you, then,” he had said.
He paused, looking up only briefly with a frown.
“I guess it’s all right as long as it pays the bills.
” Mayluna had just been nominated for a Grammy Award, and it still was the closest he might come to praise for his son.
Carter’s mother sat beside her husband—a timid, graceful woman as quiet and reserved and gentle as the soft rain that fell outside the pub’s window.
Her eyes lit up with pure sunlight every time Carter spoke.
I’d never felt so protective of Carter as I did that day, my heart breaking a little at the sadness in his eyes. His desire to be enough.
“But I like the idea of growing into an old, quiet man, secure in his solitary life, fading off into the sunset with someone to love,” Carter said as we continued our walk.
“I like that,” I told him. “It’s sweet.”
“But who knows? You never know how life will turn out.”