THE PEOPLE WE DON’T KNOW
by BETH LEVINE
Had Sara not been scrolling Instagram instead of getting ready for her 50th birthday party, she wouldn’t have learned that Aaron was dead. She reads the post quickly, then again slower, her eyes lingering on each adjective, devastated, tragic, heartbroken, and finally, one more time with the sort of intensity she reserves for client presentations, searing each word into memory so she can’t forget an article or preposition, much less the tone, the weight, the gut punch.
“Almost ready?” Kyle calls from the living room.
“Almost.” It comes out as a whisper. She grips the marble countertop and focuses on
the pale coral veins. There’d been another slab with a strange pattern, the veins resembling a twisted face, mouth agape, eyes faraway. It was a relief when their architect noticed a troubling crack that ran through what would have been the cheek, necessitating a pivot. “Almost,” she says again, clearer, louder. It would be poor form to arrive late, after work friends who trekked into Park Slope from Manhattan, after parent friends who will keep one eye on the time all evening, after whoever else she invited, unsure how big or small a celebration she wanted in the first place.
“It’s a milestone,” Kyle had said. “Of course you should throw a party.” His 50th had been semi-debaucherous, one of his grad school friends armed with mushrooms. Sara was among the few to demur, not because she was a teetotaler, lord knows her corkscrew got a bigger workout than any other kitchen utensil, but because to lose control meant she could say something she never intended to say, something about the record store owner she’d befriended named Aaron.
She swipes her lips with a sensible semi-nude matte, checks her lashes for clumps and smooths her hair. Only one thing looks amiss: the silk scarf wrapped around her neck. Kyle presented her with the scarf earlier that week, “matches your eyes perfectly,” he’d said, and the following morning she noted how liquid cool it felt against her skin, every shop window an opportunity to admire its graceful elegance.
But, tonight, it isn’t working: the fold is too messy, the knot too tight. She removes it and touches her throat.
“Sara?”
Kyle’s voice reminds her how much he’ll appreciate the scarf’s inclusion on this meaningful night, so she refolds it, reknots it, and then to mitigate the accidental corporate look it projects, swaps her kitten heels for strappy sandals that add 4.25 inches of wobbly, unpracticed height.
She carefully makes her way down the staircase and watches him bent over the tube amplifier he’d insisted they needed, muttering. Something about a hiss, a pop. High fidelity, he’d decided, would be his mid-life crisis, and he went all in, the amp, the pre-amp, the speakers with their custom mahogany finish, the turntable with its finicky moving coil cartridge. She’d scoffed when the hi-fi salesman arrived to set everything up just so, adjusting the angle of the speakers in miniscule increments, suggesting they move the sectional back a few inches. But then, at the salesman’s urging, she sat next to Kyle and listened.
“This is the pressing of ‘Physical Graffiti,’” Kyle said. “I did a shit-ton of research.” To the salesman, he added, “’75 Monarch.” The salesman smiled and nodded, though Sara sensed he was unmoved.
She was moved, though, and she wasn’t even a Zeppelin fan. There was so much power in that bass, she felt compelled to close her eyes and fall into a trance. “You should close your eyes like Sara,” the salesman said. “Like you did in the showroom. It’ll hit different.” But she knew, without looking, that Kyle couldn’t close his eyes. He couldn’t feel the music, and he couldn’t bring himself to say so. “This is so great,” she heard him say. “It’s everything I wanted.”
“Something wrong with the amp?” she asks now, brightly.
“I think we have a dying tube.” He glances up at her. “Oh wow. Those shoes are—”
“Impractical? Ridiculous? I’ve only worn them once and once was enough.”
“Well, my arm will be at the ready, should you need support.”
“Uh huh. Mr. Compulsive Circulator. You’ll be flitting from one sad soul to another all night.”
He laughs. “These sad souls are your friends. You made the guest list.”
Thirty of her closest friends, not one of whom knows anything about Aaron. Her phone burns in her palm, and she slips it into her purse, unable to handle the radiating heat of that Instagram post. The source, a record store in the East Village, shared a photo of Aaron standing in front of his own store, just 17 blocks and two avenues over from Sara’s brownstone. Tall and wiry, misshapen nose, perpetual shadow. She resists the urge to pull out her phone and read the post one more time, to stare into Aaron’s inquisitive eyes, and then to imagine that body mangled on the street. A bike accident, the post said. A hit and run.
