BY MARY ELLEN WALSH
Excerpts from a novel
Prologue
Greenwich Village, February 1989
I stood on the Bitter End stage with a gleaming white Fender slung over my shoulder. Wearing a flannel shirt as a dress, I bent in a slow sexy roll and ripped a hole in my fishnets. The crowd screamed . . . “YAS.”
A sea of gyrating bodies tumbled before me; boys with mullet haircuts next to shaved-headed guys wearing metallic mesh. Girls in ripped Madonna shirts, crosses dangling, or punked out with blue hair and dog collars. We punched through this derelict mix with our discordant unproduced rock and roll booming from the Marshall stacks like an angry drive up a mountainside.
A spotlight encircled lead guitarist, Peter Leonard, and me in a purple haze. His curly mop of long brown hair tussled to the beat, sweat beading his forehead.
I sang: We are one when we are we. You are me, and I am free. My voice thick and raspy from the smoke-filled room.
Peter winked at me through his guitar solo. I stepped closer and leaned back-to-back against his taut body, sharing guitar licks. It was a long way from Peter’s childhood bedroom where the first time we played guitar together, I said, “It’s only five chords.”
“Yeah but it’s how you play ’em,” Peter said.
I loved every note I eked out since. Every single note I’ve played, pushing hard to be in his band, The Pits.
The light shifted to Roy Testamond, wearing a glittery Disco Sucks T-shirt, riling the crowd: C’mon. C’mon. C’mon, he sang. I kept one second ahead, the energy pounding through my body like a power tool. My mind—blank. Nothing else existed. The audience chanted with us, becoming part of our music as I sang: No more. Go. On. Go. On. Go. Away. Fly away. Take you there. My hands fast and furious pinched and squeezed chords strumming to the beat.
It was there in every crescendo of Peter’s guitar solos, in the embodiment of all he was and all I could be—suspended in each song every single night we performed. Nothing was better than when we were playing music: Peter shredding the guitar, Roy singing, and me lockstep with them. We rode that wave till it crashed on shore, breaking us into quarter notes of a measure—no longer whole.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Long Island, New York, July 2008
“Don’t let me die,” my son, Tommy, begged me in the den of our new suburban house. Surrounded by adults and kids, I played a plastic Rock Band guitar, pressing red, yellow, blue, and green keys in unison with the flat screen’s flashing lights. My husband, Chris, wanted to watch his beloved Yankees pummel the Red Sox. We settled on baseball viewing for this meet-the-new-neighbors’ night, but the kids ran and seized the TV for a video-game challenge. My children were down two games to none against the other kids, so they recruited me.
“Can’t you pick a shorter song?” Chris asked, growing agitated at their choice of Boston’s extra-long Foreplay/Longtime. I shook my head aware everyone was staring at me.
Tommy’s ten-year-old fingers kept missing notes, buzzing a metallic clunking sound. As the lights darkened threatening Game Over, he yelled, “Mommy, pull the neck up. Pull it up.”
Adrenaline pumping, I jumped off the couch and jerked the toy guitar upwards. Immediately graphics flashed neon bright, bolstering an extra life for our grunge trio—me on lead guitar, Tommy on bass, and my daughter, Laura, vocals. Saved.
I wailed through the long lead as Sydney Redkin, our real estate agent, tapped her foot offbeat. Words began to form above avatar Pat-TEE Smythe clad in a leather catsuit, breasts protruding in perfect round mounds. She sneered with an indignant fist raised as vocal O cues drifted like cocktail swizzle sticks across the screen.
Two look-a-like women wearing Seven low-rise jeans and Ed Hardy shirts stared at me as if I had two heads. Were my breasts sticking out? I looked down quickly. Nope. I wore my requisite black H&M ballet neck shirt and yoga pants. Maybe something was hanging out of my nose. But I couldn’t scratch it, my hands were busy. Lights blazing and popping, I struck the keys in rounds as colors jumped out in 3D at me.
I tried to sneak quick looks at my best friend, Chantal, whose family came from Brooklyn to help ease my nerves meeting new people, but I needed laser focus. If we missed too many notes again, the hope of rock and roll would die in suburbia.
