Girl Band

Girl Band

By J.L. Hohler III

©2010 by J.L. Hohler III

Smashwords Edition

Chapter One

1.

Dad’s guitar was in the basement, in the same place Mom left it when she moved it down there after the funeral. For years when I was a little kid, it was always leaning against the wall at the end of my parent’s bed and Dad played it every day. He loved that guitar almost as much as he loved me or Mom.

After the funeral, though, Mom didn’t want it in her room anymore and couldn’t stand the thought of getting rid of it and having some stranger pawing it either, so she did the next best thing: she hauled it to the basement, tucking it under the stairs, where she forgot about it.

With it out of their bedroom I kind of forgot about it too, even though I saw it leaning there in the corner under the stairs next to the hockey sticks and tennis rackets like a thousand times before. But it wasn’t until Mom sent me down to get a bag of peas from the freezer that I saw it for the first time all over again.

Celine, what are you doing? Mom asked when I dragged it up with me instead of the peas and laid the case right across the plates and silverware and tablecloth. Those were clean two seconds ago.

Have you seen this? I asked and ran my fingers across the case. A dark black trail instantly appeared in the dust. I found it downstairs.

Thrilling, darling, but you’re getting dust everywhere, Mom said. Come on, Celine, what are you doing? Don’t I have enough to do without you making a mess every time I turn around?

Have you seen this? It’s Dad’s guitar!

"I know what it is, thank you very much. It’s a mess."

"This is so cool, I said and opened the case and lifted the lid. Inside was the guitar, an acoustic with a bright, fiery red paintjob. I reached in and ran my fingertips across the finish. It was pristine. Isn’t this cool?"

"Yes, it’s so cool that your getting that all over my clean table, Mom said. I don’t know why you even brought that dirty old thing up here."

What do you mean?

I mean, don’t you have enough junk in your room?

"Junk? This isn’t junk?"

Of course not. Mom rolled her eyes. It’s a real treasure.

It is, I said.

Right, Mom said.

I’m gonna play it, I said. I mean it.

You?

Yeah.

"You’re gonna play it? That? You?"

Yes, me, I said. What else would I do with it?

You say that about everything, Mom said and was hardly impressed. "But I’ll believe it when I see it."

"Well believe it because I am so gonna play this."

You remember when you took ballet, she said. "And gymnastics? And played softball? You want to do it now but next week you’ll be tired of that guitar, just like everything else."

No I won’t.

Sure.

I swear, I said. I’m gonna play it. You’ll see.

I bet.

I do.

If you say so, Mom said.

I do.

Well, it’ll be a pleasant surprise to have a different ending with you, for a change.

I looked at her but couldn’t think of anything else to say and finally she waved some of the dust out of the air.

Now, would you get that thing out of here, Celine? I was trying to make dinner.

I closed the case and dragged it off the table and stalked out. I was just about halfway up the stairs to my room with it when Mom stuck her head around the corner and looked up at me.

And where are those peas, Cece?

I’m getting ‘em, I said, forgetting all about why she sent me to the basement in the first place. I’m just taking the scenic route.

Yeah, well, back on track, Mom said and ducked back around the corner and out of sight. And this time, darling, don’t bring back anything with you when you do. Other than peas.

2.

Dinner with Mom was about normal, which is to say torture. If I had a brother or sister around to help run interference she might not bug me so much, but because I’m an only child it’s been a lonely life having to listen to her bitch about everything. And bitch and nag is about all she ever does.

So, how was school, darling?

Like normal, I said. "Boring."

You always say that, Mom said. Don’t you know any other songs?

Nope, just that one, I said and stared down into my plate and hoped she’d change the subject or just let me have some peace, but Mom wasn’t up for that and instead asked about her favorite subject in life.

So, Celine, have you thought any more about what you’re going to do with your life when you grow up?

Not this again, Mom, I groaned. "Anything but this."

Why not this, she asked and was so innocent and it almost seemed innocent because it was the kind of thing you might hear other parents say, but with Mom it was never innocent. There was always an agenda and this time it was to remind me that the guitar was a good diversion but I still had a future to think about.

Because it’s all you ever talk about, that’s why.

I ask about it because it’s important stuff, she said.

I sighed. I don’t know what I want to do with my life when I grow up. All right?

Well, now you know why we have to talk about it, Mom said and she had that smug smile again. So…

I’m friggin’ 15, Mom. How am I supposed to know what I want?

"I know what I wanted to be when I was your age, she said. I wanted to be a wife and a mother and a teacher and look, all three of those things happened."

Fantastic. I pushed the peas around my plate without any real plan to eat them. "I’m so glad everything worked out for you."

Is it too much to ask you to try and think about the future, Celine?

I can’t even think about what I want to watch on TV tonight, I said. How am I supposed to know what I want to do with the rest of my life? Why do I have to think about it now?

Because if you wait until later to think about it, the future will already be the past, Mom said. "That’s why."

3.

I wish I could say my Mom was just busting my balls a little bit on the life-plan thing, because I had been a bit flaky before and I know what she was thinking about the guitar. I played the trumpet in middle school but quit. I took art classes at the Art Institute one summer but didn’t really like the smell of paint and quit. I tried to write a short story and wanted to be the disaffected voice of my generation and I painted my fingernails black and thought I was cool and Mom got me a typewriter but when it came time to actually write I couldn’t think of anything to say and quit. But Mom hassling me wasn’t just because I was being flaky, because Mom was always like this. Every day of her life.