“You ok? Still having second thoughts? You look great, by the way. Scarf’s perfect.”
Its coolness has morphed into something clammy, a tentacle strangling out her life, but she smiles. “So, a dying tube? Is that easy to fix?”
He offers a rueful smile back. “I have no fucking idea.”
*
About three months after the salesman set up their new system, when it became apparent Kyle had little interest in listening to any of the records he “researched,” Sara found herself solo on a brisk Sunday. Kyle was golfing with a client who’d grown fixated on a Peter Doig up for auction; Ian, their 11-year-old, was at the Giants game with Kyle’s dad, a season-ticket holder; and Lana, aged eight, was on a playdate with a girl Sara sensed was a bad influence. Could eight-year-olds be bad influences? Or was defiance learned elsewhere, from parents or older siblings, or a demon from within? Sara and Kyle made it a point to never swear in front of the kids, to put away their phones when they were home for family dinner, to limit screen time. Ian was too busy with soccer and lacrosse practice, with learning coding and maintaining perfect grades, to be a problem child. Lana used to occupy hours with her sketchpad and a bucket of markers; now she snuck her tablet in her room after bedtime, brought home full lunchboxes and, most recently, began peppering casual conversation with an overwhelming number of fucking this and fucking that.
“That’s normal kid stuff,” Kyle said with a shrug. “If anything, Ian’s the abnormality.”
She was en route to a new butcher in South Slope that’d been garnering attention for its whole animal butchery, responsibly sourced meats, buzzwords she’d use to justify the cost of a dinner she’d dutifully cook, that neither kid would eat, Ian stuffed from stadium dogs, Lana pleading newfound vegetarianism. Still, Sara felt obligated to cook a proper dinner after working long nights that week, coddling the goateed CEO of a pharma giant who insisted on the Outlaw archetype when clearly his brand was the Caregiver. “Maybe it’s time we lose that mom energy,” he’d said, looking her squarely in the eye.
She balled her fists as she picked up the pace, passing the endless stream of nail salons and realtors, monster strollers gobbling most of the sidewalk. Tonight she’d put her mom energy to use by way of rolling meatballs in her palms and reprimanding Lana for locking her bedroom door. Her breath stuck in her throat as she worked through the evening’s scenarios; then she noticed the line snaking out the butcher door.
“Fuck, no,” she said. Her afternoon off, and she was to await hallowed entry just to buy grassfed ground beef? That was when she saw the record store, two doors down from the butcher. Had it always been there? Had she just never looked? It was a block she rarely walked, so she didn’t know. What she did know was this: someone ought to be listening to this system, given the cost and prominent spot it took in their home, and if that person was to be her, she might as well buy some records of her own.
It was a small but orderly shop, so though there wasn’t much room to navigate, Sara didn’t feel cramped alongside the two other customers flipping through bins. A third customer stood by the front, chatting amicably with the man behind the register. Her ears perked at their familiarity and her envy confused her, considering she didn’t know the man. It was a relief when this customer left, but then one of the others took his place, a single record in his hand, eager to launch a whole new conversation. By the time the last customer left, after his own lengthy interaction with the man behind the register, she’d accumulated a stack of records, mostly represses of albums she’d loved in her youth, with a few intriguing titles she’d found in the used bins. It felt strange to hold all these records, as if she were pretending to be someone she wasn’t, rebranding herself as an audio aficionado, a vinyl collector, and she wondered if the man could sense her imposter syndrome.
Whatever he was playing, some sort of jazz-funk she didn’t understand, came to a halt, and she pretended to take interest in the 7”’s as he changed the record. When he returned to his station behind the register, their eyes met, and she almost dropped her stack of records.
“The Desperations,” she said.
He smiled, crooked and wide. “I don’t come across too many Desperations fans around here.”
She would’ve answered, but she’d closed her eyes, just as she did on the couch with Zeppelin. Her body, long deprived of The Desperations, ingested it like a drug: the melody of Nick Tremont’s high bass, the relentless machine-like drumming of Perry Britton, the doom-laden words of Max Finn, that shaken baritone, that pained voice.
