Save Me, Kurt Cobain Read online

“Orion, as in the constellation, the hunter?” I thought of the Ouija board’s prediction and held my breath.

  “No, O’Ryan, as in my ancestors were Irish. You know, drinking and river dancing? Shit. I’m seeing a lot of cop cars around, Nico.”

  “Let’s play a game called Truth,” I suggested. “It just involves telling the truth.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to dare as well?”

  “I think we’re already doing the dare. I’ll go first: what do you really do?”

  The radio played “My Humps,” a massive, ridiculous hit. Cobain scowled, turned it off.

  “I don’t like to tell people the truth about that.”

  “Yeah, you some secret agent or something?”

  “I write crime novels and people buy them, lots of them. I often base the books on real crimes, so I’m pretty much a literary parasite.”

  “I’ve never heard of Daniel O’Ryan,” I said.

  “If you must know, it’s my real name. I write the books under Jasper Jameson. I can’t write around other people, or phones, or beeping things, so I hide out; sometimes here, sometimes there.”

  I remembered all those people on the Clipper ferry reading Jasper Jameson’s latest paperback. The guy had an army of followers. Another book was being turned into a movie, I’d heard. The title was something about the dawn.

  “You’re rich,” I said. An accusation. These developments were confusing. The scenery outside the grimy car window appeared phony and sculpted, with the mountains and the ocean seeming to rise before my eyes. It all looked like something from a Greek myth.

  “Kind of. Most of it goes to my ex-wife and my daughter. My daughter lives near Seattle. I see her there when my ex-wife lets me. We did not part on good terms, let’s say.”

  I tried to absorb everything he was saying, but my brain was just running white noise. I tried to memorize the cliffs, the islands, and the beaches. Had she been down this highway?

  “Now you answer one for me: what are we doing here?”

  “I think my mother traveled out this way. I thought if I drove up here and saw for myself, I’d get a feeling.”

  “A feeling?”

  “Whether she’d been here. Whether she was…”

  “Still here?” he asked quietly.

  I didn’t answer. It started to snow. My heart sped up a bit. Being from Victoria, I felt awe and a vague panic. I said as much to Cobain as we drove.

  “Ha,” he said, thumping the steering wheel. There was a line of dirt under the half-moons of his nails, possibly from working on the turtle enclosure. “That’s just what it’s like falling in love, Nico, panic and awe. You’ll see, one day.” He smiled, pleased again. I smiled, too, happy at his faith in me. One day, I would fall in love.

  “Why, in the name of all that is holy, are there no coffee shops along here?” he asked.

  It was because there was cliff face on one side of the highway and an expanse of ocean on the other, but I decided to stay silent. Cobain was eccentric. He was an artist, after all.

  “Wait until you see the Chief. It’s where all the climbers go. It’s a mondo granite monolith. Peregrine falcons nest there, too,” Cobain said, sounding as excited as a little kid.

  “I didn’t know you liked nature so much.”

  “I appreciate the epic, Nico. Go big or go home. And the Squamish Chief is epic.”

  “It’s the Stawamus Chief, actually. Named after a First Nation. Someday I want to climb it. Once I learn to rock climb.” I hadn’t told many people I wanted to learn to climb, just Obe.

  “Really?” He looked at me, hair flopping over one eye. “A daredevil, eh?” He sped up the car to goad me, not such a good idea with the traffic and the snow pelting down. I said nothing. Highway 99 made me feel like a fruit fly. It looked as if the gods had gotten in a mad frenzy and thrown boulders around. Everything was big and blue or covered in snow. I had never seen anything like it. I only hoped the rock face would hold up and not sweep us to our deaths. I hadn’t noticed any chains in the trunk of the Phoenix. We were poorly prepared for winter conditions.

  “Well, you’re only what, sixteen? There’s still time.”

  “I’m fifteen,” I said. “Born December 3, 1991. Conceived March 9, 1991. Or maybe March 8.”

  “How can you know that?” he laughed, then frowned, looking down the road.

  “Do you—” I began, then changed my mind.

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you have regrets?” I was thinking a lot about things that can’t be undone. I didn’t want Verne to hate me.

