A Song for the Road

by Kathleen Basi

  “Sorry, but I need to pee. And eat. And I need a couple of prescription refills.”

  Miriam winced. She knew what it was like to be pregnant. She should have been thinking about this without Dicey having to ask. “Of course,” she said. As the rain started in earnest, she flipped her turn signal and headed down the next exit ramp.

  11

  THEY DROPPED OFF THE disposable camera and Dicey’s prescriptions at Walgreen’s before taking refuge from the downpour at the McDonald’s next door. By the time they headed back to pick up their purchases, the storm had passed, or at least, paused. Traffic hissed noisily on wet pavement. The sky spat small, hard raindrops.

  “How’d you meet your husband, anyway?” Dicey asked as they hurried across the parking lot to the Walgreen’s.

  Miriam hunched her shoulders against the rain. “At a convention for Catholic music ministers.”

  “Love at first sight?”

  Miriam snorted. “Not hardly.”

  “Oh, come on. You said he was Italian-Argentine, right?” Dicey infused the sentence with the worst fake Italian accent ever. She had the hand motions and all. “You must-a had a spicy relationship-a!”

  The laugh caught her by surprise. “Yeah, well, Teo missed out on that particular gene. He was more the nerdy professor type.” Talia’s ghost bared its teeth at her, but Miriam stared it down. He’d said it himself a hundred times.

  Dicey sighed. “Oh well, I suppose it was too much to hope for.”

  Thinking about that convention provided welcome distraction. “I expected to be miserable that week. Everyone I knew had always thought I was a weirdo.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t care about sports, and I don’t keep up with TV shows. I had nothing in common with people. I got laughed at when we did those ‘all about me’ worksheets and I said my favorite music was Rachmaninoff. And my parents thought studying music was a waste of time. They worked the assembly lines in Detroit. They wanted us to get out, and they didn’t see classical music getting me there.” The darkening air flashed blue; a clap of thunder signaled an uptick in the rain. The women picked up the pace. “I mean, I get it. We always lived hand to mouth. I remember one day the day care was closed and Mom had to work, so she sent me to stay with a family from church. They spent most of the day shopping for clothes. It was hard pretending I wasn’t jealous. I’m sure that’s how my parents felt all the time. But still.”

  The doors to the Walgreen’s swooshed open. Not a moment too soon. Miriam glanced over her shoulder at the steady, driving rain once again pounding the asphalt. “Anyway, all those church music people ‘got’ me.”

  “They were classical musicians?”

  “Not necessarily. They were just really good at what they did.” They wandered down the first aisle. “Making music together has a way of building community. When you’ve got three or twenty or a hundred people all working on the same piece of music, it’s like all the things that divide us don’t matter. You need high voices and low voices. The guy with the power voice who can’t read music ends up being the anchor for the guy who reads music but isn’t as good at matching pitch. And the guy who can’t sing at all rocks the accessory percussion. Music lets us connect with each other at a level so deep, you can’t even put words on it. You know, after all the years my choir has been singing together, they’ll pick up a brand-new piece of music and sing the exact same wrong rhythm? How does that happen?”

  She paused to catch her breath and stole a glance at Dicey, self-conscious. She’d gotten carried away. “Anyway. When the music is centered around something else you share in common, like faith, it’s really powerful. Teo was helping with the youth track at my first convention. A lot of the people I met that week became our friends. A bunch of them came to Atlanta to do the music for the funeral.”

  “So was Teo a piano player too?”

  “No.”

  Dicey drew a soft breath. “The guitar. That’s his guitar. Right?”

  Miriam smiled and nodded. “He taught me to play it … a little.”

  “How many instruments do you play?”

  Miriam shrugged. “I can get by on several. But the piano’s my thing.”

  “Then we need to find you one.” Dicey stopped walking to devote her energy to a single, forceful cough.

  The store rattled beneath another clap of thunder.

  Dicey pulled out her phone and tapped the weather app. The radar screen was red with purple specks. She zoomed out twice before the green came back. “Maybe this is a good time to stock up on road trip snacks.”

  They wandered toward the snack aisle. “So what was Teo like?” Dicey asked.

  Miriam had never had to describe him before. Everyone she’d known had also known him. Except in college. She’d kept her church life totally separate from school. “He was kind,” she said. “Thoughtful. Totally authentic. Rarely said a bad word about anyone.”

