Audiophile
"EIGHTEEN AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT!"
Homer grunted at the music pouring down from his daughter's room, and Marge smiled at his reaction and sipped her coffee.
"You loved Alice Cooper."
"Yeah, but not at six in the morning," he whined. Grabbing a broom from the floor with his free hand (and continuing to shovel bacon and eggs into his mouth with the other), he tapped it against the ceiling. "MAGGIE!! TURN IT DOWN!"
The music ceased abruptly, only to be quickly replaced with moody, jangling guitars. Homer stared morosely at the ceiling. "Oh, not Morrissey," he grumbled. "It's killed better men than me..."
"Oh, Homey..." Marge sighed, scraping her dish into the disposal and running it.
He grumbled, finishing off the rest of his coffee. "Tell her when she gets back from school that someone needs to mow the lawn this afternoon. And it's NOT gonna be me, Marjorie!" He pecked his wife on the cheek. "Have a good day."
She shoved Homer's brown bag into his hand. "You're being too hard on her, Homey. Maggie's just sewing a few of her wild oats."
He glared one more time at the ceiling. "I just wish she didn't have to do it at top volume," he grunted, opening the back door and exiting.
**
Homer's frustration with Maggie was a reflection of her mother's frustration with the girl, and a microcosm of her teacher's frustration with her. Everything had changed when she'd turned thirteen and become consumed with music. It wasn't that she appreciated it - she lived and breathed and ate and slept in music theory. She drummed her pencil against her desk when she was at school; she thrummed her fork against her plate when she was at dinner; she knew the words to every popular song and filled the margins of her loose-leaf notebooks with lyrics. She loved it in a way that was profoundly different from Lisa's worship of jazz and her saxophone; if music was Lisa's very soul, than it was to Maggie her guts.
Such passion was somehow more easily handled when Lisa was with the family. With Lisa off at college there weren't two girls fighting over the stereo, and thus the house filled with the sounds of music downloaded onto Maggie's MyPod; songs loud, profane or plain weird. There was no divide to be conquered - it was "Maggie-turn-down-that-damn-MyPod!". She often found herself complaining to Lisa or Bart about how unfair her father could be, how disapproving Marge could be, but there was little her far-flung siblings could do but pat her on the back and let her know that life would change eventually, if she held on.
***
It was a May day when the package showed up on the Simpsons' doorstep, just ahead of Maggie's birthday. The size of it alone made Homer's palms sweat. Attached to what could only be called a crate was a note:
Dear Mags,
One of your own, and one to grow on.
-Lisa
Inside lay a guitar and harmonica, and a book of music for each. As Maggie tootled away on the instrument that night, Homer clutched a pillow over his head.
"Why did we encourage Lisa to take that paid internship?" he groaned.
"Because it's what's best for her. And this is what's best for Maggie."
"What about what's best for my ears?" Homer groaned.
"It's not that bad," Marge insisted. "Even John Lennon wasn't a virtuoso when he started out."
Homer just grumbled into his pillow.
"Honey, remember that Moby Grape concert you dragged me to?"
An affirmative grumble.
"This is payback."
Homer groaned softly. "I hate payback! If a word has 'pay' in it money should be involved! Or candy! Mmm, Paydays..."
She laughed, relieved for the distraction.
***
He had to admit that Maggie was getting better with that thing. Not that he approved of her choice of music at all, but at least the noise she made could discernibly be called music. She had gathered together a band, made mostly of the Nahasapeemapetilon octuplets. They had taken to practicing noisily in the Simpson garage every afternoon, and, as the summer clasped them to its humid bosom, most of the late morning.
Homer lingered by the garage door when he arrived home late in the afternoon, just a week before the Fourth of July, just grooving on the tune Maggie and her band had put together. When it came it a crashing halt and his daughter unstrapped her guitar, he approached.
"That was good, honey - what do you call it?"
"'Kill the Stupid'", said Maggie, with a winsome smile. "I thought you didn't like this stuff, dad."
