Save Me, Kurt Cobain Read online

  Kurt drew all his life. When he was small he was accused of copying a cartoon of Donald Duck—but he hadn’t. He was just good. In high school, he drew a sketch of two aging punk rockers with piercings, evoking American Gothic, that famous painting of the old lady with the bun and the dude with the pitchfork. One of his collages became the album art for In Utero. When he was photographing the collage, his baby daughter, Frances Bean, kept trying to play with the materials. If I ever met Frances Bean, we would have something in common: having only one parent. Except she would be a millionaire when she was older, something I wouldn’t have to worry about.

  Gillian knocked on the door. I was going to try to hide the book, but that would look even more suspicious.

  “Oh,” said Gillian, noticing the cover, which was the black-and-white portrait of Kurt Cobain. “Why are you reading that?” Her mouth turned down. Dozens of teens had committed suicide after hearing about the discovery of Cobain’s body on April 8, 1994. He was a personal hero to them, a rock god. Perhaps she thought I would revive the trend. Some Canadian teens drove across the country and committed suicide together in a storage unit in Langley, not far from Vancouver. They died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The police found Nirvana cassette tapes on the scene, and in a journal one of the young men had written that when Kurt Cobain died, he did too.

  “Aunt Gillian, I just like their music. I know my mom did, too.”

  “Oh,” she said, sitting on the edge of the sofa bed. I was glad I was wearing the little floral pajamas Grandma Irene had given me instead of, say, a T-shirt that read The Screaming Trees.

  She thought for a moment. “How did you find that out?”

  “I found a box of her albums and stuff. They’d been at Grandma Irene’s.”

  Gillian turned to the window, though the blinds were closed.

  “I think your dad planned to give those to you when you were older. He thought they made your mom sad.”

  So Gillian knew, too. Everyone knew. There was no one I could trust.

  “Maybe Verne made my mom sad.”

  “That’s possible, too. But, Nico…”

  “Clearly.” I thought I might cry like a kid who’d dropped an ice cream cone. I was sure they’d gotten married because my mother was pregnant with me. No one had ever spelled it out, but it seemed obvious.

  “There are things you don’t know, Nico.”

  “There are things he should have told me.”

  “What are you going to do tomorrow?” she asked, stroking my hair. “Still getting used to the blue.”

  “I thought I would go to the science center,” I said, not sure if I was lying. Maybe we would go there. “Then to the Armory.”

  “Have a good sleep, my sweet little Smurf,” said Gillian, kissing my cheek.

  “Good night, Aunt Gillian,” I said.

  After she left and gently closed the door, I thought about what she’d said: There are things you don’t know, Nico.

  The sofa bed was soft and firm at the same time. My aunt had good taste and a knack for selecting things like furniture and linen. I rested my head and read more about Kurt Cobain, or Kurdt Kobain, the man who wanted to be a rock star but hated celebrity. The man of a thousand contradictions.

  I was alone in my house all the time, but somehow in Gillian’s condo it was different, more relaxing. For one, I knew it had a security system where you had to be buzzed in, as well as hidden cameras and two locks on the door. At our place, I was always worried someone would break in, some junkie looking to grab a few things.

  Gillian had left me a note on the kitchen table. Coffee beans in freezer, yogurt, bagels, you know what to do. See you at 7:30 for dinner, then I’m FREE!

  I couldn’t imagine doing anything for twelve hours except sleeping. Certainly not a job. Maybe I could draw that long, but that wasn’t a real job. I stood in Gillian’s shiny kitchen and set about making myself fresh-ground coffee. While I was waiting for the french press to steep, I put on my mother’s copy of Nevermind. I let it play through, occasionally patting my blue hair, enjoying being in my pajamas and reading more about Cobain. Starting on my third cup of coffee, I decided to do a sketch of Gillian to surprise her. After that, I would call Sean. The music stopped, and the condo was strangely silent, something I was not used to. Our Victoria neighborhood was noisy, whether it was rowdies yelling in the street or the old lady who lived downstairs and cranked the television news. Quiet was unnerving. It got you thinking.

