Escape me
This one’s for you,
This one’s
For Andrew.
The song rushes out of me, verse after verse followed by a roaring bridge. I can’t remember the last time I wrote something complete this quickly.
Let Andrew claim he wrotethat.
I have to get the hell out of here. Stay a minute longer and Callie will turn me into some simpering apologist, ruining any chance of a comeback.
A good mother would be thinking of getting home to her daughter, not to her career. My little girl—not so little anymore, a teenager now.
I close my eyes, hugging my notebook to my chest. When we found out we were having a girl, Scott and I painted her nursery ourselves, all blues and purples, no pink. I was on the outs with the band at the time because I’d refused to play shows while I was pregnant.
And then the delivery, so sick I thought I might die. The doctors said I almost did. Scott holding my hand when I started to hemorrhage, and her tiny face before I passed out, my bright, shining Amelia Blue.
By the time I left the hospital, the rumors were already swirling: It was my fault she’d been premature; Scott paid off CPS so we could take her home; we flew my mom out because I was too high to take care of the baby.
It was Scott’s idea to ask my mom to stay. I was too sick to argue. I could barely stand, let alone carry another human being—a tiny, fragile creature who would break if I fell.
Eventually I was well enough that we sent my mother home. Scott and I started writing together. Amelia Blue was growing, happy and strong. I thought everything was going to be all right. For a while, it was, so much that I missed the signs when Scott’s depression returned. When I found his note, I managed to stop him from going through with it. I didn’t want my daughter growing up with a father who was absent or drugged into oblivion. I know what it is to grow up feeling abandoned, and I didn’t want that for her. I thought I could handle it myself. So I didn’t call a doctor, didn’t get professional help. He told me he changed his mind.
Two days later, he did it after all.
After that, I didn’t trust myself with our daughter. Look what happened to the last person I’d taken care of. I was scared to hug her, could barely touch her. Loving her as much as I did hurt; keeping her at arm’s length hurt even more. And so Naomi took over, the way she always did, the way I knew she would.
A better mother would have kept herself together for her child. That’s what my mom did, when my dad left.
But I took anything to dull the pain. Rock bottom can be where the using starts, not where it ends. They just don’t tell those stories.
I don’t know what I was on the night I shared his suicide note. Too blocked to write my own music, I thought I could turn it into a song. I certainly didn’t consider that the date—two days before he died—would feed the fire of their conspiracy theories.
It took years, but eventually I got sick and tired of being a basket case. There was no dramatic rock bottom, no bigeurekamoment. After a decade blitzed out of my mind, after I’d tried every drug and chased every artificial high, I was curious what sobriety had to offer. I figured I could always go back to getting shitfaced if I didn’t like it. So I stumbled into a meeting,found a sponsor, started the steps. Turned out it was more interesting than the alternative.
I thought a good mother would’ve gotten sober for her daughter, not idle curiosity, but my sponsor told me I was wrong. Getting sober for someone else doesn’t work, she said, no matter how much you love them. I had to get sober for myself, because it was whatIwanted.
And, she pointed out there was nothingidleabout it. Being sober was something I had to work at every day.
I page back through my notebook, the lyrics I’ve scribbled and abandoned, so many songs that never got to be.
I know, with certainty, that I can finish them. I’m going to fucking finish them all.
I’ll fire Callie, find a new manager. Screw my reputation; they’ll all want to work with me once they hear these songs. I’ll show Amelia Blue the person I was before Scott died, the force of nature who made a career out of thin air, who wrote half of Scott Harris’s songs for him and loved him so much she didn’t mind when the world gave him credit.
My girl will be proud to have a mother like that.
As proud as I am to have a daughter like her. She thinks I don’t know, but I see everything she does: how neat she keeps her room, the house, picking up after me. How she gets straight A’s and goes to bed early without being told. The jokes she makes—usually at my expense—so quick and clever. How sweet she is to my mother, helping when Naomi’s back hurts, when she’s too tired to make dinner.
When Amelia Blue got sick, I thought it’d have been even worse if I’d kept her close.
But now I wonder—would it have helped if I’d held her tight instead of at arm’s length?
I wouldn’t have done what I did with Scott, begging him to be well, pleading with him not to leave me.
But maybe I could’ve shown my daughter what it looks like to be well.