Maxwell Findley Acheson. It was his lyrics, this music, that carried her through her 20s, drowning at a thankless global branding conglomerate, reed-thin from depression and anxiety and a wicked little Adderall habit she developed to endure 15-hour workdays. That Sara, slouched, chain-smoking, listened to The Desperations in one endless loop, on the train, at her desk, the songs pumping from heart to lungs so she could breathe, heart to brain so she could function.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the man watching her. “Sorry, I—” she started, and then paused, in her ongoing pursuit to stop apologizing all the time.
The man sighed. “They do that to me, too. How they never took off, really found their footing, is beyond me.”
“I remember the day I learned of Max Finn’s death so clearly. I’d just given birth to my daughter, and—” She stopped again, unsure why she didn’t want to talk about being a mother with this man. “Anyway, I’ve thought often of Nick, finding him hanging. Even after Max broke up the band, Nick was so devoted, like he knew—”
Now the man nodded. “I was the one who found my son.”
Their eyes remained locked until he finally turned away, and she wondered if he was embarrassed to bring up something so intimate to a stranger. But he didn’t seem embarrassed, so she wondered instead if he volunteered this to just anyone, at any time. She didn’t think so.
The music played and she prayed no other customer would walk in, at least not until side A ended. They introduced themselves more formally and he joined her on the other side of the register. Gently, he took her stack of records, first noting her excellent taste, and they listened together. They were midway through side B when a couple walked in. Sara waited for them to acknowledge the music, to express their appreciation for this glorious soliloquy on isolation, alienation, but instead they flipped and giggled, and something about their carefree kidless mannerisms, the way the woman gazed at the man’s frame, the way he called her babe, baaabe, made Sara want to personally escort them out of this sacred space, run by a man named Aaron who lost his son, who worshipped The Desperations and who, Sara recognized with vague, foreign dread, she yearned to kiss. They bought two records and left, and Aaron said fuck it, and switched the open sign to closed, pulled down a window shade.
“It’s long out of print,” he said, “but I recently acquired their final album. I mean, I already had it, but my ex destroyed it.”
This was the one where the band fully committed to a sparse sort of horror, bemoaning the nature of existence without any excess instrumentation, the strident booms and echoes of Max Finn cutting through the thick empty space. “That’s my favorite one,” she said.
“I know,” he said, smiling again. It felt so good to see him smile, as if her presence melted some of his evergreen pain, as if she held a strange power she’d never wielded. He put on the record and brought out two stools from the back room, placing them closely next to each other. Surely he noticed the large diamond sparkling on her finger, and she learned that same day he was in a serious relationship. But that didn’t stop their knees from touching, their hands from brushing, a breathless chemistry compelling their mouths to connect. Their bodies stuck together like industrial glue, pheromones or dopamine or loneliness acting as chemical bonding agents, Nick Tremont’s hypnotic bassline playing on.
She was both disappointed and relieved it didn’t go farther than that. “I feel awful that you closed your shop just so we could listen—” and she would have continued this apology, but he cut her off.
“The amount of records you bought more than covers for whatever other sales I’d have made,” he said, and they both laughed. And now she was the customer on the other side of the register, and they talked about music, indie labels she never heard of, records he promised he’d order for her. “If there’s a way of contacting you, I can let you know when they come in. I’m happy to hold them for you as long as you want.”
“Or I can just come in whenever something arrives,” she said. “I don’t mind the extra trips.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he said, and they shared a different kind of smile, rooted in hope and tinged with regret.
*
They walk quietly to the restaurant. Sara clutches Kyle’s sleeve, sturdy through his suit jacket. She can feel his arm flex, as if to assure her he is solid and able, he can physically support her these 12 minutes. But, she knows, he cannot emotionally support her as she tries both to process Aaron’s death and push it far out of mind, so she focuses on simple things gone complicated, like breathing and walking. Her stockinged feet can’t securely grip her shoes’ insoles, and her unbalanced gait matches her unsteady breath. Kyle doesn’t seem to notice either, though he does comment she’s now practically his height.
They’d rented the backyard of their favorite local Italian restaurant and Gianni, the owner, beams as Sara gushes how exquisite it looks, the well-tended greenery lusher than usual, lights strewn across the walls and tea candles twinkling on every table, lending the space a fairy garden quality. She flashes to a painting Lana made two years earlier, that Sara had reprinted on mugs and magnets through a school fundraiser. Lana had been in a fairy phase, and the way she depicted a great oak aglow, an indigo sky, read as pure magic.