  “Oh yeah, of course.”

  “The biggest?”

  “Leaving my daughter,” he said immediately, as if answering a quiz question. “Because that changed everything.”

  A driver in a gray minivan honked as Cobain veered slightly out of his lane. The vehicles around us were crammed with people wearing colorful parkas, their skis secured in tidy racks. They could likely afford season ski passes and regular upgrades to equipment. As far as gear, I’d only ever had one proper backpack, that was it, and it was gone.

  “Can we put on a CD?” I asked, to stop myself from thinking about the missing albums.

  “I’m guessing you might like Sonic Youth,” he said, gesturing to the stack of CDs wedged in the space behind the parking brake. The CD player in the car looked like a garage-sale reject, but it seemed to work.

  “How did you know?” I hadn’t mentioned Sonic Youth.

  He turned toward Howe Sound for a moment. Snow was blowing across the black-blue water and swirling on the highway. It seemed unlikely Cobain’s Pontiac Phoenix would have snow tires.

  “I saw your T-shirt, the vintage one.”

  “The one that was in my pack, wrapped carefully around my CDs, and part of my private belongings?”

  “Yes.”

  “What the hell?”

  “I needed to look for drugs, Nico. I don’t know you. I couldn’t have you around if you had drugs, okay? I just couldn’t. Sorry.” Fat flakes socked against the windshield, and the wipers groaned over and over.

  “And one other thing,” he said, hunched over the wheel. The man had the posture of a garden hose.

  “What?” I wasn’t actually that angry. The farther we drove up the highway, the closer I was getting to my answer. I could feel it.

  “I kept some of the CDs. I hadn’t heard the albums for a long time, so I wanted to give them a listen. You had some good ones. I was always planning to give them back.”

  “You stole them?” I felt tears prick my eyes, but strangely, I laughed. He had saved the CDs.

  “Technically, yes.”

  “I love you, Cobain,” I said, but I couldn’t hear my words. I was drowned out by the sound of angry sirens, like screaming bees swarming around us.

  Cobain did not pull over, despite the sirens. His instinct was to evade, to run, so instead he yanked the car off the highway at Porteau Cove Provincial Park. There was to be no fiery chase for us, unless we drove into the ocean. He parked. I looked at the water and the trees scoured clean by winter. They stood in a line like witches’ brooms. The park was known as a place to scuba dive in the summer. We could plunge into the frigid water together, but we would not surface. I thought of the chorus to “Dive.” Would he pick me? That was what I had done my whole life: waited for someone to choose me. I stepped out of the car, and the wind whipped my blue hair across my face. I needed showering, and flossing, and laundering.

  Cobain got out, too. We had lost the cops. They hadn’t expected we would bolt.

  “I think she was here. She loved being outside, you know. She didn’t like being confined,” I told Cobain. My eyes filled with tears while snow coated my face. The mountains went blurry. She didn’t like me, I was saying. I don’t think my mother liked me.

  “Nico, I’m not good at these things, but you’re going to be okay. You just have to wait this out. And if you were…”

  I tried to picture what Porteau Cove would be
like in the summer, when it was a popular place to camp. I imagined families unpacking their tents and bags of jumbo marshmallows and beach towels. There were rail tracks nearby, where the Rocky Mountaineer would chug past. There was nothing more indifferent than a train.

  The sirens were getting closer. I could tell Cobain was scared, because suddenly he became calm and still.

  “Nico, I…I need to apologize. I’m not really the best grown-up. I wasn’t a good dad, or husband, for that matter….”

  “THIS IS THE POLICE. STEP AWAY FROM THE CAR. GET DOWN ON THE GROUND AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD. NOW.”

  Cobain looked around. There were three police cars and more sirens in the distance. I turned to face the water, getting one last glimpse. Where are you? I wondered. She had been here. I knew that. Had she drowned, or fallen through ice? Or had she been taken?

  Then all these cops had their guns drawn on Cobain. The pulsing lights circled around me. Cobain was on the ground, being handcuffed. I had done this.

