Zoe
Philadelphia, 2003
Can’t we just sing covers?”
had asked, after the deal had been signed, and the record-label bosses—Jerry and Helen and David—told the girls what would come next.
“Trust me,”
Jerry had told them, “you need to break out with a song of your own.”
He’d started to say something else, but then Cassie had raised her hand, like a kid in an elementary school classroom.
had cringed as Jerry pointed to her sister with an indulgent smile.
Cassie’s voice was all but inaudible.
“How long do you think you’ll need me?”
Shit, thought, and kicked Cassie under the table.
“What?”
asked Jerry, eyebrows shooting up.
“I have a recital in two weeks,”
Cassie said.
“At Curtis.
I have to go back to school.”
“I don’t think you’re going back to school anytime soon,”
Jerry said.
was grateful that he was speaking kindly, that his voice was gentle.
“I think you can consider yourself graduated.”
“But—”
grabbed her sister’s hand and squeezed it, a little desperately.
The squeeze was meant to communicate a number of things.
Most essentially: You have your whole life to play classical music, and I need you here.
Now.
That, plus the thing that no one had said, but that knew to be true, even if she was unwilling to even think it.
They don’t want me without you.
In a low voice she said, “Please.”
Then she held her breath until her sister sighed, closed her eyes, and gave an almost imperceptible nod.
At the head of the table, Jerry had smiled.
“So: a hit.
A brand-new song, just for you.
And I think I know just the young man to help you write one.”
The young man’s name was Russell D’Angelo, late of Medford, Massachusetts, currently living in Los Angeles.
Relic had signed his band, Sky King, six years ago.
Sky King had failed to catch fire, and had eventually fallen apart, but Russell had written their songs and had sold a few more songs to other female singers—Cyndi Lauper, Norah Jones.
“He’s a great guy.
I know you’ll love him.”
“Is he here?”
had asked.
“He’s in LA right now,”
Jerry had said, tapping his fingers on the table.
“But we’ll get him back East this week, and we’ll send him along to you.”
As if this guy was a package, to be wrapped up and shipped overnight.
The thought made smile.
On their way to the elevator, when they’d pulled far enough ahead of the group that no one could hear them, had grasped her sister’s arm.
“I’ll never be able to thank you enough for this.”
Cassie hadn’t replied.
She looked numb, and terrified, and couldn’t blame her.
herself couldn’t quite believe what had happened, or how it had all happened so fast.
The Battle of the Bands had been on a Wednesday.
On Thursday morning they’d sung for Simon and David Katz.
On Friday morning they’d been in New York City, and, by the end of the day, they’d visited four different labels and decided to sign with Relic.
Janice liked Jerry, who, it turned out, had grown up in Cherry Hill, just over the bridge.
Cassie had liked the way the keys of the keyboard the label had supplied felt under her fingers while she played.
Weird, but whatever.
As for , she liked the three boy bands who were signed to Relic.
Just after the New Year, Cassie had gone to Curtis to deliver her news and, probably, break all of her professors’ hearts.
had happily un-enrolled herself from the spring semester at the Community College of Philadelphia.
When that task was complete, she’d spent hours on the phone, telling every single one of her friends and most of her acquaintances that she and her sister had been signed to a major label (she didn’t bother telling her enemies, confident that word would make its way to them without her).
“What about me?”
asked Tommy, the only member of Girl Power! with whom was still speaking.
“Your band needs a drummer, right?”
“I don’t know,”
said.
“The people at the label were talking about putting together a band.”
The people at the label was a phrase was using as often as she could.
“He’s already got a songwriter.
Cassie and I are meeting with him today.”
“What time?”
Tommy asked.
“I can come.
I can help.”
rolled her eyes a little.
Tommy was musically gifted, she knew—a prodigy, just like her sister—but she didn’t think she’d trust him to take his thoughts and feelings, such as they were, and translate them into songs.
“I’ll see what the people at the label think,”
she told him, enjoying how those magical words felt in her mouth, how they sounded when she spoke them.
“I’ll call you.”
As soon as that pleasant task was discharged, had borrowed the family car and driven to the Cherry Hill Mall, where she’d charged seven hundred dollars of new clothes at Nordstrom, knowing she’d have no trouble paying the bill as soon as their signing payment arrived.
On Tuesday morning, Sam was at work.
Janice had been banished to the kitchen, where she was wiping the counters, which were already extremely clean, and eavesdropping, was positive.