“It’s breathtaking,” Sara had said.
“In what way?” Lana asked.
The maturity of her phrasing threw Sara off. “The composition, the color choices. I mean, everything, really.” Sara couldn’t understand how this answer was wrong, but Lana responded with an unreadable look, something toggling between disappointment and indifference.
Gianni asks if it’s ok to start playing the playlist Sara provided. She nearly forgot about the playlist, an afterthought from the start, hastily stolen from someone else’s BEST 80s MIX EVER!!!!. It is loaded with top 40 hits she knows the Gen Xers and Geriatric Millennials will appreciate, but all she wants to hear in this moment is Max Finn, The Desperations, any of the music Aaron curated for her, moody synths, brooding words, melodic bass. She says yes and is greeted by a blast of Pat Benatar.
The guests arrive, first Kyle’s partners and their wives. Cheryl’s smile is tight, phantom lines deftly erased by the pricks of a needle, and Marjorie looks like she hasn’t eaten in a week. Sara offers arm squeezes and pleasantries, forgettable witticisms that don’t warrant the laughter they garner; any good corporate branding guru knows inauthenticity when they hear it. But guests who attend a party in your honor are entrusted to uphold their end of the deal, to flatter you, to vie for your attention. You can do no wrong.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
He’d drift into her thoughts at odd times, as she unloaded the dishwasher or rolled the kids’ socks or woke at 3 a.m. to pee, and it would always surprise her, as if she was catching a secret glimpse into someone else’s transgressions. And just as quickly, she’d push him out of her head, because it wasn’t Sara who claimed a work emergency to sneak to his store after hours; it wasn’t Sara she pictured lying on a blanket in the back room, his hand stroking her spine, his breath lingering in her throat. It had to be someone else, an alternate version of her she didn’t know, and if it wasn’t her, then she, Sara, didn’t do anything wrong.
“Happy birthday, you!” says Andrea, a mom from Lana’s preschool days. “At least, I think it’s you. Did you grow?”
“Only about four and a quarter inches.” The playlist brings up “Jack & Diane,” and Sara is pleased to see guests nod their head to the guitar riff or sing along to the chorus, except then Max Finn spins into her mind, 45 RPM (reissued, remastered double LPs for the serious collector) of torment and anguish in crystal clarity.
“What was crazy?” Sara asks, rejoining the conversation.
The birthday girl can be forgiven for tuning in and out. “How our families just missed each other by a day in Florence last summer,” says Lee, part of that same preschool crew.
“Che peccato!” Sara says. “And where will you just miss each other this summer?”
“Excellent question. Jason and I’ve been discussing Barcelona. Kids would get a kick out of all the Gaudí.” Sara watches Andrea glance at her phone.
“Funny, we were thinking Denmark,” Lee says. “Jessica can get her design fix, kids can get their Legoland fix.”
Sara starts to mention they can get their Legoland fix less than two hours north on I-87, but Andrea is already asking what Lee’s fix will be, to which he replies, “Aquavit.”
Sara excuses herself with another arm squeeze, though only to Andrea; to squeeze Lee’s arm would be inappropriate. She’s grabbed by two women she met when pregnant with Ian; Sadie since moved to Larchmont, Samantha to Montclair, but they meet for lunch at Balthazar once a year, where they complain over Taittinger and shellfish how no amount of time or space is ever enough, how nothing they do is enough, how it makes them want to pull out their hair, except that they are losing hair in perimenopause, so now even their hair isn’t enough. The last time they met, Sara couldn’t join the complaints quite as readily, and she didn’t know if it was because Aaron made everything better or because to complain would be another betrayal to Kyle, when none of this was his fault, it was hers, or that alternate version of her, or maybe it was Aaron’s, or The Desperations’, or Max Finn’s.
“I was just telling Sam about the most ludicrous trip I chaperoned,” Sadie says, after fawning over Sara’s shoes. “We went to the grocery store, where each group of kids had to find multiples of items, like a six-pack of soda, a dozen eggs, and so on. My god, I’ve never been around such an unruly bunch. One misanthrope tried to throw himself down the conveyer belt. I always liked his parents, but it really makes you wonder.”
