No names, p.36
No Names, page 36
The box contains one past. All the cassettes Pete and I made. In his bedroom, at Dreamland, at all the random places—the high school pool, the salt caves. Recordings from even before the No Names, along with those from rehearsals and shows. Then there are the six or seven tapes I made each of the years I lived on the Island. Those tapes are really just an extended and pathetic echo of my time with Pete, even though, unbelievable as it seems, they represent a time lasting more than three times as long as the time I had with him. Maybe I’m assuming too much in thinking Isaac will want any of this. More than likely the No Names were just a blip on the screen of his adolescence. My own adolescent blip continued blipping way too far into adulthood. I was thirty-five and had to move here to the desert before I came to my senses and gave music up. Don’t even listen to it anymore.
Maybe I should enclose a letter? But what could I possibly say after—what is it?—a quarter century? I’d have to explain to Mrs. Lac—or maybe also to Isaac?—that, had I stuck with music, I wouldn’t have survived. Music saved my life at one point, for sure, but it was also killing me. I know it would sound absurd, but the truth is, every note I wrote or played was elegy—for Pete, for John, for Dad—and it occurred to me way late in the game that once you become elegy yourself that means you’re dead. The Island and our Invisible City, those places made me—they are me—but everything was finished and done for me in both. How would I say that gently in a letter without sounding like a self-involved, ungrateful jerk, which I may well be anyway? And how could I tell them that, had I stayed—with or without music—I would have only been in the way? Saying even that would only sound self-important. I’d have been in the way, in general, for sure, but also in the way specifically of what looked to be a great relationship developing between Mrs. Lac and Isaac, and what (although Daniel seemed to be denying it) was going on between him and Isaac. One other thing bothered me. I didn’t want to ever let the doubt of Isaac’s paternity show in any way at all. Didn’t want anyone to even sense that maybe I’d been wrong. Isaac and Mrs. Lac had become family, regardless of genes, and I didn’t want to wreck it.
Daniel and I had pretty much wrecked for each other any ability to have normal relationships with other people. I mean, a couple weeks—occasionally a month—a year spent together in isolation is not a normal relationship. No family, no friends, no coworkers interacting with us. In its own way it was perfect. For me. And that’s the problem. I’m sure Daniel wanted a real relationship. More than likely, though, Pete had already done the wrecking, at least for me. With me gone, I figured Daniel would at least have a fighting chance. Besides, I could no longer remain not only dependent on Daniel but his dependent. Not that there really could have been much pride for me to salvage after those fifteen years. He’d already done way too much for me. I owed him everything. I owe him everything. When he showed up at the Arkadia, it was one of the most powerful and beautiful days of my life. But it was, I felt, a completion, a reckoning, not an opening or a beginning. Same with the concert. I had finished what I needed to do with music, and he made the ending happen perfectly.
Sure, all three of them—Daniel, Isaac, Mrs. Lac—loved me—I have no doubt—but I could not be part of the equation. Simple as that. Sure, since I left, I’ve been lonely at times, but all in all I’ve been okay with my decision. To them, my disappearance probably seemed like an evasion of everything—relationships, career, music—but it was, I swear, necessary. Leaving everyone and everything was, random as it seemed, me taking a whack at making my own life, at shaping my future.
Would they even believe me if I told them that my leaving after the concert wasn’t premeditated? Was spontaneous? It started with the sudden and vague idea of finding Mom. I so wished she’d been there to hear the concert. Sentimental, I know. The laundress’s son playing the university’s concert hall! More than that, since I was finally back in the States, I wanted to at least say something to her in person about Dad, about his life and death, about my love for him, wanted to show her I could start acting like a real human being. So, bam! The instant I walked out of the concert hall, I felt a deep need to head to Vegas to find her. That she was nowhere to be found once I got there, hit me hard. As the girls said, she probably remarried, changed her name. I checked a bunch of real estate offices, looking for her. No luck. There are like hundreds of realtors in that town. Even went up and down the Strip, checking casinos. Don’t know why, but I could easily picture Mom as a blackjack dealer. Every few months I still drive up to Vegas for the weekend in hopes of finding her. I still even go by a few real estate offices, a casino or two. It was, and is, a misplaced—and years and years belated—sense of filial piety and duty.
