Save Me, Kurt Cobain Read online

  I played the chorus to “Sliver” in my head, bobbing my chin. I felt the panic settle.

  “What I’m wondering is which one of you is Lisa Pick?” I said, only a slight quaver in my delivery.

  Then I was heading for the door, my boots sliding on the wet floor tiles. I heard distortion, and grinding guitars, and wheezing, which was coming from me. I had never talked back to people, not until then. Nicola was supposed to mean “victory of the people,” but in practice I had always been quiet and cautious, more like “runs with earthworms.”

  Some days, I thought it would be easier not to exist at all than to have to go to high school with morons like Liam, who I once heard tell a girl “I’ve got bigger tits than you from lifting weights.” But I was waiting for something: art school, a psychology degree, or the affection of some tall, skinny guy who played bass and liked small, blond losers. I had learned to wait, if nothing else, to hibernate, without action or feeling. In animals it had some special name: torpor or something. You power down.

  Verne wasn’t home when I shoved the door open. I hung my wet slicker on a hook by the front door. My boots were soaked. Verne insisted I needed proper rubber boots. In fact, he had bought me a pair (unisex gray) at Capital Iron, a hardware store downtown, but I refused to wear them, and then my feet grew. There was a note on the kitchen table, which was like our diplomatic pouch. All our important correspondence was left there. Nico, got called in. Mac and cheese in fridge, just reheat. Love, Dad.

  I grabbed my spiral sketchbook and a pack of pencil crayons with exotic names from the counter. Sarasota Orange. Hollywood Cerise. Even the names held promise. Then I mixed up some milk with strawberry Quik powder in a travel mug. I didn’t stir it enough, so the top looked like some strange, volcanic pink planet. Squashing the lid back on, I headed to the hall and pulled the red rope hanging from the ceiling. A rickety metal ladder fell down. I had always been afraid of the attic. We kept Halloween and Christmas decorations there. Most of the decorations came from my grandma Irene, and more boxes arrived after she moved to the retirement home. There were also our suitcases, which we rarely used.

  The space was more like a nook with beams and insulation than a real attic. There was one small area with flooring, about the size of a cramped bathroom. That was where I wanted to set up my studio, or at least an easel. Someday, I thought, the attic would be filled with my paintings, and I could bring a boy up there (Bryan!) and say, “These are all my works.”

  Sitting on the wood floor, I felt safe, as if I had been tucked into a pocket, snug. There were sometimes break-ins in our area, and my mind went into overdrive when Verne worked nights. Many times I couldn’t sleep at all, waiting to hear his key in the lock. Recently I had heard trilling from the attic, which Verne said came from the pigeons that gathered on our roof since the plastic owl up there got swept away in a windstorm.

  I meant to tell myself to concentrate, but instead I thought, Concrete, Nico, concrete. I took a slug of Quik, the fake strawberry flavor making my lips pucker. I drew the three girls in the bathroom at school as if they were trapped there, like a statue garden. I made big oval mouths, thin praying-mantis arms, and tiny snail-sized ears. Each figure had a cell phone pressed to one ear. The mouths gaped, but the figures were all turned in different directions, no one listening to the person right beside them.

  Bright blue circles around the eyes, lead-pencil slashes for eyebrows, wide in alarm. Their feet were trapped in the concrete, their mantis arms swirling around them like fly-fishing lines. Lisa Pick’s revenge, I wrote at the bottom, and then the date. The attic smelled of wax, canvas tents, and dried earth, which was probably from Verne’s old camping equipment. There were cardboard boxes, three large plastic bins with lids, and a proper steamer-style trunk.

  I looked at my watch. It was 9:15 p.m. I had dinner to eat and homework to do. Wurrl, wurrrl, wurrl, I heard. The pigeons? Or a real owl. I was a city girl; I knew nothing about nature. I climbed down the stairs to eat cold macaroni and cheese straight from the container and allowed myself one memory.