Sara chaperoned a class trip earlier that year, when Lana begged her to take off work. Lana barely said a word to her the duration of the long, bumpy bus ride to the Staten Island Museum, and neither did the three other moms, all of whom seemed to know each other and every kid, too. There was a brief period of downtime, when the kids could run around a small field, and as the three other moms huddled together, Sara watched Lana, in her sparkly high-tops and pink satin bomber, both of which cost a sickening fortune and would be outgrown in another month, wander alone.
*
The first time she returned to the record store, Aaron presented her with two records. “I don’t know either band,” she said, examining the sleeves for any sense of familiarity, a song title, a design element.
“I can play one. If you have time to listen.”
She’d been afraid to meet his eyes. Of course she could stay and listen. Wasn’t that why she got a haircut three days prior, a pedicure during lunch? They waited until one straggling customer left. Sara willed him out the door; every minute that passed would be another minute marking her lateness. It was one of the two days she went to the office, and it wasn’t unusual to stay later than expected; coming home flushed, disheveled, two new records in her bag, that would be unexpected.
Again, he pulled out two stools and they sat close. How could she know where the music stopped and he began? Both seeped into her bloodstream, rushing from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head, an endless current of vitality, electricity. She closed her eyes, like the hi-fi salesman advised, and the music flowed and vibrated. Her heart accelerated like that of a hummingbird. What was it Lana said at dinner one night, during her class’s bird studies? Over 1200 beats per minute? Sara never paid much attention when Ian studied birds in 2nd grade because what a weird subject to study anyway, but there was something about the way Lana recited this fact, with such urgency, that made her take notice.
And then he put his hand on her thigh, and hummingbirds fell from her thoughts, along with brand archetypes and client calls and microwaved leftovers and a son who didn’t seem to need her and a daughter who did but who Sara didn’t know how to help. Her breathing quieted, her heart slowed, and after side A ended, he led her to the back room, where he’d already lain a blanket on the floor.
*
Before Sara can reach the restroom, she must first pass two couples who own brownstones on her block and have kids around the same age. This conversation will require no effort, just some neighbor gossip and then she can escape. A Desperations song flitters back into her head, and she swallows hard, as if this simple act will force the song out of mind, except the swallow gets stuck in her throat, so she loosens the scarf just enough to keep the knot intact but to let the swallow through.
“Hey!” Kai says. “It’s the birthday girl!”
“Welcome to 50!” Steven says with glee.
“Oh my god, Steven,” Susan says, rolling her eyes. “So rude.”
“What?” Steven says. “The invitation literally said, ‘Ring in my semicentennial!’ Is it supposed to be some sort of secret?”
“It’s funny,” Sara says as the song fades out and she can think again, “I originally wrote it as half-centennial, but Kyle insisted the correct term is semicentennial. And, as a 51-year-old, he would know.”
“There’s nothing wrong with 50,” Fanny says. “And you don’t look a day over 40.”
It is meant as a compliment, but Sara is well aware no one felt compelled to say this to Kyle at his 50th. Still, she says, “You’d think otherwise if I skipped my color appointments.”
“Um, hello, we’re all in the same boat here,” Susan says. “Except for these two.” She motions toward the husbands, both of whom still bear a decent amount of hair, most of which is streaked gray.
“The plight of a woman,” says Fanny with an exaggerated sigh and a shake of her auburn mane, the rare redhead in a neighborhood full of chestnut and caramel and the occasional platinum.
“No one says you have to color your hair,” Kai says to her.
“Please,” Fanny says.
Do they notice Sara’s ankle wobble? “Well, nothing says plight of a woman more than treacherous footwear,” she says.
“You wear your newfound height well,” Fanny says.
“Trying.” But now there is a strange lull, so she grabs the lowest hanging fruit. “408. What’s the latest?”
The others launch into chatter about the new owners, the complete gut, the dust and noise. “What a waste,” Susan says. “Didn’t Sylvia redo that kitchen three years ago?”
Sara thinks of her own bathroom renovation, the face in the marble. She knows now it was Max Finn’s face; maybe she knew then too. But how could she brush her teeth, apply moisturizer, strive and thrive and mother with the wreckage of her past staring back at her every day? Her disastrous 20s, the struggle to rise, put one arm in a sleeve, to feel anything other than a blankness so heavy, it was like every molecule in the air had been replaced by invisible weights. These weights hovered over Sara only, her personal dark cloud, a magnetic field that converted particles of despair into currents of apathy. It was The Desperations who got her up in the morning, Max Finn breaking through the numbness, holding her hand as she moved, one step at a time, from bed to bathroom, bathroom to kitchen, kitchen to subway, subway to office.
