Gavin shuts his eyes for a few seconds and then lifts his chin off his knee and says, “Should we keep going?”
Friday, May 21, 2010: Sydney says he has to catch a train back to the city but first he takes me out for ice cream. He and Mom don’t order anything because they have their coffees and Sydney is asking me about my lesson and I tell him it was boring because I already knew what the man was trying to teach me. Sydney asks how I’m liking my chocolate ice cream and I say it’s very good. He wants to know if I can guess his favorite flavor and I say that it’s mint chocolate chip. He asks me how I know that and I tell him I took a guess because I remembered from the time he visited in 2008 that his favorite macaron was the mint one and I also remember he was chewing mint gum when he visited in 2009. And then he asks me all types of questions about those other times he visited, like what day I met him in 2008 and what the weather was and what he was wearing and I tell him it was a Monday in October and the weather was chilly and he was wearing a peach shirt and shoes with no laces and he says, “That is amazing. You are amazing.”
And I say, “Thank you.”
And he says, “I’m more of a future guy.”
And I say, “What’s that?”
And he says, “I like to focus on what’s going to happen tomorrow. And the next day. I’m interested in where everything is leading. I’d rather just leave the past behind.”
I tell the entire memory to Gavin, including the end when Mom and I walk Sydney to the train station. Sydney pretends that my high five broke his hand and Mom hugs him and she kisses him, and when I finish my story Gavin keeps quiet for a long while.
“Syd would get frustrated with me about that,” he says. “If I didn’t get a role, I’d be in a bad mood for days. But if his team didn’t win an ad campaign, he’d just move on to the next one.” Gavin rubs his eye like he’s just waking up from a nap. “Anyway, it’s not a bad song lyric.”
“What is?”
“Leave the past behind.”
“That just came to you?”
He sits up. “Well, Sydney’s the one who said it. But you’re the one who remembered it.”
I’m strumming the Gibson and Gavin is walking around my tiny room. He’s holding a piece of paper that he ripped out of my journal, which is not something I like to do but Gavin says it’s not just about waiting around for an idea to come, it’s also about knowing when the idea has finally arrived.
My arm is getting tired of strumming but Gavin wants me to keep going a little while longer. We have different ideas about what a little while means because he’s been humming and scribbling forever and I guess for him it’s like when you’re dreaming and you think only a minute has gone by but you actually slept through the whole night.
“Okay,” he says at last and his eyes are bright and colorful like glass on the walls of a church. “What about something like this for the chorus?”
He sings along to my chords:
Keep running but I get nowhere
Keep swinging but I hit thin air
I hear you whisper in the back of my mind:
Start over, leave the past behind
Keep dwelling on what went wrong
Keep reaching for what is gone
I hear you whisper in the back of my mind:
Start over, leave the past behind
He stops singing and I stop playing and I feel ticklish all over. This is it, what we’ve been waiting for. I see something, the way he’s waiting silently, something I haven’t seen before but I know it so well because it matches how I feel inside: he wants so badly for me to love his words because he loves them.
“It’s about Sydney,” I say.
He gets a little shy. “It doesn’t have to be.”
But I don’t mind because I can’t always think of interesting things to write about and besides, the lyrics were already about Sydney even when I was writing them. I think it’s good to write a song about someone who isn’t around anymore, like John Lennon did for his mother in his song “Julia.” And I’m missing Sydney too after spending so much time with him in my memories, almost as much time as I’ve been spending with Gavin, so I think it feels right.
“I guess I got in a flow,” Gavin says. “I’m sorry. I know it’s your song.”
“No. It’s our song.”
I’m not even sure anymore which parts are mine and which parts are Gavin’s and that’s how it was with John Lennon and Paul McCartney when they wrote together in the Beatles. Dad says you can’t tell where one of them ends and the other one begins because they were like one super-person instead of two regular people. Maybe that’s why I like the songs they wrote together better than anything John ever wrote alone.
“You should finish the lyrics,” I say, “and I’ll take care of the music and it’ll be half and half. I’ll play the instruments and you sing.”
He slides his hand through his hair either because he has great style or because he has a headache, I’m not sure which.
“The words are coming right out of you,” I say. “It’s magic. You already have the chorus. That’s the most important part. Now just write the verses.”
He gives me a long look. “If that’s what you want.”
But he doesn’t mean it like that, I can tell, because I say the same thing to Dad when he and I split up chores and Dad takes vacuuming and I take organizing and I pretend that I don’t mind if we switch jobs but really I’m so happy I got organizing because that’s something that makes total sense to me. So I’m thinking now that maybe Gavin wants to write this song just as much as I do.
And if people remember the name Joan Lennon because I teamed up with Gavin Winters, then I guess it’s the same as someone watching Gavin’s show because he started a fire in his backyard. I don’t care why they remember me as long as they remember me, because I never want to feel the way I did when Grandma Joan forgot me. I just want to feel safe.
“One more thing,” I say. “When we send our song into the contest, my name goes first. Joan and then Gavin. Deal?”
He shakes my hand. “I can live with that.”
I open the fridge and look around until something excites me. I open the pickle jar and find the greenest one and I wrap it in a napkin because Mom hates when I drip pickle juice on the floor.
Mom’s book is on the kitchen table. It looks like one of her schoolbooks because it has her yellow notes sticking out of the top, but it’s something else:
Seeing Dad’s name messes up the good mood I was in. Dinner is the only time I see Dad lately, and that makes me want to take Mom’s book and slide it through our paper shredder.
The phone starts ringing and I just want to shut it up so I answer it. “Hello?”
“Hello,” a man says. “Is this Mrs. Sully?”
I decide to say yes.
“Oh, good afternoon, Mrs. Sully. I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Robert Brickenmeyer. I’m the head neurologist at the Hollybrook Cognitive Research Center here in Summit. We’re one of the area’s premier research centers for Alzheimer’s. As you might have guessed, I’m calling in regard to your daughter, Joan Sully.”