  I am sitting in the bath, hearing the roar of water filling the tub, which sounds like thunder to me if I lie back and submerge my head. My mother is kneeling on the tile, swishing the water with her fingers to make bubbles from the blue ribbon of liquid soap. A radio plays, but the music fades in and out like a bee zigging and zagging from a room. My mother’s hair is tucked up, in a bun, I guess, and she’s wearing a pink bathrobe with a round collar. “Chubby you,” she says, smiling and rubbing my arm with a soapy washcloth, and I laugh. “Chubby little you.”

  The countdown for Seattle was on. My rational brain knew the Ouija board was silly, but I still wanted to ask it questions. Would I meet the boy of my dreams in Seattle? I had fantasies about doing something wild there but couldn’t decide what that might be. Piercings and tattoos were common at Vic High, which had an alternative vibe. The building is an ancient, drafty behemoth that could be a convent or a prison. By and large, kids at Vic High come from families without a Lexus in the driveway—unlike many of the stuck-ups at Oak Bay or the area’s private schools.

  The trip would be my first time taking the Clipper ferry alone. I would also be touring around solo, since Aunt Gillian was working during my visit. My departure date was nearing, so after school that day I’d lured Obe over with the fact that I’d done a sketch of him (true) and had acquired a copy of the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa (false). Really, I needed someone to help me summon the spirits to move the Ouija board. Obe arrived, dusted with a layer of wet snow. He looked like a powdered doughnut.

  “You didn’t really get Surfer Rosa, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Shit. This is about the Ouija board again, right?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Nico, can you picture what guys like Liam would do to me if they found out I played with a Ouija board?”

  “Yes. Okay, I can. I just pictured it,” I said, closing my eyes. I was only ever smart-assed and bubbly with Obe. He made me feel at home in my skin.

  “I don’t like this stuff, Nico.” He was still standing in the hall, the snow disappearing from his shoulders. In some kind of stab at geek chic, he wore black earmuffs.

  “One last time, and then I promise, no more Ouija board after I get back from Seattle,” I said.

  “One last time,” he agreed. I went into the kitchen and tossed a bag of popcorn into the microwave, sealing the deal. Obe had a thing for popcorn. It made my stomach hurt, so I usually only had a handful. Everything made my stomach hurt. The pain was as if someone had attached clothespins to my insides: sharp pinches.

  Obe and I sat in the living room on a battered Oriental rug that had been in my grandma Irene’s house. The rug still smelled heavily of fake lemon air freshener. I placed the popcorn bowl on the rug and lightly touched the pointer, my legs crossed as if I were sitting at a kindergarten assembly.

  “What will this Christmas bring Obe?” I asked, my voice raspy. Shit. I couldn’t get a cold right before my Seattle trip.

  Obe’s eyes widened, as if he were surprised that I had asked a question of the spirit world on his behalf. He had still not taken off the ridiculous earmuffs, but who could blame him? The house was freezing. Cold in Victoria was damp. It clung to you like a layer of fish skin. Sometimes the only way to warm up again was a scalding shower.

  The pointer jerked along the letters. F-A-T.

  “Obe, you’re going to get fat,” I said, but I was losing my voice, and the joke fell flat.

  The planchette glided to H-E-R.

  “Father,” I said. It didn’t seem to count until someone said the prediction out loud.

  “Shit, Nico,” said Obe, who rarely swore. “That’s not funny. You were moving it.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Well, my dad’s not coming back. That’s BS.” Obe’s cheeks were flushed. His dad had left when he was twenty months old, so it had always been Obe and his mom. His father was in the military and
lived in Halifax or something. I felt bad that the board had spelled that word, but maybe it was Obe’s subconscious talking.

  “Now tell us, what will happen to Nico in Seattle? Obe, it helps to concentrate.”

  He scowled, his hands resting on the board like two pallid tarantulas. The pointer swung to F-A-T-H.

  “What the hell,” said Obe.

  The pointer swooped to E and R, then stopped, as if exhausted.

  “I guess the board is messing with us.”

  “You have a father,” said Obe, glaring. “He’s going to come home in an hour and make you dinner.”

  Obe and I knew exactly how to hurt each other, but we made a point of not doing so. Sure, I had a dad, but he had a mother at home, and she didn’t work nights. Nadia was sweet, if a bit clueless, and made world-class vegetarian cabbage rolls. She always called Obe “my big kid,” like, “Oh, do you want to speak with my big kid?” She seemed to enjoy the fact that Obe was tall, as if height helped a kid with no dad.