If everyone from back then could see me now, they’d probably think how sad, how pathetic. Sometimes on one of my Vegas trips I’ll eat at a real restaurant instead of fast food and, depending on my mood, stop in at a bar afterwards. In my non-initiator way, I might even meet someone to spend some time with, though usually nothing happens. Trouble with Vegas is, a lot of times there’s money involved in finding company. In a way, it’s pretty hilarious. The first years going there, people would on occasion offer me money, but of late they want money from me. The Two Ages of Man, I suppose.
Sending this package off is starting to make me think I’d kind of like to see Mrs. Lac and Isaac. Daniel too. A scary thought. Also makes me wonder if maybe I’d have headed back to Hallein had the big auto show not been going on when I first arrived in Vegas. Wouldn’t have wound up here, that’s for sure. One conversation changed everything. Got talking to Ashkii at the auto show and that was that. I thought it was kind of funny he and others called themselves “automotive artists” when back in Hallein we used to say “car painters.” His booth looked impressive, though—amazing custom colors and finishes—so maybe “artist” fits. Next thing I know he’s offering me a job based on my body shop experience from when I was a teenager. That, and my bizarre knowledge and love of auto paint. Just like that, life torqued radically. Only now do I understand how crazy it would seem to anyone else. It was the day after I told him sure, I’d join his shop, that I realized the job wasn’t in Vegas. Not even nearby. But in the kind of small town I never dreamed I’d live. Maybe Mrs. Lac would see this as ironic, me winding up back where I started from—in a body shop—the very place I’d worried about being stuck in when I was a kid.
But I should feel lucky, and mostly I do. Like a messenger from some twisted god, Ashkii appeared and took me—this loser going nowhere—under his wing and brought me to the middle of a real nowhere. A little garage but due to his amazing talent people came from everywhere. They ventured all the way here, to the middle of the desert, from Vegas, LA, Dallas, and lots of other places, for “the Navajo,” as they called him. When he brought me on, I had no idea he was looking for someone to take over the business. After three years, he turned the whole show over to me and retired. That sealed my fate. People continued coming, and from even farther away. And now it’s finally time to leave. Once again, a strange kind of luck. I’d never thought of leaving here until Auto Louvre in LA offered me good money to buy me out. I’m bringing my customers to LA. The plan is to work for them a couple years, then retire.
The work’s been good. It was only when Ashkii proposed me taking over the shop—now, unbelievably, more than twenty years ago—that I learned how much the gruff old guy appreciated my work. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but after my first solo job—a snakeskin design for an ’81 Camaro—he claimed he knew I was the guy. “You don’t,” he told me those three years later, “just paint fire—you know, like pictures of flames—with you, that car becomes fire! You don’t just paint the sky, with clouds and birds—that car becomes sky. I never been to the ocean—seen plenty of pictures—but I wanted you to paint my Monte Carlo SS so I could be at the ocean, and dammit, you did! That’s what I wanted, me driving around the desert in the ocean.”
I was glad to hear he liked my work, though style’s nothing I’d ever really thought about. It’s just how I see things, how I mix the paint. Enough people like Ashkii thought what I did was cool enough, though, so I’ve wound up making decent money all these years. And he treated me decent. He and his wife would have me over to their place for Sunday dinners, holidays, barbecues, and such.
“When I die, Mike,” Ashkii told me, “I want you to do the hearse up like heaven or hell. Your choice!” He laughed.
I’d rather write to Mrs. Lac and Isaac about painting cars than about the past because at least paint is something I know. Which is pretty funny. And sad. And I’d definitely rather write to them about painting cars than my personal life because there is none. Which is even funnier. Could tell them how I lose myself in metal flakes, pearl paint, candy paint, neon paint, thermochromic paint, chameleon paint, and holographics. And how there are all sorts of different spray guns, brushes, stencils, etc. to consider for each project. I still won’t call it art, but it’s intricate enough work that it keeps me away from myself for ten, twelve, sometimes fifteen or sixteen hours a day. It’s all about the customer, what they desire. Not about me.