"Honey! I only hate music when it's bad!" She glares at him and he makes a nervous sputtering noise. "I mean, I don't like it when it's so loud my nose throb uh..." He sighed. "I found this hanging on the notice board at work," he held out a flyer. "Maybe you could sign up?"
Maggie seized it out of his hands with her usual abrupt excitement. "'Springfield County Fair Annual Battle of the Bands. Winner receives a cash prize of one hundred dollars and one hour of studio time!" Puuma made a sound of excited enthusiasm behind Maggie as she pressed the document to her breast. "A hundred dollars! Man, think of what we could do with a hundred dollars!"
"We could get better amps," Puuma offered.
"I could soundproof the garage," Homer sighed. "So your old man isn't so much of a jerk after all, is he?"
Maggie smiled. "Nah. Not really," she tossed over her shoulder, "...most of the time."
***
When Lisa announced that she would attend the battle, Maggie became giddy with joy. There had always been a healthy rivalry between the girls, something Marge had worried about, something that had mellowed into a cheeky competition. She rehearsed her band twice as hard in the meantime, as reports of a stomach flu epidemic in Springfield begin to trickle into Kent Brockman's reports....
***
Maggie stabbed her finger down on the redial button, her guitar smacking against her knee, making her wince. "This is not happening," she mumbles. "This. Is Not. Happening." Homer already knows what the panic in his daughter's voice indicates - Puuma still has the stomach flu, and her band is down a member. "How can only ONE of them be sick?" she lamented, throwing her hands into the air. "How?! WHY!?"
Marge carefully took a corner, pulling into the large dirt lot that served as the fair's parking lot. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry..."
Maggie just groans, covering her eyes with her black lacquered fingertips. "This is the worst thing that's happened. Ever!"
"Worse than the time we ran out of nachos?" Homer wondered.
"Daddy. Please," she moaned, rubbing her temples.
Marge looked over at Homer, then back over the seat at her daughter. "Homey, do you still remember how to play the bass?"
Maggie looked up from her hands and straight at her mother. "Oh, MOM."
"It's better than giving up, sweetie."
"Hey," Homer frowned. "I know how to strum a bass!"
Maggie sank down in the seat, groaning, but then they were at the talent entrance, and she had no choice but to accept her father's help. They both bailed out of the car as quickly as they could, trying to avoid looking at each other.
"Please try not to embarrass your daughter," Marge sighed, as she punched in Manjula's cell phone number.
****
It was the most embarrassing six minutes of Maggie's life. Even though the rest of the world seemed to enjoy what was happening on the stage, she was PLAYING ROCK MUSIC WITH HER FATHER. Her goofy, doofy, well-meaning but hopelessly uncoordinated father, who thought that Grand Funk Railroad was still the epitome of cool.
Okay, so maybe he was a fairly talented guy, who could at least keep time with the younger kids around him. Maybe. Maggie growled, buckling down, paying attention to the notes, sure she would never live down the moment. But then the song finally ended, and the audience began to...applaud? Yes, they were indeed applauding them.
A smile creased Maggie's lips. She bowed, careful not to strum her fingers across the electrified strings of the instrument.
They came in second - good enough for a free meal at Krustyburger and a fifty dollar shopping spree at MusicTown. It was, Maggie knew, what they deserved - and not bad for a band with a replacement member. Soon she was offstage, in her mother's embrace, listening to her father's enthusiastic description of the evening.
"And then Maggie really hit that last eight bars!! I'm so proud of you, honey."
"Thanks," she smiled. She realized she really meant that smile, too.
Lisa finally emerged, squeezing her sister's shoulder. "Exemplary," she said. "But you could have put a little bit of vibrato in the last few bars..."
"Yeah," she agreed.
Lisa watched their father as Marge congratulated him. "He's something else," Lisa remarked. "Don't let all of his fighting fool you, but he really loves music."
"I can tell," Maggie said. And she could.