  “Not super sexy, in other words.”

  Miriam shoved down a swell of defensiveness. “There are more important things.”

  Dicey heaved a sigh. “That’s true. I should know.” She rested her hands on her round belly.

  Time to focus on Dicey now. “Have you picked a name?” Miriam asked.

  Dicey scowled.

  Miriam raised her hands defensively. “Sorry, I just thought, for someone who’s into names, that would be a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal. It’s a big decision.” The younger woman stopped walking, surveying a shelf filled with scrapbooks and supplies. She picked up a book with a pink cover and a photo frame on the front. “I should make a scrapbook for her. So she knows what I was doing these last few weeks. Like meeting up with you. One of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me.”

  “You’re sweet.” But Miriam didn’t miss that Dicey was trying to shift the subject away from herself.

  She tried again. “What did you study in school?”

  “Film and media studies.” Dicey fingered the selection of pens as she went on. “Well, until this.” She patted her swollen midsection, her face darkening.

  Miriam wanted to tell Dicey she understood the younger woman’s frustration and fear. But it was more important to get Dicey talking about herself. “Where do—where did—you go to school?”

  “William and Mary.” Dicey shook her head. “I just wanted to get as far from home as possible. I should never have taken on that much debt.”

  “But …” Something didn’t add up. “Then what were you doing in Green Bank, West Virginia?”

  Dicey’s face shut down. “Breaking up with an asshole. Anyway”—she turned away from the scrapbooking paraphernalia—“you know what? I’ll bet you can do scrapbooking online. That would be easier in a car.”

  A phone dinged; Dicey had hers unlocked before Miriam identified whose it was. “Come on, Mom,” she murmured, typing with her thumbs.

  “I’ll just be over here.” Miriam motioned toward the snack aisle. Dicey didn’t acknowledge her.

  Miriam loaded a cart with trail mix, whole-grain crackers, and protein bars. Then she got in line at the photo counter. She opened her phone case; the photo of her with Teo peeked over the floral card. Hesitantly, she slipped an older picture from behind it—a poor-quality snapshot of the two of them, arms draped over each other’s shoulders, taken the last day of the convention.

  He looked so young. He’d been three years older, but his face was still a little round, a hint of baby fat clinging to cheeks that would hollow out into middle age but would never see wrinkles. That big nose.

  Young Miriam still had that awkward adolescent look. The terrible hair, a few prominent zits. But she liked this picture anyway. In it, she looked calm. Safe. That was how she’d always felt around Teo. Even when she was furious with him for leaving his shoes in the middle of the floor.

  She’d arrived at the convention feeling raw and unsettled. The situation at home was strained, her parents’ silences brittle, their bright conversa
tions even more so. She’d been certain by the time she came home, Dad would be gone. She’d tried to back out of the trip, but the church music director who was mentoring her had insisted she go.

  Teo was the first to greet her when she walked into the glacial ballroom that had been home base for the youth that week. For some reason she couldn’t explain, when he said, “I’m so glad you’re here,” she believed him. By the end of the second day, she would happily have stayed at this convention center forever, talking chord progressions and ensemble and ministry.

  The night before she went home, she broke down during evening prayer. Quietly, seated in the back row, so no one would know. Yet amid the chorus of voices singing responses, she felt a warm hand rest on her back. She looked up to find Teo sitting beside her. He never stopped singing. He never even looked at her. But his concern projected a force field of security around her.

  They stayed in the hall talking for hours: the uncertain situation awaiting her at home; the loneliness he felt living with his uncle; the little brother who barely knew him. His parents’ dreams for his future as a well-to-do American; her parents’ bafflement with her musical aspirations.

  When she returned home, her parents seemed back to normal. Except for that one spectacular blowup—the one they still didn’t know she’d overheard—Miriam had never seen her parents fight. But now Miriam recognized tensions she hadn’t seen before. The way her parents avoided being alone with each other. The way they never quite met each other’s eyes. The self-aware courtesy and deference they demonstrated when making plans.

  The peace felt fragile, and the last thing Miriam wanted to do was upset it. Her parents eyed her correspondence with Teo, a college student, with suspicion. Miriam started leaving his letters lying around so they could accidentally read them and be reassured nothing creepy was going on. The tactic seemed to work; at any rate, they never tried to stop her.