We were holding on tight, but just as the vocals were cuing up, Laura bailed out. “I don’t want to sing. It’s on expert.” She thrusted the microphone into the stand. I was frustrated with Laura’s frustration. Performers cannot crack under pressure. “You sing, Mom.” Laura said.
“Me?” Damn. It was hard to simultaneously play and sing with these toys.
“Don’t you know this song?” Laura asked anger coloring her voice because we moved mid-summer from Forest Hills to Syosset and all the neighborhood eighth graders were gone, training to be camp counselors. Also, Chris and I refused to get her a cellphone, which seemed to infest families like fleas. Laura heard from her Queens’ friends that parents here had two cellphones and six cars—all BMWs. We hoped none of that was true.
C’mon! What Gen-Xer didn’t know Boston?
When the Os hit the TV frame edge, I belted into the plastic microphone, punching out notes in sync with the game. Sydney let out a gasp at the sound of my rock and roll voice as I sang the nostalgia of Boston. I felt it, too. I was turning forty-three in the fall, feeling older by the minute and about to outlive my own mother. Forty-two years of life was too short. If she could have seen me now, she would have cheered me on the loudest.
I felt all eyes on me, but I couldn’t even blink and risk letting my kids down in front of everyone. I powered through as the song came to a crescendo in a blaze of light in the final round. Tommy hung on as Chantal’s family urged, “Go. Go.”
I sang the last line of Boston’s Foreplay/Longtime as the stars burst in euphoria rolling into the big finish. Kicking the plastic microphone stand, I whammy barred a long note, sliding across the floor on my knees to land at Sydney’s feet. Hello Syosset!
“Your mom’s so cool. A hundred percent on expert!” said an exuberant kid, Alex, Sydney’s son. She and the look-a-like twin moms stared down at me like I was some goth-like witch. One woman named Leslie clapped and even whistled. Chris gave me a bug-eyed disapproval stare.
“Yankees! Play ball!” Chris announced, changing the channel abruptly.
“Sorry, kid.” I handed the tiny Fender to Alex who was annoyed he couldn’t win back his team’s loss. Adrenaline rush dwindled, I sauntered up the stairs behind the other women. I knew they secretly wanted to peek inside this handy-man special with kid-worn furniture, easy-to-sell beige walls, and dirty vertical blinds opened wide to hide stained slats.
It was sizzling hot three weeks ago when we moved twenty miles farther east. I joked about how the moving men could possibly find the house on Long Island’s Gatsby Gold Coast. All the brick and stone split-levels looked the same with a McMansion mashed in between every fourth house. The street names were British: Coventry, Westminster, Drury. My father lowered the boom that he was selling the Forest Hills house where Chris, myself, and Dad all had lived together for decades. He married Marilyn in a quiet ceremony, and she didn’t want to move into a house with The Ghost of Christmas Past. Mom had been dead for twenty-four years, but her voice was still Dad’s default voicemail.
Chris convinced me it was fine to take out a huge mortgage and give up a quasi-city life for suburbia with big lawns and no kids playing outside. Where people drove giant Expeditions hitting up CostCo on Saturdays. I wasn’t sure. It was the fireplace—that definitely sold us on Chris’s suburban dream. He whispered at the open house, “look . . . cozy,” as if a warm hearth could bring us closer.
“This wasn’t For Sale by Owner. It was a multiple listing,” Sydney explained walking through the living room in open-house mode like I was not here.
Leslie said, “Sydney. Leave work at work—remember?” Standing just so, I tried to block the doorway to the kitchen. Too bad these split-levels didn’t have doors you could shut.
“Well, I negotiated a good deal,” Sydney said. “Last renovated two owners ago.”
I watched Sydney’s eyes graze the Buddhist Kuan Yin statue and African mask, Chantal’s housewarming presents that I proudly displayed in the entertainment center. Oh no! Sydney ventured into the kitchen from the dining room, and we all followed her. You didn’t know it was 2008 from the Formica, wipe-clean cabinets and countertops. The piece-de-resistance blue-and-white, gingham wallpaper accented with huge yellowish roosters six inches apart made Sydney cringe.
“Meet Huey, Dewey, and Louie,” I said like they were our pets. No one laughed. “We’re going to renovate, soon. I swear.”
