“Are you listening?” my wife says.
I nod, then anticipate her next response, raise my eyes and say, “I am,” a few seconds before she says, “Look at me!”
I say, “Heather, I’m listening,” with no sharp edges, even though the statement is something of a lie. I hear her repeat something about our neighbor’s attorney girlfriend and our mowing service, but I am also thinking I have uncovered another secret to successful film soundtracks to have anything to say but “Huh.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
It is, because I know Heather doesn’t want to hear that in addition to Scorsese’s use of songs anachronistic to period, like “Layla” in Goodfellas, or the harsh juxtapositions Tarantino favors, such as “Stealer’s Wheel” when Michael Madsen saws off the cop’s ear, there is also the unexpected cover. In Tenenbaums, Anderson does this twice: Nico’s shimmering “These Days” and the instrumental version of “Hey Jude.” I didn’t know Junior Walker covered Foreigner’s “Urgent” until Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan! We viewers, especially experienced ones, fashion in our heads the tension between the cover and the original as it benefits the scene! As soon as I conclude this line of thinking, I wonder if I am assigning too much credit to the directors themselves. Surely the music supervisors supply insight, and wouldn’t that be a job: listening to records for countless hours to pull out of the pile “What a Wonderful World” or “I Put a Spell on You” and hand them over to Levinson or Jarmusch and glow with pride as they find the precise slots? Far superior to approving requisitions and conducting evaluations of direct reports and opening uninspiring meetings with cliches designed to build team cohesion. Yet what forty-three-year-old husband with a teen who just passed her written driver’s test and has only liberal arts colleges on her list to visit should be thinking about changing careers? And who is he to think any of this rumination will get him anywhere?
Heather sits down with the checkbook, its brown cover dull against the worn blue of our breakfast table. Obviously, we have moved on to a different subject, so I pocket my soundtrack observations to share with my friend, Matt, a film professor in Rhode Island and the only true cineaste I know. Two fears then shudder through me: Heather will catch my inattention again, and Matt will roll his eyes at my trite analysis, forgetting we were once state school freshmen who talked about making movies of our own and neither of us landed in that lofty realm.
Heather moves nearer, her indelibly minty breath forcing me to lean back and clamp my lips shut: I have failed to brush my teeth after promising her—twice this month—to attend to this daily task before I get to my office. Heather says, “I don’t want to do this again. Yelling wears me out.”
I nod. What I want from Matt, I realize, is confirmation that I am more than a dope with the occasional interesting observation, yet I fear in the interest of our twenty-five years’ long friendship, he merely humors me. The last time he was in town as a conference’s keynote, during the hour-long lunch we spent together, he had his eyes on his phone far more than me. What song should have been playing then?
Heather smacks the table with the checkbook twice. “Hello,” she says. “Are you even fucking listening?”
She stands, and I say, “Of course I am, baby. I’m right here for you.”
She shakes her head and tosses the checkbook at me. My hands don’t rise in time, so it hits my face, then falls open onto my lap. “You figure it out then.” To our daughter, she shouts, “Shelly, get out here before your father forgets to take you to school.” A few seconds pass before our daughter emerges from her bedroom lair, unkempt or in style, it is difficult to know these days. Heather tugs down Shelley’s plaid skirt. Shelley tugs it back up. I pocket the checkbook. Do I need to balance it or pay the mowers? With time I might figure it out. After kissing our daughter on the cheek, Heather scowls at me. Shelley grabs her Bride of Frankenstein backpack and the apples Heather peeled and sliced for her. Then, without asking, she yanks the CRV keys off the hook, as her mother says to stay off Gray, there’s construction. Is “Girls Talk” too obvious? Rondstadt or Costello? And Dave Edmunds, too! Who did the original? When my wife passes by I’m certain it’s not Linda, as I rise to follow my daughter before the music stops.