And then, once she found her footing, crawled her way out of the sludge, she abandoned them. They evoked a time she needed to forget, to become the Sara who gained credibility, admiration, who rose the ranks, who carved and dusted and polished herself into the sort of woman who marries the sort of man like Kyle.
They were set up by a coworker of Sara’s who since moved to Colorado. She couldn’t imagine what she’d share in common with a wealth manager until Kyle remarked, early on, how Sara helped clients figure out who they are, and he helped them figure out who they want to be. The Hero archetype, bringing dreams to fruition, tackling life’s challenges head-on. Except when had he ever been challenged? Kyle, who nursed from the fountain of confidence since day one, whose idea of floundering was sophomore year, when he bleached his hair like Kurt Cobain.
The knot of her scarf has become too loose, so she reaches behind her neck and retightens it, squeezing away Max Finn, only to see his face replaced by Aaron’s.
*
Sometimes he’d have one record waiting for her, sometimes four. They all unlocked a restlessness she didn’t understand, and she’d stay up late, listening to them with her eyes closed.
“And you thought this system would be a waste,” Kyle said lightly, but she sensed something else, hurt maybe, that she’d rather listen to music on the sectional, alone, then come to bed with him, or jealousy even, that she enjoyed it in a way he didn’t.
“You can listen with me,” she said, praying he wouldn’t. “Rise above dad rock. Discover something new.” She played The Desperations’ first album, faster and muddier than their others, an obvious punk influence guiding their sound. She could see Kyle gravitating toward this more than the later titles.
But he exaggerated a shudder. “You do you,” he said before climbing the stairs. On paper, it would read as encouraging, supportive, but his delivery was offhanded. He was, she understood, open to new things, if they were his ideas, his preferences. At some point, or maybe it had always been this way, he’d morphed from the Hero to the Ruler, grasping for control. Maybe he didn’t like observing this new sense of vulnerability in his wife, her sharp edges softened by this foreign music, or maybe he didn’t like how his own stiff layers had begun to peel, revealing a man he didn’t quite recognize.
*
Aquavit Lee’s wife, Jessica, arrives late, the victim of their babysitter’s flightiness. “A foreboding sign,” Jessica says. “But I told Lee one of us should at least get our drink on.” Sara starts to quip that of course it’s the man, but she thinks better of it. Jessica is fun, and Sara appreciates her dedication to maintaining her son’s mohawk, but their conversations lean light, frivolous. Sara wonders why she invited them.
“I just read about this awful hit and run. Second time this year, same corner. Why haven’t they changed the traffic lights yet?”
Her heart beats like a hummingbird again. “You mean—do you mean Aaron?”
“Who’s Aaron?”
Sara shakes her head. “Sorry, I. I read that the owner of a local record store was killed in a hit and run. I’m assuming it’s the same one.”
“Oh, let me check.” Jessica scrolls through her phone. “Here it is. Uh—yes. Aaron Luzzo, owner of Streh-gone? Streh-goh-nee? Records.”
“Stre-GOH-neh,” Sara says. “Italian for wizard. Sorcerer.”
“Oh, you know the store?”
“I spent a semester in Rome,” she says, avoiding the question. But then she hears herself add, “But, yes, I’ve been to the store. A couple times. Seemed like a nice guy.” This is more satisfactory to Jessica, who nods sympathetically and murmurs, “Just awful,” before Sara excuses herself. Stregone, as if she didn’t already understand the alchemy of music, of how Max Finn, The Desperations, could save her when she was sinking, as if she didn’t already know, the second she and Aaron locked eyes, that he wasn’t The Lover archetype, but The Magician, able to spin life’s drudgery into a heap of gold, of majesty.
She walks through the dining room, past the restroom, the narrow bar, and out onto the street. She unties her scarf and removes her shoes and carries them both home. It would be mortifying to run into anyone who matters in this state, but they are all at her party, celebrating her.
