“It’s midnight on Thursday, which means it’s time for Unknown Legends with Nessa, the only radio show that plays the really, really deep cuts.”
Nessa opened her mic. “Happy Thursday, gang, and welcome to Unknown Legends. This is Nessa, and this first song’s official video is not exactly my cup of tea—-it’s lead singer Josh Homme having a night out with a bunch of Asian businessmen. Guess it’s indicative of the difficult time the band had putting the album together. I recommend listening on full volume so you can decide for yourself what it all means. Here’s ‘Smooth Sailing’ from Queens of the Stone Age off their album . . . Like Clockwork.”
The opening synthesized beats blew into the jangling guitar of Troy Van Leeuwen, and Nessa clicked off her mic, shoved back her chair, and danced like she was at a rave in 2004. She sang loud, while staring straight at Otto. She could feel the hate waves rolling off him like San Francisco fog, and they strengthened her.
They didn’t speak for the rest of the shift, but she did her best show ever. She hadn’t gotten so many phone calls since the Beatles post, and it kept Otto hopping all night. When the bumper outro for her show played, she stood and stretched. Otto was sprawled on his chair.
“See you Monday,” she said, and walked out the door.
Friday, June 3
A NOISE ON the front porch woke Nessa, and she walked downstairs in the dark. She opened the front door, and there stood John, soaking wet.
“I just couldn’t get to a phone. It’s taken me weeks to walk home, but here I am.”
Nessa collapsed in relief, because he was real John, not crackhead John. He hadn’t relapsed after all. It had all been a horrible misunderstanding. She got him a towel and tried to dry him off, but she kept finding leaks, and water continued to run from his head, from his nose and ears and eyes.
“What’s happening?” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” he said as water poured from his mouth in a stream.
Nessa opened her eyes and looked at John’s side of the bed, undisturbed, smooth, unslept--in for weeks. She didn’t have even a moment’s reprieve, no periods of forgetting John was gone, no times of not wondering whether he was alive or dead. It was as if this new fact of her life sat on a shelf suspended above her and clocked her in the head every time her thoughts shifted away from it.
Probably somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d believed if John were to die, it would actually be a relief. Because he wasn’t the man she married anymore. He was a burden. But she wasn’t like her mother—-she couldn’t stop loving John even if he was deeply flawed, even if he had destroyed his own life and hers in the process.
She looked at the bedside clock and saw it was six--thirty A.M., four hours earlier than she normally awoke the morning after her radio shift. She tried to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t stop picturing John soaking wet on the front porch.
If he was gone for good this time, dead, she wondered how she would raise their boy alone.
Daltrey, who looked so much like his father they’d called him Mini--me, was a constant reminder. The ache that accompanied it was a sharp ice pick in her consciousness. Her love for the little boy was both visceral and transcendent, but at the same time she wished him vanished too—-a thought she’d never actually voice. How was she supposed to go on? How was she supposed to do this alone?
She got up and went to Daltrey’s room. He was still asleep, lying on his stomach, his little lips pursed. He looked like an infant when he was asleep, his long straight eyelashes lying across his cheek like angel feathers. He breathed like he was in a hurry. Fast in. Pause. Fast out. His fat little fingers curled in a sweet fist. She lowered her face to his hair and inhaled, the muzzy, sweet toddler scent making her heart ache. She went downstairs and looked out the back window where Isabeau was doing yoga in the morning sunshine.
What was it like to be so young and carefree? Isabeau was only four years younger than she, but Nessa felt like an old crone weighted down with the life experience of someone in her fifties.
Nessa poured a cup of coffee and stepped outside, where Isabeau held the warrior pose, her arms held out parallel to the ground, her legs in a deep lunge.
“What are you doing up so early?” Isabeau said.
“Nightmare,” Nessa said, and sat down on the steps.
“Daltrey’s not up, is he?”
“No. I just checked on him.”
“Good, because I want to talk to you about something.” Isabeau rolled up her yoga mat, dropped it next to the steps, and sat next to Nessa.
Oh, no. This was it. Isabeau couldn’t handle the crap parade that was life on the Donati homestead.
“Okay,” Nessa said, dejected. “I understand completely.”
“What?”