Mystic, Connecticut at Dawn (Credit: RB Photo)
Now Playing: “The Kindness of Strangers” – American Analog Set
I always hated being that alum who hung out on campus just after graduating, all the time. Unfortunately, in the absence of anything else making sense, I turn to Doctor Dalton Wright. The good doctor was my advisor in college, and with mom absent and dad difficult to talk to sometimes, Doc Wright became one of my main sounding boards. He doesn’t keep up with many of his students on account of most of them moving away or having their own support systems in town, so I think he cherishes the times we sit and talk as much as I do.
While not originally from these parts, the man has grown accustomed to New England autumns. He strolls into Marie Elena’s in a cable knit sweater, a navy peacoat, and a pair of thick boots that would hold up well at sea. He looks like a sea captain of old, though he lacks the beard and his glasses are more professorial than fisherman. In comparison, I left home in grey pants, my burgundy Decemberists hoodie and a jean jacket.
“What is this? Casey Adams wearing a pair of non-jean pants?”
“Well, I own a denim jacket, so I had to have pants I could wear with it. Seeing as I can’t pair it with blue jeans on account of it not being 2004 and me not dating Britney Spears.”
“Don’t knock the Canadian Tuxedo look, I pulled that off my senior year of high school.”
“You didn’t have social media your senior year of high school.”
“Not true! MySpace had just launched.”
I wonder if it says something that snark is the preferred tone for my interactions with everyone I’m close to. Not that I’m complaining, but perhaps it says something about who I am as a person if that’s how I interact with people. And Dalton’s presence always gets me thinking much more analytically.
“You in the mood for anything in particular?”
“Just that I haven’t had a lobster roll in months.” Doc rubs his hands together greedily. The horrific fate which awaits that lobster roll is inevitable. Food was always one of the ways to his heart, and many a class did I bring an offering of doughnuts or danishes or muffins. Still think it helped me pass a couple of classes I had with him because my final grade was miraculously a few points higher than my average at least twice.
“Honestly, it’s been a hot minute for me too. Anyways, what’s your interest du jour?”
Wright beams at my question. He used to come into class or our advisory meetings with the weirdest topics he had been researching. I remember everything from the history of Yugoslavia to Indian economics between the Partition and modern day to the science behind black holes.
“Maritime disasters!”
“We talking Titanic or Edmund Fitzgerald?”
“First of all, thanks for getting Gordon Lightfoot stuck in my head.”
“I will accept no slander! Gordon Lightfoot is fantastic and that song is perfection.”
“Okay, okay, point taken.” He throws his hands up in surrender. “Actually, it’s been on the military side of things. I’ve spent the last three days reading up on the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000.”
“What the hell is that?”
“After the Cold War, the Russian Navy was flat broke. 2000 was the first time they were able to do large scale naval exercises. Well, in the middle of the fleet, the Kursk had a dummy torpedo which exploded and sank the boat. They sat there for hours before the rest of the fleet realized something was wrong. The Russian government didn’t let the west help until five days later, at which point, all of the sailors had died on board. They did a movie about it a few years back with Léa Seydoux and Colin Firth in it. Not bad, I rented it last night.”
“You find the damnedest rabbit holes to go down.”
“I’m a man of many facets,” Wright shrugs, then his face turns serious, “But I’m guessing you didn’t come to me to talk about my interests. What’s on your mind?”
I always appreciated and despised in equal measure the way Wright could read me like a picture book. I sigh, rub my temples, and prepare myself to divulge everything. I told him about my mother my junior year during one of our advisory sessions. He was sympathetic to my plight. He knows my backstory well enough that I can just hit him with the facts.
“Reilly got engaged, and it’s bothering me that my mom isn’t here for it.”
Wright steeples his fingers and presses them against his lips in contemplation. He oscillates between being easy to read and having no indication as to what’s on his mind. I know he’s thinking back to the hours we spent conversing before, during, and after class or in his office or at the record store when he’d drop by.
“She hasn’t talked to you?”
“Not since she left.”
“And are you doing anything about it?”
“I have a whole conspiracy board in my bedroom with everything.”
“So your dad knows?”
“No, it’s hidden behind the poster.”
“The poster.” He knows exactly what I’m referring to. “Is that all that’s eating at you?”
