“We can talk to them when we get back.”
I couldn’t fathom going more than a day without responding. But I couldn’t imagine saying we were in New York, either, so I turned my phone off.
It was a long, stop-and-go drive from the airport to the hotel Jason had booked, and I spent most of it trying to focus on breathing. I was worried my breaths sounded ragged or gaspy to him and that he might think something was wrong. The city kept changing out the window, but it was hard to focus on any of it and to notice very much about our surroundings when we finally got to the hotel. In the lobby, we checked in, and I worried something would go wrong because of our age, but no one asked anything, and we went to drop our things off in our room.
The room had two beds (I wondered whether he’d specifically requested them), and I sat down on one of them and tried to relax. We were here, I told myself; we’d done it, we’d pulled it off. I would think of how to respond to Sunny later.
I put my backpack on top of the dresser. I had made sure to pack my nicest underwear—which actually wasn’t particularly nice, but I had one six-pack from Costco that had floral designs and a kind of sheer lace trim. It was strange to me now that I’d been daydreaming about this trip since we’d booked it. I’d thought it would be romantic and exciting, but maybe I should’ve foreseen that instead I would be anxious and on edge. Maybe it would be this way the whole time. Maybe I would be stiff and wooden and jumpy during my audition, too, and I would sound as scared as I was.
Jason, though—he seemed different than he had since the hospital, and in the opposite way as me. We took a yellow cab uptown to Juilliard, and on the way there I sensed in him that alertness, that kind of gentle watchfulness that made him seem like himself. And there was something hopeful in the familiarity of seeing him carrying his violin again too—how natural the movement was, how much it had always felt like an extension of him. He was nervous, the way he always was before a big performance.
It was loud when we got out of the car. The street gleamed with the glass and steel and marble of all the buildings reaching up to choke out the sun, and the sounds of traffic ricocheted back and forth between all the walls. When we walked across Lincoln Center, the streets gave way to an open plaza surrounded by performance halls, and I recognized the big, round fountain in the middle from all the pictures I’d seen online. And being there—just for a minute, as I took everything in, the guilt and anxiety I’d felt since leaving were suspended. I was here. Then I remembered the audition, and it all rushed back.
The halls were teeming with parents as we made our way to one of the designated warm-up rooms. Inside, it was crowded and frenetic. A lanky white boy who was tapping his fingers rapidly on his knees looked us up and down as we walked to find open seats. We sat next to a Black girl in a gray long-sleeved dress who was running through the same Paganini Jason had picked, No. 5. Taking out my violin, I felt sick, and I was afraid I might throw up or pass out. I tried to distract myself by listening to Jason. It was the first time I’d heard him play anything at all in months, and that familiar run of thirty-second notes from Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy he always warmed up with brought tears to my eyes. I tried to blink them away before he saw. When I stole a glance at him, though, I realized he wouldn’t have seen anyway—he was utterly absorbed.
I wished I could listen to him longer, could try to center myself there in his playing until I felt better. But it was cacophonous in the room, and my slot was first, and I needed to prepare.
I was in the A–M audition room, and I waited outside it for half an hour to make sure I wasn’t late. There were two other people waiting also, a South Asian guy with glasses and a very tall white girl, but we didn’t talk. It was a small room with a music stand and a chair and a table where the three judges sat, two white men and a white woman, and alone in the room with them I felt myself blurring. I felt how little they cared about me, how impenetrable they were, and yet here I was in the face of their apathy, implying, by my presence, that I thought I deserved to be heard and watched and considered.
I was dizzy and flushed all over. I had always hated inserting myself somewhere I wasn’t openly wanted.
But—and I hadn’t counted on this—I felt different as soon as I lifted my violin to my chin. It wasn’t how they responded, because they didn’t; they told me which pieces to play and when, but they were otherwise stone-faced and didn’t react to my audition. It was that when I played everything else fell away—the flight we’d taken and the lies we’d told and the huge strangeness of the city—and the room expanded, like a camera zooming out so suddenly those things felt tiny and contained and everything else there with me, the music hovering in the air, was the part that felt endless and true.
And—this never happened to me when I was playing—my eyes welled up. I don’t think I realized before then how my violin let me make a home for myself, how it let me belong in places I never would have otherwise—how I could lose myself in the music and try to find myself again and how, eventually, I always did.
Usually, it’s hard to feel an absence keenly before it descends on you, but there are moments in your life when you see with a perfect clarity what it will be like to lose something before you’ve lost it. And I felt it that day, that shock of pain that flashed all the way through me, what it was going to be like to give this up.
* * *
I’d thought after the audition that fog around me might lift, but instead it just shifted, came to rest a little lower on my shoulders, and the world around me dulled. Jason’s slot was an hour after mine in another audition room down the hall, so I waited in the lobby, people streaming past with their parents, clutching their instruments.
