Authors: Matthew Quick
I’m relieved when she smiles and takes another gulp of her pink drink.
“As someone who lists Gloria Steinem as a hero, I probably shouldn’t like Mötley Crüe—a band who will most likely have strippers onstage tonight,” she says. “A band that’s notorious for objectifying women. I tell myself I’m grandfathering Mötley Crüe in, because I listened to them before I knew any better.”
“Like letting the racism of a beloved uncle slide?”
“Exactly! This music—Mötley Crüe—it’s our childhood. It’s what we have. It raised us, for good, bad, or indifferent.”
I glance at the ring hanging around her neck and say, “It’s that for me—but it’s a bit more too. It kept raising me even after I became an adult.”
I really wish I hadn’t said that, because I don’t want to talk about my past tonight.
“How so?” Portia asks, and then I know there’s no turning back.
“I mean, as a former junkie.”
She cocks her head to the side, sips her pink Cosmo, and says, “Mötley Crüe did do a lot of drugs.”
“They say Nikki Sixx used to do five thousand dollars’ worth of drugs a day. And that was in the eighties. Can you imagine?”
“You sound impressed,” she says.
“Many years of my adult life, I didn’t make five thousand dollars
a year
.”
Why did I just say that?
“But what really impresses me is Nikki Sixx’s sobriety,” I say, and wonder if it sounds too soapbox, too former-drug-addict-turned-reformer. But for some reason I keep on going anyway, maybe because I really believe it. “When I was in rehab, one of
the counselors—his name was Grover, which is an unusual name, and he was an unusual guy—he saw me draw a pentagram and the words
Mötley Crüe
in my notebook, with the little dots over the
o
and
u
and he asked me if I had ever seen the Nikki Sixx episode of
I Survived
. When I said I hadn’t, he pulled out this VHS tape and we watched it together. It was all about how much drugs Nikki Sixx did, how he didn’t even enjoy playing music anymore, didn’t even care that he was a rock star, crashed cars, ended up alone on the holidays, paranoid in a closet, died twice and was brought back to life by an EMT Mötley Crüe fan who gave him adrenaline shots even though he was already pronounced dead. How he didn’t even go to his grandmother’s funeral, because he was so strung out. He was very close with his grandmother apparently. The episode ends with Nikki hitting rock bottom, but then getting clean and discovering that playing music sober could be a rush too. And then he started a charitable organization that helps teen drug addicts. They can learn how to make and produce music. I remember Nikki saying that music can give them a goal, something to focus on. When Grover showed me that episode, something clicked, and I decided if Nikki Sixx could beat addiction and make
Dr. Feelgood
sober, well, then maybe I could get sober and become an elementary school teacher.”
Portia is staring at me intensely, and I can’t tell whether it’s love or regret or concern, so I go for a joke. “That line always gets big applause at Narcotics Anonymous meetings.”
Now she’s looking at me with those eyes that scare me, because they make me feel like she really loves me and maybe even admires me—and she’s nodding supportively.
“Anyway, Nikki Sixx is my hero. Stupid as it sounds, saying that at forty-three years of age.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“I admire you,” she says. “You were brave. You fought to get here—right here, with me. And I won’t forget it.”
My phone rings, and I check it. “It’s Tommy. Do you mind?”
“Go ahead,” she says, but she seems to mind a little.
“Little man,” I say. “You good?”
“Are you at the concert?”
“Not yet. We’re eating dinner. Everything okay?”
“Johnny Rotten left.”
“Good, right?”
“Mom’s crying.”
“Why?”
“Not sure.”
“You okay?”
“I’m being brave,” Tommy says.
“You’re the bravest.”
“I’m going to sleep soon. Just wanted to say good night.”
“We’ll see you tomorrow, buddy. And tomorrow is
soon
.”
“You’ll tell me all about the Mötley Crüe show? We’ll listen to Portia’s
Too Fast for Love
vinyl?”
“Swear on my life.”
“And you’ll answer the phone if I have a bad dream again?”
“You won’t have any bad dreams. The Quiet Riot mask is protecting you, remember? That thing is super powerful!”
