My mother the rose turns the music down

Trying just to tell the story.

This is the story that came before I came here.  This is the book I wanted to close.

It's easier for me to write sometimes when I have music on.  It's like the sound drowns out everything I don't want to think about and lets me just write what I need to.  I'm listening to some strange stuff right now that Cam brought home from work.  A local group, women's voices.  Very pretty and very angry.

I listen to music with headphones on even when nobody's around to not want to hear it.  I always have.

When I hear that one song that just clicks for me, I want to get to know it.  I listen to it again and again, and really loudly. I know you're not supposed to, especially with headphones on.  You could damage your hearing, you'll be deaf by the time you're thirty, okay, okay; but if it's not going right through you, it's not music.  It's just background noise.

I could be dead by the time I'm thirty, too, and then what good will all that pristinely preserved hearing do me?

The first few times I listen to a song, I can barely understand the words.  I'm just listening to how the whole thing sounds. Then I start hearing, bit by bit, what's being said.

That must be what it's like before we learn to talk -- before we learn what language is at all. All those spoken sounds falling at us gently like balloons, and we just smile and reach up our hands for more.

Music has colors and shapes, but each note moves so quickly that it's gone almost before you can see it.  That's another reason I need to relisten to one song so much.  I want to see what it looks like.  It ripples by like water and all I know is that something was there and I want it back again.

I wouldn't want to be able to stop it long enough to really get a clear look.  That would be like killing a butterfly so I could stare at the pattern on its wings.  

I don't remember what music I was listening to that afternoon.  I remember the song seemed like a lot of tiny arcs caught inside one great one, all silver and crimson.  

Whoever was singing was saying exactly what needed to be said, and I was happy to hear it. It was one of those songs that feels like it'll never wear out no matter how many times you play it.

The sun was piercing through a gap between my bedroom curtains at that angle that always looked like a celebration.  Probably because it only looked that way in the late afternoon, when I was safely home from school and wouldn't have to think about going back until the next day at least.

I sort of knew my mother had come home, but it wasn't something I was particularly thinking about.  I knew she was downstairs, just as I figured she knew I was upstairs.  

When I was younger, when my mother or father or I came home, we'd check in with whoever was already there.  If you were the first one home, you were supposed to leave a note.  

Sometimes my mother would pick a rose instead and leave it on the table.  That was her name, so she got to use it as her signature. You could tell how long she'd been waiting for you by how much it had wilted.  

I used to save those roses.  I dried them so they wouldn't rot.  I'd never pick the roses from the garden -- she didn't like anyone else to touch them -- but I could keep one if she'd already taken it.

On the rare occasions that my father got home before either of us, he would leave one of his business cards.  I never knew if we were supposed to be his clients, or if it was some quaint Victorian leave-your-card-for-the-ladies-of-the-house gesture.

I usually drew a picture, of something from whatever I was reading or something we'd learned about in school.  Food, if I was hungry. Something I really wished they'd buy me, if there was a holiday coming up.

Whoever got home and found a note was supposed to go and find the person who'd left it; check in with them, talk to them for a minute.  My mother said that was how civilized people behaved.  You could even just say hello, but you had to say something.

Lately, we hadn't been doing that any more.  My mother would get home from work and just go about her business, like she had roommates rather than a family.  My father had been staying later and later at work; a lot of the time I'd be in bed by the time he got home.

They still talked to each other, but they talked at me rather than with me.

I was too afraid to ask what had changed and why, so I waited and hoped for it to change back.

That day I had some reading I was supposed to do, and some reading I wanted to do.  I was putting it off just a little longer.

Sometimes I read while I'm listening to music.  It makes it more intense.  But it has to be a book I've read a million times before, and the song has to be just the right one.  

Today I was just listening.  It was all I could do to soak in the sound.

There's plenty of music I like; but there are some songs that make me fly.  I don't even know why one song will strike me as that much better than another.  Maybe it's not even the music itself, or all by itself.  I was happy that day, I know that.  No reason; I just was.  And I was ready to be made happier.  So maybe the song had stopped by at just the right time.

Every time I played it I turned it up a little.  I really wouldn't have been surprised to open my eyes and find myself nose to nose with the ceiling.