Leslie smiled. “You should’ve seen our Pepto Bismol pink bathroom when we moved in three years ago,” she said.
While I appreciated her attempt to soften my uneasiness, the women stood awkwardly not knowing what to do next. Chantal smiled widely at me, pointing toward the dining room.
“Let’s eat, shall we?” I picked up on her social cue ushering them around the dining room table filled with Trader Joe’s specials—some of which they had brought: romaine salad with cranberries and sunflower seeds, rolled cold cut meats, a fruit platter, chicken nuggets, Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins, and hunks of cheese. Before she became sick, my mom served friends tea and banana bread on her Royal Albert Country Rose tea set. I hoped my spread was enough. Not having a mom in my adult life left a hole in me—an imposter. Other women knew I was trying to copy what came naturally to them. I was more comfortable in a feral-type untamed creative state.
One of Sydney’s friends carefully unwrapped a cellophane sleeve of fancy crackers, rearranging my circle of Ritz. With a plastic spoon, she scooped up bulbous little black eggs from a tin and smeared them on the fancy cracker. Caviar? The twins began admiring Sydney’s new Gucci bag and talked about the latest sale at Denny’s Childrenswear clothing store. They informed me where to get good haircuts, mani-pedis, and the best cuts of meat.
“Amy is an elementary school teacher,” Sydney said gaining an accepting nod from the women.
“Well, this September I’ll be a leave-replacement fill-in. I take what I can.” I was feeling better like I just had to give people a chance. Warm up the crowd.
“You must love children, then,” Leslie said, face aglow in a genuine smile.
“Yes. Children are so honest,” I said. There wasn’t a day that went by where I was not grateful for all the kids in my life. My own included, even though they weren’t happy with me right now.
“That explains your love of video games,” Sydney said eyeing the caviar. She quickly shifted gears. “Before I forget. I have flyers for Tuesday’s bridge construction meeting. Everyone will be there.” She handed me a red, white, and blue flyer with huge block letters that reeked of Americana small-town politics.
Here it was. This was the reason I took two Tylenols before our guests arrived, the reason Chris was on edge. How much should I tell? What to leave in; what to leave out? I figured I should just say it. “We’ll be there. Chris’s company is building that bridge,” I said like a legitimate neighbor.
“Really?” Sydney said. I felt my mistake instantly as forkfuls of food stopped mid-bite—the look-a-like women’s eyebrows tried to shoot up, but too much Botox froze their expressions. “Interesting,” Sydney said and bit into a caviar covered water cracker.
“That’s why we moved here.” Chris trained me to be ready for an argument. Lots of people didn’t want the bridge. Long Islanders had been fighting it for decades. Then one day news broke. It was huge—the company Chris worked for won the bid to connect Long Island to Westchester—or rather to the whole world, as Chris often said, Think of the possibilities! His life was project manager for Bustin Brothers, a construction company who built urban infrastructure in and around New York City. So we moved closer to his job. I drank the Kool Aid—Chris could fulfill his professional dream, good schools for the kids, better colleges to apply to down the road. I would be happy, right?
“Just about every taxpayer on the island has taken a side—pro or con—and there’s a meeting,” Sydney said. “I hope he can enlighten us.” She leaned in as if I could wave a magic fairy wand and dissolve the tension on Long Island.
“Why so divided?” I asked. We thought it was a good idea. Anyone ever trying to get off Long Island could agree that we needed a new route out of town.
“The bridge was supposed to be built decades ago. They ran out of money. Now people are protesting declining property values. Nonsense, you never lose a dime in this town. It’s an investment,” Sydney said.
“They didn’t run outta money. Nelson Rockefeller put the kibosh on it in ’73.” Chris—all six-foot-two inches of him appeared in the relatively small kitchen. Whenever he arrived in a room, he filled it up, which, usually comforting, now seemed excessive. He piled marinated chicken wings and a dollop of blue cheese dip onto a plate. “People complained about Robert Moses, too. Yet that genius built half of Long Island’s roads and Jones Beach. This bridge will cut traffic in half.” There must’ve been a commercial in the Yankees’ game because the men resurfaced for food.
“My business relies on that foot traffic. With this, they’ll just drive right through,” said Sydney’s husband, Robert, who apparently owned a deli in The Syosset Plaza strip mall where construction would begin end of September.