  We both sat there, freezing, our fingertips touching the pointer. It began moving again, which freaked me out. H-U-N.

  “Father the Hun?” Obe asked.

  T-E-R.

  “Hunter,” I said. “Father Hunter. That makes no sense.”

  The pointer quavered toward GOODBYE.

  “It’s saying goodbye to us,” Obe said, his eyes wide.

  “Goodbye,” I said out loud. You always had to say goodbye to the board or the spirit might stay longer; that was one of the “rules.” The creepiest rule was that if the pointer started counting or doing the alphabet backward, you needed to stop immediately. That meant the spirit was trying to escape and could terrorize you forever. I had never told Obe that part.

  “I’m going to turn on the heat,” I said, getting up. I noticed that my grandma’s rug needed vacuuming. I wasn’t big on housekeeping.

  “Nico?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you really think your mom used this thing?”

  “Dunno,” I said, hearing the thermostat click on, a soft snap. “It was hers, apparently. Left in the attic.”

  “Don’t get mad, but I’ve always wondered, where’s all the rest of her stuff? I mean, there’s almost nothing here.”

  “Verne says he waited three years, then gave most of it away to charity. He said it made him too upset to see it every day, her clothes, her books.”

  “Doesn’t that piss you off? That he didn’t save those things for you?”

  “Yes,” I said, and couldn’t say more. There was a tangled ball of anger in my stomach. Verne had meant well, I tried to tell myself.

  “Do you want to see the sketch I did of you?” I asked, to change the subject. Sketching was the only thing that made my stomach stop roiling.

  “Okay. But that’s it for the Ouija board,” said Obe.

  “Yes, I promise,” I said, crossing my fingers.

  I went into my room to get my sketchbook, considering the answers. Did Ouija boards joke? I had often wondered if Verne was really my father, and once made the mistake of saying that to a school guidance counselor. After that, I’d been forced to attend therapy sessions to discuss my alienation from my dad and whether I blamed him for my mother’s disappearance. They even wanted to medicate me. I learned fast to keep my crazy thoughts to myself, or at least restrict them to Obe, who was eccentric in his own, contained way.

  “Hey.” I tried to sound lighthearted. “Verne will be home soon. Do you want to stay and have dinner with us? I’ll make it.” He followed me to the kitchen, so I knew his answer.

  “Oh, Lord, Nico. Pancakes or spaghetti?” Obe knew my two specialties.

  “Pancakes,” I said. “We might even have frozen blueberries.”

  He swung open a cupboard and reached for the top shelf, because he knew exactly where we kept the mixing bowl.

  A tsunami of schoolwork crashed down on me, and my brain seized up under the strain. Putting together sentences was the hardest, and I had left all my English assignments until the end. Maybe I was depressed; who knows? But I pushed through the term’s final essays and exams by concentrating on Seattle. The trip was everything. Maybe I needed to leave Victoria, or spend a few days not seeing all the green trucks rumbling by delivering their laundered uniforms. Or maybe I needed a break from the armpit-farting Liams of Vic High.

  A short essay still loomed. On “a book that means something to me.” As soon as I heard that, my mind was wiped clean, as if I’d never read a book. I decided to find my mother’s old copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I had no memory of her reading the stories, but there is a photo of me tucked under a quilt, cuddling up to Annalee, who is fanning the book in front of her face. The photo, a Polaroid, is dated November 1993. My mother loved Polaroid cameras, the kind where the photo spits right out. Back then, for most cameras, you would have had to take the roll of film to a photo lab. And waiting wasn’t one of Annalee’s strong points.

  The book had been passed on to my mother from her own grandparents and was really old, like from 1927, with the title in gold script. The illustrations were by an artist called Rie Cramer. Each scene made you feel as if you were spying on a dream. I used to keep the book in my room, but I hadn’t seen it for a while.

