Chapter 4
Idig through my bag and pull out the postcard Andy wrote from The Monarch Resort.
It’s a photo of the building exterior with a small, scrawled message on the back, much like the others.
This one notes that while playing the show at the local theater was fun, the karaoke at the resort bar was outrageously rowdy.
I hum to myself—I wonder if Dean is the kind of guy who likes karaoke.
He doesn’t strike me as anyone who likes any kind of fun.
“What are you reading?” Dean asks me, taking note of my shuffling.
“Postcards from Andy,” I say quietly. Andy isn’t always a touchy subject for me, he’s been gone a long time now. I am making my peace with that. I finished most of the visceral, physical portion of my grieving years ago, but still, every now and then, saying his name throws a wrench in my throat.
“Do you want to talk about him?” Dean offers, although he sounds like he’d rather listen to me talk about international estate taxes or the price of gasoline.
“Not really,” I deny him any more information about Andy for his own sake. I want to keep these parts of Andy for me. The public has enough. Dean could just look Andy up online if he wants to know more.
“Why not?”
“What’s there to say? I bet you know what happened already,” I say. It was all over the news, the papers, the internet. TMZ did a whole expose into his death. Andy was a huge loss for the folk-rock community and everyone in the world knows it.
“Yeah,” Dean whispers. “I know what everyone else knows from the media. That he was famous. I know his public persona. But what was he like to you? How’d you meet?”
I swallow. It’s been a long time since I told this story. Mostly because it’s boring and not romantic.
“We went to grade school together. Then, his parents moved to Portland and we reconnected in college when we went to the Maine College of Art.”
“He went to art school?” Dean asks, his voice raising significantly at the end. “You went to art school?” I can’t tell which he’s more shocked about—me or Andy.
“He was there for a semester before he dropped out,” I say. “We both studied illustration. I graduated, he didn’t.” I look out the window, not looking at Dean.
“You don’t seem like the type to have studied art,” Dean concurs. I see Andy in the distance, in the trees and the fields. He loved anything green. I hear him on the radio. Art school was never really for Andy. He liked art of course, but there was always something missing. That auditorial element.
“Music was his real calling,” I tell Dean. “He was never as invested in drawing as he was in music.”
“Why’d you marry him?” Dean asks.
I let out a short laugh. “Real forward, aren’t you?”
“Well?” Dean laughs back and it sounds like sunshine melting through the clouds. It’s one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard in my life. I don’t know why I like it so much, but I want to hear more of it. It’s scorched on my heart forever.
“I was twenty-three and he asked. I didn’t know any better,” I respond. Things were not perfect by far when I was married to Andy, especially as young as we were, but we were happy. I was happy. I was working as an assistant art teacher and illustrating part time, Andy was playing music full time.
“Do you regret it?” Dean’s voice is serious, the brevity all gone, thrown to the wind.
“Not a chance.” I turn to look out the window, there’s flurries in the air. “I could never regret Andy.”
“Even after he died and was plastered all over the news?”
“He was going to be plastered all over the papers whether he died or not,” I remark. His fame was just taking off before he died. His death only exacerbated the situation. From the tour to his hypothetical second album, he was all over, everywhere.
“Why was he playing such small venues when he could have sold out much bigger theaters?” Dean asks. His eyes are trained on the road, but it seems like he has a million and one things going on in his mind. It’s not an absent-minded question.
“It was his Hometown Tour. A return to his roots. All up and down the state of Maine.” I recall. “He sent me postcards from everywhere.” I hold up the collection, smacking it against my hand, although Dean doesn’t look.
“Thanks for telling me,” Dean says, gripping the steering wheel. His knuckles are almost white, which tickles me because this conversation should be stressful for me, not for him.
“Do you want me to drive?” I ask, as it’s starting to snow heavier.
He laughs but it comes out like BAH! “No. You don’t need to drive. I got this.”
“Okay.” I lean my head back on the headrest and close my eyes for a moment.
I haven’t thought this much about Andy in a long time.
It used to be that not a day went by that I didn’t think about Andy and how I should have been there on the tour with him, I should have done something, I should have saved him.
But as time goes on, other things and other anxieties take up more space in your brain, slowly covering up what used to be.
I try to picture his face in my head. I can’t put the whole puzzle of his face together anymore, but my brain fills in the rest from what I remember of the landmarks of his face.
