Save Me, Kurt Cobain Read online

  Cobain opened the case and in the dim light strummed the opening chords to AC/DC’s “Back in Black.”

  “That’s the first song you learned to play,” I said.

  “No, it was ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ It must have been ‘Stairway.’ ”

  “You liked the Beatles and the Monkees.”

  “Sure, everyone did. Look, what’s wrong with you? I mean, what’s the matter?”

  “I guess I’m just too much of a moody baby,” I said, my final lob over the net, quoting from his supposed suicide note. I heard crying: gasping chain-saw sobs. It was coming from me.

  “Hey,” he said, putting his arm around me. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and rested my cheek against his sleeve. He wore a flannel shirt, of course, soft from years of wear. Cobain’s hand hung over my chest like a starfish. I was so tired. Outside, branches smacked against the window.

  “Help me, Cobain,” I thought, and must have whispered out loud.

  “What did you call me?” he asked.

  “I need to use your bathroom.” I couldn’t put it off any longer. He handed me a flashlight and pointed to the ratty plywood door in the corner of the room. I shined the beam at the door, right on a bashed-in circle, dead center, no doubt made by a fist. From what I could see, the bathroom had a warped floor, a stall with a rusted showerhead and a torn peach curtain. There was a sad toilet with a wooden seat that was cold on my thighs. I peed for what seemed like ten minutes, trying not to touch the seat, while gazing at a large plastic box by the sink. I heard something moving. Oh God, if they were baby rats, I would freak: their pink hooded eyes and soft gray bodies. We’d found a nest of them once at our house in Victoria under the hot water heater. I could handle many things. Rats weren’t one of them.

  I set the flashlight by the sink, determined to wash my hands. I unstuck a triangle of glycerin soap from the counter. The water sputtered and spat. I dried my hands on my jeans, then pushed the lid off and shined the light in the box. It was alive with bodies. I looked closer. They were baby turtles, four of them, clambering around in a mix of soil and leaves.

  “Are you keeping something alive in there?” I asked Cobain. He was sitting up on the couch, still holding the guitar, strumming. He had a small battery-powered lamp going, which cast a watery lemon light.

  “Yeah, American box turtles. I’m going to build them a pool in the spring. They like the humidity in the bathroom. They’re fan-fucking-amazing,” he said, pointing one finger in the air for emphasis.

  That was the longest answer I had heard from Cobain. He still kept turtles.

  “So,” Cobain asked. “Where would I have met your mother?” He had picked up the photo again.

  “A club in Victoria, the Forge. March 1991. Nirvana with an AC/DC cover band.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, rubbing his chin. “We danced together.”

  “You pulled her onstage,” I corrected him.

  “Right, I did, because she was so beautiful, Annalee. She was with a friend….” I could tell by his tone that he was shitting me, playing along to see what I’d say. He was trying to trip me up again.

  “Janey. Her best friend: Janey Keogh. They did everything together.” It annoyed me that he wasn’t even trying to remember. Yes, it was a long time ago and he’d done a lot of drugs in the years after, but he could at least make an effort.

  “What happened to Janey?”

  He rubbed the bottom of the Polaroid with his thumb as if there might be a hidden message on it. His finger pads were calloused. He played guitar more than he’d admitted.

  “When my…After Verne and my mother got married, Janey was working at a resort in Whistler. I guess she was a wild one, snowboarding, partying, and all that. Janey was…rough.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then what, what?”

  “What happened to Janey?”

  “I guess she was crushed when my mom disappeared. She left the country for Puerto Rico or something. She was the crazy one. Annalee was sensible, most of the time. Or so I’m told.”

  “Write Janey’s full name down on this paper,” he said, shoving an Esso gas receipt at me. “Make sure you spell it properly. So Verne, your father, was all you had?”

  “I had my aunt. She’s why I was in Seattle. A grandmother. That’s about it.”

  I thought I heard the skittering again. My eyes itched from the woodsmoke. It was late.

  “Nico,” said Cobain. “It’s almost Christmas.”

