Between the Notes

You have to listen to the notes between the notes, you said.  And I thought that you were nuts, but I also thought that you were cute, so I just nodded along.  It’s not that I didn’t love music, or jazz, just that type of jazz.  And you were distraught – “but, there is no other type, the man practically invented jazz.”  Well, I like the singers - Ella, Billie, Louis.”  “Yeah, yeah of course,” you said, growing irritated, “but they don’t challenge in the way that these guys do.”    “I don’t know why, Miles just makes me nervous.  All that inconsistency and noise, it makes my heart jump and it puts me on edge.  Not in the good way either.  It feels, intimidating.”

 

I don’t think that you understood, and I know that you were annoyed but I knew it was OK because I knew that you were falling for me too.  I have always had a sense about these things.  Do you remember leaving the bar that night?  We had a lot to drink but I remember leaving clearly, I remember how cold it was and how warm we felt, a glow of we-don’t-know-what-just-happened-but-we-know-it’s-important. 

 

In all these years you tried to convince me.  Myles, Coltraine, even that crazy St Germain nu-jazz stuff.  Give me the heartache of Billie any day.  It must be the Chicago in me, these blues.  But you always found the joy in things, the notes between the notes.  And I tried to listen, I really did, but all I heard was nothing.

 

I was thinking about that time that we were driving north for the weekend.  We were in the car – her car – Betty.  And a stone skipped off a truck and it hit the window.  And – I don’t know, I just freaked out.  It just jumped up and smashed Betty’s window.  How could it do that?  How could the driver get away with it?  You made me pull over and as we sat on the side of the highway I looked at the smashed glass, already big enough to be a sizeable home for a large spider.  And I wanted to put my fist through the glass, I wanted to smash it into a million pieces.  Because Betty was all that I had left of her and now it was gone too.  And you held me, and told me that it’s only a car, that we can just get it fixed, insurance will cover it, we’ll call State Farm tomorrow.   And I hated you.  I hated you.  I didn’t want you to tell me that it was going to be OK.  I didn’t want to you to fix it.  I wanted you to be as mad as I was.  I wanted you to yell and cry and smash the window, I wanted us to smash the window together.  “It’s been six months, it’s time to forgive,” You said.

 

Well it’s easy for you to say.  But I have news for you.  Misery loves company and that day I had never felt so alone.

 

I know that you think that I only remember that bad parts but it’s not true, they are just the easiest.  I’m thinking about that time that we went to the apple orchard.  you me, her and – God, I can’t even remember his name.  she had so many guys, I guess.  I remember liking that one though. It was her idea, to go to the orchard.  It’ll be autumnal, I told you, and get us in the Halloween spirit.  You thought that we were crazy, but we wanted to go so badly, so you and what’s-he-called came along.  We went to that place that we always went with mom and dad when we were kids.  I was so happy – it looked exactly as it had then.  It hadn’t been diluted one bit, we hadn’t glazed it in adult romanticism.  The scarecrows were perfect, the pumpkin patch wild and welcoming, the hot apple cider … remember she brought that hip flask of JD and we made them Irish?  And it was like a dream, the four of us laying on piles of hay, drinking spiked  cider in the waning autumn sun.  Kids running around us, faint screams coming from the haunted house (and god, yes! That haunted house was as harrowing as it was when we were five!).  I laid with my head resting on your flannel chest, a living, breathing, warm scarecrow, my guy.  I remember closing my eyes and thinking that if I could always feel this way, I would be happy for the rest of my life.

 

Remember her hay fever attack.  She always got them, I never did.  “My nose is like a faucet!” she whined, and we laughed, and you got her a roll of toilet paper from the port-a-potty and she thought that was gross.  And you said, so is that line of snot coming from your nose, and she shut up and used the toilet paper.  And she pouted for a while until I told her to get over herself – only a sister can say that – and she poured herself the last of the JD, shot it down right in front of us, and defiantly walked away.  I loved it when she did that, well now I love it, I didn’t then, but I miss it now.  She could be such a brat.