The house is empty; Ian and Lana are sleeping over her in-laws on the Upper West Side. She drops her bag, scarf and shoes by the front door and heads straight toward the turntable. She pulls out The Desperations’ final album, the one Aaron played for her the day they met. She would have paid top dollar for another copy; it was yet to get the repressing it warranted, and a near mint copy cost an insane amount, but he insisted she take his. This was when she knew she’d never see him again.
“I don’t want to end this,” he said. “I just—my partner said something feels off, and I’m having a hard time straddling these two worlds. I can’t—”
She smiled her Caregiver smile, channeling her mom energy. She couldn’t imagine Kyle sensing anything like Aaron’s partner. When Kyle wasn’t working, he was researching his next thing, his next fix. Hi-fi didn’t scratch the itch, neither did the La Marzocco GS3 espresso machine that ate up valuable real estate on the counter. He spoke recently of restoring a farmhouse in Litchfield County, a 2.5-hour drive and a money- and time-suck that sounds so outlandish, she wonders who she married and was he always this person? Or was it middle age that birthed a version so unsatisfied, unfulfilled, he couldn’t simply close his eyes and feel the music?
“Of course,” she said to Aaron. “This was never meant to last.”
Neither were The Desperations. Max Finn contained his heroin habit with self-imposed barbed wire long enough to create four albums, but then he got clean, or so he said, and the fluorescent positivity he preached at sobriety’s first bloom rang so false, the band imploded. “The magic is gone,” he declared in an interview, but it was Max Finn who did it, who broke the magic. She’d printed out a photo of him, just so she could rip it up, remnants of the page scattered around her like confetti from a funeral.
The record sounds horrible, fading volume, crackling she hadn’t heard before. It was as if Aaron took the soul of the music with him, and she was left with bones, brittle vinyl devoid of spirit, meaning. Then she remembers the dying tube and turns it off. It dawns on her that Kyle must have tried listening to a record, or how would he have known?
Her phone vibrates. Where are you? No one can find you.
The birthday girl can’t escape unnoticed, she gets this. She must return, explain herself. I needed some air, to wrap my head around 50. I forgot something important at home and had to run back. I missed the kids and did a quick FaceTime. The last one feels good, so she dials her mother-in-law. It is ten, and Ian is asleep, but her mother-in-law looks relieved.
“Lana couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I told her not to bother you, but since you’re here—”
“Mom!” Lana says. Her face, so often distant, unreachable, is bright and alive, so alive Sara touches the screen, thinking her fingers can dip in and brush Lana’s skin. “Are you having fun? Where are you? Are you home? Why aren’t you at your party?”
“I forgot something,” Sara says automatically. “But I found it. I’m headed back now. Are you all right?”
“I’m all right. I think I can sleep now. See you tomorrow!” Lana hands the phone back to her grandmother.
“I think she just missed you,” she says to Sara. They exchange goodbyes, and Sara re-sleeves the record, puts it back with the D’s. She reapplies her sensible gloss, smooths her hair one more time. She rewraps and knots her scarf but changes back into her kitten heels. That would have been the perfect excuse, she thinks as she locks up: she needed to change her shoes. But she’s glad she hadn’t thought of it before talking to her daughter.
*
She walks slowly. Aaron floats into her thoughts. He rode his bike to work every day. Was it instant, did he suffer? This is too painful to consider, and she leans against a lamppost for support. And then in swoops Max Finn to save her once again, gently nudging Aaron out of view. Her mind fills with images of Max Finn rotating at random, grainy, black and white. Max Finn with a cigarette dangling from his mouth; Max Finn on stage, his bangs limp under the hot lights; Max Finn clutching the microphone as if for dear life. A Max Finn flipbook, a Max Finn slideshow, a Max Finn PowerPoint presented to a boardroom of men in ties and women in blazers. “This,” she says to the pharma CEO, “is what it means to be the Outlaw.” She hands him liner notes, plays him The Desperations. There is no use forcing the song out of her head, so she turns up the volume and hums along as she resumes walking.
“Sometimes,” Nick the bassist said in an interview several years after Max Finn’s suicide, “I wonder if we ever even knew him.”
author pic here
Beth Levine ’s writing has appeared in The Bloomin’ Onion and Wanderlust Journal. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two kids and two cats, and is at work on her first novel.
Next ( Shnayjaah Valentine Jeanty) >
< Previous ( William Pei Shih)