There was a banging noise that didn't have anything to do with drums.  Jagged and angry.  And my name being shouted.

"Will you please turn that damned music down!"

My mother at the door. Which was still closed, fortunately.

I pushed "stop" and sat frozen, holding my breath.

"Thank you."  A pause, as if for an answer.  I didn't say anything, and she went on.  "Please try to remember that you aren't the only person who lives here.  Not all of us share your taste in music."  That last word pronounced very sarcastically, as if music was the last word she'd use to describe what I listened to.

I didn't answer, and there was the sound of her footsteps moving deliberately down the stairs.

When I could move again, I pulled my headphones off and looked at them.

They'd been on the whole time.  Plugged in. There was no other way for sound to get out of the player.

No one else should have been able to hear it at all, unless they were standing in the same room and heard that horrible hissing sound that other people's headphones playing other people's music give off.  And even that wouldn't be so loud that somebody downstairs would come storming up demanding not to have to hear that hideous din any more.

I knew the answer, of course, and it had to do with why they'd been avoiding me so much.  

It was coming from me. It was me.

The music had been pouring through me, and I let it.  I sent it.  

I should have kept it to myself, but I didn't.  Because if I sat and concentrated on making sure that no one else could hear it, that was admitting that there was something I could do that I shouldn't have been able to.  

I didn't need speakers to make the world hear music.  I didn't even have to open my mouth to talk.  

I wondered how long it had been since I really had talked.

No more styrofoam strawberries

Cam has all this great music, groups I never would have even heard of.  He knows how to put himself in the way of it.  He brings a lot home from his work.

Once a few days after I came here, Cam went out early and brought back some strawberries, fresh, from the farmers' market.  I didn't like strawberries much, but I wasn't going to say that to someone who went out first thing in the morning to buy me food.  So I tried one.

I hadn't realized until right then that the reason I didn't like strawberries was that I'd never been given one worth eating before.  These were like a whole different species.

"They're called Brown Sugar," Cam said, pleased at my expression.  "All the farmers have different names for their fruit."

I'd been eating plastic all my life, and after that I couldn't go back to it.  Once you have a piece of good bread or real fruit, you can't go back to bubble wrap.

It was the same with the music he brought to me.  I thought I'd listened to pretty decent stuff, and some of it still sounded all right.  I'm not a snob or a purist or anything.  I don't know enough about music to be able to judge like that, and I don't want to judge anyway.  Music is hard enough to make, and if a piece gives someone pleasure, I'm not going to try to talk him out of it.

But now I just can't stand anything that sounds canned.  It sounds like that ravioli in a tin tastes.  A little off.  Fake.  Too smooth -- there's no body to it.

Cam's got an even lower tolerance.  If something comes on the radio that sounds just a little too pop for him, he'll get this pained look on his face, like he needs to go to the dentist or something. "Oh, my favorite," he says.  "Boys In The Sync."

The story ends, the story begins

That night we met, Cam asked me if I needed a place to stay.  "I've got plenty of room," he said.

"No strings attached," he said when I looked at him.

I was so tired, and that was why I didn't say yes right away.  I didn't know if I was thinking straight.  I felt like there must be something I wasn't seeing.

I felt like Cam was safe and kind and his offer was exactly what he said it was.

I guess it sounds crazy to say you'll go and live with someone you've just met.

But the fact that I needed somewhere to go so badly, and why, wasn't exactly a scene from Planet Sanity either.

Do you live by yourself?

"Yes."

I'm allergic to dogs.  Also afraid of them, but he didn't need to know that.

"No pets, no smoking, no loud music after 10:00 PM."

I like loud music.

He laughed. "I made that one up, actually.  I only have one neighbor, and she's partly deaf."  He looked at me.  "Will you come and see my place?"

He always phrased things like that, in the least threatening way possible.

Okay.

A box of one's own

Today I didn't leave the bedroom.  Even after Cam left, I stayed in here.  I kept the door shut.

I just want the world to be as small as possible.

Actually, the world can be as big as it wants.  I just want to be in this little room, far far away from it.

Cam's room is small, but it has everything you need.  The bed, and a desk and the computer and a lot of books and music.  

