Chapter II: D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan underwent prostate surgery, Budd Dwyer shot and killed himself on live national television, Jim Bakker resigned as head of PTL ministries after an illicit affair, Kylie Minogue recorded “The Locomotion”, Prozac made its first appearance in the public market, and just an hour out of my hometown, an Amtrak train leaving Washington, D.C. en route to Boston collided with a Conrail train, killing 16 people in Chase, MD.

The latter occurred approximately five months before my sixth birthday. Not that I recall it particularly, but I suppose this was my first experience with avoided tragedy. The interesting thing about that train wreck was that my family was supposed to be on that train to Boston to visit my mother’s side of the family for a reunion or some such out in the Berkshires. However, due to some last minute circumstances, namely my two-year-old sister getting the flu, we were unable to leave home.
“Jean, we can leave Claire here with Edie for the weekend, and the three of us can go on ahead,” my dad yelled up the stairs.
“I am not going to ask Edie to do that! She comes in here and works for us five days a week, I can’t possibly ask her to spend her weekend taking care of a toddler with the flu, Pierce,” Mom fired back.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jean—“
“Don’t you talk like that in front of Marcus down there,” she shouted, storming halfway down the stairs at a speed I’d only previously seen in cartoon rats. “Pierce, I am not leaving Claire here with Edie, she’s a…” Mom quickly stopped herself to keep from adding the adjective, ‘fucking’, “…monster these days. Edie can barely handle her as she is.”
“Alright, fine, fine. Lord knows I don’t want to spend the weekend listening to Meri talk about her goddamned business ventures anyway.”
“Oh, that is enough, Pierce,” Mom shouted again, this time coming the whole way down the stairs. “I don’t complain when Gwen comes over and smokes in the house, or when your mother is knockin’ back the scotch while Marcus is there, so leave my family out of this, because for every stinkin’ thing you have to complain about them, I’ve got just as many for the Lievres!”
“Oh well, congratulations Jean. I appreciate the familial criticism from someone whose family has been so caring and such a constant presence in her life,” Dad sneered so smugly that I could virtually see the sarcasm seeping out of his mouth.
I quietly snuck through the doorway from the living room to the kitchen. I pretended that I was on a secret mission to the basement. The tiles felt cold on my hands, and the words of my parents felt hot all over. They had been fighting almost all the time, and over almost everything since my sister had been born. Mom was pregnant again, in an apparent, but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to keep the marriage strong. Things had been too strained for too long.
I took a peek back into the living room to see if I’d been spotted. My mom was pacing around the room, straightening couch cushions, and picking up toys. My dad sat fixed at the card table, talking, taking long pauses, leaning back in the green wooden chair. He’d speak calmly, condescendingly, which just made my mom more frustrated. She’d call him a robot, he’d say she was being illogical. I turned around and crept slowly around to the door behind the kitchen.
Escaping to the basement, I tiptoed quietly down the stairs. I was careful not to turn on the light in the stairway so that I wouldn’t give away my secret location. Every child needs a sanctuary. Sometimes they build them from sofa cushions, sometimes it’s a garish piece of neon-colored plastic erected in the backyard. My sanctuary was the basement. If you asked either of my parents what was down there, they’d tell you there was nothing, but to me, there was everything. The most important thing was my dad’s old record collection. I got to the bottom of the stairs and blindly navigated my way to the second room of the basement. I was careful to watch for the splintered dining room chair that our late English Sheepdog, Jasbo, had turned into a chew-toy. I ran my finger along the mortar between the cinderblocks. My fingernail scraped it and chills went up my spine.
I finally made it to the back of the basement where the old leather couch from my Grandad’s house, the record player, and the six or seven wooden record crates rested. My dad had made the crates when he was in college, and each one held something like a hundred records, maybe more. I started flipping through them. I couldn’t read most of the titles, as I’d only just begun learning, but unless it was something really simple (like Los Angeles by X), I’d just dig through until I found one that looked cool. I pulled out one with a big banana painted on it. Bananas made me gag, so I put it back. A little further down from it was one with a guy punching himself in a mirror. Blood was kind of cool, but also pretty scary, so I put that one back too. A few more and I found my favorite, Al Green (I knew his name because I knew the color). Al smiled at me from behind the dust sleeve, as I pulled the record out of its jacket.
Before I knew how to use the telephone, I knew how to use the record player in the basement. I remembered to brush off the record before I lifted the lid to the player. I put the needle down and turned the volume down low, so that only I could hear it.
“I’m so tiiiiiiiiiired of being alone, I’m so tiiiiiiiiiiiiired of being alone. Won’t you help me girl just as soon as you can?”
I kneeled and just stared at the album rotating, I listened to the scraping of the needle on the vinyl. I sat there so long that my knees started to hurt from the concrete floor, but I didn’t care. After listening through all of the first side of the album, I went to flip it to the B side.
“Listening to some Al Green, huh?”
“Yeah.”
My dad came over and sat on the leather couch behind me. “Do you want to listen to that side again?”
“No.”
“Could you do it for me?”
“I already listened to it,” I said without turning around.
Dad laughed, “Okay, well, do you want to keep listening to this or do you want to listen to something else?”
“I dunno.”
Frustrated, Dad walked over to the crate marked “F-M” and pulled out one with a bunch of cars in piles on it. “How about this,” he asked me.
“What is it?”
“Husker Du.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It sounds stupid.”
“You won’t know until you listen to it, buddy.”
“Yes I will.”
“Trust me, Marcus, you’ll like this.”
“Fine.”
Dad took the first LP of Zen Arcade out and handed it to me. Regardless of my front, I was always excited when my dad put on a new record. I put the needle down, and sat on the couch next to my dad, listening to the opening bass line of “Something I Learned Today”. As the song went on, I leaned closer to my dad, resting my head on his thigh. My dad told me about what happened to the train we were supposed to be on. I said it would have been cool to see a train wreck. He said we might have died if we had been on it. I said that wouldn’t have been as cool. He chuckled a little bit, brushed his hand through my hair, and said, “You know, Husker Du recorded all of these songs on their first takes?”
“What’s takes?”
“Their first try.”
“Oh…so?”
“What do you mean, so?!”
“Isn’t that how everyone does it?”
“That’s not how anyone does it.”
In that basement, where there was nothing, my father and I listened to “Broken Home, Broken Heart,” for the first time together, and we both cried. Me because my father was crying, my dad because he knew his marriage was over.