“It’s a bedroom community,” said Chris. “People work in the granite city and sleep in suburbia. Traffic.” He stuffed a wing into his mouth, chewed it down, and sucked on the bones. Not his most attractive side, but this was Chris. Nothing fake about him. It took a while to get used to his nature.
“Tell them why not a tunnel” Chantal’s husband, Tyrone, said.
Chris said, “Can’t cut through the Lloyd Aquifer and all the wells under Centre Island. Bad idea. With a bridge, we just build over all of that—easier.” As he licked his fingers, I handed him a napkin.
“Skipped over just like Queens,” Robert continued.
“What’s wrong with Queens?” Chris asked. His hazel eyes connected with mine. I tried not to convey, I told you so. This night was not going as smoothly as Chris assured me it would.
“Robert,” Sydney said. “Please, let’s not fight about the bridge tonight. “You sound like the Republican Minority Leader Peter Schmitt who does nothing but play golf and whine about Tom Suozzi and the bridge.” She looked at me directly and whispered, “we don’t agree.”
The children began yelling in the basement. Alex emerged holding my real acoustic guitar, which had been buried underneath our fake Christmas tree box. He came at us like the pied piper with all the kids trailing behind him.
“You went through our closet?” I jumped up. “Give me that please.” Alex’s enthusiasm was cool, but I swiftly grabbed the guitar from him, holding it high above their reaching hands. Glancing at Sydney, I was relieved to see she didn’t notice my roughness or at least pretended she hadn’t.
“Alex. Say you’re sorry. Is this your husband’s?” Sydney asked.
“No. It’s mine.” Why do people assume a guitar must be the man’s in the house? “I used to play.” I cradled the Takamine. The very same guitar Peter had given me when my mother died, the fretboard worn down from endless years of playing.
“She was great—in a grunge band. With that incredible voice you just heard,” said Chantal. All eyes looked at her and back to me, trying to imagine who I once was like a Courtney Love persona.
“Well, you played Rock Band and sang so well,” said Sydney in that emollient thick real estate voice, not understanding a video game is not a real instrument. Going to be hard to grasp reality here.
“Thank you,” I said smiling. Chantal, my rock, was there for all of it.
“You were? What band?” Leslie asked.
“The Pits!” Tyrone said proudly. He came to one or two shows at the end when Chantal began dating him, and he has been forever fan-girling me—in a good way, since. Decades had passed since my days with The Pits, whose name seemed silly now. Roy, the lead singer, said, “Life ain’t a bowl of cherries; It’s The Pits.” Peter grumbled about the name. But it stuck and we weren’t awful. In 1989, according to the Village Voice, The Pits were the next hot thing.
“The Pits? Wait a minute.” Robert, Sydney’s husband, snapped his fingers. “I think I saw them in the city. That guy died. He hung himself. They were pretty cool.”
I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. My throat tightened so my voice barely squeaked out. “No. Not a hanging. Ancient history.” My heart pounded in my chest. An overwhelming thirsty feeling caused a lump in my throat, and I couldn’t speak. I wished things turned out differently and he wouldn’t be dead. Just maybe I would not have been here, in suburbia, trying to defend my husband building a bridge across Long Island Sound. Maybe The Pits would’ve gone on to great fame.
I carried the guitar upstairs and gently strummed a song I wrote “Love Ballad in Blue” that didn’t make it onto The Pits’ album. I lay the guitar on our queen-sized bed, noticing the deep scratch where the pick guard used to be. It fell off years ago. Maybe I should get it fixed.
When the Yankees’ game was over (they won), Chris was in a better mood. The men emerged euphoric from the den, families re-grouped, and were whisked away by their wives. We did it. Now they knew. These neighbors could go home and talk, and the fact that Chris was connected to this bridge would multiply. I had to just focus on unpacking and getting us as comfortable as we could in this new-to-us town.
At the front door Leslie said, “You have a cool voice! If you need anything, call me. It gets easier.”
“Thank you,” I said. She was kind, but I was apprehensive about the others.
Chantal and her family were the last to leave.
“That went well,” I said. “Where the hell are we? They’re all so beautiful.”