Getting rid of stuff for the move to LA is cleansing. Even though I’ve tried to avoid accumulating a past for a quarter century, it somehow does accumulate, it does. The present has a funny way of becoming the past.
I tape the box up with duct tape, sealing every seam double, then address it from memory.
Bast disappears out the window, like smoke.
JULY 2018, MARIKO
Hopping off the rocking postal ferry, Aiko and Miyo screech like gulls at the sight of a white cat dashing up the path. They chase after it. The cat is a new addition since last summer. Mice managed to get onto the Island with one or another delivery of supplies, so Daniel had Cousin Abraham bring a mouser over to hunt them down. But only until the pests are gone. The sheep, the dogs, and, I suppose, us should be the only mammals on the Island, because, Daniel explained, once the mice are gone the cat would start killing nesting seabirds and their chicks.
Daniel has paid the shipmate to bring the luggage up to the house. Daniel and Isaac will arrive by the First Movement next week. Only because nowadays there is cellphone and internet service, as well as an emergency helicopter on the main island, do they allow me to come here alone with the girls. They underestimate my capabilities. They forget I survived the War as well as the crime wave during my last years in Hallein. This is my second summer, and there is no place on earth I would rather be than here with my girls and their fathers.
Aiko cries out from above, “If we catch him, may we bring him home at the end of summer?” Miyo runs back to me, begging, “Oh, please, Hiibachan!”
I laugh. “You can’t simply have any cat you see! It belongs to Cousin Abraham. We are only borrowing it.”
Aiko stops and turns back toward me. “Then may we please get our own?”
She is eight, old enough to care for a pet. I answer, trying not to smile, “That’s up to your fathers, girls.”
“You always say that!” Miyo pouts.
“First one in the house gets first pick of pastries!” I call out, and they run through the door. We made it to a few shops, including the bakery, for a couple of things between our ship docking in Tórshavn and the postal ferry departing for here. Otherwise, Abraham has already brought all the supplies we will need.
When I get to the door, the girls are already swooping around the rooms, making familiar once again this place where they’ve spent a good part of every summer of their lives.
I motion the shipmate to leave the suitcases inside the door. I thank him, in Færoese, tip him, and tell him good-bye, also in his language. These are among the phrases I have learned on my language app.
Inside the door sits a package—a rather large cardboard box—with some miscellaneous envelopes resting on top of it. Very little mail arrives here over the year, and anything deemed important Abraham forwards to Daniel in Copenhagen. I kneel down for a closer look. The surface is tattooed with a variety of postage stamps and ink stamps. It is addressed to Daniel and comes from the States. The postmark reads Blindeye, AZ. I place the pastry box on the larger box, then carry them over to the kitchen counter.
While the girls set plates and cups on the coffee table, I bring the suitcases to the bedroom the three of us share. Then, returning to the kitchen, I untie the pastry box and slide the pink and yellow teacakes onto the fluted, blue-and-white china cake stand. I pour chocolate milk into the crystal pitcher the girls love—a very modern one, with fanciful geese etched in the design—place everything on a wooden tray, and carry it in to them.
They are discussing the motion picture A Wrinkle in Time as they nibble their cakes. Aiko has read the book and, with great authority, deems the original far superior. Her younger sister disagrees, despite the fact she has yet to read the book. The ocean out the window is lively with waves and bright. After finishing the cakes, the girls head out to fulfill their great desire to catch a lamb to hold and pet.
In the kitchen sink, I gut the small cod Cousin Abraham caught yesterday and kindly put in the refrigerator. Such a good man. I slice off the fish’s plump cheeks, setting them aside to fry up as a late-night delicacy for myself after the girls are asleep. From the window, I see that Miyo has indeed caught a lamb! Last year, no matter how much the girls schemed, the lambs eluded them. She sits on a stone, the little creature curled in her lap. Aiko stands above her, hand extended downward so the lamb is able to suck her thumb. The scene warms me. I grab my phone from the counter and take a picture. I send it to their mother Tomoko in San Francisco and ask her to please show it to her grandmother. Cousin Keiko still refuses to get a smartphone or a computer! I’m not sure how, in this day and age, she can run her jewelry shop without one or the other.