  It wasn’t in the back of the hall closet, wedged in the living room shelves, or under the beds. I stomped around, swearing, and then put my boots on to take my rage out on the storage shed, a place visited by spiders and creatures with long tails. After getting the rusty lock open, I threw boxes and duffel bags of things aside—croquet set, hockey sticks, and sleeping bags. Finally, underneath all that, was a box marked child books in Verne’s writing. I lifted out Grimm’s Fairy Tales and closed the box.

  My shoulders tensed at the sight of the stack of firewood waiting for the day our landlord fixed the chimney and we could use the fireplace again. A brown spider shimmied down the logs and onto a tied bundle of papers set aside as a fire starter. One of the pages caught my eye: the top strip read MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL in black-and-white. The spider ambled away, and I picked up the bundle, slicing the string with a pair of pruning shears. Mixed in with the ancient flyers was a bunch of music zines on different-colored paper, including one called chickfactor, a pretty cool name. No way they belonged to Verne. I separated out all the zines and carried them into the house, smoothing them.

  I had heard of MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL, a punk zine since forever. The faded pink page was turned to an interview with Nirvana, a grainy image of bassist Krist Novoselic (then called Chris, before he embraced his Croatian roots) looming tall in jeans with the knees torn out, and drummer Dave Grohl and Kurt Cobain sitting to his right. Grohl’s hair is in a ponytail, and he’s wearing a motorcycle jacket. Cobain looks pensive, forearms resting on his knees, his trademark Chuck Taylors on his feet. In the Q & A piece, Kurt is called “Qurt,” without explanation. Qurt praises the girl band L7 as being both “heavy and sexy.” He and Krist use the word heavy more than you’d think was possible.

  In the interview, Qurt talks about his knack for writing songs and claims to be writing one for the London Philharmonic, a story about a boy playing video games. He intends it as a metaphor for Nirvana’s making it big. The rest of the zine crackles with a crude, exuberant energy, including a “Scene Report” section that includes a “Drunk Punk of the Month” feature. (The winner, shown passed out clutching his guitar, was from a Portland band called Deprived.) The zine pages had ads from bands I didn’t know and a few I did, like Bad Religion and NoMeansNo. I stood in the kitchen, my boots getting mud on the floor, and stared at the zines. There were six in all, and I knew there must have been more. Almost all had one thing in common: an article on Nirvana and their nerve center, Kurt Cobain.

  Verne found me at the table, still in my boots, paging through them. He put his lunch box on the counter.

  “That doesn’t look like homework,” he said. “Come on, Nico, you said you have papers due.”

  “I do. I will. Were these Mom’s?” I asked,
gesturing to the photocopied pages. Taken at a glance, the zines brought to mind patched-together ransom notes.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, trying to sound like it was no big deal, but I saw a ripple of concern cross his face. “Her music newsletters. Where did you find them?”

  “They’re called zines. In the shed, by the woodpile.”

  “I didn’t know they were there. They look kind of…” He gazed at a black-and-white ad for R Radical Records that featured a dog’s behind wearing a police officer’s hat and sunglasses. “Hey, cop, if I had a face like yours…,” it read. It was rude in about six different ways.

  “I’ll take them to my room,” I said, before he thought of confiscating them.

  Kurt Cobain would have found the dog ad hilarious.

  On the night before the last day of school, I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning finishing an essay on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I woke up at 8:02 a.m. when Verne rapped on my door, causing my Flipper poster (I had sketched the band logo myself) to flop from the wall.

  “Nico, wake up. You’re going to be late.”

  I was never late for school. Being late meant drawing attention to myself. I was always on time.

  “Shit, Verne, sorry. I was up late with an essay.” What had I written? Something about the danger of complacency. Or rather, the danger of accepting a little but giving up a lot. Something like that.

  I hefted off my sheets and swung my feet down. It was always awkward for both of us when Verne came into my room, even though there wasn’t a girlie thing in sight. Actually, just one: a pink jewelry box that my mother gave me when I was three. Inside was a tiny ballerina that turned around when you opened the box. The ballerina rotated in front of a small, oval mirror with white sparkles making a frame. The box was still filled with a three-year-old’s treasures: shiny barrettes, beaded bracelets, gumball-machine rings, and, for some reason, three pink feathers.