Save Me, Kurt Cobain Read online

  “Oh yeah? What sports teams do you follow?”

  “Seattle Sonics, for one, but I’m preparing to have my heart broken by them.”

  The drunk talked loudly about a job interview he’d just had. Apparently he was from Olympia, the town where Kurt Cobain had ended up after high school; he’d lived in a house on Pear Street. I retained these details, just like the girl with the quart of milk and the stick of butter.

  “Nico,” Sean was saying. “Do you like basketball?”

  I kept having mini-blackouts thinking about Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. I almost expected Kurt Cobain to walk into the diner and demand a hamburger. Maybe it was being in Seattle, where people erroneously thought the Nirvana sound developed. The whole grunge scene was marketed around Seattle in the 1990s, though. That was when the fashion magazines packaged plaid shirts and knit hats as the “grunge look” on the runways.

  “Yeah. But I’m too small to be any good. So what made you want to be my tour guide today?” I asked, surprised at my own boldness.

  “I think you’re cute,” he said. “And you look like you need a friend.”

  I smiled. No one had thought I was cute for about eight years. I was used to hearing I looked sad. “Ya look like your dog just died!” a man in a pickup shouted at me once, then sped away.

  “Have you ever been to Aberdeen?” I asked.

  “It’s a real shithole,” he said. “But yeah, it’s where Kurt Cobain grew up. What did you think of the Crocodile?”

  I shrugged. I had tried to picture Nirvana playing there. It was like any other dive club, but seedier, with more charisma. It had a big green sign that resembled scales. A lot of great bands had played there: Nirvana, R.E.M., Mudhoney, Pearl Jam. Kurt Cobain hated Pearl Jam. It wasn’t easy being a musician, it seemed. For example, some music critics said Bleach, Nirvana’s first and most punk album, was too simple, but then complained that Nevermind was overproduced. I liked them both.

  “Maybe I’ll become a total Canadian,” said Sean, taking a long sip of his Coke. “The Bush clan is driving me mental. At least your head of state isn’t coco loco.”

  “Not like Bush, anyway,” I said. I was still thinking about this young couple having a rabid fight in front of the Crocodile, which had been closed. The girl had ink-black hair and a red kerchief, black eyeliner, red lipstick. The guy was in a black motorcycle jacket. Seattle liked black. The argument was getting heated, something about coming in late, insulting a sister, and a cat left unfed—all in one. Sean and I had shuffled along, embarrassed. You could practically feel the intensity radiating off them as they argued. I blushed, wondering if they would have make-up sex later.

  “So what do you say, Nico? Do you want to get married so I can become a full-on Canadian?”

  He gave me a lazy smile. He chewed on his straw. He was not nearly as charming as he thought he was. Well, maybe he was.

  “Yeah…no,” I said, then thought of Obe. He hated when people said that. “Not today, anyway. I’ve got to meet my aunt in under an hour, and she wouldn’t like me hanging out all day with a strange guy, let alone marrying one.”

  “I’m not strange!” he huffed. “Do you want to see the periscope in the men’s room before we go?”

  He accidentally dropped a pocketful of change on the floor and then paid for my lunch over my objections, which was sweet and made me suspicious at the same time. It seemed absurd that Obe didn’t know about this guy yet. Obe knew almost everything about me, except how sad I could be sometimes.

  “Your dress is really cool,” Sean said, tugging on the sleeve. I felt a chill race down my arms. The dress, which had cost four dollars at Value Village, was navy cotton with tiny pink and white flowers and appeared to be handmade. We ducked out as the drunk was embarking on a long story about a baseball game. “When do you leave?” he asked.

  “Day after tomorrow. Christmas Eve.” He thought I was cool. He wasn’t making fun of me. Nobody thought I was cool, except maybe Obe.

  “Back to your dad?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Verne seemed very far away. He had already phoned Gillian to make sure I had arrived safely. She’d said I was sleeping, though I was listening to another one of my mother’s CDs and reading the Cobain bio by flashlight.

  “Do you like anything more mellow than Nirvana and the Pixies?” Sean asked.