“You gotta get you some diamonds with this crew, honey.” Chantal patted her scarf wrap on her head.
“Chantal, I can’t even afford curtains—we’re mortgaged to the hilt. I’ll stick with my ten-dollar silver hoops.”
She kissed my cheek. Many weekends we used to sit together on my Forest Hills’ driveway and watch our kids play together. How I missed those times with Chantal in my old neighborhood.
“Did you try the caviar?” I asked.
Chantal raised only her right eyebrow—classic move I taught her. “Hey, you okay? That guy knew The Pits.”
“Don’t want to talk about The Pits or him. New town, right? Do you think they like me?”
“My money’s on you.” Chantal pulled the screen door open. “You’re a Queens’ girl. Lock the door. I hear it’s a bad neighborhood.”
“Get out of my house, you.” I nudged Chantal outside.
Chapter 2
At the South Woods Middle School meeting, Bustin Brothers’ promotional video showed drivers crossing a simulated bridge. Overly enthusiastic folks walked around Westchester’s Playland Amusement Park, eating cotton candy. A family was strapped into bucket seats on a Ferris wheel that turned around and round. “Can you believe it only took twenty-five minutes to get here?” crooned a voiceover in a New York accent exactly like mine and my kids. They should’ve just shown people driving on the Long Island Expressway—we called the parking lot—stuck in nightmare traffic jams. That awful road where, at exit 40, Harry Chapin was killed in the summer of ’81.
My husband, Chris, leaned over and mumbled, “Boss wants me to speak. Told me not to deviate, stick to the facts.” He was growing pale through his natural reddish-tan state from perpetually working outside.
“Good plan,” I whispered back.
He kept neurotically twisting a note paper in his hands, beads of sweat forming at his temples. He was making me nervous. This was an exciting career peak, his plan B after not becoming a big-time football player since a torn ACL dried up his Penn State scholarship. Chris’s father was in construction, as was his father’s father. I knew this meant the world to Chris to be part of New York’s infrastructure history.
Hey, I got it. They say the draw for Long Island living was waterfront nooks and crannies. The south shore offered smooth sand with not quite surfing waves. Days of swimming and soaking in sunshine on beaches all licked smooth by the Atlantic Ocean. The rocky north shore beaches, more for wading and fishing in Long Island Sound, had mansions dotting cliffs. Four solid seasons and oh, those incredible schools.
I stuck out like a sore thumb in Syosset. I thought it was colder and threw on a jean jacket over my black ballet neck T-shirt. Note to self: no AC in the schools. The kids were going to fry the first couple of weeks of school.
At a table lined in American flag puffy plastic bunting, I handed out pamphlets to attendees. Sydney Redkin seemed exuberant—pro-bridge in the name of progress—everything new was better. Chris was happy with her enthusiasm. I wasn’t sure her husband, Robert, with the deli near the construction site was as excited. He reminded me of my dad, who said that Chris’s personal glory outweighed Long Island’s gain. Since we moved out, Dad was much freer with his opinions. I couldn’t very well ask anyone’s advice. Everyone thought they were right. I knew the dream of a better life for us was through this bridge, so I put a smile on my face and supported Chris.
The crowd was filled with different types of people I probably had walked by running errands. Parents fresh from summer travel soccer fields or missing their children away at camp. Mothers in Talbots classic work clothes—no leggings here even though that awful trend was back. Stick around long enough, the music will be back, too. Fathers looked the same in two-piece grey or navy suits, arriving straight off the nearly hour-long eastbound trains from Manhattan. I imagined their opinions: Gen X-ers, like me, seemed to buy high-priced homes and were knee-deep paying for our children’s every whim, worried that we might need to ditch it all because property values tanked. The older Baby Boomers wondered if they should liquidate before their investment on the Gold Coast dried up. Depression Era folks seemed self-righteous that doomsday finally came—someone really did want to take their house away.
The door cracked open and closed as residents shuffled inside.
A Town of Oyster Bay representative, at the podium with a bunch of dignitaries, I had no idea who, droned on.
“Because the groundbreaking is at the end of the Ralph J. Marino Expressway—Route 135 in Syosset, it puts your town on the map. Not since Robert Moses made that sandbar into Jones Beach has Long Island ever seen such a collaborative effort from the New York State Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, and Town of Oyster Bay.” The TOBAY rep (they called them) smiled widely as a few cheers erupted from the crowd. “Let’s hear about the logistics from a Bustin representative.”