We’re interrupted by the waiter coming by to take our drink orders, but he puts in his lobster roll and I have the same. Plus an order of biscuits. See, people will willingly repeat the falsehood that Red Lobster pioneered the cheddar biscuits, but whoever gave it to them stole the idea from up here. Marie Elena’s has been around since at least the 1930s, and the biscuits showed up in 1947, as wartime rationing eased up.
“Did I ever tell you about Allison? My old friend?”
“You mentioned her in passing a few times.” His tone doesn’t so much as betray his knowledge of my situation with Allison as it does telegraph his familiarity with that part of my history. Her disappearance was a significant part of my struggles in college, and many of our advisory sessions were spent talking about her.
I give him the rundown of her return, but unlike the story told to everyone else, I excise our venture to Sentinel’s Point. Instead, I point to my own complicated emotions. Our food arrives somewhere in the middle of the rant, and half of the story is delivered with a mouthful of biscuit, or his responses are given with a drop of garlic butter running down the side of his mouth. Marie Elena’s lobster rolls tend to be a little messy to eat, but they’re so worth it.
“Are you mad at Allison, or are you mad at your mother?” Doc, again, hammers me with the difficult question. Years of class discussions taught him that it’s the only way to get a good answer out of me, and it taught me that I like to dodge said difficult questions.
“Mom leaving really pissed me off, especially in the wake of Allison up and going. Allison coming back with no word ahead of time and then dropping the atomic bomb that she was into me when we were younger was really frustrating too.”
Wright smirks, and I curse myself under my breath. I slipped up. He wordlessly bids me to go on with soft eyes and a simple gesture. I always appreciated his kindness even when he was being stern.
“I’m mad Reilly’s engaged and mom isn’t here to be part of it. That’s her oldest child and only daughter, it’s something she should be part of. And I feel the need to find her so she can.” My voice strains against the truth, and I have to choke back sobs, which I preempt by shoving another biscuit in my mouth.
“Casey, you have always taken the world onto your shoulders and ignored the important things right in front of your face. More than that, you never let anyone else share the load. So you’re getting yourself into another jam with no hope of getting out just because you’d rather fight an impossible battle alone and lose than admit to some uncomfortable truths and do some healing.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. I hate admitting he’s right. But he’s right. The search for my mom isn’t my noble cause right now, it’s a distraction from dealing with Allison, and by extension, Jordan. Even admitting it to myself feels like it’s still nothing I can solve right away. Nor that it’s worth doing so in the first place. Still, if I burn myself out acting like an idiot and don’t see any positive resolutions, what does that make me?
I sigh, bury my head in my hands, and look back up at my former professor. “Then how am I getting out of this?”
“I think the best bet you have is to tell your friends everything. You’ll have to come clean to them eventually, and right now, you need people to support you. I respect your decision to not tell your father and sister, but Casey, you’ve been beating at this for five years and barely have anything to show for it. If you want your mother home before that wedding, you need to get some help. And more than that, Allison and Martin both love you. I have no doubts about Allison with all the stories you told me, and I got to watch Martin’s devotion towards you across at least three semesters. Don’t be an idiot and freeze them out, friends like that only come across a couple times over the course of someone’s life.”
The weight of the truth sinks in a few moments, scored only by the gentle din of a light lunch hour at the restaurant and the boats knocking on the marina outside from agitated waters. Wright polishes off his lobster roll and flags the waitress for a dessert menu. I pull out my phone and text my two best friends to meet me later with something important to deal with before returning my attention to my old college professor.
“Thanks, Doc. Always knew what to say.”
“I’m a professor, we get paid to be long-winded. Anyways, how’s the band going?”
I crack a grin at my professor, mentor, and I guess my friend. I know what he didn’t say at the end of that sentence, and I fully intend on bothering him with his again if I need to. I put in an order of a brownie sundae to match his crème brûlée, and recount a fun story about our last attempt to put down any tracks in the studio.
I only look at my phone to confirm my friends are coming to our little impromptu meet.
***
My sister was always the goody two shoes when we were growing up. I was the rule breaker. She’d be the one who’d never run in the hallways at school and always made sure her clothes never got messed up. Now she’s diligently getting ready to be married with plans to take over the family bakery and the approval of all the family and family friends. Meanwhile, I’m the crashout musician who barely graduated college and works at a radio station.
