The Soundtrack of Summer

Last weekend Annette and I went to the Indigo Girls concert at the Albuquerque Zoo with Kate. Had I seen them before. Yeah, sure. I saw them exactly 10 years ago at The Backyard in Austin. Once we got there, we spread out with blankets and food, other friends and chatted under the beautiful cottonwoods, an even more beautiful Albuquerque sky. The music was almost tangential. I haven't bought an Indigo Girls CD since Shaming of the Sun so every time they said this is a new song Annette and I looked at each other blankly, still it was a breathtaking night.
They did sing the standards. As the show was winding down, and people were packing up their chairs and ice chests they went into "Closer to Fine," "Galileo." It's funny, but I was faraway from Albuquerque in that moment. The first time I heard the Indigo Girls it was not summer. It was a bitterly cold winter day. The kind of winter day the Texas Panhandle doesn't get anymore. Perhaps it's an exaggeration to suspect global warming, but even 16 years ago I suspected global warming as the editor of my high school newspaper. I had to chip the ice off the windshield of my VW Beatle. It wouldn't start, so I called my best friend Shea for a ride to school. He pulled up in his ice blue Cutlass. The heater was on, the seats were a deeper blue and plush. When I opened the door to get in I was overwhelmed by the heat and the combined scent of Calvin Klein's Obsession and hair product. No big deal. We needed to get to school. Shea was playing a new tape -- Indigo Girls' Rites of Passage. He fixated on "Romeo and Juliet." We were both broken-hearted that morning. He was still not over his ex-girlfriend Marcy. I was still reeling over my latest break-up with Jeremiah. "Listen to this, Patti. Listen to this." We sat in the school parking lot. The car idling. Ice sliding in plates down the back window. "Listen, do you hear this line where she says. 'I keep bare, bare company. Man, I really feel that sometimes.'"
We listened to that tape the rest of that school year. It sustained us on late night drives to Denny's where we would sit across from each other and talk across chocolate milkshakes about boys, girls and loneliness. Summer began and we still listened to "Romeo and Juliet." We infused our summer with other music, specifically Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes, but always we kept the "bare company" of each other.
I can't count the number of times I showed up at his house that summer of Little Earthquakes and Rites of Passage. He assured me Jeremiah would eventually realize he loved only me. I told him there would not only be a girl but an entire town who understood his music, his fashion sense, his love of Dungeons of Dragons. The summer began with Dungeons and Dragons. We met at his house to play this game I didn't really get, even though I loved the cartoons when I was a kid. I always wanted to be Sheila (the girl who could turn invisible). Shea and Jeremiah weren't talking anymore. Shea had broken up with another girlfriend and was in summer school. We had spent a long night together listening to music, sitting at his mom's kitchen table and I went home.
Tornadoes came the next day. I stood at the kitchen window with my little brother. He hadn't even started kindergarten yet. The air was heavy, still. It was late afternoon. Mom wasn't home from work yet. I had just cleaned the kitchen. We were listening to Another Side of Bob Dylan. Adrian was only five, but he could sing all of "It Ain't Me, Babe."
Jeremiah called before the song ended. Shea was dead. His voice broke my heart. He didn't make it home from summer school. A car wreck. I don't remember very much about that phone call or the days leading up to the funeral. I just remember it was hot and humid.
I've been to two Indigo Girls shows. I always wonder if they will play "Romeo and Juliet." They never do. I suppose it's a pretty trite song -- not a hit. Last weekend I sat under these cottonwoods, thinking about my upcoming surgery, barely listening to the music. I kept thinking about dying and then I heard "Galileo." It's definitely not my favorite song, but it is on Rites of Passage. I remembered my senior year, how we kept going out to the cemetery. We decorated the tree by Shea's grave that Christmas. I remembered dancing with Shea in sixth grade, seeing him skateboard down my street when we were twelve.
Then I looked around at Annette who didn't know any of the words to the Indigo Girls, but still jumped up to look at the peacocks walking through the branches of the bosque. Kate who got excited about the possibility that maybe they would play "Strange Fire." And everyone who was dancing -- babies and adults.

Yeah, life is good