We say good-bye and hang up, and I tell Portia I’m sorry. “Sounds like my sister and Johnny Rotten had a fight. Tommy just needed—”
“You’re a good uncle.”
“I just answer the phone when he calls.”
“Bullshit,” she says, and then gives me a smile so beautiful, I’m forced to look away.
We dip bread in some sort of hummus-like mash, which is pretty good, and then we have the gnocchi, which I think is excellent, but Portia says is overcooked, and I wonder how she knows things like that. Who can tell the difference between properly cooked and overcooked pasta?
“Did you tell Tommy you were going to propose tonight?” she says.
“We hid the ring in his bed for a few weeks. He was my partner in crime.”
“Whose idea was it to give me the
Too Fast for Love
vinyl?”
“All his.”
“I’m going to tell Tommy you and I are getting married eventually,” she says. “I’ll make him understand. Don’t worry.”
“Okay.”
“Because we are getting engaged and married eventually.”
“Good.”
After dinner, we walk arm in arm around the casino, digesting. We pass Judge Judy slot machines and a woman with a rhinestone belt buckle that spells journey, find a Thunder Moon and a Peeping Frog Moon on the carpet, and then we are in the mob of people assembled outside the concert.
“Everyone got old,” Portia says as we look around at a crowd mostly made up of people who seem to be at least ten years older than we are. “When did that happen?”
There is a weird mix of grizzled bikers with neck tattoos and pointy beards, fake bikers cleanly shaved and in shiny new leather that has obviously never seen the open road, parents with their teenage kids who were taught about 1980s rock just like Tommy was, dweebs in acid-washed jeans and pastel polo shirts who look like they weigh 110 pounds soaking wet, women in leather bustiers and corsets and stiletto heels, and us.
Inside we purchase concert T-shirts and little
Theatre of Pain
key chains with the tragedy and comedy masks before listening to a local band as we wait for Mötley Crüe to take the stage.
Portia and I hold hands and take in the scene until Mötley Crüe make their entrance carrying scantily clad women on their shoulders and medieval banners that feature the letters MC in white and red, swinging a giant incense burner that looks like what a priest would carry. The crowd goes wild.
They open with “Saints of Los Angeles,” and instantly we are teenagers again, banging our heads and flying the devil horns. By the time they’re playing “Wild Side,” I’m completely transported. There are strippers dancing and singing and doing acrobatics on chains hanging down from the ceiling and at certain points simulating lesbian sex, and the lights and swagger and noise, and Tommy Lee’s drum set, which is connected to a giant O and becomes a sort of drumming roller coaster at times, spinning him upside down forty feet in the air as he bangs away during his lengthy drum solo mid-show. My role model Nikki Sixx is mostly on our side of the stage. I’m only maybe twenty feet from him, and as he plays his bass and spits water at the crowd and bangs his almost Muppet-like explosion of black hair, I wish I could thank him for doing that
I Survived
documentary and writing
The Heroin Diaries
. They play many of my favorite songs: “Shout at the Devil,” “Home Sweet Home,” “Live Wire,” “Too Fast for Love,” “Dr. Feelgood”—and Portia dances her little ass off and loses herself too, forgetting about the degradation of women and her feminist views of rock.
At one point Vince Neil says, “We’re old motherfuckers up here,” and the crowd roars because it’s mostly made up of old motherfuckers too.
They finish with “Kickstart My Heart,” during which Nikki Sixx spits fake blood all over the people in the front rows before he
and Tommy Lee throw buckets of fake blood into the crowd and then call it a night.
When the lights go up, Portia turns toward me and says, “As a feminist, I know I should absolutely hate Mötley Crüe, but I can’t deny it. They scratch the primal itch within us all.”
“It’s only rock and roll. Just a show,” I say, loudly, because my ears are ringing now.
“I wish you could talk to Nikki Sixx,” she says, yelling too, as we make our way to the exit. “Even though he spits blood on people, I bet he’d be cool to you. I bet he’d be proud of you for cleaning up. I wish I could get you backstage.”