  “ ‘Redemption Song’ by Bob Marley,” I told him, which was true. There was something about the opening chords. And the words: the idea that you could suffer but endure.

  “Noted. Maybe next time I come to Victoria we can hang out,” he said as we walked toward my aunt’s place on Fourth. The wind had picked up, and strands of my blue hair whipped across my face. Breaking with my no-makeup custom, I had worn mascara and charcoal eyeliner, hoping I looked like a young Chrissie Hynde—the eyes, anyway.

  Something skittered in my stomach. Excitement. Nerves. One thing I knew: I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to be abandoned Nicola Irene Cavan with the dishwater-blond hair, and the sad dad, and the reckless young mother who had disappeared. The new, blue-haired Nico with the vintage CD collection seemed to be appealing to boys, decisive, and even slightly opinionated.

  I formed my hands into two bundles, squeezing my fingers, which were clumsy with cold. I slapped them against my legs to warm them, making a thrumming sound like a bass line. One of Kurt Cobain’s first real high school friends was bass player Krist Novoselic. He was a giant. Kurt and Krist formed a band and they sometimes practiced above a hair salon owned by Krist’s mother. They were two freaks in Aberdeen, a less than scenic logging town packed with bars with names like the Pourhouse.

  I felt a hand wrap around mine. It was Sean’s.

  “So am I going to see you tomorrow?” he asked as we started to cross the street. Sean stopped in the middle of the crosswalk, expecting an answer. A waiting motorist leaned on the horn. A woman pushed a double stroller past, surveying us as I turned to Sean. My hand probably felt like frozen fish bones. His was warm. Rather than answering, I kissed him lightly on the lips, which made his eyes flip fully open like blinds.

  He looked surprised, and then he smiled, and we raced across the street holding hands. If someone had shown me that moment on video, I would have said it wasn’t me.

  I knew then that I would not be going home as planned.

  “You seem far away, little miss,” said Gillian.

  After leaving Sean, I suddenly felt deflated, as if none of it had happened. I knew I might never see him again, though he had talked about getting together in Victoria. Words were just words.

  “Sorry, tired,” I said. I was used to getting away with minimal conversation with Verne. It was not so easy with Gillian.

  “How’s Verne doing?” she asked, her back turned to me as she lifted a bag from the vegetable crisper. She’d already asked me that the night before. Maybe she was trying for a more detailed answer.

  “I guess he’s okay. It’s hard to tell.” I scratched at a sticky patch on her kitchen table.

  “Sometimes I wonder if Verne is depressed. He’s so quiet and low-key, as if he’s having psychomotor retardation.” She whacked carrots into medallions with an enormous knife. Gillian was constantly diagnosing people. She usually got that out of her system early in the visit.

  “Verne’s not retarded,” I said, though I knew she meant something else.

  “Oh, no. It just means doing things slowly. But then, he’s always been that way, methodical. You know, he never got those migraines until after your mother…” She trailed off. Verne took pills every day to prevent his blinding headaches. He called the pain “the white wolf,” after the white lights he saw before the migraine descended.

  “What are we doing tomorrow?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Anything you like. Windy, rainy Seattle is at your feet.”

  “I’d like to go to some record stores and see the Experience Music Project.”

  “You’ve become a serious music fan.” Ther
e was a pause. She was probably thinking I was like my mother.

  “Are you still against bean sprouts, or was that a phase?” she asked, holding up a pack of them.

  “Neutral. They used to remind me of worms, but I’m over that.”

  She turned on the tap to rinse the sprouts. “Did you like my mother?” I asked loudly, to be heard over the water.

  “Yes,” she said, with only a second of hesitation. “She was lovely, beautiful, always quiet with me. We were close to the same age, but she was really into the music scene and I…Different things. We didn’t relate, exactly. Maybe she thought I was judging her. But when she was with her friend Janey, different story. With Janey she was bubbly.”

  “She had me too young,” I said. “She wasn’t ready.”

  “Well…Annalee adored you. She thought you were amazing. Verne has trouble expressing his feelings.”