  Then there was a noise on the stereo like raccoons fighting. My heart jumped, and I realized it was the beginning of “Endless, Nameless,” a caterwauling of a song. I listened, transfixed, almost scared.

  My mother loved Nirvana, early, before everyone else in the world did. Was she angry, even then? Or did she just love music? My questions pressed on my chest, squeezing out the air.

  I lay on Gillian’s couch, listening to the hidden track, and remembered I had promised to call Sean. He had probably forgotten about me. When “Endless, Nameless” was over, I picked up the phone.

  When you wear thrift-store clothes there’s a fine line between being charmingly different and looking like you dressed from a lost-and-found bin. I had no one to dish out fashion advice, so I wore a secondhand floral dress with black leggings. I clipped my hair back with a silver barrette, which Gillian said made me look pretty because it showed the angular cheekbones I had inherited from my mother.

  I was to meet Sean at the Armory after his shift at the coffee shop, which he admitted was part of a big chain that exploited its workers. I didn’t mind. Money was money. Now that I was fifteen, I planned to try to get a part-time job so I wouldn’t have to ask Verne for cash.

  Leaving Gillian’s building and walking on my own in a strange city, it was almost as if something was falling off me, cracking, the way they say glaciers groan when they separate.

  I saw Sean before he noticed me. He was watching some old man play his guitar in front of the Armory. The man played “Jesus Loves Me” while a fuzzy-haired woman and her two children sang along and tapped their feet. Sean stood there, a big grin on his face. The young mother swung one of the boys between her feet as they all sang. The other one mumbled something.

  “We’ve got rice cakes in the bag, Ethan, don’t you worry,” she assured her boy, who was probably two or three. The other appeared to be almost school age, maybe four. They had identical crew cuts, as if their mother had buzzed them with a razor. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Who had said that to me?

  The man singing wore a gray suit and a fedora; he was the picture of a bluesman. He was busking for coins, but he was calm and self-assured. The song ended and the kids gave the singer sloppy high-fives, and the mother put two green U.S. dollars into the man’s guitar case. Sean saw me and waved. Someone, for once, was expecting me.

  “Nico,” he said, smiling. “Do you need a coffee before we head out?”

  How did people learn to be that way? So easy, so welcoming. He touched me lightly on the shoulder and my pulse shot up.

  “No, thanks, I had some at my aunt’s place.”

  “What would you like to do first?”

  Go somewhere warm, I thought, wishing I’d put on another layer under my jacket. I hadn’t wanted to look chunky. Vanity would cost me. Damp cold was the worst.

  “How about the science center?” I asked. He pulled his gray hood over his head against the cold drizzle. Why was he wasting time on me? If he knew how ignored I was back in Victoria, he would never be seen with me.

  “Okay, Mud Honey, let’s go.” He grabbed my hand. I let out a laugh that was somewhere between surprise and delight.

  There was a butterfly on me. I could feel it trembling. Somehow the idea of something so delicate and fine on my body made me panic. It could be killed so easily. We had been told before entering the tropical butterfly house that if one landed on us, we should just gently shake our clothes.

  Sean leaned forward and gave the sleeve of my dress a slight tug. The butte
rfly, a blue Morpho, veered off, flying in its dizzying pattern, as if a puppeteer were manipulating its wings with strings. I loved Morphos. I had never seen one so close before. Maybe I liked them because I was blue now, too.

  We headed to the double doors. Beyond them, there was an enclosed area where we checked each other for butterflies. They had to be kept in the tropical house, where they would be given fruit and nectar. Sean and I were alone. There was quiet. Soft. A family barged in at that moment, including twin boys in ball caps who couldn’t stop fighting. Loud. The spell was broken. Sean ushered me out, making sure no butterflies followed us. In the warmth of the tropical house I had looked up at the ceiling and regretted it, because there were all these dead butterflies trapped in the lights. They had tried to get away, to soar out, but the chilly Seattle winter would have killed them on the spot. Either way, they had flown to their deaths.