The one rule I never broke, however, was not to let other people in the booth. Our broadcast studios have a few rooms. One smaller booth, which is really more of a converted office, is typically for solo shows. It has a couch on it from the previous station manager’s day we never bothered to remove, but it seldom ever gets used because of the one person in the booth rule. There’s a larger room with a conference table and more equipment used for when a guest is on the show, or there’s a talk show being broadcast. I’m usually in the small booth, and for good reason. The rule is in place to keep the airwaves clear, but also to minimize distractions.
Well, Allison and Martin are both with me in the booth today.
“Coming up next, we’ve got Broken Social Scene’s ‘Cause = Time’ and after that, a whole lot more here on 99.7 WARP,” I play the song and queue a Slowdive track and a Decemberists track before double checking if I’m muted and then turning back to my friends.
“You know if we get caught in here, it’s all our asses, right?” Martin is seldom terrified of people. Sarah Klein in the second grade terrified him, but that’s mostly because she had a crush on him. Then there was Professor Arnold for his chemistry course sophomore year of college. I was smart and took the bullshit earth science course in second semester of my junior year, but Martin followed the advice of his advisor and landed in the most dickish professor’s class to fulfill his science gen ed. The third person is my boss, station manager Daniel Walters.
“I know, but I’m willing to risk it today.”
“Your boss scares me more than he scares you,” Martin deadpans.
“Will you let the man speak?” Allison chastises our other friend. She interrupts Martin’s response with a bulge of her eyes in response to him emphatically throwing up his hands that forsakes any more protests…for the moment at least.
I summarize everything for my friends. That the search for mom has been a driving force of everything I’ve been doing for the last five years. I even admit to it being a good substitute for my frustrations over Allison moving away. I also share it’s why I was distracted while in college. My conversation with my uncle last weekend is also of particular interest, with both Martin and Allison thinking that it was a good place to start.
“So, you need to find an excuse to visit Philadelphia to see your uncle and look at those letters,” Martin summarizes. He rubs his chin thoughtfully for a moment, rustling his two days of stubble. “I’m certain that there’s a band that you need to check in, even if it’s to write a review for the station’s website.”
Damn, that’s actually a good idea. One I hadn’t thought of previously. Doctor Wright was correct; I need my friends to help me sort this out.
“What was that place you always wanted to go? The venue.” Allison starts snapping her fingers and biting her lip in some idiosyncratic attempt to make herself think of the answer. “The one where Springsteen got his start.”
“Oh, the Stone Pony!” I snap my own fingers and point at her in recognition of her nailing I and smile like she just cut me a check for a million bucks. Allison gives a happy smile in return and a does a triumphant little shimmy of her shoulders to celebrate. Her joy at my joy is all that matters. I’m lucky to be so loved.
“Where even is that?” Martin asks, refocusing the conversation the way a brick wall stops a speeding car. As annoyed as I am for interrupting the moment of sunshine in my somewhat stormy mind, he’s right. We only have part of the puzzle to all of this.
“Asbury Park, New Jersey. Literally across the street from the ocean,” I answer proudly. Mom was a huge Springsteen fan, it informed a lot of her own songwriting. Maybe I’ve been pondering a pilgrimage to the Pony for the last five years as a way to become closer to her.
“Bro, the Jersey Shore?” Martin teases with a smug grin.
“Grace, I swear to fucking Christ,” I hold up one finger threateningly to my bro.
“I just didn’t take you for the fake tan and blackout type,” he persists nonetheless, without a care in the world. It’s honestly kind of impressive how well he knows that my bluster is just that. Still though, gotta try and make him sweat a little bit. So, I hold up two fingers this time. The furrow in his brow tells me he’s trying to figure out what the hell I mean. Without a solid answer to that, I’m hoping the confusion will hold him at bay.
“When are you looking at going down?” he ignores the threat and gets back to business. Honestly, that’s even more appreciated.
“ASAP, but if I’m going to pitch it as a work trip, I gotta find someone to see that’s worthwhile.”
“Okay, next week at the Stone Pony, looks like a few cover bands, one or two local artists that don’t seem to be doing much else, and a group called Catherine Cold,” Allison reads off the schedule from her phone.
I’ve heard of Catherine Cold. They’re an alt rock band with some eighties affectations that have been really popular on social media. I’ve been following them for a while, and I honestly think they could use the popularity boost of a little media attention.