It reminds me of the houses I used to make when I was lucky enough to get a really big cardboard box.  I'd bring a blanket and a flashlight and my favorite book and a box of crackers.  There's a way of folding box lids so that you're closed right in and the flaps won't open.  It's hard to do by yourself from the inside, but then there you are, in your own home.  Nobody can tell anything from the outside. It's like you're not even there.

I don't have any food in here, but I'm not hungry.  Cam brought me something to eat when he got home this afternoon.  He's mad at me for not coming out of here. He says he isn't, but I don't know what else you'd call it.  Upset.

I hate it when he's unhappy.  I wish we could just be quiet together and not have so much to worry about.

When he leaves, everything goes blank.  Not bad, but empty.  It's all right.  I sit in here and read stories or make up my own.  Watch time passing.

I'm not hurting anything or anybody.  If this is my version of happiness, I don't know why he can't just leave me to it and be glad I have one.

The $300,000 funeral

Last night I dreamed that my parents threw a very expensive funeral for me.  It wasn't in a church; I couldn't tell quite where it was.  A bright white room, white everywhere with no decoration or break.  There were a lot of people there, and everyone held flowers because it was too crowded to put them down anywhere.  They'd get stepped on.

I saw a beautiful coffin, glossy and dark.  I knew I was supposed to be in it.  I tried to remember why I wasn't.  I'd done something wrong, I knew that much.  Everything was thrown off schedule now.  But my parents are diligent, organized people.  They were doing the best they could to keep things in the proper order.

There was a black marble angel for a headstone.  It should have been outside; maybe it was in here so everyone could see it without getting their shoes dirty.  The angel's hair fell in long ringlets and it held a sword half-raised.  I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. Its face had a mischievous, indulgent smile I recognized from somewhere.

I heard someone say that the whole thing cost 300,000 dollars, and that didn't even include the food they were serving after.

I thought I was out of the way.  I was behind a glass wall, off to one side.  That was it -- the place was like a hospital, with those windowpane doors you try to peer through to see what they're doing.  No one else seemed to notice or care that I was there, but my parents saw me watching and were furious.  If I didn't leave, they were going to be humiliated in front of everyone, they said.  

I told them I'd apologize if that would help, but they didn't listen.  They didn't exactly talk right to me, either.  They just kind of hissed me out of there, as if they were embarrassed to be seen near the likes of me.

Thou shalt not steal (unless thou art really, really hungry)

I don't know if I was afraid when Cam looked at me in the club and I realized that I couldn't dodge him the way I could everyone else.  I think I was, but only in the way that I was always afraid.

I guess I was more curious than anything else.

It's hard to be afraid of Cam.

"That was you, right?" he asked, as I stood there not knowing where to go or what to do.  "Doing that to the music?"

I don't know, I said, and he smiled.

"I think it was," he said.  "I think it was great."

I didn't mean to.

"But that's what's so great about it," he said.  "It's just the music sounding better because we get to hear how it sounds to someone who thinks it's fantastic."  He nodded toward the band.  "Those guys ought to hire you."

I sat down because I was feeling shaky.  I don't think they need the help.

"I hope they don't," he said.  "They're really good.  But there's so much competition out there.  I've seen a lot of terrific bands go nowhere because they couldn't stick it out.  It's so hard to keep going when you don't know if it's going to get you anywhere."

Are you a musician?

He smiled and started telling me about his job at the radio station where he goes to school. He does play music -- he knows how to, anyway, piano and guitar -- but that's not where his passion lies. He wants to work in the music industry.  Helping, not playing.

Cam learned about music before he realized that he didn't want to play professionally, but it's good because after he finishes with school, he can teach if he has to. And he just likes knowing what goes into making music.

He told me all this without asking me anything.

He was watching me as he talked.  Someone came a bit too close and I kind of ducked out of sight.  I can't disappear like Lacy can, but if I try hard, I can make people just notice something else.  Look somewhere else.  Not be the thing they want to see.

I was able to get into the clubs by making whoever took the money see what he wanted to see: that I was paying what it cost to get in.

I was able to get a little money for food by making them see that I paid too much and needed change.

