Tess Kelly
Playlist at a New Jersey Rehab Center
I hustled into the courtyard amid a flourish of violins, late for Thursday’s entertainment: Jerry. Mic in hand and perched behind a folding table, he belted out Sinatra’s classic “Strangers in the Night,” tracking lyrics that flashed across his laptop’s screen. I spotted my aunt in a wheelchair beneath a maple tree, late summer’s greenery pinned to a clear sky. Her eyes were full of clouds. “You finally got here, kid,” she said. I kissed her forehead and settled into a lawn chair beside her.
The star of the program wore a Hawaiian dress shirt, unbuttoned a little too far, revealing puffs of snowy chest hair. A toothpaste-ad smile gleamed in Jerry’s tanned face, crowned with a thatch of silver. I found him every bit as captivating as Ol’ Blue Eyes. Jerry’s eyes were a piercing cerulean.
A couple dozen patients made up the audience, the majority elderly and tethered to oxygen tanks or mobility devices. Two weeks earlier, my widowed aunt suffered what she described as a “small stroke.” I don’t know how any stroke at age 95 could be considered small but she seemed okay at the moment. A staff of bustling middle-aged women tended to the group’s needs: tucking knitted shawls around shoulders, adjusting a patient’s gown that had crept up her legs, rearranging the crowd for better views of Jerry.
He followed the Sinatra number with Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana.” My back stiffened and I stifled a groan. I hated the cheesy melodrama of that song. I recalled my “Fanilow” cousin’s decades-long crush on Barry and her persistent presence at his concerts. Although he once touched her hand in the front row of a Vegas show, her dream of joining Barry onstage remained unfulfilled.
To be fair, I tacked a Barry poster above my bed when I was twelve, where he remained for a year until ousted by John Travolta. Barry was a puzzling choice considering his predecessor, David Cassidy. The television heartthrob had occupied that prime real estate since fourth grade. Deep dimples, puka shell choker, and hair as feathery as ostrich wings. I was as wild for him as anyone who didn’t know what sex was or could be.
What prompted me to jettison a teen idol for a balladeer of adult contemporary music in a fancy suit jacket? Maybe I realized it wasn’t all that cool for Keith Partridge to be in a band with his mom. Maybe I wanted my parents to notice I’d matured. Or maybe I just loved “Mandy.”
Sometimes we’re a mystery, even to ourselves.
“I take a lot of pills now that I’m in my seventies, and the thing I miss most is BOOOOZE,” Jerry said. Then he launched into “Margaritaville,” which launched me not to Jimmy Buffett’s Key West but to the Jersey Shore. I’d stumbled through my own sand and surf days, sucking on boardwalk frozen custard, pondering lost love and an aimless life beneath the sun’s accusing glare. I once couldn’t imagine life without boooooze. But I didn’t miss it now, didn’t miss the shame and remorse. Didn’t miss the useless hours spent at the mercy of the hammer in my head.
“Some of you might remember this guy,” said Jerry, and damn right I did. Boom. From the first measure of “Knock Three Times on The Ceiling” I was ten again, sitting cross-legged with my sisters on a braided rug. Our eyeballs lasered onto a black and white TV. Vibrant even in grayscale, mustached and disco-haired Tony Orlando held the stage front and center, flanked by two chic vocalists known as Dawn. The courtyard crew nodded along or clapped hands to the upbeat chorus. I pounded a metal table on cue, with all the vigor I could muster.
Next up: “When I’m 64,” which Paul McCartney penned as a teenager. The Beatles tune came out a few years after I was born. The era when those clarinet notes bounced through my transistor radio seemed as distant as Liverpool, if not Pluto. The era when I thought 64 was ancient. The Beatles must have thought so too, back then. Half of them never made it that far: John Lennon gone at 40, George Harrison, 58. On that day at rehab I was glad to be 60 and breathing and walking unassisted, and able to listen to Jerry without subtitles.
The bonking in Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” makes it the raciest track of the set. Jerry handled the delicate phrasing with aplomb. My own youth blazed through those days-of-yore lyrics. I inhaled the Newport smoke lingering in a high school boyfriend’s jean jacket, my face buried in denim, his arms around my waist in the birch woods that edged our suburban neighborhood. We were steeped in love so electrifying it sent me flying above those trees, above my humdrum world. The embers flickered long after he moved away. I wondered how his life turned out. I wondered what he remembered of those gilded afternoons.
“I can’t hear a damn thing,” my aunt grumbled but when Jerry plunged into “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” her ears miraculously recovered. Like Sinatra, Frankie Valli hailed from New Jersey, but Frankie got the love today. Was it due to the intimacy of lyrics in the second person? Frankie sang to me, sang to all of us, reminding us that we were once irresistible, and that we were beautiful, still.
We sang along, all of us, most in time-warbled voices steeped with thousands of difficult, astonishing, and ordinary days. My aunt sang and I remembered when she didn’t just walk but waltzed, when she floated face-skyward and weightless on the swells of the Atlantic. When she and my jocular uncle drew us kids to them like vines reaching for sunlight. The music soared and even though my aunt would hold my hand for only five seconds, my pulse quickened with joy. Her retreating palm reminded me of her long-gone sister. Mom was never one for physical affection, even during those final weeks, weeks when I thought she might want a backrub or a hug lasting more than a few heartbeats.
To cap off what turned out to be an all-white-male songster tribute, Jerry landed on Sinatra again, with “My Way,” a standard finale for crooners in that part of the world. He rose to his feet for dramatic effect to polite, if not listless, clapping. After all, the classic’s about some guy reveling in his own greatness before clocking out. Maybe no one wanted a reminder of their own dwindling journey, including me. Along with her younger sister who’s in memory care in San Diego, my aunt is all that remains of our family’s elders. The truth of impermanence deepens with each eulogy. My aunts will undam the river as they go and hasten my own rush to sea.
I’m not ready to be an elder. I’m not sure I’ll ever be.
Just past the third verse of “My Way” my aunt said, “Let’s get out of here,” as if poised to beat the throngs to the parking lot. I stood, ready to roll. “Thank you, Jerry!” I called and waved from across the patio. He waved back. Lush sounds of a full orchestra blared through speakers as I pushed my aunt’s wheelchair up the walkway and through double doors, to the room where she’d idle away the hours until Bingo tomorrow and my sister’s visit on Sunday. I manicured her nails and helped her choose a blue blouse for dinner. Then we hugged goodbye, my face buried in her neck, her white curls soft against my cheek. This time she didn’t nudge me away.
Tess Kelly’s essays have appeared in Sweet Lit, Passages North, Cleaver Magazine, and Dorothy Parker's Ashes, among other publications. Tess lives, teaches, and writes in Portland, Oregon. More at rainy-day-writer.com.
