“The Back Yard” by Otis Huband
Stoppin’ on the red
You’re goin’ on the green
‘Cause tonight’ll be like nothin’
You’ve ever seen
And you’re barrelin’ down the boulevard
Lookin’ for the heart of Saturday night“(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night”, Music & lyrics by Tom Waite
I couldn’t get the song out of my head as I read this. Given the words, it could have been full of the energy of anticipation, but instead, the slow, gentle tune and the emphasis on the hook makes it nostalgic: the memory of host of Saturday nights spent looking, but not finding, some magic that maybe doesn’t even exist.
Fiedorek could have titled her story “The Heart of Saturday Night” if she’d wanted to (at least I think she could have, but a lawyer or editor might differ), but she didn’t. Using “arms” has a different feel to it. Open arms can welcome; crossed arms can protect and repel; arms can restrain, attack, or comfort. All of these elements come into the story in different ways.
Janie’s looking for her own Saturday night, if she can get around the little detail of her uncle’s wake first:
There’d be no traffic on the turnpike, not on Saturday. She could get her dad to drive her to the city, though at the risk of being pushy, and insensitive, really, considering the circumstances, but wouldn’t some part of him enjoy it in a way, like, was it not a source of comfort in a time of grief, a welcome sign of life’s renewal—the death-proof, scrappy ways of teenage lust?
There was this party in the city later. And she had it on pretty good authority—not immaculate, but strong—that Adam Donovan would be there. Adam Donovan. His name, a neon light, electric-blue.Complete story available online at Narrative
Janie’s dad, John, has been looking for his own version of Saturday night. He’s an academic who wrote a few columns for Newsweek and has been trying to get a book published, essays on “semiotics, or technology and the soul, or something” as Janie puts it. His “career as a public intellectual had been looking, in the past year, pretty private”.
“I should’ve gone to trade school, Robbie. Electricians, contractors, do satisfying work. Me, I feel like I’ve spent my whole adult life standing in the middle of an intersection, trying to play the harp, and all this time I’ve been saying, it’s the traffic that’s the problem, it’s too loud, I can’t focus, but it’s not. The problem is—the music—the music that’s inside of me—it’s not good.”
Janie’s mom, Robbie, is more concerned with the bikers attending the wake, friends of John’s brother Murray, the honoree. In spite of having what John might consider a more satisfying life, a carefree element he hopes to see in Janie, Murray was the one who died young. His cocaine habit might have had something to do with that.
But back to Janie, the point-of-view character of the story. She’s something like a symbol of the vanishing middle class, alone and adrift in her high school between the working-class immigrants and the kids with “genetic wealth”. I love that term, genetic wealth; it used to be called old money until new money took off. And there’s Adam, who’s finally shown an interest in her, but is leaving for California, where he’ll do something exotic, but she has this one Saturday night party to connect with him, to experience the heart of every teenage girl’s Saturday night.
But there’s this damn wake, and her mother wants her to stay home and be with family, because that’s what family does. Janie sees the wake a little differently:
It was strange to Janie, watching them all, how nothing could be more radical, more awe-inspiring, really, than someone dropping dead, and yet people were often at their most perfunctory at an event built explicitly around the fact of doom. It just seemed like a waste. A waste of Murray’s memory, of the cocktail napkins, of the possibilities of language. There was no love, no vibes. There was nothing to talk about, least of all him. Everyone would drink responsibly, talk superficially, then go home. She just wished they would do it, you know, soon.
Don’t go looking for the heart of anything at a funeral, in other words.
For all her desire to flee, Jamie in the end discovers the arms of Saturday night literally in her own back yard, in two ways. First, there’s the connection she makes with a “rookie biker” (dang, I like that almost as much as “genetic wealth”) who she first views as instrumental – his pickup truck might be the way to get to the party – but comes around to seeing him as intrinsic when he starts talking sense and then reveals a secret. And then her father offers a second surprise. The sulking teenager she was fades behind the thoughtful adult she might one day become if she remains able to accept the arms that are offered, and lets the swords become plowshares:
That smell was in the air, warm and mulchy, almost tropical. That smell of total summer. It made you pause. It made you pity the dead even more than usual.
I always pay close attention to the opening story of Pushcart editions; they’re usually chosen with care, bringing thematic implications that carry on for a while until the waters change. I’m not sure which theme that will be: connecting across class lines, abandoning teenage toughness for cooperation, finding what you want in a surprisingly close place, or this melancholic nostalgia that still sticks with me. Because I’m sure Janie is going to remember this night, and the party will have little to do with it.
[Addendum: Jake Weber also had a musical reaction to this story – though a different song than I heard.]
A Just Recompense 