It was stealing. I know that.  I know it was wrong.  If it had been somebody's own money, I never would have done it.

I know it's just as wrong to steal from a place as from a person, but it doesn't feel as wrong.  Three or five or ten dollars to a person, just one person, is a lot.  To a business, it's nothing.

And I was hungry.

And if I asked -- for help, for money -- they might have asked me questions I couldn't answer.  Like why I needed money so badly.  Where I lived.  Why my parents weren't taking care of me.

I don't want to write about this any more.

Twenty-four hours can't be that strong

"You knew it was out there," Dog said.  "That was the whole point."

Cam had invited him over.  Lacy, too.  And a friend of Lacy's, but I don't remember her name because I left before he could tell it to me.

Cam's bedroom has a door and I shut it.  I didn't lock it because it is his room, and anyway if he wants to come in I guess I'd rather he just did than banged on the door or tried to talk through it.  

It's his apartment, but he said I could stay here and I get to choose the room I want to be in at any given time.

I chose the one with nobody else in it.  

I didn't feel like sitting with a bunch of other people arguing over whether we should watch a movie or go out, and then arguing some more over which movie or which club. I felt like seeing how far into the bed I could burrow and still be able to breathe.

I was hoping they'd go out, but they stayed.  I think Cam was hoping I'd get bored and come out and play nice.

He drives me crazy.

Sometimes I feel like he knows me straight through, like I'm a crystal shell he can pick up and look all the way into any time he wants, and I don't even mind because I know he'd never break me; and sometimes I can't believe how he can't figure out the most basic ordinary obvious things about me.

Like that the last thing I'd want was to be reminded right then that there were plenty of other people on the planet.

Like I haven't had enough forcible reminders of that.

Why would he invite a stranger over?

They decided to watch a movie after all.  I heard the kind of hollow booming that even his neighbor can hear sometimes. That's about the only frequency she's got left, I think.  She'd be banging on the wall soon if things didn't stop blowing up.

A knock on my door.

I'm not here. Go away.

I heard the door slip open and then shut again.  There's a chair next to Cam's computer, and someone sat down in it.

"Me," Dog said, and I cleared the covers back away over my head.

"Hey," he said when I looked at him.  

Here's the thing: if it had been Cam that had come in, knowing how much I didn't want him right then, knowing I wanted to be alone, knowing why, I would have started screaming.  I would have thrown something.  Thrown him, if I could.  Clawed until there was blood on the wall, and not cared much which of us it came from.

That never occurred to me with Dog.  Not just because I don't think I could get anywhere near hurting him, unless he let me or I fought dirty and snapped out a real keeper of a headache at him.   Dog just sat and took my measure, and everything along those lines was completely irrelevant.

"Heard you weren't in the mood for company," he said.

So you came in.

He smiled, just a little.  His face never moves much.  His eyes always stay locked on you whether it's you talking or him.  Most people tend to look around a bit, especially when they're trying to find the right words.  Like they think they'll see them on the shelf, or hanging just outside the window.

"I don't think of myself as company," Dog said.

His voice is so deep it's distracting.  Sometimes it takes me a minute to know what he's saying.  He doesn't mind.  He just waits.
I didn't have an answer for him, so I piled up some pillows to lie on.  I'm a pillow hog.  Cam had to buy some more just to make sure he had a chance at getting one on any given night.

"Cam told me what was bothering you," he said.  "I'm not sure I understand the problem, though."

Then go talk to him some more.  Maybe he can explain a little better.

"No need to get nasty," he said.  "You have to admit, it's kind of a contradiction."

I don't see why.

"If you didn't want anyone to see what you wrote, you shouldn't have put it out there."

I glared at him. He just took it.  It wasn't for "anyone" to see. Cam's out a lot, and he likes to be able to see what I've been doing.

"What you've been writing, you mean."

So?

"So," Dog said, "he could have just had you email him, or put it in a document he could get to and no one else could.  There are plenty of options for keeping that kind of thing private."

I slammed myself back, rattling the headboard.  I felt Cam worrying from the other room, and I was glad.

I don't know about computers.  He set this up. This is how he wanted it. It wasn't MY idea.