A soft, round jawline, with baby blue eyes.
Blonde, wispy hair with matching eyelashes.
A full set of pink lips and a melodic voice that could soothe even the fussiest of babies.
My Andy. He’s a floating echo in space, a face lost to time, even to the person who swore to remember him always.
I pull out my phone and google him. His picture is one of the first things that comes up. Here, he’s a little more angular, a little more rough around the edges. He’s a little more like the rockstar everyone wanted him to be. Of course, I recognize Andy, but I don’t recognize the photo.
I’ve never seen this photo before and I don’t know where it was taken. I screenshot it for later. Andy’s face will only ever be pixels on a screen from now on. This makes me miss him, but he’s so far gone, so far removed from my current situation, I don’t even know what I’m missing anymore.
I look over to Dean. He’s preoccupied with driving and not paying me any mind. For once, he seems unbothered. His hat and gloves are resting in his lap, so his hair flops over into his eyes just a bit. It’s tempting to reach out and push it out of the way for him, but I leave it be.
He’s not mine to take care of. Not that he even wants it, anyway.
“We’re about 30 minutes out,” Dean says. “You good?”
“About as good as I’ll ever be.” I say.
But what if I wasn’t good? The fact that he asked puts my deranged brain in motion. Maybe he asked because I looked funny or he thought I wasn’t well. Despite the growing pit in my stomach, I grit my teeth and shift in my seat.
It always starts off like this. A growing pit I can’t ignore nor explain. An inkling or a feeling of something unusual, something out of place. A pit. A gurgle. A tingle. A comment.
I try to fight it off for a little while longer. I try not to worry about the fact my smartwatch thinks I’m exercising with an elevated heart rate even though I haven’t gotten up. I repeat my mantras to myself.
It’s okay. It’s just anxiety. I’m not really sick, even if all these symptoms lead me to believe I’m sick.
I’m itching to go looking for a remedy for my elevated heart rate, even though I know the only thing that’ll cure it is time.
I can’t focus on anything but the fact my heart is beating really, really fast. 123 beats per minute, according to my watch.
It thumps in my ears, it thumps in the back of my head.
It’s okay. It’s just anxiety. I’m not really sick, I repeat to myself. My heart rate ticks up one by one to 126. Oh, fuck. Here we go again. The what ifs.
What if it’s a heart attack?
What if it’s an embolism?
What if, what if, what if!
Dean sits there and drives, completely unaware of the situation unfolding beside him. I’m starting to sweat, and I need to be free from my coat. I start unzipping it and wiggling my arms out.
“What are you doing?” Dean asks me, irritated by the fact I whipped him with my sleeve trying to get my coat off.
“I’m sorry, I need to take my coat off,” I tell him quickly, I’m almost out of breath. “I’m, I’m, I’m having a heart episode, I think,” I stutter. I’m completely totally panicked. “You need to pull over, you need to pull over. I can’t be in a moving car.”
“What?” Dean is caught off guard, his voice raised an octave. “I’m not pulling over, we’re almost there.”
“No, you need to stop, I need to get out!” My jacket is caught in between my shoulder and the seatbelt.
“I can't breathe!” I’m truly frightened and my watch is buzzing at my elevated heart rate, and now I feel like my lungs are full of rocks.
It feels like I haven’t gotten a full breath in ages.
I wished I took my psychiatrist’s advice and got an inhaler.
“What good is getting out and dying on the side of the road going to do? We’re almost there,” Dean snaps. “You’re not dying. Just sit down and stop moving.”
“I’m so hot, I’m sweating, I’m probably having a heart attack!
” I try not to raise my voice. I know deep down that this doesn’t make any sense, but the alarm bells in my body are ringing tenfold.
They’re setting off all major alerts that something is amiss, something is off and I need to fix it now or I’ll suffer the deadly consequences. I’ll be roadkill, for all Dean cares.
Dean sighs and puts the hazard lights on. He begins to slow down. “You’re not having a heart attack. You’re having a panic attack.” There’s a tinge of worry to his voice, but it’s not for me. He turns off the heat in the car, and switches it to the fan and AC.
“I can’t breathe, I’m not having a panic attack!” I deny, finally freeing myself from my jacket. Pulling over onto the side of the road, Dean rolls the car to a stop. I’m fanning myself and leaning into the air vents. He steels me.