 

She loved you so much.  I think that’s a little sister thing – wanting to be like your big sister, looking up to their boyfriends, wanting to be loved by them.  I sometimes thought that she wanted you to love her as much as you loved me.  It would annoy me sometimes, but mostly I thought it was cute.  I never asked you if you noticed?  I’m sure that you did.  She’d always been like that.  I would read all the Sweet Valley books, and she was practically over my shoulder, a line behind me.  I bought a new sweater and it was on her back the next day. I took up French class, she would parlez-vouz francaise.  It was always a victory when I could start doing things that I knew she couldn’t – go to high school, start driving, do my SATs, college.  I knew in two years she’d be right there but for a brief moment it was space, and time, and I could breathe. 

 

It annoyed her when I met you, because she wasn’t expecting it.  Not that she wasn’t expecting me to have a boyfriend, I’d had plenty.   She just wasn’t expecting… you.  How easily you fit in with my family.  How smart you are, how much you know about music, and film, and plays, and art.  How you played in a band, and have a great family, and drove a decent car, and cooked a decent lasagne.  I don’t think that she was expecting that I would find you, and that I wouldn’t want to let go of you, and that she would have to share me, and that it wouldn’t be ending any time soon.  That’s what I thought anyway – she never said any of that but I think that’s what was going on. 

So she joined instead.  Out with us all the time, while marching through her own boyfriends.  Do you know that she used you as a measuring stick to see if they were good enough?  If they couldn’t hang with you, if you didn’t give your approval without her asking, they were gone.  That’s how much she loved you.  I don’t know if I ever told you that, or if you knew already.  In a way, and I know how this will sound petty, but I didn’t want you to know because she always got everything, and you were mine, and I didn’t want to share.

 

What are you doing now?  Are you thinking about me at all?  I can’t imagine that you are.  But then again, I can’t ever imagine anything good happening again, and you thinking about me would be very, very good.

 

And do you know what else about you annoyed me about that time, in the car?  Those mixed tapes.  Betty (I can’t remember why she called her Betty.  Why do the details seem to slip away?) only had a tape deck and I was giving out because I had just gotten the new Belle and Sebastian on CD, but you said you’d dig out some old mixed tapes instead.  We were talking and going pretty fast, all the windows were down because it was so hot – remember? – there was no AC and I was wearing shorts and the vinyl was sticking to my legs.  So I wasn’t really noticing the music, and then that damned stone came up and hit the glass and we pulled over.  And what was playing?  What of all things was on the mixed tape, the mixed tape that you brought and you played in my dead sister’s car?  Never Tear us Apart.  And you knew what that song meant to me.  You knew that Kick was the first tape I’d ever properly owned, and that she and I used to dance in the basement, we used to fight over who would marry Michael Hutchence.  You knew that and you brought that mixed tape anyway.  And then you tried to hold me and tell me that everything would be ok.  You told me to stay positive.  It wasn’t your legs glued to your dead sister’s car, listening to her favourite song, looking at her smashed windshield.  Was it?

 

It must have been hard to love me.  I think I can see that now.  I always thought that you were easy to love.  And then it just got to be really hard.  Everything you said was so righteous.  The way you are so positive and see the good in everything became trite, annoying, unrealistic.  The way that you saw the good in her being dead was unforgivable.           

 