"Stop acting so powerless," Dog said.  "You knew what he was doing.  You could have said no."

Right.  Say no to the one person who's standing between me and the street or worse.  He's paying the rent and everything else and the way he never breathes a word about it you'd think that kind of thing just happens.  He keeps me safe.  I step on him when I walk in my sleep because he takes the floor at night so he'll be between me and the door just in case I start really heading somewhere.  He brings me books and music and the way he looks at me you'd never think he knows I have a body.

All that, and he acts like he's grateful I'm here.

So of course if he asks if I'll please do something, one thing, I'm going to say no.

"You knew people could read whatever you wrote," Dog said.  "You knew it was out there.  That was the whole point."

Not for me.

"You're not the only one dealing with this kind of thing.  The more that's out there about it, the better.  People are just starting to face the fact that we're real.  Sure, the science is adding up, but it's pretty abstract.  We need more stories."

I think that was the most Dog has ever said to me in one big block.  

I wished he'd keep talking.  His voice is like a purr.

I didn't answer, and he asked, "Does it bother you that I've read what you wrote?"

Surprised, but not bothered.  I shook my head. That's different.  I know you.

"And those people -- the ones who left the messages -- are total strangers.  They don't know you from Eve.  For all they know, you're some forty-year-old guy with a goatee."

I smiled. "So why care?" he asked. "Especially if they like what you say, but even if they don't.  What does it matter?"

I shook my head again. "So you don't mind friends, and you don't mind strangers," he said.  "Who does that leave?"

I looked down at my hands.  They burned a little after I got out, but when Cam took me in they paled right back up again.

"You afraid somebody's going to find you?" Dog asked.

"Quit curling up like that," he added.  "I can't even see who I'm talking to."

He looked at me more curiously than usual.  "Is it the police?" he asked.

I don't know, I said.  I hadn't really thought about that.  They might be looking for me.  You're not supposed to leave that kind of place until they say you can.

"Your family?"

I wanted another blanket, but I was too cold to go get one.  

"You're an adult, right?  Legally?  They can't do anything to you."

That might be true. It is true, I guess, if he says it is.

It doesn't feel true.

How can two people have all the power in the world over you one day and none at all the next?

I don't want to be your pillar of salt

Fight with Cam today. I hate that.  It's like an earthquake.  He's my safe place.

I pointed out to him that this marathon sleepwalking I've been doing really started up when I started writing more about the past.  Which I was only doing because he wanted me to.

If it's supposed to be so wonderfully healthy and important to take a good hard unwavering uncomfortable look at things that have already happened and are over and done with, why do we have phrases like let sleeping dogs lie?  Why do people say things like stop living in the past?  You never hear anyone say I really wish you'd live in the past more.  

Why would we have a myth about a woman who was turned into a pillar of salt for taking a glance over her shoulder at a place of ruin and destruction she was safely out of? Punishment for peeking back when she should have been living in the now and just happy to be alive.

That used to make me laugh — a pillar of salt, who even thought of that?  Why salt?  And if salt, why a pillar?  It just didn't make sense.

Now I think it's horrible.  To be alive and moving and warm, and then feel yourself hardening into a component element.

Did she feel it happening?  See her own hands — too white, too beautiful — one last time before her eyes crystallized into solid tears?

Cam pointed out that I was sleepwalking before I started writing about the past, and also having nightmares.  Which I haven't been having at all lately.  The sleepwalking may be keeping him on his toes, but I haven't noticed a thing.  And (he says) even I have to admit that I'm a lot calmer lately.

Am I?

"Aren't you?"

I guess it doesn't sound so bad when I write it out here, but I was really angry and he was really serious.  And then I was almost crying, which made me even angrier.

"Maybe you need to be angry more often," Cam said.  "It beats being afraid."

Not feeling like a good cause

Threw out the keys again last night.  This time down the drain and Cam, against his usual policy of not touching me when I'm asleep, took my hand when I tried to turn on the garbage disposal. I didn't insist, and after a minute I seemed to forget what I'd gotten up to do in the first place, so since he was still holding my hand he led me back to the bedroom.  I slept peacefully the rest of the night.