  “Yeah? I’d better get to sleep or Santa won’t come,” I said. When had I started talking like that? After I started listening to Nirvana.

  “I’m going to give you a present,” he said in his soft, boyish voice, easing the guitar back in the case by the light of the fire.

  “What’s that?” Goose bumps climbed a ladder up my arms. I wasn’t used to people just giving me things.

  “I’m going to help you find Janey. Tomorrow.” He snapped the case shut.

  When I was little, in kindergarten, I would sometimes wake up and expect my mother to be standing over my bed. She used to do that. Verne said she liked to watch me sleep, which sounds boring, I know. She would watch my breath rise and fall, my eyes shut tight like a doll’s. Some days, I would forget that she was gone, dead, disappeared, and there would be this crackle of joy in me at the thought of seeing her. Then I would remember, and I would cry, howling, until Grandma Irene, who lived with us for a few months, made me wash my face and eat a bowl of cereal. Over the months, I stopped howling and became the Quiet Girl, a walk-on part in a movie.

  When I woke up in the cabin, the lights were on, which meant the power had returned. My bones ached because I had been cold, even under the quilt and the blankets. Cobain had grunted that I should take the bed. He would sleep on the couch. I was only to stay one night, he said several times. I had fallen asleep at once, the quiet like a lake engulfing me. The deep sleep was almost unsettling. At home, I often lay awake. I’d try not to think about having to go to school the next day or my terrors of the Frog Man, this nasty half man, half frog who was the star of my nightmares. If the Frog Man touched you, he would leave warts on your skin. You would never be the same. Verne used to check under my bed for the Frog Man and then leave the light on without me having to ask.

  As I peered around, I realized Cobain was gone. He wasn’t just in the woodshed, or feeding the turtles, or outside checking the weather. He was gone.

  So there it was, Christmas Day, and I was on my own. People had to be searching for me. Verne would want me back, yearning to retrieve me as if I were a lost bicycle. No, Verne did love me. He did. But he didn’t fully claim me and make me feel as if I belonged. There was something in him that prevented it. And now it all made sense.

  Having nothing else to do, I sketched Cobain playing his guitar. I used my style, spidery arms and legs, motion. I liked Daphne Odjig, a native artist from Ontario. I had seen her prints on cards.

  When I was done with the sketch, I tried my cell phone. Verne would be looking for me at the ferry terminal, then everywhere, which made me sad. I could call home and say I was fine but not coming back for a while. But wherever we were was remote enough that we weren’t getting reception. The floor creaked as I walked to the fridge and yanked it open. The air smelled of woodsmoke and something else, gasoline and lemon, like an industrial floor cleaner. The cabin had been cleaned at some point. I couldn’t imagine Cobain with a mop, though he’d once been a janitor after he dropped out of high school. Like I said, Cobain was an ambitious slacker. He later included a janitor in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video as a private joke.

  The fridge contained a carton of milk, a jar of raspberry jam, a tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, and four bottles of Rolling Rock. Finding half a bag of English muffins in one of the cupboards, I examined them for mold, then toasted one and ate it. I opened the cabin door and a gust of cold air rushed in. There was a layer of frost on the ground. I glanced at my watch: 8:23 a.m. There w
ere tire tracks in the mud that had been covered over with frost. He would return for his turtles, if not for me, I figured.

  Back inside, I decided to snoop. In the cutlery drawer, I found a pack of Winston Lights and an orange Bic lighter. I had hoped for a wallet or passport, but he had taken those with him. Cobain was cagey. I hoped he was off drugs. He’d be able to find those in Nanaimo, no problem. It was a harbor city.

  I studied the images of body parts once more, including a photo of the heart: the atria, valves, and ventricles, the arteries springing out like garden hoses. In a small drawer in the coffee table, I found a little illustrated children’s book on caring for turtles. American box turtles have a hinge on their lower shell that allows them to retract inside, leaving no flesh exposed. That was something to be envied. There was a laptop on the end table by the bed, but it was password protected, so that was that.