“Yeah, me too. Except you’d probably try to fuck Vince Neil.”
“Jealous much? Your phone,” she says.
“What?” I say. Everyone exiting the concert is talking very loudly, because no one can hear now.
“Your phone! It’s ringing!”
I pull it from my pocket. It’s not ringing anymore.
There are fourteen messages.
I jump out of line and make my way to the center of an empty row.
Portia follows and says, “What’s wrong?”
I punch in my code and listen to the first few messages.
My mind starts spinning.
I feel as though I may vomit.
“I fucked up bad, Portia. I fucked up really bad.”
“What’s wrong? Tell me, Chuck. You’re freaking me out.”
I hold up my finger and listen to the rest of the messages.
I’m punching my thigh hard now, as I hear how scared my nephew is and mentally put together the pieces.
“Stop hitting yourself, Chuck. Stop that! Tell me what’s wrong.
W
HAT’S WRONG
?
”
When I hear the message from Lisa at the Manor, saying that Tommy is safe with her, I look at Portia. “Danielle shot up in the apartment.”
“Shot up?”
“Heroin. I’m not sure, but I think she might have OD’d. Tommy found her passed out with the needle in her arm. He’s been calling me all night. I have to call him.”
“Call him!”
I get Lisa.
She tells me that she’s managed to get Tommy to fall asleep at her home, but that he was very upset.
Then she says, “It’s bad, Chuck, really bad. I don’t want to be the one to tell you.”
“Just fucking say it!” I scream.
Lisa starts crying as she tries to get out all the words. “Tommy came into the bar, screaming and crying. We went to the apartment. Found Danielle on the floor. We called an ambulance, but it was too late. She’s gone. I’m not sure that Tommy understands that yet, and I didn’t know what you’d want me to tell him, so . . .”
I black out for a while, although I continue to move somehow, and when I come to, I’m in my truck, trying to get it to start, but the engine won’t turn over, and then I’m punching the steering wheel, cursing incoherently, kicking the floor and screaming and crying, and Portia is telling me it’s going to be okay.
“I let Tommy down,” I keep saying. “I should have been there for him. I should have answered the phone when he called. My fucking father never was there for me, and now Tommy is going to think that—”
“Shhhh,” she says, and then I’m sobbing into her chest like a baby for what feels like forever, moaning and completely losing my shit, before I’m overcome with it all and I pass out with my head in her lap.
When I wake up, my neck hurts, and Portia’s looking down at me.
“Shit! We have to go home!” I say.
“It’s okay. Tommy’s with Lisa. We’ll be home soon.”
“How long was I out?” I say.
“Only a half hour or so,” she says, and tries to smile.
Her eyes are red.
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to check out of the hotel and rent a car. I’m going to drive. We’ll pick up Tommy and bring him to our place, where he’ll live from now on. We’ll make sure Tommy is okay, and then we’ll figure it out.”
“Figure
what
out?” I say.
“Everything.”
The diary under Danielle’s pillow tells us everything we need to know. Her boyfriend wasn’t collecting for bookies. He was a full-time drug dealer more than willing to supply my sister, provided that she screwed him on a regular basis, of course. The worst part is this: she loved him, and yet she was afraid the feeling wasn’t mutual. And I think she did drugs with him at first as a way to prove her love for him—sharing his interests, so to speak. But his product was a bit stronger than what she remembered from our days, and therefore the cravings were more intense. Everything happened quicker than she could handle. And her new boyfriend didn’t like girls who couldn’t handle their highs. That was the gist, anyway.
Johnny Rotten doesn’t show at the memorial service—which is good, because my plan is to punch his face into a bloody pulp whenever I see him next—but Portia’s mother miraculously does, and she even wears the dress Portia purchased for her, shedding the old stained pink sweat suit for a day. The Crab and all of my teacher friends attend, which touches me deeply. Danielle’s hairy boss and a few other waitresses pay their respects, along with a bunch of people from the Manor. Wearing the black suit, black tie, white dress shirt, and black shoes and belt Portia picked out for me at Men’s Wearhouse, I mumble a bunch of gibberish in front of the small crowd at the funeral home, mostly about growing up with Danielle and
watching cartoons when we were little and then falling in love with metal in the 1980s, and how maybe I wished we were into classical music instead because classical music fans tend to avoid heroin and live longer, and what a good mom she was—how she loved Tommy so much—which is when I lose it and break down crying, maybe because I feel like it’s all bullshit.