She’d told her mom to go somewhere—anywhere!—but Janice had refused.
“You’ve never met this person.
I want to make sure you’re safe.”
was wearing one of her new outfits—boot-cut dark-rinse jeans and a light-blue halter-style crop top, with long sleeves, a high, ruffled collar, and a hem that left a few inches of her belly bare.
She’d used a curling iron to put waves in her long, light-brown hair, and had taken her time lining her lips and her eyes.
Cassie was at the piano, as usual, in a sweatshirt and loose-fitting high-waisted jeans.
No makeup, as usual, but her hair looked recently washed, and her top and pants were both clean.
“Are you ready?”
asked.
Cassie just sighed.
ignored her.
No one—not even her weird, silent sister—was going to ruin this fairy tale.
Her dreams were coming true, and meant to enjoy it.
When she heard a knock at the door, she smiled her prettiest smile, licked her glossy lips, and crossed the living room with a spring in her step and a swing in her hips.
Russell D’Angelo entered on a gust of wintry air with a guitar in one hand and a notebook tucked under his arm.
His hair was wind-tousled.
His cheeks and his knuckles were red from the cold. “Hello!”
he said.
“I’m Russell.”
took his coat and looked him over.
She’d expected ...
well, she hadn’t known what to expect, exactly.
Songwriter conjured a number of things.
There was the writer part—pale, poetic, romantic; a man with a tender heart and sensitive eyes who’d maybe wear a cape or have a scarf thrown around his neck.
But the song part, plus Russell’s past tenure in a band, brought to mind something different: long hair, tattoos, booze and nicotine and worse; an air of dissolution, a whiff of the forbidden.
A guy who’d wear sunglasses inside, and look rumpled, from sleeping until noon.
This guy did not resemble either Mr.
Darcy or David Lee Roth.
He looked, thought, like a substitute teacher.
He was a little taller than she was.
His brown hair was cut in a modified mullet, shorter on the sides and top, long enough to curl over the collar of his blue crewneck in the back.
His full cheeks and big, soft brown eyes gave his face a boyish appearance.
He looked young, maybe in his mid-twenties.
No cape or scarf.
No earrings.
No visible tattoos.
knew she was staring, but she couldn’t make herself stop.
She still couldn’t get over how guys in bands were also just regular people, who bought groceries and ate frozen pizza and replaced the toilet paper when it ran out.
“I’m , and this is Cassie,”
she said, leaving out their last names for the time being.
“Can I get you something to drink? Water? Coffee?”
Russell smiled a little and lifted a Wawa to-go cup.
“I’m all set.”
His expression was open and curious as he looked around their living room, taking in the stiff couch and love seat, the coffee table with a bowl of dusty potpourri (why hadn’t she tossed it?) and Janice and Sam’s wedding album (why hadn’t she moved it?) arranged on top.
The family photos (ugh) on the mantel above the ornamental fireplace, the school pictures (double ugh) hung beside the staircase.
Cassie’s piano against the wall, and Cassie, sitting on the bench in front of it.
Later, would think that afternoon was when she’d realized that they were poor.
Or, not poor, but definitely not middle-class.
She knew, of course, that there were people who lived differently.
Tommy, for example, had told her about the house where he’d grown up, which had four bedrooms and a swimming pool in the backyard.
She guessed, from his carefully neutral expression, that Russell had also been used to more than this.
She wondered if he pitied them.
But she couldn’t tell from his tone, which was businesslike and brisk, or his face, which gave nothing away.
“Okay!”
he said.
“Jerry tells me you ladies are going to be the next big thing.
Are you ready to write a hit?”
looked at Cassie, trying not to appear uncertain.
They’d talked about it the night before, about how it was going to work.
“Probably he’ll just bring us a song,”
had said, with a confidence she didn’t completely feel.
“One he’s already written.
Like, maybe something he wrote for Norah Jones that she didn’t want.”
“So we’re getting someone’s leftovers?”
couldn’t see in the dark, but she had imagined Cassie making a face.
had sniffed.
“They’re not leftovers,”
she’d said.
“They’re just, like, songs there wasn’t room for on an album.
Or maybe songs someone didn’t like, or couldn’t sing.”
“Leftovers,”
Cassie had repeated.
After a moment, she’d asked, “How’s he supposed to bring us a song if he doesn’t even know us? How does he know what we’ll like?”
had considered.
“He knows about us.
He knows how old we are.
Maybe Jerry played him that tape they made, so he knows how we sound.”
wondered if Russell had also been told how they looked—if he knew that one of the sisters was beautiful and one was not.