People politely clapped as my husband stepped up to the podium. A video of the tiny replica of the bridge locked in our basement home office was projected onto a screen. Chris cleared his throat.
“Ninety thousand people each year will travel on this eighteen-mile bridge, which will take six years to build. Starting at the end of the SOB—it’s really called,” he looked at the rep. “. . . one exit over to Oyster Bay’s shoreline. Onto a suspension highway stop at Bayville. Then up and over Long Island Sound to Westchester.” His voice echoed like megaphones from the 1920s jazz era. I’d never heard it amplified before.
A guy yelled, “Is Westchester paying for it, too? How are we gonna pay for all this? Toll fares were just raised, and this bridge isn’t even factored in yet. It’s never enough for you people.” All eyes focused on the seventy-something-year-old man wearing an American Legion hat.
Chris spoke up, appealing directly to him, forgetting he was addressing a crowd. “The bridges are falling apart.” There were a few gasps as a New York State DOT rep stepped closer to Chris and whispered in his ear. My husband was a little too blunt. He could have dialed it down. I shifted my weight, looking out, assessing the crowd. The door swung open and Chris’s bridge crew, in black Bustin T-shirts, hastily shuffled into the hallway.
“With three hundred and five million people annually using New York City’s bridges and tunnels, these structures cannot hold up. Your children will ask where you were when The Sound Bridge was built. Why not say that you were for it?”
When the door burst open again, my heart jumped and pulse quickened. I thought it could be a lone shooter situation. Should I run? No one else seemed concerned.
“Forty-three billion dollars. Are you kidding me? That’s a huge burden we gotta pay for! Elliot Spitzer jerked my taxes around. Now this.” The man’s face turned beet red with anger.
“Repairs alone will cost the same. This new bridge will be built to a higher code,” my husband said. Within moments thirty people burst into the room. There wasn’t any shooter that I could see, just a few people carrying signs. “Bridge to Nowhere!” and “Don’t Pave Paradise.”
I couldn’t determine what was going on. Chris’s crew shoved through the front line. As the crowd parted, one leader propelled forward and began marching toward us. I focused on this short-haired man. He looked young-ish. Okay maybe a little older as he got closer. He wore nice jeans and a brown leather jacket—put together in a simple way. No fuss but definitely took time to get the wave right in his hair. I watched him walk straight towards my husband. He was very attractive, like Brad Pitt wattage attractive. As he came closer, I could not look away.
His sweeping gaze over the rows of Long Islanders twisted in my direction. I felt a stinging burn fizz through my body. Wait a minute? I knew that guy. Was it possible? That slow, jutting walk—that swagger? I recognized something in the way he moved and felt a shiver. It was him. My Peter. He squinted, seeming to locate the authority figures in the room. Yes, it was him. He was nearsighted and could never see past the second row when on stage. It caught me off guard and I was at once sweating—no AC—and weak in the knees. What was he doing here? Last I knew Peter stayed in Seattle making music. When I had heard him on the radio in his new band, The Trees, I snapped it off every time. The nineties were so long ago. I didn’t Google to find him. Why should I have? I was a Scorpio—all or nothing.
Rolling out a scroll like a knight in town square, Peter spoke projecting his voice—that voice that I heard squeak and come to full register as he developed from boy to man. He announced: “As the president of BYB, we have an injunction to curtail the building of The Sound Bridge. We will see you in court.” Peter thrusted the parchment at Chris and looked at me. Don’t look. Don’t look his way.
“You can’t do this!” Chris said gruffly like when he would lose a tennis match with his brother or grew annoyed picking up the children’s wet towels off the bathroom floor.
The TOBAY rep held his hand up to stop Chris. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”
“Well, we just did. BYB believes in the preservation of the natural beauty of Long Island,” Peter said. Cheering protestors behind him held their signs even higher. Half of the crowd clapped, responding well to Peter. “We have ten thousand signatures from across the island on this petition to stop work on this bridge.”