Two white mothers were standing near me, and when an East Asian girl holding a violin case went by, the first one murmured to the other, “There are so many of these Chinese kids here. You can really tell they have no life, don’t you think? If it were me, I’d go through last names and strike out half the Chens and Wongs right off the bat.” Maybe they didn’t see me, or maybe from looking at me they couldn’t tell.
When Jason came out, we left and this time, since it was cheaper and there was nothing to be late for, found a subway station, and Jason lifted my case over the turnstiles for me and studied the maps to figure out where we needed to go, and we got on the train and let it carry us underground. And all the while, I think, what I was feeling, what was shrouding me, was the beginnings of grief.
“You think it went well?” Jason asked, leaning his head back against the seat.
I didn’t know how to answer. What had happened in the room—the audition itself almost seemed secondary. The music had subsumed me, and it was strange to try to describe that as it went well or I did okay. “I guess we’ll find out,” I said. “What about yours?”
“Eh—I don’t think it was the very best I could’ve done, but it was okay. I should’ve prepared more, I guess.” Then he added, “It went by so fast. I forgot what that felt like.”
When we emerged from the subway again, it was like another city, and with the audition over now I could absorb our surroundings in a way I’d been too distracted to do before. The buildings were shorter here—the sky closer, a blanket swaddling us—and there were more trees, and all the facades were brick and had wrought-iron gates. Our hotel was on the corner across from Washington Square Park, a medium-height brick building with pretty window boxes and a striped black-and-white awning and marble steps. We dropped our violins off back in the room, and when I turned my phone on there were twelve messages from Grace and Sunny: where are you?? Are you okay?
Sorry! I wrote back. My phone was off. I’m fine!
It was about dinnertime, and the night stretched out in front of us. Jason said, “Where to?”
I wished I could somehow go back in time and tell my younger self that I’d be here someday, alone with Jason, as his girlfriend, in New York. There was that old solicitousness to him that I’d almost forgotten about, and it felt, for
the first time since we’d started dating, easy. We walked hand in hand through the park to find something to eat, the pathways curving around the playgrounds and the old leafy trees, past and then under the looming white arch. And because I liked it here, because I could still reach for and find the way it had felt to play my audition piece, my mind rushed ahead of itself, building a future for us here—maybe even just the two of us, at least at first. Maybe Juilliard would want us both and Jason would change his mind and we could make it work here somehow.
We bought slices of pizza at Joe’s Pizza and ate them standing up at the high-top table outside. They were steaming hot, the crust crackling in our mouths, and delicious. After I finished, I wanted another piece, but that wasn’t the kind of thing I liked to do in front of people, especially him.
“I’m going to get another piece,” Jason said. “Maybe two. You want any?”
I hesitated. “No, that’s okay.”
“You sure?”
I nodded. My stomach grabbed at itself—I’d been too anxious to eat before the audition, and I was hungry still. I watched him go to the counter and wondered if later, maybe, once we were back, I could slip out to the CVS I’d seen on the corner and get a snack. I’d never leave the room by myself at night, though.
Jason came back with three pieces. He put one in front of me.
“You don’t have to eat it,” he said. “I just thought—it’s good, right? And the line was really long, so I thought maybe between the time I asked and then actually ordered, you might’ve changed your mind.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks. I—thanks.” And then I felt unsure about whether or not to eat it, and I wavered, and I think maybe some of it showed on my face, because he watched me for a second and then something in his expression changed, and he smiled, and pushed the plate toward me.
“I changed my mind, actually,” he said. “I’ll be offended if you don’t.”
And it was such a small thing. It was a slice of pizza. But it was more, too. Because you can understand the way another person needs permission sometimes, and that you can grant it without holding the power in that for yourself. And I understood that; I’d seen the opposite happen with my parents all my life and with other people, sometimes, too, sometimes with myself.
But what I wasn’t sure of then was what it meant—that you cared so much, or not enough.
* * *
We went back to the hotel after eating, and as the elevator ascended my nervousness, this time a kind of delicate one tinged with excitement, rose too. It wasn’t really that late, and we were still on California time, and all I could think was how many good hours were left in the night. Or could be, if we used them. There were so many things he could tell me, so many conversations we could have, so many ways we could twine ourselves together.
But it was fine if Jason needed to sleep, I told myself, because he wasn’t like I was and never seemed to feel the same compulsion to stretch an instant as far as it would go, and because maybe I could trick myself into pretending I wouldn’t mind.
Jason glanced down the hallway, which was empty, and then checked his watch.
“You tired?” he said. “I’m not.”
* * *
Our room was small, intimate in the way things always are when they’re removed from your normal life and someone else is there to share it with you. My skin went hot when Jason closed the door behind him. He stood in the entryway for a while, his hands in his pockets, glancing around the room.
You can spend hours each day imagining what you might say to someone if you’re ever given the chance, and then when the moment arrives, when a night stretches out in front of you, swollen with possibility, you can find it difficult to say anything at all.
“Those are really ugly curtains,” he said after a while.
“I was thinking that too.”
He smiled. “Got a good deal on the room, though.”
