But it wasn’t always a music haven. This tiny hamlet tucked in the middle of Nowhere, California, used to be a gold rush town, back in the 1800s. You could still see it in the buildings and street names as Dad and I drove through the rugged outskirts—Mother Lode Antiques, Eureka Lane.
And with the gold rush country came wild land. As in mountains and forests. Part of the lake butts up to a state park filled with some of the largest trees in the world, giant sequoias.
Dad and I drove past one now, one of the last of California’s kitschy “tunnel trees.” A sequoia that was hit by lightninga hundred years ago, in the 1920s, and instead of cutting it down, the locals turned it into a tourist draw and carved a tunnel through it that a single car could drive through. These days, they don’t let cars go through, but you can pull over and walk through it on foot.
“We need to take our yearly photo,” Dad noted. We always have our picture taken together under the tunnel tree. Dad prints them out and adds them to a frame with photos of us that go back to when I was six. It’s our thing. We missed last year’s photo.
But I didn’t have time to worry about that too much, because when we passed the tunnel tree, Dad turned onto the Strip. Between tall pines, the town opened its arms.
Condor Lake.
Teal-blue water ringed by snowcapped mountains. Rows of brick old-west buildings lined the packed downtown, a mix of live music venues (bars, quirky clubs) and family-friendly lake tourism (canoe rental, a million ice cream parlors, the California Condor Flight ride). The streets were too narrow, and parking was a mess. Tourists rode the Bonanza, a streetcar that went up and down the Strip, clanging a bell. But I didn’t care about any of that at the moment. My eyes sought out the arrowed sign pointing away from town that made my heart pinwheel:
CONDOR PARK AND AMPHITHEATER
HOME TO THE WORLD-FAMOUS CONDOR MUSIC FESTIVAL
A SARAFIAN EVENTS PRODUCTION
Yep, there it was. Dad and I were huge music nerds. You didn’t grow up like I had and hate music—not possible. And I loved festivals.Coachella was down near L.A., and there was Burning Man above us, but that was something else entirely. Condor, however, was in the forest by the lake for a weekend, with tents and lights, and there were unsigned bands playing all the tiny venues on the Strip, and the bigger outdoor shows in the day.
Condor was magic.
Anyway, all anyone was talking about this year on the festival boards was something so new, it didn’t have a label yet. People just called it the Sound. West Coast indie,post-post punk. It just exploded over the scene, and suddenly there were, like, ten bands, then a dozen. Then who knows. But I was really into it, just watching clips online. Dreaming of getting back to the lake.
So, yeah, I’d made a mental list of bands I wanted to see this summer. Maybe even meet some of the band members. You know, through Eddie. Sometimes I met bands at Mad Dog’s studio in Bel Air, but I had a feeling it would be different meeting them as Eddie’s girlfriend rather than the Help. How could it not?
Driving past the festival grounds today, Dad and I couldn’t see much from the road, but we could see something I wished we could avoid. Blue Snake River. Betty’s on the Pier.
And the Condor Dam. My nemesis.
Dad gestured as we took the auto bridge that crossed the river behind the dam, and said unceremoniously, “There it is.”
Whoomp. I craned my neck to look behind the seat as the Mercedes bumped along the bridge. “They put up a gate?” He came up here last summer when I stayed back home in L.A.
Dad cleared his throat. “They lock it up after dark. It’s a goodthing, baby. No one else can fall in now. Positive change. That railing is dangerous at night.”
My throat tightened. Now I was the girl who made the town lock up the dam at night? The kids here must hate me. Jane, the Summer Girl who ruined the party—forever. Ugh.
My father never wanted to know the details about that night. He didn’t ask. I didn’t tell. I hid behind the excuse that I couldn’t remember much after my fall, and Dad hid behind his fear. Why had I been at a party at the dam? How had I gotten a ride out there? Who was I was with? How did I fall in? Who pulled me out? Those questions weren’t as important to him asWill my daughter ever be able to speak again?That was his priority at the beginning. When I started talking, then he focused on my speech therapy. When Eddie and I started talking online—and meeting up in L.A. on occasion—we kept it on the down-low. Until today.
Eddie wanted to keep us a secret. Drama-free, just us. That was fine back in L.A., but I couldn’t do that over the summer here at the lake. I hoped he wasn’t mad at me for showing up with my dad and popping our little bubble of privacy.
It’s just that it was going to be hard enough for me, returning to the lake for the first time since my fall. I needed him as part of my present. Someone who’d changed and grown up. Not a secret. Not a murky memory from a terrible night that was haunting my nightmares.
I wanted to let go of that. I wastrying.
“Hey,” Dad warned me gently as we drove away from thedam. “Don’t let seeing the dam get you down. We’re Marlows. What do we do?”
“We get back up on the board again,” I recited, even though I actually couldn’t get up on a surfboard if you paid me. He’d tried to teach me. The sporting life and I weren’t compatible.
“That’s right,” he told me. “When you had trouble talking in the hospital, the doctors said it might be permanent. I said nope. She just needs time. We get back up again. And look at you now? Graduated. Back at the lake. And Velvet’s personal assistant.”
He was right. Though, the last one wasn’t all that impressive. Yes, I was going to be a rich music daughter’s personal assistant this summer. But here in the Larsen house, “PA” meant shopping, returning calls, booking appointments, and picking up their prescriptions. Like, my dad was sort of Mad Dog’s PA. But Mad Dog had an actual professional assistant who handled music biz stuff back in his Bel Air studio—Denise, a fiftysomething ex–record executive who didn’t “do” Northern California. She got paid the real money. My father didn’t make much more than me, and I was a minimum-wage peon. Mad Dog was cheap.
“Hey, PA is better than dog walker on your resume.…Shit,” Dad mumbled, glancing at his phone screen. “That’s Mad Dog now, asking where we are.”
Dad sped up. So much for a leisurely drive through town. We were still ten minutes or so from the lodge. And by lodge, I’m talking a sprawling 1920s luxury estate on the northern side of the lake, away from the Strip and the festival grounds. Away from everything, no neighbors for miles. It was built by somerich railroad tycoon from San Francisco who kept live tigers and prostitutes in different bungalows. It had its own dock, a pool, and a multicar garage in a separate building called the carriage house—where us domestics stayed. And as we pulled around its horseshoe-shaped driveway and stopped in front of the entrance, it loomed in front of us, larger than life. For a moment, I forgot all about the dam—and Eddie.