“I know of them. I’d love to get them on the show for an interview and to play a set,” I state with a devious smile. “I’ll check in with Daniel and see if I can go down.”
“Are you sure you want to do it alone?” Martin asks, stopping himself and turning to Allison. “When are they playing?”
“Next Friday.”
“Fuck!” Martin pounds his fist on his leg so hard he lets out a small ‘ow’ and starts rubbing his hand and wincing. A quizzical look from the other two of us prompts elaboration. “I can’t go, I’m working all next week, including the weekend.”
“I still don’t have a job. I’ll go with you.” Allison is too eager to jump at the chance, and my gut tells me it’s still concerning. We haven’t exactly had the big chat we need to have, and I’m not so certain a five hour road trip with at least two nights away from home is the best choice for such. At the same time, it’s a lot of driving, and I’d like to borrow her car because the Challenger isn’t quite ready yet despite Martin volunteering much of his time and teaching me lots of things about mom’s vaunted classic. And company on the road would be nice.
“Thanks, guys. Love you both.” With that, the plan is set. The only remaining piece is to convince my boss to let me travel to try and bring a decently big act to the radio station. I text him to come to the studio for a quick chat, knowing a few tricks to disarm him before he gets mad about other people in the booth. Being the favored one has its perks for sure.
“Casey, we have rules.” Dan’s greeting is a grumble, and coming from his tall frame, it’s honestly intimidating. Or it would be if I didn’t know well enough that he’s all bark and little bite. Daniel Walters opts for a seventies inspired look in general, somewhat flashy button downs tucked into jeans, and sunglasses often worn indoors. He’s as if Dr. Johnny Fever were ten years younger, forty pounds thinner, and had a full head of dark hair. The attitude is mostly the same to boot.
“Yes, Daniel, I would break them if it wasn’t serious.” The use of his full name causes my boss to hear me out with no questions asked. I have only ever used it on three occasions, one of which was when the building was literally on fire. “I found a band, Catherine Cold, that I want to ask to come up and do an interview with and do a set live on-air.”
“Sounds good, I’ve heard one or two tracks by them. Reach out.”
“I wanted to do it in person. They’re playing the Stone Pony in Asbury Park next week, and I’d like to go down and ask in person. Also, see a show at the Pony, because I’ve never done that before.”
“You want to drop off another week, after you’ve skipped out a few times lately. Somehow-”
I narrow my eyes for the killshot. “And I want to visit my mother’s family in Philadelphia while I’m down there.”
That gets the desired reaction. Dan’s eyes cease trying to burn a hole through me, and he understands. This is a mission, not a vacation. He looks at the wall for a second and contemplates.
“Been meaning to meet with some of our friends at WJLK,” Dan solidifies my reason for travel aloud, “I’ll set it up for next Friday. You be there.”
“Thanks boss.”
He nods and walks out without another word. I confided in Dan about my situation with my mother a while ago, a late night working an event at Bishop, and we were swapping stories of family. I mentioned how lucky it was my mother’s family was from Philadelphia and not Baltimore, since being a Phillies fan is not as much of a black mark as being an Orioles fan in Red Sox territory. Not that mom nor I ever gave that much of a damn about sports, I know just enough to bond with people. . What I told Dan that night was enough for him to understand that this isn’t something I use as an excuse, nor is it a subject I handle lightly.
Martin looks at me with a silent plea to be careful, though I cannot help but grin. This may be the breakthrough I need to find mom and be the big hero. Doing it with Allison means so much more than doing it alone. Making up for lost time is one aspect. I also think it’ll do me some good to have one ghost come back to life help resurrect another.
“Sure hope you don’t have any plans with Jordan next week,” Martin states pointedly.
“Nothing planned. Midterms are taking all her time right now. Wasn’t going to bother her with specifics, just tell her that I’ve got a work trip and I’m seeing family.”
“You mentioning that Allison is going with you?” Martin presses the attack, and the implication makes Allison shift in her seat uncomfortably. I look at Martin’s disapproving expression, and Allison’s nervous lip tremble, and am faced with a hard choice. I don’t want Jordan to worry about anything happening, but also, I don’t know if I feel right having her be part of my drama with Allison. In some ways, it’s so nice to have Jordan be outside of it all, she’s a space away from my own troubles, and I want to keep her that way.
“Wasn’t planning on it. Don’t want to distract her from midterms.”
I don’t like admitting I barely believe myself.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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