The worst part is that my getting emotional scares Tommy. He’s sitting in the front row, dressed exactly like me because Portia also bought him a funeral suit and accessories, and I can tell that Portia doesn’t know whether she should keep holding Tommy’s little hand or come to me. Finally, she comes to me, which makes me feel weak, since my nephew who lost his mom is handling this better than me. She rubs my back and whispers, “You’re okay,” in my ear over and over.
“I should have put the pieces together. I should have saved her—”
There are maybe two dozen people seated in rows of chairs facing me, and I feel like it’s my fault that my sister’s funeral isn’t better attended, like I’m the reason her life turned out so pathetic and ended much too early.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I say through tears.
“You’re doing fine,” Portia says.
I look over at the casket and see Danielle looking almost blue and waxy. The coroner found track marks up and down the inside of her thighs. She’d been using for weeks, the knowledge of which hasn’t done much to ease my conscience. But it’s not time for guilt. I need to make it through today. I have the rest of my life to deal with guilt.
A few people stand and tell stories about Danielle, none of them all that interesting. Diner patrons who always asked to be seated in her section, a few exaggerated tales about how much fun Danielle was to drink with at the Manor. Tommy talks about singing with
her, and Portia tells a story about being in Mr. Vernon’s class with Danielle, but most of it doesn’t really register in my mind. I keep glancing over at Danielle and thinking that a decade or so ago it could have easily been me in that box. Why wasn’t it? My fists clench as I think of Randall Street.
When there are no more stories left to tell, people make their way to their cars, and I ask the funeral director if Tommy and I can have a private moment.
They clear the room and close the doors.
Portia leaves too.
I do my best to keep it together as I say, “I want you to take a good look at your mom, Tommy, because when we close this lid, you won’t ever see her again.”
He looks at Danielle. “It doesn’t really look like her.”
“I know, but it is. And she loved you so much. She just did a dumb thing, and now Aunt Portia and I will take care of you.”
“Aunt Portia wore the ring on her finger today,” he says. “She wasn’t wearing it before. Why
?
”
“I’m not sure. We’ll have to ask her later.”
“Will she be my mom now?”
He’s looking up at me with this very concerned look, and it wrecks me.
“You’ll always have your real mom with you in your heart,” I say, at the same time thinking, What the hell am I telling the kid? What does that even mean? Having someone in your heart, like religious people say about Jesus. “She’ll always be with you. And Portia and I will be with you too. I’m trying my best to make sure Portia becomes your official aunt, and I’m pretty sure that will happen, but I will never ever leave you, Tommy. Do you hear me? I’m with you for life.”
“I know,” he says, and then looks at his mom.
“It’s okay to cry,” I say.
“I did already, when you weren’t looking.”
“You can cry when I’m looking, Tommy. Didn’t you see me crying earlier? It’s okay. Real men let it out. So go ahead if you need to.”
Tommy leans his little head against my thigh. “Can I kiss her good-bye just once?”
“Sure, but it’s not going to feel like her, okay? Just so you know.”
“Okay.”
I hold him up so that he can reach, and he kisses Danielle on the cheek once. I hear him whisper, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Uncle Chuck.”
After I put him down again, I say, “You don’t have to take care of anybody but yourself. You hear me? And we’re going to take care of you. You are the little kid. You get to be taken care of.”
My voice is stern, but I want him to get the message.
He nods once, and then the tears come.
“I don’t want my mommy to die,” he says before he throws himself at me and then cries into my brand-new tie.
“I know. I know. I know,” I keep saying over and over, because I don’t know what else to say, and it’s all I can do to contain the rage I feel whenever I think about Randall Street. “I don’t want your mommy to die either. But we have each other still, and we are going to kick ass living together, you hear me? Absolutely kick ass.”