As I fillet the fish, I cannot stop thinking about the box from Arizona. After the cod is prepared for cooking and the potatoes peeled and set in a pot of salted water, I rinse my hands in the cold mountain water, dry them on the checked apron, and go look at the stamps on the box again, this time more closely. Oddly, there are several other postmarks, including two from Hallein, months apart. There is no return address. Daniel’s name and this address—which is simply the name of this island and Færoes—are written with a Sharpie on a large index card taped to the box. I peel up the edge of the card to discover underneath are my name and address on Geranium Avenue written in the same hand! Stamped next to it: ADDRESS UNKNOWN. I don’t know why that startles me so, but it does. Another, later stamp reads: NO RETURN ADDRESS. One, with an even later date, seems even more ominous: Send to Postal Reclamation Center, Atlanta, GA. From postmark to postmark, it seems to have taken the box nearly seven months to have arrived here. It is a miracle that it made it at all. Even after all these years, it must be, I am quite certain, from Mike. Oh, Mike!
After dinner, the girls and I Skype their fathers, to let them know we have made it safe and sound. The boys chat and laugh with the girls. When I mention the box, and that it might be from Mike, Isaac’s face lights up. “Go ahead, open it!” He means right away. Daniel nods cautiously.
The girls carry on the conversation while I go and retrieve the box from the kitchen, along with a sharp knife. In front of the camera, I slice the cardboard open hesitantly, carefully. I then remove layers of crumpled newspaper, dated from last year, spread on top.
“What’s in it?” Isaac is so eager. He puts his eyeglasses on and leans in closer, as if the space isn’t virtual.
Underneath, packed neatly, are dozens of cassette tapes and compact disks, each one labeled in jagged handwriting, with a date.
“Music,” I answer, holding up a few samples for them to see, “from Mike.”
“Holy …” Isaac stops himself from swearing in front of the girls.
Daniel’s pale eyes grow wide. He swallows hard.
“Who’s Mike again?” Miyo asks.
Aiko is first to answer, “He was grandfather’s boyfriend.”
“Best friends forever!” Isaac says with a sly grin.
“Yes,” I say, “and he lived with us back in Hallein, when they were in high school, when they started their band.” Aiko, and to a lesser extent Miyo, are familiar with swaths of the story, and though they sometimes forget, they basically know who’s who.
“When do we get to meet him?” Miyo wonders.
This time it’s Daniel who answers. “Maybe someday. But you can probably meet him through his music. That says a lot about a person, their music.”
Isaac urges me to play something from the box. Though the old stereo here does have a cassette player, I feign helplessness, and oh my goodness I wouldn’t know where to begin with all these tapes and CDS. We might just have to wait until they arrive.
After the boys disappear into the ether, I tuck the girls in and read to them from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” It is quite different, they notice, from the Disney picture. “More intense,” says Aiko. Yes, more intense, yet somehow the girls still manage to drift off to sleep right in the middle of the painful transformation of the mermaid’s fishtail into human legs.
I sit on the edge of the bed the girls share, staring out the window, immersed in the sound of wind and ocean. The sky and water are still light—nearly white—though it’s past ten. On this blankness before me, memories begin etching themselves too clearly. Peter and Mike at Geranium Avenue doing all the ordinary things of this world. I see them making cold-cut sandwiches while standing in front of the open refrigerator, cleaning the slimy black leaves out of the eavestroughs for me, slouching on the sofa together watching a football game, playing music in their room and in the garden, relishing a T-bone steak hot off the hibachi. But more powerful still, a lexicon of their expressions and gestures—some so simple—a smile of contentment, a blink of disbelief. Others go uncategorized, coming at moments where one of them appears deep in thought or daydream. So many memories. Surely, Mike must have often experienced something similar, perhaps sitting right here staring out this very same window, all those years he lived in this house. After the initial pain subsides, the memories become less distressing. Mike has his music, and I have to believe that it was in the music he placed and shaped his memories.