  “Right, family curse. We’re incapable of telling the truth.” I had heard it before. If I was the light of her life, why did she leave? Then my gregarious, wavy-haired aunt came over and wrapped her muscled arms around me. Sometimes when I felt the sadness crashing over my head, I would recite the facts I knew about Annalee: she liked to hike; she was a Gemini; she was messy but charming; a bee sting could kill her, so she wore a MedicAlert bracelet. I remember it jangling.

  “Let’s watch a movie, early start, then full-on Seattle,” Gillian said.

  “Okay.”

  We watched The Princess Bride, which was funny, violent, and romantic all in one. After, I lay in her office and pulled out my Discman. I thought about Cobain again and how two men in his family had killed themselves. He told friends that he had the suicide gene. People later offered that remark as part of the proof that he killed himself, that he hadn’t been murdered or faked his death. I think it was just a joke, a sick joke.

  I grabbed the CD of Bleach to study the lyrics. The drummer on the album was Chad Channing, the guy with silky brown hair who looked like an elf. When I tugged out the liner notes, there was a yellow paper jammed in the CD. I thought it was a receipt at first, but it was a page torn from a lined notepad. Dear Kurt, By now you’re back in Seattle, and I’m still here in sleepy Victoria. After seeing you those two nights, I realized Janey was right. I should have followed the tour. Were you teasing me?

  The page was torn there, the bottom ripped off. It was a note that was never sent. Kurt Cobain was also known to write all kinds of letters and notes, then not mail them. His journals were full of them, I had read. But this note was from my mother. I had read every scrap of paper in the house with her writing on it: old letters, calendars, and a birthday card with an image of Snow White (Let your heart dream, the caption read) that she’d given me when I turned three.

  My mother had been at the Nirvana show at the Commodore in Vancouver the night before the Victoria concert. She’d taken the passenger ferry across the Strait of Georgia, waited through the ninety-minute crossing so she could see Nirvana, a yet-to-be-famous band, not once, but twice. She’d literally crossed the ocean to see him. Lots of people traveled to see bands, but usually not such an obscure one. Perhaps she’d just been dreaming when she wrote the note, the same way girls scrawl their first names with the last names of boys they like. Something about the band, and him, had captivated her. That was when I thought: What if my mother hadn’t just loved Nirvana? What if she’d been in love with Kurt Cobain?

  It must have sucked to be Jan Brueghel II. He wasn’t as good a painter as his father, not in the same league, and worse, he had eleven kids, which is just excessive. I smiled, imagining what Obe would have said about Jan Brueghel “the Younger.” He probably would have concocted other Jans, such as “Jan Brueghel, the Semipro Wrestler” or “Jan Brueghel, the Pastry Chef.” Obe would have loved the Experience Music Project Museum, from the crazy Frank Gehry building design to all its sci-fi and horror exhibits, and especially the hip-hop exhibition. I had been expecting music, but not art. There was this exhibition called “DoubleTake: From Monet to Lichtenstein.” Gillian listened to me babble about the paintings, happy to see me so animated, so I played it up. I think she felt as if she were watering a plant.

  Was I supposed to like Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings, which were comics? Sometimes I felt too late for everything. Monet reminded me of Kleenex box designs, but when I saw one close up, it was like climbing into a sunlit lake. I felt calm, a sensation that always darted out of my reach.

  “What do you think?” asked Gillian. She wore a deep rose scarf looped around her neck, which brought color to her cheeks. If I asked her about her boyfriends (or girlfriends), would she tell me the truth? Lichtenstein’s piece in the show was The Kiss, which depicted a serviceman and a blond vixen embracing. It would have been a perfect segue. The Lichtenstein was paired with a painting by Renoir of a woman reading alone, at home in her skin, in peace.

  “I like that one,” I said, pointing to the Renoir.

  “Not the kissing?” She laughed, giving me a look. I would not talk about boys with her. Which meant I had no excuse to ask about her love life.

  “No,” I said hastily.

  Having seen almost everything, we walked out onto the front steps to take one last look at the building.

  “Can you imagine leaving something like this behind?” she asked, sweeping her arm across the pewter-gray sky.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Was she asking about suicide? I would not talk about that either.