How to run out of here? I needed to support my husband like I wanted him to be there for me. We brought our children here to build a new life. Wasn’t progress good? I wanted to scream It’s not my home, yet. We still kept saying: home home? or the new home? when we ran errands in the minivan. Queens had the Queensborough Bridge. If you headed north, you got stuck on the George Washington. It seemed like it was time that Long Island got its own bridge. I looked at the sea of faces in the crowd. People looked like they were weighing the same thing.
Chris conferred with the TOBAY rep and said, “We’ll be taking questions in a few minutes,” loud into the microphone. I bit my lip.
Peter looked straight at me. Should I act like I didn’t know him at all? Maybe I could slink away. But as I turned, recognition lit his face. I was caught here in boring suburbia and not backstage at some rock festival living the dream we both had. My fantasy went like this: me accepting a Grammy or signing autographs backstage at Madison Square Garden and Peter would be in my band or, if not, he’d come backstage and say, “Golly. Look at you. You did IT!”
“Amy? Amy Storch is that you?” He bent to catch my eye.
Yes. That voice. I couldn’t look away. How was this happening? “Pe-TER? LEO-nard? What are you doing here?” My voice cracked as I responded to his reach with an awkward half shoulder hug. I was aware that people were looking at us, especially my husband.
“I live here. Well, not right here, but on the island with my daughter Chelsea, in the summers . . . um. It’s home. Let me look at you.” His eyes, still as piercingly honest and blue as I remembered, grazed my hair, then cheekbones. His smile ignited my whole entire body’s attention, and I had to avert my gaze and gulp in a quick breath.
The sound of the loud video loop jolted me.
“Wow. Um.” Shit. Flyers spilled out of my hands and landed all over the floor. I bent to pick them up, stacking papers backward and upside down and stood quickly. “I’m nervous,” I said.
“Don’t be,” he said comforting me. He handed me a flyer that he had snatched off the floor. “Are you on board with this bridge?”
“Yes.” Of course. I’m for the bridge. I am. I am. “You’re really not, huh?” I asked him.
“It’s a bad idea to pave over a dream,” he said, those smiley eyes twinkling.
I smirked. “Suburbia is a dream?” I asked.
My husband stepped away from the podium and stood next to me. He looked at the protesters who had begun sharing Peter’s petition for neighbors to sign. Chris jutted out his jaw and extended his hand, all business. “Chris Whitaker, project manager from Bustin Brothers, and you are?”
“Peter Leonard.” They shook. My husband was a whole head taller than Peter and broader all around. Could I run out of here? Would they chase me?
“You don’t have a permit for all this protesting,” Chris said, pointing down at Peter.
“We developed a 501c3, non-profit organization: Burn Your Bridges.”
“Cute,” Chris said condescendingly. Musicians did write catchy phrases. I gazed at Peter as he spoke. I didn’t expect him to look youthful at forty-three and much less awkward without his guitar. It used to be another hand to him. He finally seemed comfortable in the real world.
“This bridge is bad for Long Island,” Peter said.
“Why does everyone keep saying that? It’s good for this island,” said Chris. “Traffic is horrendous. You’ll be off the island—Bam, less than half an hour.”
He realized Peter and I were staring at one another—like we’d seen a ghost. I felt like I was sinking in quicksand. “Do you two know each other?” Chris asked.
“Um . . . we grew up together,” I said, nodding like a fool not knowing what to make of all this. Not wanting to dig up Roy’s death, I hadn’t told Chris much about my past. Peter had moved on from 1989 and I had to deal with life the best I could.
“Amy Storch and I were in a band together as I recall,” Peter said searching my eyes for a nod to our past more than I was willing to offer in a middle school cafeteria decades later. “Remember The Pits?” He didn’t take his eyes off me. That quicksand rendered me motionless.
It was Chris who wrested me back to reality. “Whitaker now,” Chris said.
“Oh . . . you’re her husband,” Peter said ever so slightly shifting away from me.
“Peter Leonard? Wait. From that high school band you were in?” Chris turned to me.
I nodded. “Not just high school,” I said still looking at Peter, mesmerized by the earnestness of his blue eyes. “Yes, we were in a band together.”
“We have to go.” Chris pointed at Peter’s face again. “Keep away from that site. There’s going to be construction soon. It’s dangerous. This isn’t a show, you know. It’s real. Someone could get hurt.”
