His smile turned from wry to bright. “Yeah. I guess you do. So besides the genius of S.I.T.A., who else are you into?”
I gave him my usual litany of indie darlings—Joanna Newsom and her amazing stylings on the harp and Kurt Vile and his hyper-self-aware songwriting. I nervously rattled off Deerhunter and Beach House and Father John Misty. Julian said that as much as he appreciated modern indie rock music, his favorites would still always be classic punk bands and David Bowie. But as far as indie rock music was concerned, he agreed with me that Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields was a genius at tragicomedy, but he said that he thought Sufjan Stevens was overrated, which was basically a declaration of war as far as I was concerned.
“You’re just jealous that he not only is a world-class songwriter, but also has a perfect face.”
“Maybe,” Julian admitted sheepishly.
“Harlow and Quinn are really into this goofy band called the Front Bottoms. You might like them. I bet you’d get the humor.” I moved down another aisle in search of Talon of the Hawk. Once I found it, I turned around and held it up for Julian to see.
He took the record from me and ran his thumb over the cover. He was quiet for a moment, studying the record with such intensity that I wondered if maybe I’d overhyped the band.
“They’re pretty fun,” I offered. I was starting to feel a little insecure about my suggestion, so I added, “Like I said, Harlow loves them.”
He looked up at me. There was a new intensity in his eyes. “You love music, right, Taliah?”
I bit the inside of my lip. “Of course. But isn’t saying that like saying I enjoy breathing oxygen? I’ve never met someone who didn’t like music.”
“But you love it, right? Like really love it?” he pressed, his eyes still intense. I broke away from his gaze and pretended to be interested in browsing through the records.
“Sure,” I said.
“What do you love about it?”
“What do you love about it?” I flipped the question back around on him.
“Everything,” he said.
“That’s a cop-out.”
“Okay. Well, for starters, I love the way music holds and enhances our memories. Certain songs can always transport me right back to particular moments in my life. It’s like magic.”
I pulled out a Sun Kil Moon record from the bin. “Your own songs?”
He shook his head. “No. Not really. Sure, I’ve cataloged my life by my own songs, but I’m talking about other people’s music.”
“Give me an example.”
He ran a hand through his messy hair. “Whenever I hear Neutral Milk Hotel’s ‘Where You’ll Find Me Now,’ I’m twenty-two again, sitting heartbroken in my room, trying to figure out how to convince your mother to give me just a little more time to get my shit together. Trying to figure out how to write a song with one–eight hundredth of the emotional rawness.”
I set the record I was holding back in the bin. I brought my hand to my mouth and nibbled at my fingernails. His face looked impossibly sad and I felt this sudden urge to make it better, but I didn’t know how. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. Except …”
“What?”
“Why don’t you try again?”
“Try again?”
“To tell me why you love music.”
I stared at the tops of my red Chucks. “Dude. I don’t know.”
“Try.”
I glanced up at him. There was an uncomfortable pause. “I don’t—” I started.
“Just try,” he repeated.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “This may sound weird, but there are certain songs, like really great songs—you don’t just listen to them, you know? They make you feel like they’re listening back. Like the person who wrote the song heard you. Music makes you feel less alone in that way. It’s proof that someone out there has felt the exact same way you do and they’ve managed to capture it in this perfect blend of words and sound.”
Julian was staring at me intensely.
“What?”
He looked away for a moment and shook his shoulders, like he was trying to shed himself of an emotion. Escape it and pack it away. I recognized the gesture because I sometimes did the same thing. As I watched him, I remembered what Debra had told me about him feeling things too intensely.
“Julian?” I said.
When he turned back to me, he gave me a playful smile. The seriousness was gone. He lightly punched my shoulder. “That’s my girl” was all he said, but it felt like so much more.
I shrugged him off, a heat creeping up my cheeks. But deep inside, something like pride, like recognition, uncoiled inside of me. As weird as it is to say, I was maybe, sort of, starting to fall in love with my dad. And he was maybe, sort of, starting to fall in love with me.
Most people don’t remember falling in love with their parents. It’s something that happens in between bites of pureed carrots and late nights in rocking chairs. But with Julian, it was different. It felt like a choice that I got to make. A choice we were making together.
“This is a moment I’m going to want to remember forever,” he said.
“Okay. That’s enough, cheeseball. Hallmark called. They want their lines back.”
He laughed and leaned in to nudge me with his shoulder. “No. Seriously, Tal. This is a monumental occasion. Our first trip together to a record store.”
“Right.”
“The first of many, I hope.”
“Sure,” I said, which sounded cagier than I meant it to.
But that didn’t seem to bother him. “And since I want to always remember it, we should pick out a song to attach to the memory.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “What did you have in mind?”
“Haven’t decided. Let’s hunt for something. What do you think?”
I hunched over another bin of records and started flipping through them. When I turned around to see if Julian had come up with anything good, I saw that Willowy Records was suddenly brimming with people.
“So I think someone blew up our spot,” I whispered, taking in the clusters of people who were all excitedly hovering in proximity to Julian.
Julian sighed and pulled his sunglasses from their resting place in the V of his T-shirt. He grabbed my hand and we pushed through the crowd. People held up their phones to take photos. He politely waved in the general direction of the crowd but kept walking.
“I thought you told the kid at the register that you were gonna sign records.”
Julian didn’t answer that. We were quickly walking down the main drag. There were people staring at us, but Julian was ignoring them, so I followed suit. All of a sudden, he stopped walking. He pointed at a building across the street.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The diner I told you about. Where I met your mother.”
“The first one?”
“Yes,” he said with a sad smile. “The first one.”
“So are you ever going to tell me the rest of the story?”
He sighed and kept staring at the building. “I don’t know, Tal.”
“You don’t know what?”
He shook his head as if shaking himself out of a memory. He put his hand on the small of my back and steered me toward the diner on the corner of the street. “Let’s go in here and have a milk shake. And I’ll tell you the rest of what I know.”
New York, 2000