Page 65 of Goode Vibrations
“And yeah, I’d run into Jerry in a hotel bar not long before the band broke up, and he’d said I needed more experience, a broader portfolio, and gave me his card. I knocked about Europe basically just getting distance from Dad dying, and started focusing on really learning to take artistic level photos. Finally, I felt I had something to show him, and we met up in London, and that’s when what I told you earlier happened. He pulled strings and got a barely educated kid, not even twenty, on the staff ofNational Geographicas an adventure photographer. Out of duty to Mom, yes, but I think also because he saw himself in me. He’d lost his own parents young, and had gotten his own break in photojournalism as a war correspondent in Vietnam. So yeah, I think he saw me as a chance to sort of pay back the breaks he’d gotten as a young man. Take care of someone he saw as a lot like himself. More’s the luck for me.”
“And the rest is history?”
He nodded. “And now you know. I’ve never talked about any of that, not since it happened. Jerry was at Mom’s funeral, of course, but it was only the band at Dad’s. I’ve never talked about Mum dying, about taking care of her. Dad, the overdose, none of it.”
“Never?”
He shook his head. “Who would I talk to about it? I work alone, mostly. I send in the photos and Jerry takes care of putting an article to it. Sometimes I’ll work with a writer to create a specific piece, but usually it’s just me. I’ve never had any close mates. I call Jonesey once in a while, check in with him. He’s married, now, living on a sheep farm in the English countryside. Women? Never saw the point in sharing that shit with them. Women have always just been…for fun. For a bit of companionship. Except Leslie, but even she couldn’t get me to share that shit.”
“Who’s Leslie?”
He laughed. “Closest thing I’ve ever allowed to…” He pivoted, waved between him and me. “To whatever the fuck this is.” A shake of his head, disbelief and amazement and confusion and pain conflicting his expression. “I lived with her for six months in Perth. I was doing a long-term piece on Aborigine life, so I’d take day trips, weekend trips, sometimes a week or two at a time out into the bush researching and shooting. Leslie was…comforting. And comfortable. But she wanted me to share, to open up, to be all…”
“Gushy?” I suggested.
“Yeah. You get it.”
“Oh boy, do I get it.”
“I just couldn’t. I cared about her, but I just…I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.”
“It feels selfish, in a way,” I said. “To put that kind of burden on someone.”
He nodded, sighing in relief. “Exactly. It’s too much for most people.”
“Especially if they’ve never lost anyone. That kind of pain is very lonely.”
“She was steady and stable, sweet, kind, affectionate, totally vanilla. Worst thing she’d ever experienced was some secondary school bullying about her weight.”
“Not the same.”
“Not making light of it, because I guess it was pretty bad. She struggled with it, even when I was with her, years out of school. She’d lost a lot of weight but still had trouble seeing herself as beautiful. Which she was, very. So, I’m not saying her pain was less than mine. But it’s just…”
“Not the same.”
“No.” He went back to the fire, added a couple larger sticks to brighten it back up.
I sat in the sand beside him. “Errol…” I fought with myself over how to ask the question. “Why? Why me? Why now? Why go back for me, why look for me? Why tell me all this?”
He poked at the fire, adjusting the sticks. “I don’t know, Poppy. Truly I don’t. I just know I got about two hours away from the hotel and realized…” He swallowed hard. “Realized it just…it wasn’t the same.”
“What wasn’t?” I asked, my voice not quite a whisper.
“Driving. Being in the van. The road.” A long, boiling pause. “Me.”
I’d been ignoring my emotions all day. Fighting them. Focusing on my feet taking one step after another, and wishing I had something strong to drink. Then I’d been in the semi with Marty and he was a nonstop font of rambling conversation about everything from politics to raising his daughters to the crazy shit he’d seen as a trucker, and he’d made it easy to push things away.
“You, how?”
He shook his head. “Pop, I…”
“Errol, you can’t hunt me down and throw your life story at me and open up my own fucking bullshit wounds, and not tell me why.”
“I don’t fucking know!” He shot to his feet, paced away. “Okay? I don’t fuckingknowwhy. I just couldn’t go another mile. The van was fucking empty. Music was pointless. Even when I stopped and got these great shots of a ghost town, it wasn’t the same.” He pivoted to stand staring down at me—glaring, more accurately. Seething. “It wasn’t the fucking same without you, Poppy. I can’t explain it beyond that. I just know that that moment in the hotel room, before we went separate directions. It was a moment where we could have…done something different than we’re both used to doing. I run, you run. We’re runners, Poppy. Someone threatens to get close, to get inside, to get under our walls, threatens to understand our pain, and we run. I’d rather jump out of a fucking airplane than talk about Mum dying, about watching her die, about…about how she’d cry in her sleep…” He turned away, wiping his face. “How I’d hold her and beg her to stop crying. How do you fucking talk about that? Why bother in the first place? So the other person can feel sorry for me? Fuck no. No thanks, and piss off. And yet with you, there’s something else.”
He turned back. Crouched in front of me, eyes damp. “I threw my life story at you, yes. I shared my shit with you. Shared the sad bits. Because…because I don’t have a choice. I had to find you, had to…to figure what this connection is, between us. What it means. Because it’s real, Poppy. What it is, I don’t fucking know. But it’s there and I know you know it.”
“You want mine, don’t you.” It was a question, but came out as a statement.