If he had feelings about it, again, she couldn’t tell.
He looked at them the same way he’d looked at the furnishings—open, and curious, not judging, just taking it in.“We’re ready,”
she told him, and tossed her hair.
“Great,”
said Russell.
“So, I’ve got a couple of things I’ve been fooling around with.”
He’d brought in a spiral notebook with a soft red cover, the kind had used in school.
He set it on the coffee table, on top of the wedding album, and opened the guitar case, his movements deft and practiced.
watched as he settled the instrument against his body and began to tune it.
“How does this work?”
asked.
Russell looked at her.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how do you write a song? What comes first? The lyrics or the music?”
Russell strummed a chord, and then gave one of the tuning pegs a twist.
“It’s probably different for different songwriters.
It’s different for me.
Sometimes I’ll get a line, or even just a few words, stuck in my head, and I’ll build a song around them.
Sometimes it’s the music.
A phrase, a chord progression.”
He strummed some more.
watched the motion of his fingers, the tendons flexing in his wrists.
He didn’t look like a substitute teacher when he played.
He looked like an expert, accomplished and smart.
“But I thought we could start just by talking.”
He looked at them, first Cassie, then .
“What kind of music do you like?”
felt her mouth go dry as she struggled to come up with the name of a single musician.
When she couldn’t, she looked at Cassie.
“Aretha Franklin,”
Cassie began.
“Tina Turner—the early stuff, especially.
‘Fool in Love.’”
Her sister’s voice was less low and muttery than it normally was.
She wasn’t quite smiling, but she wasn’t frowning either.
“Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris and Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette.”
Russell gave Cassie a teasing smile.
“Anything in the last five, ten years?”
he asked.
“Someone, perhaps, of a more contemporary nature?”
“Alanis,”
said Cassie.
“Ani DiFranco.
Liz Phair.”
saw how Russell’s expression was becoming more impressed with every name Cassie spoke.
“I like Christina Aguilera,”
she said, feeling an urgent need to insert herself into this conversation.
“And the Backstreet Boys, and *NSYNC.
Popular songs,”
she said, her chin raised.
“That’s what we’re trying to do, right? Be popular? Because that’s what they told us.
That you were going to write us a hit.”
Cassie gave a narrow-eyed glare and mouthed three words that herself had said to her sister probably a million times since preschool: You’re being rude.
felt a sense of dislocation, like the world had flipped over and she was tumbling through a void, turning upside down and right side up and upside down again.
Russell’s chord strumming turned into fingerpicking, a swift flurry of notes that moved up and down the scale.
“I think popular songs get popular because they’re saying something true.
Something that feels real, that resonates, even if it’s just a song about partying and having fun.
And the best ones combine that with music that . . .”
He gave a half smile.
“Strikes a chord.
So to speak.”
“So where do we start?”
repeated.
Russell played a few chords again.
didn’t recognize them.
Cassie probably did.
She probably knew if they were major or minor chords too, what notes were involved, and how to replicate them on the piano.
In terms of music, Cassie was far ahead of her, which made ’s sense of dislocation, of wrongness, feel even stronger.
Russell, meanwhile, was still talking.
“What do you two want to talk about when you sing?”
he asked, looking from Cassie to .
“What do you want to say?”
“You mean, like, a message?”
asked.
Her heart was sinking, a hollow feeling replacing the elation of the previous days; like she’d walked into a classroom and found herself forced to take a test she hadn’t prepared for.
She hadn’t thought about messages or what she wanted to say.
She’d just imagined singing ...
something ...
in front of a crowd that would adore her.
There were a hundred pop songs she loved, but where had those songs come from? And had their music or their lyrics come first? She’d never given those questions much thought.
“Not exactly a message,”
Russell said.
“More like a conversation with the audience.
With give-and-take.”
frowned.
She didn’t want to sound stupid, but she also did not want to screw this up.
“But we’re performing, and they’re listening,”
she said.
“So how is it a conversation?”
Russell raised his eyebrows and didn’t answer.
realized he was waiting for her to figure it out.
She groped for a response, but, before she could find one, Cassie spoke up.
“People have questions.
Songs are the answers,”
Cassie said, her voice too loud in the small room.
Russell looked at Cassie, startled, then smiled with approval.
“That’s it.
That’s exactly right.”
Cassie ducked her head.
Her skin turned an unlovely blotchy pink.
felt her belly clenching, that sense of being turned upside down returning, intensifying.
