Never Can Say Goodbye
By Jeff Ingber
It’s an August afternoon in 1971, and Jackson Heights feels punitive. The heat permeates, turning every step into a test of will. Even the shade feels exhausted.
When the front door of The Record Room on 82nd Street swings shut behind me, cool air washes over my skin. The place smells of vinyl, cardboard sleeves, and incense. Dan Ingram’s buoyant voice spills from the speakers, riding the hook of a Top 40 song. He sounds impossibly cheerful.
I wander toward the Soul/Motown bins and stop short. There they are: stacks of the Jackson 5’s Maybe Tomorrow. Twenty copies at least, neat and waiting. I stand there longer than necessary, then pull one copy free and hold it in my hands. Five boys with matching afros carefully arranged, with Michael forward and the others orbiting him. Wide smiles radiate off them like stage lights. They look like they know where they’re going in this world.
I’m not a Motown guy. I don’t own any soul records. My shelves tilt toward guitar-heavy songs played by men who look like they’ve been up all night. But this summer, whenever “Never Can Say Goodbye” comes on the radio, something in me loosens. The song doesn’t demand anything. It just arrives, sad but strangely hopeful. At sixteen, I don’t have a heartbreak to point to, not a real one, but I recognize the feeling anyway.
The bell over the door rings, and before I turn around, I know it’s Saul. He moves through the room as if it owed him a red carpet. Spotting the album in my hands, he lets out a laugh that sounds like a snort. “You’re kidding. You actually thinking about buying that?”
My face warms, not from the heat this time. I notice a girl with long hair a few feet away, flipping through the Rock section, listening while pretending not to. She keeps pushing her hair behind one ear, as if the motion might make her invisible.
“It’s good,” I say, instantly aware that this is the weakest possible defense.
Saul shakes his head, already charging into his argument. “It’s corporate junk. Manufactured to tell you how to feel. Those kids don’t even write their own songs.”
“So what?”
“So what?” He looks at me like I’ve admitted to something shameful. “That’s the whole point. If you’re going to spend your money, buy something real. Something that matters.”
From the speakers comes Dan Ingram shouting: “Here’s the record everybody’s talking about! And yeah, your mother hates it!” Then comes the hard, strutting opening guitar riff of “Brown Sugar.”
Saul beams in delight, then takes a couple of long steps—brushing next to the girl, who looks up just long enough to see what I’m holding—and pulls Sticky Fingers from the rack. “This,” he says, tapping the sleeve, “is music.” His finger moves to the metal zipper on the cover and pulls it open, as if it might reveal a new world. “And this is art.”
He meets my eyes. “This is what you’re supposed to be listening to.”
Supposed to be. The words land heavier than I suspect he intended, carrying rules I didn’t know I’d agreed to.
I try to explain what I feel but don’t yet have the language for. Saul counters with lineage and blues roots. About how “Brown Sugar” knows exactly what it wants—lust stripped of regret.
“The lyrics of your song don’t even make sense,” he adds. “The kid keeps saying he can’t leave, but he never says why.”
“Not everything’s a book report,” I retort. “Sometimes a song just lands.”
Saul narrows his eyes, and then delivers what I assume he thinks is the killing blow. “Michael Jackson’s a kid. He’s singing about heartbreak when he hasn’t even hit puberty.”
I pause. Hadn’t thought of that.
“Maybe,” I say. “But he sounds like he means it.”
Saul sighs and lowers his voice. “You don’t want to be one of those guys with bad taste.”
Bad taste. The kind that quietly closes doors. Including the door to the girl standing a few feet away.
“Don’t embarrass yourself,” he adds kindly, as if doing me a favor.
The album suddenly feels heavier. I slide it back into the bin. The cardboard edge catches slightly, resisting me before disappearing. I tell myself I didn’t really want it anyway.
Saul grins and slaps my shoulder. “Good call.”
*
Years pass. Life complicates. Music styles change. Yet “Never Can Say Goodbye” surfaces at weddings, in supermarkets, on late-night radio—always familiar, at times uncomfortably apt. And then there’s “Brown Sugar,” forever blasting from car windows and stadium speakers.
Then one Thursday evening, the phone rings.
“Have you heard?” Saul asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Everyone’s heard.”
“They’re saying cardiac arrest.”
“Which usually means something else.”
We lapse into a brief, reverential silence.
“You remember that day in The Record Room?” Saul asks.
“Yes, I do.”
“You know, those Jackson 5 records… they weren’t so bad. I took myself too seriously back then.”
I say nothing, though part of me wants to remind him how easily he once dismissed them, and me. Then I chuckle. “It takes Michael Jackson dying for you to come to this realization?”
After we hang up, I turn on the radio. Sure enough, “Never Can Say Goodbye” is playing.
Standing alone in my kitchen, twilight pressing against the windows, it occurs to me that the songs Saul and I argued over were both about the refusal to let go, whether dressed up as sneering swagger or sung sweetly by a boy who hadn’t yet lived enough to know how true the impulse is to cling to what gives comfort.
The sky outside dims. The song ends. And still, I wanna hold on.
THE END
Author Bio: Jeff Ingber is the author of books, short stories, and screenplays, for which he’s won numerous awards. His first screenplay became the story for the 2019 film “Crypto,” starring Kurt Russell. One of his novels, “Shattered Lives,” was made into a documentary film. He’s had many of his short stories published in various journals and magazines. You can learn more about him at www.jeffingber.com.