  “Leave him alone!” I tried to shout. Arms were around me, too. I punched at the body that held me, but it was solid, strong. I heard that I was safe now. Noise, and uniforms, and sirens, and snow. The famous Royal Canadian Mounted Police. If they were so great, how come they couldn’t find my mother? I did not want to be apart from Cobain. But I never got what I wanted.

  “I’m sorry,” I sobbed as they took Cobain. “I’m sorry!”

  I saw him turn to me, a flash from those blue eyes. Not “Help me, Nico,” or “You hurt me, Nico,” but just, “I tried, Nico.” As they led him away, he straightened to his full height. He was taller than I had thought.

  They asked if I was hurt. Not like they meant, no. Did I need a hospital, a doctor, a social worker, a therapist? Had he touched me? No, no, no, no. I would be sent home, back to Vancouver Island, this time commencing with a long ride in a police car. Did I want a juice or a tea?

  Coffee. Please.

  “When can I see him again?” I asked, when I finally managed to produce a full sentence.

  “Your dad will be at the station. We’ve told him that we found you.”

  “I want to see Cobain. When can I see Cobain?”

  “I don’t know who you mean, honey.” This was from a female cop with teak-brown hair. Power bangs, like an awning above her face.

  I realized it was best to shut up. I had so many more questions for Cobain. I had wanted to hear him sing, if only once. I watched the scenery flash by, as if this were my montage in a movie. No one seemed to believe that they had actually found me. They seemed to think it had been too easy.

  “Where are they taking him?’

  “Who?”

  “The man I was with.” I thought about the kind of people who had sat in the same cop car, looking out the same window: murderers, drug dealers, and molesters. And me.

  “Don’t worry about him. We’re going to make sure you get back home with your dad.”

  I hugged myself. I stayed quiet. Inside I wailed, wanting Cobain.

  My mistake had been jumping out at Horseshoe Bay. Not surprisingly, I had been seen. At the RCMP station in West Vancouver, I answered the same questions over and over. No, Cobain had not hurt me. He had not touched me. I was not on drugs or alcohol. Verne had not hurt me. I had just gone away for a few days, to think. Wasn’t that what people did?

  “I want to speak with Detective Stanton at the Victoria Police,” I said. “I need to talk to him about my mother.”

  The sergeant, Horvath, seemed unsatisfied with my answers about Cobain, or O’Ryan, as they called him. If I told the Mounties what they wanted to hear, would they search for my mother again? If I said Cobain had kidnapped me, held me against my will, would they do what I wanted? I considered it for one shameful moment. The truth: If I hadn’t met Cobain, I might have gone crazy, succumbed. Given in to my pack of white wolves.

  Horvath’s nose was too big for his face. His face was thin, but his nose was a monster home on a small lot. Underneath it was the stereotypical cop mustache. I focused on that. I was one baby step away from crying. They would not tell me where they’d sent Cobain.

  “You’re in quite a bit of trouble, young lady. You don’t seem to realize that,” Horvath said. “Can you tell me again how you wound up in Vancouver?”

  I sighed. The interview room smelled of the same lemon floor cleaner as Cobain’s cabin, which stopped me for a second. Horvath stood in front of me, and some social worker was sitting in the corner. She had a straight part down her scalp, showing her chalk-white skin. The woman, Maria, wore a beige wool sweater and a beige wool skirt and held a notebook and a file. She seemed afraid of me. I was afraid of the file. I tried to explain about the homeless man again, the cold night in the ferry terminal.

  “Why did you feel you needed to leave, Nicola? Maybe you weren’t getting enough attention? Wanted to be in the papers?” asked Horvath.

  “Only one person called me Nicola,” I snapped, jerking forward. “You can call me Ms. Cavan, or Nico.” I fell back in the plastic chair, surprised at my own words. “Horvath,” I said, forgetting his title again. “Mr. Horvath. Please. I have new information. I think my mother was heading to Whistler when she disappeared, trying to see her friend who was working there. Can you get someone to recheck the files or something? Your officers can talk to my mother’s friend, Janey Keogh. She lives in North Vancouver.”

