“Not until I get better at this,” he would say.
We all just took it in stride. It didn’t matter. He sat on his stool and sang the songs that Harry didn’t want to sing, and it was like it was in the early days of the band. We just practiced and had fun hanging out together.
But there were undercurrents. There are always undercurrents. No matter what you’re doing in life, there is always something written between the lines. Nothing is ever exactly what it seems.
Take my father.
No, I mean, please, take my father. Ha ha. I’m mostly kidding. I love my dad, but he doesn’t really have much on the ball. Harry calls him the La-Z-Man because he never leaves his La-Z-Boy. There’s a reason the chair manufacturer named it that. My dad just sits there in front of the TV, zoning out.
He’s retired on disability. I’m not even sure what that really means. I just know he gets a check every month for not working. So I guess that’s a kind of work. In some weird way, it’s like he’s getting paid for watching TV all day. And for drinking.
And no, we don’t need to go there. I know my dad is a drunk. My sisters know my dad is a drunk. The neighbors know my dad is a drunk. My friends know my dad is a drunk. The only two people in the entire city who don’t seem to know that my dad is a drunk are my dad and my mom.
Anyway, my dad just sort of gave up on life. He and my mom had all these daughters, and I think he got overwhelmed and packed it in. But here’s the thing: sometimes, when he’s watching television, his attention wanders. His eyes focus on a spot above and behind the TV, like he sees something there. I wonder if he’s seeing his life without the rest of us, without me, my mom, and my sisters. Or maybe he’s seeing what his life would have been like if the rest of us hadn’t come along in the first place.
Undercurrents.
There were undercurrents at our rehearsals, too. At first I thought it was just my pregnancy freaking me out, but after a while I realized it was other stuff, too.
Mostly, it was Johnny and Harry. Johnny, because he was trying to figure out how to live life without his leg—I don’t mean physically, I mean emotionally—and Harry, because had a pretty big crush on me.
Harry said the crush was over. He told me he was happy that we could be friends and happy that the band was back together. But I saw the way he still looked at me. Not like he was undressing me with his eyes or anything pervy, more like he was trying to hold my hand with his eyes. Most days, it broke my heart. Not a lot, just a little. What’s that expression? Death by a thousand cuts? Like that.
Harry had figured out how to tuck his feelings away so they weren’t causing any problems in the band, but the crush was still there, underneath the surface, like a bruise under your skin. I know that must sound conceited, but it’s the truth.
Like, one time, I was walking by and gave Harry a little squeeze on the neck, and I felt his whole body go stiff. Anytime I’d done that in the past, he would sort of just melt into me, like a puppy. But now, now things were different.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” We locked eyes for a minute, and I thought he was going to cry. He wasn’t fine. I knew from that moment on that Harry was off-limits.
All that stuff was in the background, but it was there. There was a lot of baggage, and there were a lot of secrets.
Anyway, we played and played, day after day, grinding out song after song in Harry’s basement. None of us had jobs, and other than Richie going to school every day—he was still a senior in high school—and Johnny going to physical therapy, we focused on the band. It was an endless stream of rehearsals, each one the same as the one before. Even my morning sickness had settled down into something I could manage.
Sooner or later, something had to change. I figured it would be my pregnancy—that was like a bomb with a timer counting down to zero—but Richie pushed a different button first.
“So you ever gonna plug that fucking thing in or what?” he said to Johnny at the end of one rehearsal.
Johnny did, and the Scar Boys were truly reborn.
RICHIE MCGILL
What did I think when Johnny started playing the piano? Shit, I didn’t think about it at all. I just let the groove into my bones, and, man, it felt good.
CHEYENNE BELLE
Before Johnny sat down at the piano, we were guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, like the Who or R.E.M. And we were good. We were really good.