He just keeps crying into my shirt, and so I rub his back until it’s all out.
We put my sister in the ground without any religious fanfare, eat sandwiches at the Manor, and then Portia and I lower the futon in her office and get Tommy to sleep by lying on either side of him and telling him stories about when his mom was a kid, teasing her hair out like Axl Rose. The little guy manages to laugh a few times,
which makes me proud, although he checks several more times to make sure his Quiet Riot mask is hanging above his makeshift new bed in Portia’s apartment.
It’s there.
We made certain.
After he’s out, Portia and I watch the kid breathe for a long time, making absolutely sure he’s sound asleep, before we leave him.
And then I’m finally alone in the kitchen with Portia, who has poured herself a glass of wine.
“You’re wearing your engagement ring, I see.”
“Let’s talk about this later. We just buried your sister.”
“I don’t want you to pity me. I don’t want you to wear that ring just so I’ll feel better.”
“I don’t pity you. I love you. There was never any question about that. I just wasn’t sure I was ready to get married again—officially married.”
“Why?”
She looks into her wine for a moment. “Because our life together is going really well. I didn’t want to tinker with it, you know? I wanted things to stay just the way they were for as long as possible. And maybe I want to accomplish something first—at least one thing, as a single woman.”
Portia runs her index finger around the edge of her wineglass for a few seconds. “But now we have a real chance to make sure a good little kid has a shot at a good decent normal-
ish
childhood. We didn’t ask for this situation, but here it is, and we have a choice.”
“So you put the ring on for my six-year-old nephew, not me?”
“Don’t be an asshole, Chuck.” Portia smiles in a way that makes it impossible to take offense.
I stare at the kitchen ceiling. “You know, when I was up there today, speaking about Danielle, I thought about using again. For
the first time in years, I wanted a fix. Even though junk killed her. I wanted to get high. I also wanted to kill Randall Street. I seriously want to kill him.”
“So what’s keeping you from getting high, throwing away all the work you’ve done?” Portia says, avoiding the second part of my confession.
“You. And Tommy. And the idea that I might be a good teacher. The Official Member of the Human Race card Mr. Vernon gave us. Choosing to be the person we want to be, right? But I can’t do this alone. So I have to know right now, Portia, are you in or out?”
“I was always in, Chuck. Always.”
“Then why’d you put the ring on today?”
“Because it’s just a ring, okay? If it helps you and Tommy feel more secure, I’ll wear it. But I’m in regardless. I was before I put it on. I’m wearing it for you too, in a show of solidarity. Maybe mostly for Tommy, because I know what it feels like to be alone as a kid—like you have to take care of yourself
and
the adults in your life. It’s fucked, okay? I didn’t want Tommy to feel doomed. And I wanted you to feel strong. Because you’re never going to use again. We’re going to make a good life for ourselves. We’re going to make it together.”
I look her in the eyes. “Portia, I knew she was using again. Some part of me knew.”
She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “You didn’t. Maybe you suspected.”
“I should have saved her. She shot up for the first time with me. Did you know that? I introduced her to heroin.”
“That was when you were addicted. You were sick. And you also reached out to her when you were healthy. Tried to help. She refused your help. And she left you with her problems, which you don’t even see as problems because you are a good brother and an even better uncle. So don’t do this to yourself.”
I shake my head and stare at the table. “I don’t know if I can raise him. I’m an ex-junkie with monstrous student loans. I don’t have any answers.”
She holds up her ring finger. “You’re my fiancé. And what did I tell you in the truck? We’re going to figure it out together.”
“You sure picked a winner to fall in love with, huh?”
“You
are
a winner, Chuck Bass. I don’t marry losers anymore. Been there, done that. This time around, it’s only winners for me.”
I marvel at this woman who can take control when needed.
“I just feel so guilty,” I say, shaking my head. “How did I miss the signs?”
And then I’m crying again and Portia is holding me, kissing my neck and whispering reassuring words.