“So who’s your audience? What are your people asking you?”
Russell let his fingers drop from the strings to thump against the guitar’s body, tapping out a rhythm.
Quickly, said, “Love.
Everyone wants to know about love.”
She sat up very straight, chin lifted, shoulders back.
She was determined to reclaim her position as the smarter, savvier sister, the one who knew things, who was, perhaps, less musically knowledgeable, with less native talent, but was also, unquestionably, the one best equipped to navigate this world.
Russell nodded at her.
“Okay.
So you want to write a love song.”
He looked at Cassie.
“What about you?”
He arched an eyebrow and waited, as the silence stretched, until Cassie mumbled, “Love is fine.”
Poor Cassie, thought.
Outside, the morning’s clouds had lifted; the light coming in through the windows was brighter, and thought she detected the faint remnants of pink lipstick on Cassie’s lips, like she’d put it on, then wiped it away.
Poor thing, thought.
“Pick something else,”
Russell said to Cassie, his voice light, his expression coaxing.
“Don’t overthink it.
Just tell me—what’s on your mind?”
“Loneliness,”
Cassie blurted, and then turned even blotchier.
felt herself flushing in sympathy, knowing how much of herself Cassie had exposed.
Russell nodded.
His expression was calm.
He didn’t look disgusted, or even surprised, as he strummed those three chords again.
could feel them forming a groove in her brain.
A hook, she thought, and felt her heart beating faster.
“Love and loneliness,”
Russell said.
“What about, like, a crush?”
said.
“Like, someone you want but can’t have.
That’s love and loneliness.”
She sat back, feeling pleased with herself.
“Or what if,”
Cassie began.
She swallowed and licked her lips.
was startled.
Cassie rarely spoke at all and, certainly, not more than she had to when there were strangers around.
Was it possible that Cassie felt competitive? It gave her a stab of unease, until she decided that it couldn’t possibly matter.
Cassie was so awkward, and so weird.
If this was a competition for Russell’s attention, for his regard, knew she’d win.
crossed her legs as Cassie slowly said, “What if it’s a love song about disappointment? Like, a girl in love with a guy, and she’s lonely when they’re apart, and then, after they get together, she’s even lonelier?”
Russell leaned toward Cassie, his expression sharper, more interested. “Okay,”
he said.
“So it’s like, I want you, I’ve got you, I miss you?”
He strummed the chords again, one for want, one for got, one for miss.
“I miss you when you’re here,”
Cassie said, actually meeting his eyes.
Russell smiled, wide and unguarded.
He looked about ten years old, just a boy, eager to show you the Lego tower he’d constructed, as he opened up the notebook, then pushed it across the coffee table, away from her, toward her sister.
“Write that down,” he said.
Cassie picked up the notebook, produced a pen from somewhere, and began writing.
tilted her head toward Russell.
“Is it like a riddle?”
she asked.
“Uh-huh. Kind of,”
said Russell, who barely appeared to be listening to her.
His eyes were on Cassie, on her hand as it moved across the page.
He strummed his guitar, playing the chords again, and sang, “In all of the darkness / I saw you so clear.”
He played a different chord.
“But now that we’re together . . .”
His voice trailed off, and Cassie sang, her voice low and clear and lovely, “I miss you when you’re here.”
Russell was beaming, and Cassie was smiling at him shyly.
Actually smiling! , meanwhile, was shocked.
A coldness was spreading in the pit of her stomach, and her face felt paralyzed.
Had Cassie ever sung on her own like that, unprompted? Had she ever sung without harmonizing, offering Cassie her mantra of encouragement: You can do it.
I believe in you?
Russell, of course, did not realize what a rare occurrence he’d just witnessed.
“So let’s plan on three verses.
One where she wants him, then one where she’s got him . . .”
“And one where she’s happy?”
made herself smile.
She hoped she didn’t look as confused as she felt.
“We want a happy ending, right? People like happy endings.”
“Maybe it ends when she’s leaving,”
Cassie said, speaking rapidly, like she was hurrying to get the words out before she forgot them, or lost her nerve.
“Maybe that’s the happy ending.
She realizes he wasn’t what she thought he was.”
“A breakup anthem.”
Russell sounded pleased.
He paused, then said, “‘When You’re Here.’”
“That’s the title?”
asked, hearing the capital letters when he spoke.
Hearing, too, the uncertainty in her voice.
“It’s about a breakup, and we’re calling it ‘When You’re Here’?”
