Sydney (1:33 p.m.): Xoxo!
I wonder if the line about the gift could be a clue. For the life of me I can’t recall what it was that Sydney brought home with him. There were always gifts and souvenirs. Between his clients constantly unloading presents onto him—everything from cheap swag to expensive booze—and his own love of shopping, Syd rarely returned home from anywhere empty-handed.
After that message, there’s a break in our correspondence until I arrive at LAX. Then, just two more messages.
Me (8:39 p.m.): Here.
Syd (8:47 p.m.): Coming out now!
I shut my eyes, try to picture him walking toward me. A full memory of that night at the airport doesn’t exist. This is something different, based in truth but fabricated. I see him in the distance, exiting the glass doors, but it’s too dark to make out his face. He’s too far away. He’s moving, but not getting any closer, never reaching me. I’m still here, waiting. But for how long?
“Gavin.”
I feel Joan’s hand on my arm. Our train has arrived. The doors are open. Time to go home. Wherever that is.
23
I wake up with a very crummy feeling because every new day is also an old day and today’s new day is also Grandma Joan’s birthday.
Before I get out of bed I spend a little time thinking of my favorite Grandma Joan memories, like when she made pancakes and the flame shot high into the air and she didn’t even notice and Dad called them hibachi pancakes (Sunday, February 3, 2008). And when she jumped around in the bounce house with me at the Italian festival and the man yelled at her to get out because she wasn’t a kid (Saturday, May 9, 2009). And I think of when she played “Jealous Guy” on the piano and she changed the words to I’m just a jealous wife (Thursday, December 24, 2009). But all these memories only make me feel worse.
I spend half the day trying to fill up all my new free time. I watch TV and go with Mom to the supermarket and write in my journal, and I check where the walrus is swimming (Bald Head Island, North Carolina). Now I’m in the living room in front of the computer but I’m just staring at it because I haven’t decided if I should listen to music or play a game or watch a video or if I should just get up and walk around. Nothing I do is anywhere near as fun as writing songs and sharing memories with Gavin, and both of those things are over now.
Gavin and I finished our song the other night and Dad sent it into the contest and now we have to wait a couple of months until we find out if we’ll be selected as finalists and invited to the award ceremony in New York City. I was so busy trying to finish the song in time that I never paid attention to how long it would take for the contest people to get back to us. I don’t know if I can wait that long because waiting is the worst thing ever invented.
It’s especially hard now that Gavin and me have finished all my Sydney memories. It got a little annoying to have to sit there and tell Gavin every tiny thing, but now that it’s over, I wish it weren’t. No one has ever asked me so many questions about my memories or cared so much about what I have to say. Gavin never thought I was acting like a know-it-all when I was trying to be very careful about telling him exactly what happened. I wish we had a new project to work on so I could go downstairs right now and wake him up and tell him that it’s time for us to get started.
My time with Gavin isn’t the only thing I’m losing. It didn’t really sink in that the studio would actually be closing until the other night when we were all downstairs recording and I had a feeling like I wanted to be doing that exact thing forever, making songs with Dad and Gavin, and that’s exactly where I wanted to be doing it, in Dad’s studio. It’s almost August already, which means that pretty soon Dad will start moving all of his stuff out.
It’s like when the school year ends and you clean out your cubby. The teacher takes all your projects off the wall and you stuff your projects and pencils and erasers into your backpack. You take it all home with you because next year you have to go to a whole new classroom, which I hate because I’ve got so many memories in the old classroom and I never want to leave. But this is even worse because there’s no new classroom to move into. There’s no new studio. Where will Dad record? Where will he put his piano and guitars and desk and couch and drums? Where will he hang all his John Lennon pictures? Where will I write my new songs? If I win the contest—when I win the contest—my fans will want to hear more songs and I can’t write here in the living room with Dad’s smelly sneakers by the door and Mom working at the kitchen table and the mailman ringing the doorbell with a package and the phone always ringing like it is now.
Mom finally answers it. “Yes, this is Paige Sully,” she says. “Oh, right, I’m sorry. Yes, I’ve been meaning to get back to you. I was going to talk it over with my husband. It totally slipped my mind.”
Things don’t slip Mom’s mind too often.
“I see,” Mom says. “So she would be in front of an audience?”
Now I’m really listening because I’m pretty sure she is me. I watch Mom reach into a drawer and pull out a pad and pen.
“And you’re featuring only kids for this, right? Yes, it does sound interesting, but you know, the timing isn’t great. I know. I realize that. Maybe there’s a future show that would be right for her. I understand that. We’ll just have to take our chances. Yes, we’re going to have to pass on this one.”
Mom moves her pen across the pad without lifting it off the paper even once.
“Yes, I’m positive,” Mom says. “I’m sorry too. Thank you.”
She hangs up the phone and I turn back to the computer, but I’m not even looking at what’s on the screen because I’m watching Mom’s reflection as it gets bigger and darts away.
After she’s gone, I find Mom’s pad in the kitchen drawer. On top of the page is my name and below that is a long list of other names and phone numbers and one of them is Dr. Robert Brickenmeyer. Somewhere near the middle of the page there’s one whole line of information crossed out with Mom’s pen. It’s a person’s name, a phone number, and all the way to the right it says: The Mindy Love Show.
I’m in front of the TV at exactly eleven o’clock. I’ve heard of The Mindy Love Show but I’ve never actually seen it before. I’ve got my journal open to a fresh page because I want to write down any ideas I have while I’m watching.
The first thing on the screen is a photo of a bald man in a suit. I hear a lady’s voice: “Three years ago Arthur Ballibloc was living the American dream. As the CFO of a Fortune Five Hundred company, he could’ve had pretty much anything his heart desired.”