  “I mean the building. The Gehry building. I can’t imagine leaving something so amazing behind, as a legacy.”

  I looked up at it. It was amazing. The building fit together, but it looked warped, as if the parts had traveled through another dimension and then were gift wrapped in shiny shades of silver and purple.

  “Gillian, you save people’s lives. Their lives are your legacy.”

  She shrugged. “I help patch them up a bit. I’m a walk-on character.”

  “Young lady,” I scolded. “You have serious self-esteem issues.” I hooked arms with her. “You’ll never land a man that way.”

  Gillian wore the newsboy cap again, as if it were her costume for arrivals and departures. She was invited to come to Victoria for Christmas but had declined. She’d be on duty. She always worked Christmas so the nurses with children could book time off. It was just her way. Gillian did this with no sense of self-pity.

  “When are you going to come back and see me again, ducky?” she asked, a tear collecting in the corner of her eye. “I love my drawing, by the way.”

  She had already told me that three times. I had done a sketch of her, imagining her on the job with a whirl of gurneys and movement, arms and legs, emergencies. I’d called it Code Blue, a cheerful holiday sentiment. She seemed to like it, though, the idea that I’d tried to picture her life, and that I had actually been listening to her stories. The sketch was black-and-white, but there was a tornado of blue in one corner meant to be a child in trouble, alone.

  Gillian crushed me against her chest again and stroked my hair. We stood in the parking lot of the Clipper terminal as icy rain pelted down, other passengers dashing past us with their rolling suitcases packed with purchases, everyone shopping their brains out for Christmas.

  “You sure I can’t come in?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. She was clearly torn between wanting to see me safely through customs and letting me have the sense that yes, I could do it.

  She stepped back and locked the car. “I’ll just make sure you get past the guy in the gray uniform.”

  The lady who took my ticket was not friendly. She looked me up and down with disdain, her lashes thick with black mascara. I could tell she thought I was a teen runaway, probably pregnant. I pushed back my shoulders. My aunt stood by the doors, her arms folded across her chest, waiting. She always found it hard to see me go, I know. Everyone wanted to help try to fix me.

  “Victoria your hometown?” the Clipper clerk asked. I imagined she’d bought all her Chr
istmas gifts at a big box store in the summer to avoid the rush. She wore thick beige foundation so smooth that her cheeks reminded me of panty hose.

  “Yes,” I said. “I was born there.” I knew I looked like shit. I had stayed up thinking, imagining my mother dancing at the Commodore in Vancouver, then rushing back to Victoria to catch the show at the Forge. My brain, and my stomach, had churned all night. When I’d fallen asleep, I’d dreamed of Annalee. She wore a red flower in her hair, and she was smiling, which made me wake up feeling calm.

  The Clipper woman rolled her eyes. Why did she hate me so much? I was glad my aunt was standing there. When I turned to her one last time, Gillian waved slowly, as if wiping a mirror. I tried to smile and followed the crowd.

  I found a seat in the waiting room but sat closer to the front to score a window on the ferry. I wanted to see this daylight crossing. Let the old people scowl as I upended up their elaborate seating plans. I didn’t care anymore.

  After landing a window seat, I stretched my feet out in my black Converse with the holes in the toes. I pulled my jacket to my chin and clamped my eyes shut, my ears plugged into my CD player. I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes, the boat was already plowing across the winter-gray water, the seats filled, clusters of people all holding the same burgundy coffee cups. I searched the scene, looking for someone sketch-worthy. There was a man with a crew cut and leathery red skin who looked like a sailor. He was probably just an accountant who liked the sun. A young couple sat together wearing identical styles of Mountain Equipment Co-op jackets (hers red, his orange), their hiking boots crossed at the ankles the same way. They sipped water from Nalgene bottles with silver carabiners dangling from them. They seemed ready for disaster. There was an old woman, maybe eighty, who wore a carnation-pink dress with a white lace collar. The fabric was a shade normally reserved for baby clothes, but I liked it. It suggested a joy in how she dressed, in life.