When people meet my Mom they like to think she’s like a normal person. She likes 30 Rock and Seinfeld, can laugh at a fart joke, cries at Say Anything…, loves Jeopardy and read The Da Vinci Code just like everybody else. She does all those things and seems like a normal person but that’s where the normal ends.

Here’s what you need to know about my Mom: she’s a teacher, but not just any teacher. She’s actually a college professor, but not the pony-tail wearing, crunchy, granola-eating, touchy-feely type of professor. No, she has a PhD in economics, which meant my Mom didn’t do things like other parents and it made for an excruciating upbringing.

When I was little I saw commercials on TV during cartoons just like everybody else, stupid commercials for all kinds of stupid junk and always begged my parents to get the junk for me, whatever it was, sure I had to have it. When other kids did this their parents usually told them no and said it was because ‘I told you so.’ With my Mom it was never the simple. Any time you talked to her about anything she always had to put it in economic terms.

I don’t know, Celine, can you explain the efficiency of that little toy, she asked, looking down at me, as if the five year-old version of me would quickly draw up a graph to justify and explain my decision. Will that maximize your happiness, darling?

But she wasn’t just like that with cheap toys and cereal – she was like that with everything. She made me an only child because it was the most efficient number of children to raise and let me tell you, if she could do that efficiency thing over how many kids to have, she’d do it about anything. There’s nothing quite like riding in the car as a six-year-old and begging her to stop at McDonald’s for chicken nuggets and have her demand you justify the stop in economic terms and then driving right on by when you couldn’t.

As I got older she only got worse and demanded more out of me, and I did get better at arguing with her, or not arguing with her. The key with Mom was not to argue on her terms. If you had to play her game by her rules, you always lost, no matter what, so I learned pretty quick that when she would demand an economic justification for my wants that was my cue to change the game and start throwing a tantrum like any teenager. It wasn’t pretty and made me feel pretty stupid but she couldn’t understand teenagers and it always unsettled her and even if I didn’t always win, the odds were at least a little better. Maybe if I’d learned to throw a real tantrum when I was a kid I would’ve had more novelty toys and Big Mac’s. Of course, if I’d learned it as a kid, I’d probably weigh 250 pounds and couldn’t see my feet, so maybe it wasn’t all bad what Mom did.

It was because she figured out she couldn’t just win anymore with her economic arguments and actually needed to talk to me for real that she learned to stop fighting fair too, which was why whenever I talked to her about anything I wanted to do, she always went right into my life plan. If she were on a TV show, ‘Tell me about your future’ would be her catchphrase.

This isn’t to say I don’t love Mom, because I do. She’s great. She’s the best Mother ever. She can be funny and is a good cook and when people say they think my eyes are pretty I hope they never meet her because her’s are way prettier than mine and every time we go anywhere it’s always girl’s night out and we can have a lot of fun laughing over a boy or making fun of some hideous hag. But that doesn’t mean she’s like every other parent, because she’s not.

Still, I guess I should be happy because getting hassled about life-plans and efficiency and whatever is better than being beaten with a brush or molested. Under the circumstances, I guess things could have been a lot worse.

4.

After dinner Mom cleaned the table and I loaded the dishwasher, then I took some furniture polish and one of those cloth baby diapers Mom liked to have around up to my room to polish the guitar, even if it didn’t really need it, because there wasn’t a speck of dust on it anywhere.

When I was done wiping it down I pulled it on over my shoulder and stood looking at myself in the mirror on the closet door and I thought I looked pretty good and after blasting the stereo I played some air-guitar on my real-guitar and had a total Liz Phair moment. At least it was until Mom came pounding on my door.

Turn than racket down, she hollered and even if she didn’t say ‘you meddling kids,’ like the bad guy in Scooby-Doo always did, she might as well have. You’re going to ruin your hearing that way.

Just because you don’t like fun doesn’t mean I don’t, I yelled back and only just turned down the radio.

Save it for somebody who cares, Celine, and just turn it down.

Sometimes when she was being like that and barking things at me and I was all put out, she would remind me that she was a kid once and knew I had it real easy, but I could never believe it. For a woman who had her life’s goals mapped out by the time she was 15 and then made it happen, it’s hard to believe she ever was a kid.

It’s like she was born old.

Chapter Two

1.

Allie – that is Alexandra, my best friend – was waiting out by the tree in front of the school when I walked up, just like every other morning. She had a piece of a white pencil in her mouth and she was chewing on it like every other morning and it kind of looked like she was smoking a cigarette.

About time you got here, she said and tossed the pencil out, then brushed the grass off her butt when she stood up. I was beginning to think you were gonna skip.

My Mom was hogging the bathroom, I said. "Like, putting on her face takes that long."

I don’t care what it is, I just hate waiting for school to start, she said as we started to the building. Why is my bus always the first to get here?

I don’t know, I said. You could walk if you don’t like it. Then you’ll get here whenever you want.

"Walk, she said. Are you crazy? That’s like two miles."

Two miles isn’t that far.

"It’s far enough in the morning, she said. You know, if I had a car we wouldn’t have to meet at the tree and you wouldn’t have to walk and I wouldn’t ride the bus. I could pick you up and we’d get here when we wanted to, not when they say we have to."

You can’t get a car until you get a license, I said.

Details, darling, details, she laughed.

Allie was old enough to drive but she failed drivers ed the first time and hit a parked car the second so her parents wouldn’t let her get her license until they were done paying for the damage. The way it was going, I was probably going