  People say “Maybe this Christmas,” or “the magic of Christmas,” or “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.” I thought this: I could not take one more. I had been waiting for something, someone, to help me, and no one had. I was done. A yellow school bus soars off an icy road; divers search a lake for bodies; legs are crushed; a brain is dead. Sometimes the worst has happened. Sometimes done is done.

  I had itemized the ways. For example, Verne took tiny blue pills every day to stave off his headaches. He brought them home from the pharmacy in big quantities because it was cheap. Those would work. There were bridges, such as the blue one downtown on Johnson Street. There were hard drugs that could be purchased at Vic High. And who could blame me surrendering my brain? Perhaps people would be surprised I’d waited so long. Sure, I knew other kids who only had one parent at home, lots of them, but no one else had a mother who had just vanished one day without explanation or warning. Not knowing was killing me in a way that felt literal, a clawing in my gut.

  A car door slammed. Cobain was back. I walked outside to check. He was wearing the same hooded coat but with a burgundy hunting-style cap on his head, which was odd, since it screamed Kurt Cobain. The trees were laced with snow, but the wind had died down. It would be a peaceful Christmas—for some.

  No doubt Aunt Gillian would be frantic, Verne would be worried, and Grandma Irene would be sure I was dead in a ditch. She was a worst-case-scenario person. And that was about it. Obe would still be in Winnipeg visiting his grandparents, wondering why I hadn’t been emailing—unless someone called him looking for me.

  Obe, I imagined writing. I have found my father. I have found Kurt Cobain. I knew it sounded insane. I needed more time and more proof. I needed Cobain to like me, to love me, to see our connection. I was eager to show him the sketch.

  Some people walk. Cobain kind of swooped. I wondered if he still had back problems.

  “Nico!” Cobain had a big smile on his face and a coffee in each hand. “This is for you,” he said, presenting a red paper cup. “Merry Christmas. It’s a latte.”

  Cobain was acting strange. Jovial. And he had called me by name.

  “The end is in sight, Nico, but I have one more thing for you. Come inside.”

  He opened the cabin door, taking a sip of his coffee.

  “You know, I don’t like rich people, but I do like their fancy-pants coffee,” he said. “I’ll admit that to you, and only you.”

  He sat at the kitchen table and thumped his coffee down. In daylight, I could see that the table needed scrubbing. He dropped the hunting cap on the floor, his hat rack of choice.

  “Nico, I think I found Janey.”

  I said nothing. I clutched the coffee cup, which made my fingertips pulse. The coffee was scalding.

  “Did you hear me?”

  I nodded. There had been too many close calls, too many disappointments. None of them had ever put me any closer to my mother’s arms. Once, there was a serial killer from Spokane, Washington. He was serving a life sentence for murdering several women, including some seasonal farm workers in the Lower Mainland, not far from Vancouver. While doing time, he’d admitted to committing more murders in Canada. For a few months, the police had investigated the possibility that my mother had encountered him, but there was never a strong link.

  Annalee Cavan had left Vancouver Island; that was known. There was security-video footage of her taken on the ferry from Swartz Bay to the Tsawwassen terminal on the mainland. I knew, too, from Aunt Gillian that a lot of disturbing questions had been asked about my mother. Sex-trade workers were disappearing from Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Poor and drug-addicted women were going missing, and later, bodies were discovered at a farm in the Lower Mainland. But Annalee’s DNA was never found, nor was she ever spotted on the streets of Vancouver. Annalee had no history of hard drug use or mental health problems. She had just walked away from her life.

  In Vancouver, the trail had gone cold. The last sighting of her was on the Spirit of Vancouver Island, a ship that sounds like a ghost but is really a massive ferry that can hold more than four hundred vehicles. She traveled on foot, though, since she had never learned to drive. The ferry could move more than two thousand people. It was an easy place to disappear.

  “Nico. This is good news. Or at least news.”

  I wondered if he’d pounded back a couple of coffees before returning. He was jittery. He picked up the cap again.

  “Janey Keogh waitressed at the Blue Peacock Pub in Whistler until the summer of 1996. After that, it looked as if she left to work in Puerto Rico for a few years.”

  “A few years? You mean she came back?”

