“Joey is not a pharmacist. Go home. Stop being delusional in my place of business. Go do something else with your life.” Dean goes inside the office, leaving me to the wolves, commodes and multivitamins.
I really don’t know what to make of my behavior. I never know what to do after a panic attack, and it usually ends with me bawling in the shower. I never know I’m having one until after it’s over. Brushing off my coat sleeves, and trying to keep it together, I walk out of the store.
Staring across the street at my house, I zip up my coat. It’s probably only 100 feet away, but with the way my head feels so heavy, it may as well be a thousand. I look to the sky, a ghastly overcast gray. It’s frigid even though it’s still early December. My feet are glued to the sidewalk. I can’t move from where I am, even though I’m desperate to douse myself in near boiling hot water in my own shower.
A panic attack. Not a heart attack.
I used to be able to keep it together. Old me wouldn’t think twice about walking across the street. I know for a fact I can make it home in five minutes or less. My house is the third largest Victorian, the one with the chipping yellow shutters and the dirty, old wrap-around porch, on the main drag in town.
Biting the bullet, I race across the street as fast as my legs will carry me. I go so fast that the wind blows curly strands of hair into my face, catching on my chapped lips. I blow the hair off and bound up the stairs to pick up today’s paper—even though I swear I canceled the subscription long ago, they still deliver it to me.
Since Andy died, there’s always something to clean up or throw out. A tattered t-shirt in the back of a drawer, the last of the men’s razors in the linen closet, the pair of hiking boots caked in mud by the back door. I’m always finding pieces ofAndy, no matter how hard I try not to find him. It’s not like I’m trying to get rid of him anymore.
I unzip my coat, the only thing that makes these Maine winters bearable, and don’t bother to hang it up, tossing it on the entryway bench. Early afternoon light is streaming through the stained glass window above the sink.
Turning towards the fridge, the article pinned by a cracked, magnetic palm tree catches my eye. Rather, it’s the picture of Andy plastered next to the blocky headline that gets my attention. I picked out that photo myself. It was taken at our wedding. I know the article by heart even though it was published just a few days ago.
Remembering local musician Andy McKinney 5 years after his death.
I flip up the newspaper clipping to reveal the other newspaper clipping behind it, the very same photo of Andy peeking through. I read the headline for old time’s sake.
Andy McKinney, award-winning local musician,
Dead at 27.
My breath catches in my chest like it does every time I read the article. It’s short—less than a paragraph. I clipped it the morning after, and it’s hung on my refrigerator ever since.
Andy McKinney, York Falls resident and musician, and 2022 GRAMMY winner for Best Folk Album, has died at the age of 27 following an accident mid-performance at The Belladonna in St. Agatha. Arrangements to be announced.
The arrangements were barely made, and never announced. Andy’s funeral had been cold, rainy and short. His parents were dead, mine were overseas, and I didn’t want any fans around. Only his bandmates and my college roommate were in attendance.
I had been managing the aftermath of his death well until I planned a road trip to visit every dive bar, inn and tavern Andy played on his Hometown Roots tour. It wasn’t until the night I left, and I couldn’t shake the thought that pain in my head was a stroke waiting to happen, and I crashed Andy’s truck into a telephone poll.
I never got around to working up the courage to go again.
Since becoming a diagnosed hypochondriac, and trial and error with three different anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medications, I’ve stayed in town. I hardly leave the house or deviate from my routine, but I check the mail in the morning, visit the cafe around the corner for a late breakfast, and go to the pharmacy in the afternoon. I make a humble living as a virtual assistant and I mostly live off of my nest egg from Andy’s life insurance and album revenue.
I look at the paper from the porch that I’m still holding, and flip to the arts and entertainment section. Sure enough, in the corner of page E4, in a tiny black and white box, is the schedule of performances dedicated to Andy’s memory. At least one is held every year at The Belladonna and crowds go. I’m always specifically invited, but I’ve never felt ready to attend.
Go do something with your life, Madeline.
What would happen if I did go?
They’d say, “Oh, Madeline, we’re so sorry” and “We miss Andy so much” and “He had so much potential” and “We can’t believe he’s been gone for five years!”
Well, me freaking too.
Then they’d make me go on stage and say something, and I’d start crying, and nobody wants to hear that. I see the name of a jazz trio I almost recognize in the deepest section of my memory.
Before I know it, I’m fumbling with papers and letters and pictures in a box in the basement to compare this article to. It takes me a minute and several near paper cuts, but I find it in a scrapbook from Andy’s tour. On the back of a postcard with a drawing of a lighthouse. A scrawled recommendation by Andy of The Bloom Jazz Trio. A band he first listened to in 2016, that he apparently felt so moved by their performance one night, he wrote a postcard the next morning to recommend them to me.
According to the newspaper in my hand, they are performing in Andy’s memory at The Waverly Inn in Kennebunkport. This Sunday.Tonight. And the next band is on Tuesday in Camden. And on Thursday in Caribou all the way through Friday in St. Agatha. I peel off the corresponding postcards Andy sent me from each venue from the scrapbook.
I know I don’t have the truck anymore. I haven’t driven a car in four years. I’m pretty sure my license is expired. But am I going to hoof it to the Enterprise Rental on the outskirts of town and try to get a car? Just for the hell of it?
I hear Dean’s voice echoing in the back of my head. Go do something, Madeline, go do something! In a panic induced stupor, I drag the single suitcase I own up the basement steps. I haul it into my wreck of a bedroom and start throwing clothes, socks and underwear into it before I lose my momentum.
I grab an armful of over the counter medication—my new bottles of pepto-bismol and aspirin included, and toss it like thecherry on top. I make sure to grab the stack of postcards from Andy, and put them in my tote bag with extra care.