He waited to see where I’d sit down. I sat on the chair at the desk—it felt less suggestive, like maybe he’d wonder about me if I sat down on one of the beds—and only then did he plop down on his bed. But he did it with a practiced kind of carefulness that made me think I wasn’t just making it up that things were different tonight, that all the rules and norms that bound us were weakened. My heart was going faster than usual, pulsing in my wrists.
If he wanted to have sex, I was probably as ready as I would ever be. It couldn’t be that bad, surely, and it would be something to make him feel closer to me, and also it would be something I could give him. Ever since Brandon’s birthday, I’d known I would do anything, would sacrifice anything and give any part of myself, for his sake, but then there’d been nothing he seemed to want. Here, finally, was something I could offer.
How did it even happen? Did you talk about it first, or were there signals I was supposed to know, or did it just sort of—occur, like one thing led to another? It would probably be his first time too, although it wasn’t something he talked about, so maybe I was wrong.
“I kind of wish our flight weren’t so early,” he said. “I’d be down for walking around more somewhere right now.”
“We could if you wanted to.”
He glanced out the window. “Eh, it’s kind of getting late. And we should probably head to the airport before five.”
But he didn’t sound convinced, and there was a moment there where I think both of us were waiting, an instant when the night broke open and I could’ve said Let’s do it; let’s go somewhere, and who knows what would’ve happened then—maybe we would’ve been out until morning, maybe we would’ve missed our flight. But I waited too long, and I lost the chance. We sat quietly, and underneath my quiet was franticness. I was afraid now he’d just want to sleep.
“I keep worrying my mother will call Sunny or something and realize I’m not at her house,” I said finally, when I needed to slice through the quiet with anything at all. I hadn’t said anything more, even though Sunny had written again: where are you??? “Have you heard from anyone else yet?”
“I’m not sure. My phone’s been off.” Jason got up and wandered over to the window and looked outside for a while. On the building next door there was a garden out on the rooftop, chairs set up and twinkling lights strung around. No one was on it, maybe because it was a little cold, but I wished we were out there. Then he came back and sat down again.
“I’m glad you talked me into coming,” he said.
“Really?”
“I just—I feel really happy here,” he said. “I guess I thought maybe I would, but then actually feeling it—I don’t know. Do you wish you’d auditioned other places?”
I hesitated. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. It’s—complex, I guess.”
“Complex how?”
“I don’t know. I used to just, like—not think about the future that much, you know? Everything was kind of all laid out, so I just never thought about it. But now everything feels—kind of jumbled. But I guess I still don’t like thinking about the future, so what else is new.” He picked at a thread on the comforter. Outside, it was windy; the windows were thin and rattled with each gust. The thermostat was running a little too cold. I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. The truth was that I didn’t mind the cold, that I could see myself thriving in it. I imagined all the heavy coats I’d layer on myself, how I’d learn all those attractive complex ways of tying a scarf. Then Jason said, “My parents think I withdrew my application.”
“Your application where?”
“Here. To Juilliard.”
“Wait, what? I thought they didn’t know you were applying.”
“Yeah, they weren’t supposed to. But then I left my computer open and my mom saw some of the emails. This was, uh—it was at Christmas.”
I understood immediately what at Christmas was code for, and I sat up straighter, my heart pounding. “What happened?”
“They—kind of freaked out. They said they were going to call the
school and tell them to withdraw my application.”
“But then they didn’t call?”
He raised his eyebrows slightly. “I guess they were sufficiently distracted.”
My face went hot. “Right, of course. But did they—”
“It’s not worth talking about it.”
“Jason—” My eyes were filling. Already I felt the past months reshaping themselves in my mind, and not just that but the months ahead, too. “I had no idea.”
“Yeah, well.” He’d found the end of the thread he was fiddling with, and he tugged it gently from the blanket. Then he said, abruptly, “What if we just went for it? If we ended up getting in?”
My stomach flipped over. “You would do it?”
“Being here—I don’t know. I could see it. You know? Like walking around today, and the audition—what if it was just like that all the time?”
I felt both fragile and oddly oversaturated, and images from Christmas were flashing across my mind. I was imagining his parents finding his application, what he’d meant, exactly, by they kind of freaked out. My chest hurt. “I think you would be so happy here, Jason.”
“Would you?”
“I could be happy anywhere.”
He considered that a moment. “You think that’s true?”
Was it true? What if—why had this not occurred to me sooner—what if Jason got in and I didn’t? “I would love it here. But maybe—I mean, like if it didn’t work out, maybe it’s not being here specifically that makes you feel like this, you know? Maybe it was the audition. What if you did a music major at Berkeley?”
I got up from my chair and sat next to him on the edge of the bed. He took my hands in his, and then he pulled me down gently, so we were lying next to each other, facing one another. My heart made a funny, sad little skipped beat.
“Because you seem more like yourself this trip,” I said. I could feel his breath on my cheeks. “Maybe it’s just that you’ve missed playing.”
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