  “Let’s go see the show at the planetarium,” Sean said. He seemed to know when to talk and when to be quiet. I think he knew, even on the ferry, that there was something strange about me, not just my weird hair or my outdated plaid flannel shirt. Perhaps he found me intriguing, the way you puzzle over someone with one gray eye and one blue, until you figure out what’s different.

  I had told Sean about Verne but hadn’t mentioned my mother, and he hadn’t asked. He lived with both his parents, but his father traveled a lot (something to do with e-commerce that I didn’t fully get). He had an older sister in first year at university who seemed to have temporarily forgotten about her family, which made his mother hysterical. There was his brother, too; he worked in the kitchen at the Empress and was a jokester. Sean seemed close to him.

  Usually when I went to places that were packed with families and grandparents and strollers, I felt lonely, but not that day. I was curious to know what Sean saw in me, an un-girlie Canadian girl. I snorted to myself, sending a laugh up my nasal passages.

  “Are planetariums funny in Canada? Here they tend to be pretty serious,” he said as we waited in line for the show. I just smiled back at him.

  There were only a few other people in the planetarium once we got in. I liked the feeling, dark and safe, like a warm cave. Sean’s shoulder was almost touching mine, and I felt my skin buzzing, as if a Morpho had landed there. I wondered if he would take my hand again.

  A fellow with a booming voice and saucer-sized glasses was trying too hard to keep the little kids in the room awake by being overly animated as he talked about Orion, the Big Dipper, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, Draco the dragon. As the lights darted above my head, I got sleepy, as if someone had given me a potion. I woke up with my head on Sean’s shoulder. The children and their parents were shuffling out, and Sean had a slight smile on his face, his green eyes curious. So much for playing it cool. I removed my head from his shoulder. The presenter, who had one of those midlife-crisis ponytails that look like a squirrel pelt, shuffled his paper star guides, no doubt annoyed. At least the children had stayed awake.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Guess I’m still tired from exams.” That was only partially true. I was tired from staying up all night listening to Nirvana tracks online and reading articles about Kurt Cobain, clicking on photo galleries, videos, fan sites. The hits were as infinite as the galaxy. I had once thought about buying Cobain’s published journals. If you read, you’ll judge, it said on the cover, which was a mockup of a red Mead spiral notebook. It seemed wrong to read the journals. It would be like spying on someone undressing. But I’d read almost anything on the websites, with all their bad grammar, trash talk, and dubious conspiracy theories.

  “How about a trip to Pike Place Market? That will blow your mind,” said Sean.

  I had been to the market once before, but I had a feeling it would be different with Sean. I knew there was no way anyone would want me running around Seattle with a boy I barely knew, charming green eyes or no. Getting on a bus with him seemed like a big step, for some reason. It was like doing a stage dive.

  “Let’s go,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets. My blue hair spilled from my ponytail in a way that I hoped looked appealing. On the bus, he asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. He said it in a silly way, mocking all the adults who ask, hoping you’ll say something they understand, like doctor or tax attorney. I was fixated on our fellow passengers. A few rows away one woman was shouting to another: “I was trying to help you out, bitch!” Seattle seemed to have more rough edges than Victoria. But I didn’t mind rough edges. They were better than lies.

  “An artist,” I said. I had never admitted that to anyone before. “I wish I could play guitar.”

  “Does anyone in your family play?” he asked.

  “No. I don’t think so,” I said.

  The two women at the front of the bus began screaming at each other. One had thought the other was sleeping and tried to wake her up.

  “Driver!” shrieked one of them. She had big hair, piled up like a copper layer cake, and shiny silver earrings. “This woman is harassing me!”

  Sean rolled his eyes. The driver ignored the commotion. The second woman, wearing a New Age–y quilted coat with half moons on it, changed seats, moving farther down the bus.

  Sean held his face close to mine, as if we were separated by glass and I were a peculiar animal he was trying to figure out.

  “I don’t know my mother,” I said. “She left when I was four. She loved music. She liked hiking. She sang. I don’t really know.” The last few words I think I said to myself. The bus was suddenly quiet, everyone straining to hear if the women’s dispute would resume.