“It is a show. Look at all these dignitaries.” Peter gestured to the front of the cafeteria where reps tried to control the crowd sharing the petition.
“Construction won’t happen if we can help it. It’s illegal for you to proceed. You’re ruining Long Island.”
“It’s good for the island,” Chris insisted. “Traffic!”
“It’s not good for the island. It’s good for big business,” Peter said. He turned to me with those eyes again searching mine for some type of answer. “I hope you’re not in on this, too.”
Instantly the guilt and pain of our past choked my throat and burned into a simmering rage. Where were you? You disappeared on me years ago. But all I could do was shake my head. I had dreaded this chance meeting for so long. Did it have to go this way?
The room grew loud with people fighting and swearing at each other. No one stepped up to answer any more questions as the TOBAY rep banged a gavel. “Meeting is officially adjourned.”
On the ride home Chris said, “Really? You’re not for the bridge now? What happened back there? I need your total support on this.”
It was true—what was I thinking? This was our dream to build a new life in suburbia, but who I was and what I used to believe walked right through those middle school cafeteria doors and its name was Peter.
After I didn’t say anything, Chris added, “Amy, your friend there is screwing up everything. What’s his problem? Who is this guy, Peter Leonard?”
The next morning, I ventured to get on this new Facebook thing Chantal had told me about. It was so weird like a party going on twenty-four seven and I dropped down the rabbit hole, scrolling through and finding so many people. High school kids who I never thought about in decades. I found pages—one called The Pitts with two Ts who were an EMO cover band. There was another one with The Pits’ only album Bowl of Cherries as the photo. My heart raced as I clicked on it. The whole world opened up. Past and present as one. An hour went by in a flash. I scrolled through photos, posts, and comments from fans: Dude-Banger night. Front row. Kicked in mosh pit. Roy was hot as F—. Voice killed me. Some guy wrote: I’d do him. Shame he committed suicide. No, it wasn’t suicide. It looked like a legit fan site and not marketing from Peter and his team. More comments. play CD backwards and hear Roy is dead. Dude could sing. Fucking hung himself. No, Roy didn’t. People were so wrong.
There were many photos with skinny, young me. Roy and his long black hair and me in a suede fringe jacket sharing a microphone at Long Island’s Mulcahy’s. His rough, unshaven face inches from mine. You could see the tension between us. Me leaning into his lanky body staring at his parted lips as we held an ooo sound—like a kiss. I didn’t think it was so obvious between us, but there it was. On the photo in red grease pencil someone wrote HOT. More Facebook comments. Get a room. Another photo of Peter and me, sitting in the front row audience at CBGBs. I remember that exact moment like it was yesterday—even our conversation. I had no idea someone took a photo of us. I couldn’t tell if we had kissed before or after this shot. We had been hammering out a set list and Roy agreed to let me sing one of my songs that night. You could see the setlist in Peter’s hand but couldn’t read it.
Then there it was, my quote from The Rocket newspaper in Seattle. “Roy was not alive to relax.” I remember how Peter was so mad at me for talking to the press. There were hundreds of comments. He’s dead now, DUH!
I clicked on another red dot icon and saw private messages, some selling books or services and, what was that? Oh God. A photo I didn’t want. I slammed the delete button. More messages from real people I actually knew. One from a student I had taught in elementary school who had a college degree and baby already and wrote that I was her favorite teacher. Oh, my cousin, Gina, who moved to California. I also found friend requests from people I didn’t even know. Delete. Delete. One was Peter Leonard. In a knee-jerk reaction, I clicked accept. What was I doing? I shut the laptop. Stay away from me.
That afternoon, I dared to get on Facebook, again. Shoot. He messaged me. Wow! Blast from the past. Good to see U after all these years. Can U attend anti-bridge rally next week? What? He had nerve! I wanted to write—please just leave me alone—instead I typed: I can’t. You understand why. I added You look great. No. No. I backspaced and erased it. Good to see you, too. I hit send. Leave, Amy—get off Facebook my mind raced.
I didn’t see his answer until the next day: I understand. Will miss you. I didn’t search his wall for fear of a wife or girlfriend far prettier and younger than me. Why deal with that? I closed the laptop.