  “She’s in Vancouver. She works at a college day care. I got her home address. It’s North Vancouver.”

  “How do you know all this? About Janey?”

  Cobain shrugged. “I know a guy in Nanaimo. He can find out things, for a price. You can get almost anything in Nanaimo for the right price.”

  “You have a hacker who works on Christmas Day?”

  “He did this time. It’s just a matter of accessing electronic records. I’ll send you the bill.”

  “You aren’t really a medical illustrator, are you?”

  “Hmm. Did you do this drawing?” He picked up the sketch.

  The answer was obvious, given the circumstances. He was dodging me.

  “This is not bad. It’s me, right?”

  “Yes. It’s you. Merry Christmas.”

  My gift clearly made him uncomfortable, and he fiddled with the strap of the hunting cap.

  “I have to feed the turtles,” he said, shuffling off but still talking. “They belong to my daughter. Her mother travels a lot, so…It’s a long story. They trust me with the turtles, at least.” He dropped something metal on the floor, cursed, and retrieved it. I could hear him murmuring something to the turtles.

  “After that, can you do me one more favor?” I shouted. It was now or never.

  Cobain refused to go with me. We made an agreement: he would drive me to Duke Point. He would not report me, but he would not accompany me on the ferry to Vancouver.

  “How can you even ask that? I can’t get charged with kidnapping. I was on my own when I was not much older than you, so do what you have to. But at least send word home. Tell them that you’re alive.”

  “Fine,” I said, although I thought that was a bit much coming from him. He’d had more than a decade to “send word home.”

  “And whatever you do, do not mention me.”

  “I’ll send the message right now, before we go. I promise.” If the Internet in the cabin was working, which was not a given.

  Cobain, from the many stories I had read, was inclined to self-preservation. He feared conflict. He skipped out on people instead of confronting them. Nirvana constantly changed drummers in the early days, but Cobain never fired them face to face.

  I didn’t want to leave Cobain. Maybe he would go back to Seattle, or who knew where. I considered presenting all the facts that suggested I was his daughter. But then, he had one daughter already, and he wasn’t with her.

  I type
d: Verne, delayed. Had to take another trip. Something came up. I am fine. Will see you very soon. XOXO Nico.

  After sending my message and packing up, I made the entire journey to the Duke Point terminal crouched in the backseat, as per Cobain’s orders. I didn’t dare ask for directions back to the cabin. I was afraid he’d tell me not to come back, so I just kept sticking my head up to look for landmarks—a farmer’s market sign, a truck for sale by the side of the road. I caught a glimpse of a street sign before Cobain yelled at me to stay down.

  We arrived at 9:45 a.m., enough time to board the 10:15 to Tsawwassen terminal in Vancouver. The authorities would no doubt be checking ferry terminals for me, but likely the main one from Victoria, which was Swartz Bay. I figured I might get lucky. Duke Point was smaller and less busy.

  Cobain, too, knew the police would be looking for me. The cops seemed to be a constant preoccupation, and he mentioned them several times. He stopped the car with a lurch to let me out just shy of the terminal. He was only willing to go so far. He was either getting more cautious or smarter with age.

  “Couldn’t you just go home and then travel to Vancouver with your dad later?” he asked while his car idled. I could see now it was an old Pontiac Phoenix with British Columbia plates.

  “I’m not going back there. If I do, I’ll never be allowed to leave the house, that’s for sure.” Verne was not unkind, but he believed in maintaining order and safety. That was his job, at work and at home. I remembered then that he had gotten a tree. The thought of it sitting there undecorated made me sad, but not sad enough to turn around. I hopped out, trying not to seem scared. Forward march.

  Passing the statue of an enormous orca that stands by the terminal, I thought that maybe Cobain and I could pose by it together, the big fake whale. It could be ironic, as everything was. I had forgotten about the point-and-shoot camera in my backpack, which hopefully contained at least one good photo of Sean. I turned to wave to Cobain, but he was gone. I’d said I’d only go to Vancouver without him if he promised to be in the cabin when I returned. He did, though he might have had his fingers crossed.