Music, like smell, provides some of the strongest sensory memory there is. It's a powerful drug, a miracle healer, and a good friend.
But no matter how much you love that song, the jukebox eventually demands another quarter.
But no matter how much you love that song, the jukebox eventually demands another quarter.
That Song by J.J. Sinisi
 |
 |
That song is playing at night
when I get in the car and crank the engine and blow on my hands and do all the
things to get the chill out. The song doesn’t help. It quite honestly makes it
worse, but there are other things I can do to stay warm. So for now, I listen
to the jumping guitar and slow melody and I think about you.
The next day I dig out my gun
from above the closet, still in a shoe box, still hidden from Hank even though
he moved out eight years ago. I head to the hospital, the tune chiming between
my ears. The halls are asleep and before you wake up I stand by your bed and
watch you sleep. I know you used to say that was creepy, but I don’t think you
meant it like that.
“Hey Tiger,” you say through
eyes caked with snots and so many dried tears. If I weren’t me and you weren’t
you, I would have no idea what you just said. But we are ourselves, at least
for now.
I dab your lips with a damp
cloth. You attempt to smack my hand away but your coordination has failed.
“I heard that song on the
radio last night.”
“Yea?” after a struggle.
“Yea. I don’t think it’s mine
anymore. I think it’s time for me to give it back.”
“It was the only thing,” you
pause, words strangled. I’ve stopped asking myself if I had found you earlier
would things be different. If I hadn’t had another, and another, and one more for
the road, because Jimmy always has one for the road, if I would have seen you
fall, seen the stroke happen and been able to do more than just the rough
calculation that you’d been down for at least three hours.
I hold your limp hand. The
doctor walks in. He is younger than both of us and his glasses look like
fashion accessories.
“We’re early today, Jimmy.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
He flips some charts, makes
some notes, doesn’t look at his patient, doesn’t look at my wife.
“To be expected.”
“She told me last night she’s
in a lot of pain still.”
He glances up through those
designer metal frames, back down at his clipboard.
“Her Morphine is already
maxed out. Can’t do much more than that. She’ll just have to stay comfortable.”
I don’t respond. I don’t tell
him you’ve never been comfortable with anything in your life.
It’s six hours later and I’m
sitting at Tommy’s. There’s no one there, just me and Tommy and a jukebox and
an empty bar full of my regrets.
“How is she?”
“Barely talks. Can’t move. Trouble
breathing without the tubes.”
“Shit.” Tommy rubs a glass. I
don’t know if it’s dirty or if this is the secret source of a bartender’s divine
spirit of conversation, summoned like a genie in a bottle. “Doctor’s say it’ll
get better?”
“Not likely, no. She was out
too long.”
He finishes the glass.
Doesn’t say anything.
I swill my beer and he pours
another. I shotgun it. Another. He’s long since stopped asking me and my tab
bridges weeks. He gets a little every Tuesday when I get paid. But I haven’t
driven the tow-truck since she went down. Won’t matter much after tonight.
Somewhere through my fourth
that song pops on the juke’s auto-play.
“Well shit.”
He doesn’t respond. He’s
losing interest.
I kill the fourth. Sit and
wait for Tommy to stop wrangling eyes with me and pour my fifth. I kill half;
wipe my mouth with a dirty sleeve.
“After her second stint in
rehab, I told her to get the fuck out. To leave me, leave Hank. Told her I
never wanted to see her again.”
Tommy rested his hands on the
bar, leaned in, the other classic bartender pose. I’m convinced he never hears
a word, just plays through the script. But I guess that’s what we’re all doing.
“What addictions do to a
family.” I shake my head, let the song fill in the blanks, drink my beer and
watch the sounds vibrate the bubbles. “Anyway, she heard this song and gave it
to me. I took her back a few weeks later. That was eight years ago. I’m
supposed to think of her when I hear it.”
“Do you?” A young couple
walks in and sits down. He hands them a pair of menus. The bar will come to
life now. He will move on. We all move on.
I tap the wood, slide my
empty glass across.
“Well?” he asks, hands still
on the menus.
“Nope. It just reminds me of her
broken. So I told her this morning I’d give it back to her.”
“That’s cold shit, Jimmy.”
“I’ll see ya’ when I see ya’
Tommy.”
Back in my car I hold the
steering wheel, let the alcohol wave in front of my eyes. I click through every
station, but the song is gone. I scan and scan and absent those sounds, I
settle on static, a whitewashing haze blocking the space I can’t reach.
I go home and call Hank. I
don’t tell him that I love him because that’s not what sons need to hear from
fathers. But I tell him I’m proud of him, even though I’m not, and his mother
isn’t going to get better. He says he understands and will take the next flight
home. I tell him not to rush.
The gun hasn’t been fired in
ages, but it’s okay if it doesn’t work when I need it to. That’s what our
marriage was like. It just has to look like what it is.
I finish a sixer before
driving back. The hospital is nearly as empty as this morning. I show the night
nurse the piece and tell her to call the doctor.
His eyes are bloodshot beneath
the sleek glasses. I give him my ultimatum, right there in the hall, and I know
he’ll do it. I know he’ll look at my gray beard, my loose skin, at the
fragility of life and he’ll take his Hippocratic Oath and bury it next to all
his other regrets.
We walk to your room and you’re
sleeping. I want to kiss you but don’t. I cock the hammer and put it next to
his temple, make sure he doesn’t get cold feet.
Little tears drip. He loads
the syringe and doesn’t wait for me to ask again. The needle whistles as he
depresses the plunger and I pretend it’s the closing note, of that song, of our
life. You take a quick breath and fall silent. I put the gun to my chin and
pull the trigger, but it misfires. He doesn’t do anything. He lets me try again
and again, but it never works. Everything is broken.