  “What hold does that fellow have on you?” asked Horvath, leaning in. He smelled of stale coffee, an odor I detested. Fresh coffee was the smell of possibility. Stale coffee was a Greyhound bus ride.

  “Please tell Stanton. He said he cared. He said he still thought about her,” I sobbed.

  “I think she’s had enough for now, Staff Sergeant Horvath,” the beige lady said, looking up from a handheld device. “Her father just arrived. She’s answered all of your questions.”

  I had never seen a Mountie up close before: the crisp shirt, the badges, the lapels like arrows. His black cap had a bright gold band with a badge in the middle. I was afraid of him, which I figured was what he wanted. Did they even usually wear the hats? My greatest fear, however, was that he wouldn’t listen to me.

  “Ms. Cavan, did you know that girls, women, are disappearing from downtown Vancouver and we don’t know why? And when we hear that a girl, a young woman, has gone missing…Do you know what you’ve put your father through? I have a daughter your age.”

  “You wouldn’t want her to be friends with me, I guess,” I said quietly. All the cops had a daughter my age, it seemed.

  “That’s not what I was saying, and I think you know that. We’ll take you to your father now. He flew over by floatplane to get you.”

  My thoughts were scrambled, and I forgot that he meant Verne, not Cobain. Horvath surveyed me again, as if uncertain I was worth the expense of a floatplane. “If what you say is true, you’re lucky all you lost was a backpack.”

  When he was still nobody, like me, Kurt Cobain was arrested for spraying graffiti. After becoming famous, he later observed that one good thing about jail would be not signing autographs. “If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail,” Kurt Cobain said. He also hoped he died before he became Pete Townshend, the guitarist from the Who.

  I tried not to think of all the bad things I’d read about Cobain, such as the times he was supposedly too strung out to see his baby daughter, or didn’t bother to thank people who needed thanking, or when he was childish and selfish and had poor hygiene. He was a genius. He had a problem with drugs. So what. Everyone’s got something, I figured. Some of the biographers had described him doing things that were just crazy, but that’s how those people sell books, right? Making up stories about people who can’t defend themselves. I didn’t believe most of it. Kurt Cobain wrote one of the best rock albums of all time; who wouldn’t be jealous?

  I wondered how I could see Cobain again. Would he go back to the cabin? Where was the cabin? I wasn’t sure I could find it again. The social worke
r, Maria, led me through a set of glass security doors, and then I was looking up into the face of Verne. I nearly gasped. He seemed to have aged five years for every day I’d been gone. His eyes were pinched and red, as if he’d been crying or rubbing them. His rosacea had flared up, but he was clean-shaven, a task he sometimes neglected if I wasn’t there to remind him. When he saw my face, his gray eyes lit up for a second, and then he clasped me in a hug, crushing me against his raincoat. He’d worn his good London Fog, which was reserved for important occasions.

  “Verne, I…” I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I was sorry.

  We took the bus to the terminal and rolled onto the bowels of the boat, my third ferry in less than forty-eight hours. The driver parked the bus and shouted instructions for reboarding later, and Verne and I walked up to the passenger decks in silence. If we had spoken, something would have shattered. I realized I was glad to be going home, where there would be a hot shower. Verne seemed to relax once we were on the ferry to Victoria, the adrenaline easing off. I didn’t want to think about what the floatplane had cost.

  “Do you want a Nanaimo bar or anything?” he asked. All around us, people were staking out their areas with shopping bags full of their Christmas loot. How important it was for human beings to claim their little parcel of territory, even for a ninety-minute voyage. I am here. This is mine. Keep off.

  “What?” I asked, my mind still running over the cabin, Highway 99, seeing Cobain down on the ground.

  “You used to love them when you were little,” Verne said. He had sagged into a seat by the window and was fixated on the black water instead of looking at me.

  “Did I?” I didn’t remember that. “They gave me a sandwich at the station. I’m okay.”

  He winced, as if not wanting to remember that his daughter had just been at a police station.

  “Gillian has been sick with worry. So have I. We tried to keep it from Grandma Irene, but then it was all over the news.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I was always sorry.

  “What were you thinking, Nico?”