Page 77 of Goode Vibrations
I shrugged. “Yeah, I know that…now. But then, it was all just too tangled up. The easiest way through it for me was to put music behind me.” I blamed the sting in my eyes on the wind and the sea spray. “There were other reasons, too, things I’ve come to figure out since. I was never given a choice about the fiddle. I’m a Sylvain, and Sylvains play the fiddle. But he was never home, so the teaching fell to Mum, who didn’t play. She got me lessons in Christchurch, which I hated. But I just…I couldn’t bear the thought of Dad coming home and him asking me what I’ve learned and not having shit to show him. It was the only way I knew to get his attention, to make him proud of me. I think…I think I always thought, deep down, that if I got good enough, maybe he’d stay. Or, stay longer.” Blink hard, breathe deep. “Never worked. And then Mum died and Dad was all I had, and since I’d been playing since I was old enough to hold a kid-sized fiddle, meaning four or five, it was expected that when I was on the road with Dad and the guys, that I’d play. It was never discussed, just expected. Get on stage and play. And when there’s a pub full of half-pissed adults watching you, you don’t dare freeze up. You don’t dare embarrass your dad or his mates. Once a year on Christmas, the whole band would get together, so I knew them all too. Sometimes in the summer between gigs they’d all stop off in Christchurch and they’d have a great old piss up.”
“You never had a choice.”
“That’s why I ended up in photography, even though my talent and experience and training is actually more in the music world. There’s enough folks out there who know my dad, the guys, the band, even me to a small degree, that I could get a gig fiddling. But I chose photography, because I had the freedom tochooseit. And I put music aside because it was…it never felt like mine. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the fiddle, and I still play sometimes. Alone, off in the middle of nowhere, when there’s no one listening and no one watching, just because I guess it’s in my blood.” I sighed. “Today was the first time I’ve played with anyone or in front of anyone since Dad died, actually, except for you at the lake, and I think playing for you is the only reason I was able to play today.”
“How’s it feel?” she asked.
A shake of my head. “Dunno, really. Good, and painful at the same time.”
“You know, my…I’m not going to say in-laws. The family, the big group of people we’re going to be with…I don’t know how to quantify their relation to me. Mom’s boyfriend’s family. Mom’s adopted family? Not adopted like legally, more emotionally…” she laughed. “Whatever. A lot of them are musicians.”
I growled. “Great. I’m going to be expected to play.”
She shook her head, rested a hand on my arm. “No, that’s why I’m letting you know. I don’t want you to feel obligated. Mom has told me several times that jam sessions just happen, a lot. So if you ever feel like joining, you can. But I’m not going to put it out there that you’re a musician.”
I laughed, a strange, bitter, confused sound. “Musician. I’ve never claimed that title.”
“Well, you are, and an incredible one.”
“You like it when I play.” It wasn’t a question, more of a leading statement, I guess.
“So much. It’s…it’s beautiful, watching you play. You light up, Errol. You change. I don’t know how to put it. It brings something alive in you, brings out this other part of you. But I understand that it’s all tangled up in a lot of pain, so I’ll never make a big deal out of it. You have to choose for yourself the role music plays in your life.”
I held her hand. “Thank you, Poppy.” I hated the constant onslaught of strong, piercing emotions that was always boiling under the surface now—now that I’d let them out, brought them up, opened the portcullis of the tower holding all the crusty, jagged wounds and pain and ghosts inside. “For seeing me.”
She only squeezed my hand, and gave me space to get some kind of a handle on this roiling crush of emotion.
“How do other people deal with feeling this much, all the time?” I asked, half laughing.
She snickered. “I think most people don’t bury and suppress as much as we have, for as long as we have.”
“Oh.”
“It kind of sucks, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t mean to sound sexist or anything, but women are expected to and allowed to be all emotional. If you burst out crying in the middle of a conversation, so what? It’s normal. At worst, they might figure you’re on your period or something. I know, I know, you don’t have to say it. Like I said, I’m not trying to sound like a sexist asshole. But for men, we’re allowed anger and masculine stuff like that. Appreciation of natural beauty. Lust, and even love, I guess, but that’s a confusing one. Because we have to be macho about being in love. We can’t be all soft and weak about it. That’s the unspoken part of it all.”
She held my hand, turned to face me, brushed fingers through my hair, across my forehead and over my temple. “Well I reject that for you. Letting yourself feel emotions isn’t weakness. Even the soft sappy stuff, like missing your mom and dad, or feeling, like, tender or whatever toward me. It’s not weak and it doesn’t make you soft. And you know what? You can be soft and strong at the same time. Like a spiderweb, you know? Soft and thin and silky and flexible, but one of the strongest substances on earth. I’m not saying be all weepy all the time, but when it comes up, let it happen.”
“I’m not going to sit here and have a cry in public on a fucking ferry, Poppy,” I said, growling a sarcastic laugh. “Not happening.”
She sighed. “I know. I wouldn’t either, honestly. But when we’re alone, you don’t have to, like, hide it, or feel embarrassed about it, or…or whatever. You can just let it out and let me see it, let me have that part of you, and just trust that I still know the strong, tough, capable you also.”
I nodded. “I hear what you’re saying, Poppy, and I appreciate it. All I can tell you is that I’ll try. It’s a lot of conditioning to overcome, though.”
“Believe me, I understand that.”
We were quiet, lost in our own thoughts as Ketchikan approached off the bow. Seagulls wheeled and called, and pine-carpeted hills rose on all sides. It was a day somewhere between cloudy and sunny, patches of blue and moments of brilliant sunlight, and leaden gray clouds scudding low and mixing with puffy white ones soaring higher up. I spotted an eagle tilting on a wingtip off in the distance, and something big splashed in the water near the shoreline.
“Beautiful country, here,” I said.
Poppy nodded. “Sure is.” She seemed…hesitant about something. “I see why Mom settled here.”
“You’ve never been?”
She shook her head. “No. First time visiting her since she moved up here a few years ago.” She chewed on the inside of her lip. “I’d been accepted to Columbia at sixteen, not quite seventeen—I was always a motivated student, mainly because the faster I got done with bullshit school, the more time I had to focus on art. So I crushed through high school, skipped several grades, took some dual enrollment classes at the community college. Whatever. I was shy of seventeen and acting all eager to get to Columbia, move out on my own to big bad New York City. I thought I’d be like Charlie, my oldest sister. She has not one, but two Ivy League degrees.”
“No shit.”