He doesn't want to tell me these things because he's afraid of upsetting me, but I make him. It's more upsetting not to know what my body is up to when I'm not looking.

Is this worse than nightmares?

Absolutely not. For me, anyway.  Cam's the one who has to be on guard duty. He says he doesn't mind, but I think it's starting to wear him out.  He's tired all the time now.

He doesn't want me to worry about that.

"I was tired all the time before, dummy," Cam said.  "I'm a student.  That's my job."

This is different.

"Not so much."

Anyway, being tired all the time before was for a good cause.  Doing work you like.  Getting a degree.  Staying up nights to babysit somebody who doesn't know enough to stay in bed after she falls asleep is just stupid.

"Yeah, well, call me weird," Cam said.  "I like it."

Stop it.

"It's true. I don't mean I won’t be glad when you start feeling happier, more peaceful.  But I like being there when you need me."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"Try finishing what you were trying to tell about before," Cam said.  "In your journal.  Finish up with when we met.  And maybe a little more about why.  Maybe we'll both be able to sleep a little better if you do."

Or maybe I could just never ever think about anything that's happened to me ever again.  I bet I'd be happy and peaceful then.

But he won't believe that.

Can't trust me even when I'm sleeping

Cam had another set of keys made today.  He wants to have extras around, just in case.

Just in case of me, to be exact.  Last night while I was asleep, I threw his key ring away.  Only in the trash, but he's worried about next time.

He's Mr. Adamant Gentleman now.  I have to sleep in the bed.  Sometimes he does, too.  Very modestly and properly.  Keeping between me and the door, which is always shut.  Sometimes he camps out on the floor in his sleeping bag.

What if I step on you?

"Then I know where you are," he said.  "Anyway, you're little."

ing is max and john

Sitting, listening to ing.  

The computer hates it when I type that.  Keeps objecting to ing.  Spell checking ing.  What -ing?  Put something in front of it!

Sorry.

The music sounds like I feel.  Kind of far away and close all at once.

I'm not sure where I am, and I'm not going to move an inch until I find out.

darn, some ing fell off my plate.

Missing club ing

Cam is nagging at me about going out.  Tonight it was a concert.  A couple of guys called ing.  That’s the name of their group, anyway.

"It's not like a club scene," Cam said.  "Some of the music is really pretty.  Some of it's just kind of, I don't know, odd."

I didn't say anything.

"I think you'd like them," Cam said.  "Not just their music, but the whole feel of it."

He found some of their music for me to listen to.  It was really whole and clear and sweet.  When I thought of just being there and getting to hear them play, I wanted it.

But when I thought of everything between where I am now and where they are, playing, I just couldn't.

It was more than I could imagine doing.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever have to go outside again.  I wish I didn't.

I want to just stay here.

Voyage in the dark

I don't want to see anybody right now.  I don't want to talk.

I'm tired and I'm nervous and nothing feels right.

God hates me and my eyes don't work.  I read that somewhere, I think.  Some crazy novel.

I’m a crazy novel, and I’d like to be able to shut myself and put me on the shelf and pick up something funny instead.

The almost-official freak doesn't want her own show

I don't know what they think they're proving.  I don't know why they think it matters.

It doesn't feel any different to me to be an almost-official freak.

I really don't care if I could get the Randi seal of approval, assuming he has one.

Dog didn't say there couldn't be words.  Just not only words.  

I thought about the night we went to see his band play.  I remembered the song he told us he wrote.

I can't remember faces, or even names; but music stays with me.

I shut my eyes and really went there.  

I felt the music going through me the way it did that night.  That's what I like best about being in the same room with the music:  it’s like you can touch it and see it as well as hear it.

I thought about how Dog and the rest of the group looked while they were playing.  I thought about the light and the mostly darkness, and the scent of the drinks, and the people dancing and listening and talking.

I gathered all that up as best I could and I sent it to Dog.

"Damn," Dog said.

"Jesus," Cam said.

"Ouch," Lacy said.

I jumped. Someone was pounding furiously on the other side of Cam's wall.  It sounded like they were using a broom.

Cam's deaf neighbor.

Dog smiled in her direction.

"Throw the cards away, Lacy," he said.  "I think we've got ourselves a telepath."