Remember?  At the funeral.  You said that she was in pain, and that the pain is over, and that she is with God.  And I said screw God, and screw pain, because it’s nothing like what I feel, and that she had no right to cure her own pain.  And you tried to calm me down, but how could I feel calm?  I was in the room, this room packed with people that I know and yet have never felt further from in my life.  And you at my side, holding my arm, it was like a vice grip.  And I couldn’t breathe, and asked you to leave me alone for a few minutes.  I went behind the church and sat on a small stone bench, away from everyone.  It was so cold out and the bench was freezing but the air was crisp and felt like it could get into my lungs.  I lit up a cigarette – I bought them that morning when I went to Walgreens for aspirin.  You offered to go in for me, remember, and I said no it was fine, I needed to walk.  But I wanted to buy cigarettes and I know that you hate them – I hate them too but it reminded me of her.  The two of us, 16 and 18 years old, sitting on the pier outside the cabin in Eagle River.  Mom and dad were in bed and we broke out a few cans of dad’s Old Style and she snuck a few of Mom’s cigarettes from the back of her pack of Parliaments.  And we sat there and drank a beer each and choked down a cigarette, and felt happy and hazy and sneaky.  And so close.  So that’s what I did in Walgreen’s, I bought a pack of Parliaments and I sat outside the church, and I smoked one, and I let the smoke fill my lungs and I remembered that time in Eagle River, and I remembered how we felt, and I closed my eyes and for a second I was there again, with her.  I could feel the splintery wood beneath me, the bittery goodness of cold, stolen beer.  Sirens of crickets blared in the air and mosquitoes descending for feasts of our flesh.  I was there, I moved 10 whole years, I felt the heat of a summer night, I felt the devil-may-care feeling of youth, I felt that nothing could ever go wrong.  That we will always there for each other and that all summers would be exactly like this.  That we would be those kind of sisters that are best friends too, and that would marry rich brothers and be each other’s bridesmaids.  We would drink cocktails by each other’s pools and have these really cute kids that a nanny would look after.  And that when I had a problem I would call her and she would be over in 5 minutes, because she only lives up the street, and that when she went on vacation I would check her mail and turn on her lights at night.  And that we would go to the orchard every year, because that’s what we did, and drink funny apple cider and she would blow her nose and I would bring her antihistamines because she always forgot.  And we would embarrass our kids, and drag them to places that they don’t want to go because we think it’s interesting, or educational, or just because we would know if would piss them off.  And we would take up a hobby together, like I don’t know – knitting, or pinochle, or bocce, or whatever the hell it is that sisters do when they get old.  Because that’s what sisters do – they get old together, and the rest is just filler, the men, the kids, the houses, the apple cider.  That’s the way it’s meant to be, and that’s what that day, that pier was all about.  It was always just us. 

 

And that’s why it could never be you.

 

It’s strange, being back here.  I am staring at the carpeting that I used to stare at when I was 12.  It’s just that low-pile, hard-wearing stuff that moms and dads buy for kids bedrooms, but in their own rooms they get the nice fluffy soft stuff.  It’s uncomfortable and itchy to lie on, and sometimes little bits get stuck in your arm and when you get up you have red angry imprints all over.  But I am laying here now, because I can feel this and not much else.  I am lethargic and numb.  Mom and dad do nothing only shuffle around outside my door.  There isn’t dinner, there are no cheery phone calls.  Dad doesn’t play his god awful music that she and I used to complain about, but then he doesn’t really do much. 

 

You should see the medicine cabinet here.  There are enough pills to sink a ship.  Funny, because that’s exactly what this feels like, a sinking ship.  I think mine are OK, I am afraid of gaining weight though.  I wonder what you would think if you saw me now.  I don’t know.  I think that mine are OK.  They say they take a few weeks to kick in and it’s been a few weeks now.  I don’t feel good and I don’t feel bad.  I don’t feel like I miss you, or love you, or hate you.  I don’t feel anything toward you, but I do wish that you could feel this, I wish you could feel what I feel.  But I don’t have that kind of a right over you anymore – I gave that up a while ago because it’s was just easier to be like me than to be like you. 

 

So here we are, me mom and dad, like it was I guess before she was born.  We just move past each other, and take our pills, and zone out in front of the TV, and start again the next day.  It’s ok, though I guess.  I told you before, misery loves company, and three’s company enough.

 

I guess there’s one more thing that you should know.  It took a while but I finally got started on Miles.  There’s something about it, that edgy feeling, and after numb and lethargic, on-edge is strangely a nice place to be.  I listen to the one where all the notes sound like they’re falling – I can never remember the names of songs, you know that, especially when there are no words.  But yeah I like that one.  It throws me.  There’s so much to hear, so much intricacy.  I get so intent on listening to it that other things go away and I forget everything.  Even the bits between the notes.  Especially the bits between the notes.

 

 

        

 

Author's Note

This is *VERY* rough - haven't edited at all so I would appreciate any suggestions on editing, pacing, tone, anything you feel needs to be cut out, etc. Thanks.