It was Cassie, not Russell, who answered her.
“I think it’s good.
That should be the title.”
saw that he was smiling and nodding, and Cassie’s pen was almost flying over the page.
He’d hum a phrase of music, she’d sing a few words; he’d play another chord, she’d write something else.
Later, would think it was like watching someone carving a statue: like someone taking a hunk of wood or slab of marble and unerringly cutting away the parts that weren’t supposed to be there, until what was hiding inside the wood or the stone was revealed.
Like the song had always been there, and Russell and Cassie were working together to find it.
Like this was a thing her sister knew how to do, without being taught, without being shown how.
I saw you
And I knew
You were my heart’s desire
My first clue
That we two
Could set the world on fire
You were so high, you’d never know
You on your throne, me down below
You looked, but you could never see
That what you needed, it was me
No, you can’t see
In all of the darkness
I saw you so clear
Look at me
I’m right here.
Yeah, I’m right here.
watched them work, sitting in silence, a lump on the couch, frozen in her shock and her dismay.
She watched her sister and Russell, as the music came pouring out of them—pouring through them—spilling out like a shower of gold, lyrics that Russell identified as verse and pre-chorus and chorus.
A love story in three minutes and thirty seconds; a girl who goes from yearning to satisfied to lonely again, but stronger and wiser—heartbroken, but ready to move on.
“What do you think?”
Russell asked, forty-five minutes later.
Cassie looked up at him and shook her head, blinking.
Her expression was startled.
She looked like she’d been woken up from a dream as her eyes moved from Russell to the clock that ticked on the mantel.
Clearly she hadn’t noticed the time passing.
, meanwhile, had felt every excruciating second that she’d been sitting there like a useless third wheel that couldn’t even spin.
“It’s good,”
made herself say, hoping she sounded enthusiastic.
“It’s really good.”
Russell nodded without bothering to look at her.
“Cassie? What do you think?”
“I think,”
she said slowly, “that if my piano teacher heard this he would kill me.”
“Cassie!”
was appalled.
Russell looked at her sister, head tilted.
He didn’t sound shocked as much as amused.
“How come?”
Cassie looked embarrassed.
“He calls this moon-June music.”
“We didn’t rhyme moon and June.”
Cassie smirked.
“Yeah.
Just fire and desire.”
Russell slapped his hand against his chest, like she’d shot him in the heart. “Ouch.”
He pulled his guitar strap over his head and put the instrument back into its case, talking as he did.
“A really famous songwriter once told me that pop songs are simple for a reason.
You want the audience to be able to sing along with the chorus the second time they hear it, and to have all the lyrics memorized the second time they’ve heard the whole song.
But you can still make choices within that framework.”
He stood up, stretched, and ambled over to Cassie’s piano, looking at it, then turning to her, eyebrows lifted, waiting for Cassie to give him permission.
Cassie nodded.
wondered how her sister felt, watching Russell sit down on the bench, where only Cassie herself had ever sat.
A day full of firsts, she thought.
Russell raised his arms, wiggled his fingers, and started to play an Elton John song.
“I can’t lie ...no more of your darkness . . .”
He had a pleasant voice, a light, tuneful tenor.
It sounded especially good when paired with Cassie’s darker, raspier alto.
“All my pictures ...seem to fade to black and white.”
He stopped, looking from Cassie to .
“Do you hear it?”
was frowning, her brain skittering, spinning fruitlessly as she tried to figure out what he meant, to hear what he’d wanted her to hear.
Because Cassie, clearly, knew the answer.
watched as her sister got up, walked to the piano, and leaned over Russell’s shoulder to play, one-handed.
“I met a woman / She had a mouth like yours,”
Cassie sang.
“She knew your life / She knew your devils and your deeds.”
could feel her frown deepening into a scowl.
“What is that?”
she asked them.
“Are you making it up?”
Cassie and Russell exchanged a glance, a brief look of perfect understanding, absolute complicity.
could imagine their connection like a physical thing, a golden thread stretching between them, a bright line she couldn’t cross.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to hit them both.
Later, she would think, I should have gotten up off the couch and gone out of the living room, out of the house.
I should have left them alone.
I should have walked away and never looked back.
I should have known that it would only get worse, that it would never get better.
And she’d think of the words she hadn’t known yet, the part of the verse her sister hadn’t sung, that felt, years later, like prophecy: “And she said / ‘Go to him, stay with him if you can / But be prepared to bleed.’”