Page 73 of Sing For Me

Simon had been older; he’d come up to me at a bar where I was singing with the band I played with in college.

“You’re good,” he’d said. He wore a band shirt and had a buzzed head. A dangly earring. He’d looked me over like I was something to eat. “Need to work on those high notes though.”

That had stung, but he wasn’t wrong. That was his style—pay a compliment, knock me down a little. Later on those compliments diminished, the negging taking the front seat. But he always knew when he was taking it too far. He’d pull me in and tell me he was helping me become the best version of myself. That I needed his help. That he loved me.

When I read that letter to my therapist, she’d asked me to repeat one of the paragraphs in the middle.

I don’t deserve someone as beautiful as you, Reese. I’m worthless scum next to you,it said at the beginning. But at the end?I know it’s hard to hear, but you don’t have the looks for the big time, and you need those if you don’t have the voice. I say this because I love you.

I still had a photo of that one in my phone’s photo album. I used to look at it when I felt lonely, to remind myself of just how much better being alone was than being with him.

I press my palm to my forehead. “You should throw those letters away,” I say, my voice tight. “Please, Michelle. I don’t know why I still have them.” I should delete the one on my phone, too.

I rub my thumb along my wrist.

“Reese, I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“You think I want that?” God, how I wish I hadn’t said anything at all.

There’s a long pause before Michelle says, “I’m sorry. You’re right, Reese. This is your life.”

My chest hurts. “Yes,” I say, because I don’t know what else to.My life.

I look up at my wall, to the photo of Rufus, the photo of Michelle and her family.

“Tell me about the girls before we go,” I say, needing to hear something good, something pure. As Michelle goes on about each of their girls’ accomplishments and sweet things they said recently, my eyes drift to the big wall calendar calledWOMEN SINGERSnext to Michelle’s family photo.

I lift up a page as Michelle talks, then another. Each image on the calendar is a different arthouse photo of a woman singer-songwriter. Pietro sent it to me for Christmas last year. My brother never got the memo singing was a sore spot.

He also didn’t know that this calendar hits a specific pain point inside of me. Because these women, famous as they were, aren’t pictured during the peak of their fame, or in the biggest stadiums or arenas. They’re all singing in small, intimate venues. Wooden stages with just them and their mics and occasionally, their guitars.

Each month I’ve flipped the page and felt the weight of failure.

But I’ve also felt the old, dusty weight of longing.

Whenever I used to picture “making it,” that was how I saw it. Close. Connected. Just my music and some people to hear it.

Okay, maybe a lot of people to hear it.

On the other end of the line, Michelle sighs. “Reese, just one more thing about what we were talking about? Please?”

“Okay,” I say, still staring at Janis’s hand wrapped around her mic.

“Reese, you were my personal life coach when my life was going sideways over here. You helped me when I couldn’t help myself. So, I trust you know what you’re doing, okay?”

My eyes well up at her kind words. But I feel like I don’t deserve them.

November’s picture is Janis Joplin on stage at some small venue, well before Woodstock. Her eyes are closed as she sings soulfully into the microphone, the audience before her enraptured. It’s like Pietro dipped into my dreams and saw the old, stupid one I used to have, of singing on a stage just like that.

“That’s the thing, Mich,” I say. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” Who am I to hope? To dream? But I trace the lights on the image with my finger, and a note plays in my head, strumming all the way down to my heart. It’s a note in a new song that won’t leave my mind. My lips curl up in the faintest smile. “But going to that studio, singing into that microphone, it’s like…it’s like a piece of me I thought died has come back to life.”

When you’re a green shoot, poking up through the decay of the forest floor.

I don’t realize I sang it until I hear Michelle sniffling on the other end of the line.

And a creak behind me, followed by the sounds of the kitchen, which has gone up in volume.

I turn to see Eli standing in my doorway, his face frozen in a way I can’t describe. He’s wearing a blue button-down, sleeves rolled up to reveal his thick, corded forearms. Arms that were wrapped around me only a few days ago.

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