  “Oh, Nico,” he said. “That’s really rough.”

  I had done it. Now he felt sorry for me, like everyone else.

  “Every day I wonder where she is,” I said, my voice even and flat. “I wonder if she’s alive. Why she left me.”

  “Of course you do,” he said, and then he put his arm around me. He was wearing soft fleece gloves. “I’ll bet she was beautiful, just like you.”

  She was beautiful. I knew that for sure. Oh my God. He had said I was beautiful.

  “Maybe tomorrow we could go to the Experience Music Project Museum,” he said. “Since you like music so much.”

  We. Tomorrow.

  “I don’t know how I can get away from my aunt. She’s going to want to spend the whole day with me. I’m not sure she’d approve of you.”

  He shrugged. “Parents love me.”

  “She’s not a parent.”

  I felt better after I told him about my mother. When I kept her a secret, it made me feel as if my stomach was filled with icicles. The therapists I had seen over the years all told me the same thing: none of it was my fault. But sometimes it seemed to me that everything was, as Nirvana declared in “All Apologies.” What kind of person has their mother just disappear?

  “Can we go see the Crocodile Café?” I asked Sean.

  “Sure,” he said, as if expecting the request. As we headed toward Pike Place, I was almost jogging. Sean had long legs, and I was trying to take everything in. One of those odd hybrids of boat and bus blasted past, with the tourists on board all singing a Christmas carol as their guide conducted them. A homeless man on the corner “raised the roof” in response, pushing his hands up in the air. I had forgotten it was almost Christmas, or at least, I had tried.

  Cold rain verging on sleet was firing down from the sky. I knew the market would be crowded, colorful, packed with stands carrying strange produce like star fruit, comic book stores, diners overlooking the gray expanse of Puget Sound. Sean would want to show me the novelty store with all the retro posters, the cardboard cutouts of pop culture icons like R2-D2 or the cast of Battlestar Galactica. Visiting the market as a girl, I had searched out the candy stores.

  We approached the entrance, and I could hear the fishmongers yelling, doing some kind of performance that was their claim to fame. As we neared the crowd, Sean held out his hand.

  Near the end of the video for “Heart-Shaped Box,” a bree
ze blows a white peaked cap off the head of a spooky little blond girl with enormous blue eyes. That’s the song where Kurt Cobain sings that when you turned black, he wished he could eat your cancer.

  A wave of blue butterflies drifts across the screen. The white cap soars after them. The cap lands in a black puddle and quickly soaks it up until it has completely turned black. I had forgotten about the blue butterflies.

  I was recalling that, and eating a grilled-cheese sandwich, when Sean asked what I was thinking about. He had taken me to the 5 Point Cafe, which he claimed had the best diner food in town. It had longevity, for sure, with the slogan “Alcoholics serving alcoholics since 1929.” It was close to my aunt’s place, but I had never been there. I loved it.

  “I was thinking this is a really good grilled cheese,” I said. “Thanks for bringing me here.” The place had been voted Seattle’s best dive bar and best diner.

  “Of course,” he said, taking a bite of his hamburger. The fries at the place were massive and plentiful, piled up like kindling.

  Sean chatted easily about his parents. His dad was into gadgets and watching sports on television; his mother liked country music and was obsessed with yoga. His older sister would one day attend his wedding, be an aunt to his children. He had his older brother, who let him stay at his place in Victoria. He’d need the fingers of both hands to count the people who loved him.

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked him. A man in a brown knit hat at the bar was getting drunker by the minute. The restaurant had an adults-only side and a diner side. We were on the diner side since I was underage (and so was Sean, technically). The man kept ordering something called a red eye, which Sean said was beer and tomato juice. Disgusting.

  There was also a group of university kids and an older couple in nice clothes: strand of pearls for the lady, tie for the man. The 5 Point had a varied clientele.

  “A reporter,” he said, without hesitation. “I’m nosy. I like stories. Ideally I’d cover music or sports, but crime holds a certain appeal.”