She Remembers When He Gave Concerts
She Remembers When He Gave Concerts
Eireann Corrigan
He used to set the telephone receiver down
on the floor, hook the wire harmonic trap
around his neck, duck under the guitar
strap, and call out Can you hear me?
I would holler back Yes, yes I can hear you
and picture my voice squeaking from the receiver.
Sometimes, I’d hear him sigh and then
the odd chord of the guitar tossed to the bed
right before he’d pick up the phone again and ask
Can’t you hear me? And I’d say Yes, Yes
I can hear you. Then he’d set me back down,
pick back up his guitar and strum. He’d sing the
song he’d just learned that morning or
the one that meant me that day and I’d sit,
crushing my ear with the telephone, listening.
When we started it, he was still in the hospital
and I was in college. Later, he sang from the
rehabilitation center and from the halfway house.
Then he was at his college and I was at mine.
He’s done it from the apartment in Philadelphia
and sang to me while I filed in the tiny cubicle
at the publishing office. He’s done it from the
basement in his parents’ house and from the room
he slept in, growing up. Once he went silent in the
middle of Springsteen because his father opened
his bedroom door and stared. And when
I’d call him at college and hear the shrill giggle
of another girl in his room, he’d call back later to say
Look, it’s not like I’d sing to her over the telephone.
And that counted as enough, back then. You can’t
decide how someone will go about loving you.
He’d finish the fourth or fifth song and then
make himself stop, telling me People would think
the two of us were crazy if they knew about this.
People would think we were insane.