  It was Teo, then in his third year at Temple University, who’d learned of the Curtis Institute’s generous scholarships and encouraged her to apply. He helped her move into her apartment in Philadelphia. She was a little nervous that the easy friendship they’d shared at convention wouldn’t transfer to real life—a needless worry, it turned out. Their conversation picked up as if they’d left off last night, not last year. He recruited her for the music group he coordinated at a parish in downtown Philly.

  From then until the day he died, they’d been inseparable. Even in those few delirious weeks she’d spent with Gus, her one and only boyfriend—if he even deserved the title—Miriam had spent Saturday nights at church with Teo. Once, Gus tried to get her to skip Mass to go to a show with him, but Miriam wouldn’t budge. When she played music with Teo, she felt more herself than anywhere else. Music let her express the things she didn’t know how to put into words. Playing with Teo, she didn’t need to. He just understood.

  Thunder rattled the roof again. Miriam touched the photo. Here in this chilly Walgreen’s, with the rain pounding the roof, it seemed impossible that Teo could be dead. That she couldn’t tap his name on her phone and hear his voice on the other end. He’d had a way of making her feel safe. Wrapped up in security. Teo had felt like … home.

  Even now, the echo of that feeling settled on her shoulders like a cozy blanket. She could still feel the warmth of his hand on her back. Still hear his voice, calling her Mira—or, when he was feeling particularly affectionate, Sassafras. She didn’t even remember where that nickname had come from. Like everything else about Teo, it simply was.

  She’d spent so long blaming herself for what she’d failed to give him, she hadn’t really let herself realize what she’d lost: her best friend.

  “Can I help you?”

  The cashier’s voice recalled her to the present. “Oh,” Miriam said. “Um … last name Tedesco?”

  “Just a sec.”

  The clerk returned. Miriam laid the photo and her phone on the counter while she paid for the groceries and the photos. As she punched in her PIN, her phone rang, showing a number with a 415 area code. Who could that be? She swiped the “answer” bar. “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Miriam Tedesco?”

  “Yes?” Belatedly, she realized why the voice—strong, baritone, rich as butter and soft as silk—sounded familiar. No. Just no. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t have conjured him by a single fleeting thought.

  “Great! I’ve been trying to reach you for days. I left a message at your work, but it just occurred to me that I probably had your mobile on an emergency contact form. I wasn’t sure it would work.”

  The air felt as heavy and muddy as Play-Doh. Miriam couldn’t get it into her lungs.

  “I’m sorry, where are my manners?” he said. “I should introduce myself.”

  She couldn’t talk to him. Not now, with Teo’s face staring up at her.

  “Hello?” she said loudly.

  “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  “Hello?”

  “This is—”

  Miriam punched the red button and flipped the phone to silent, then turned to find Dicey staring at her, a question poised on her lips. Miriam knew very well the volume had been too high to disguise the fiction she’d just perpetrated.

  Why did he have to call at this moment? This moment had been Teo’s. For once in her life, she’d had her mind focused where it ought to be. Why did he have to pick this moment to upend her life yet again?

  Damn Gus von Rickenbach.

  12

  Twenty-three years earlier

  Detroit, Michigan

  THE DAY MIRIAM MET Gus, she was performing at a regional competition for high school students. He sailed into the room where everyone was waiting to perform, wearing a bright fuchsia shirt so neatly pressed, the creases could have sliced her open.

  Miriam was too busy running through her music in her head to notice him making the circuit of the room, cracking jokes and introducing himself as if he were the host instead of a fellow competitor. She was the youngest of them all, and the only one without a string of awards to her name. It was all she could do to squash the devil in her head.

  I am Mira Lewis, and I belong here. I am good enough!

  “Hi,” said a voice, rich and warm like butter and cream and sugar fresh out of the oven.

  She looked up and found herself face to face with the most gorgeous guy she’d ever seen: thick black hair, straight nose, and a smile that said no one else in the world mattered.

  She blinked stupidly at him.

  He stuck a hand out. “Gus von Rickenbach,” he said. “I’m from Chicago. More or less.”

  Nobody that gorgeous had ever talked to her before. Or anybody that old, for that matter; at school, people looked right past her. Miriam’s brain went completely blank.

  Gus von Rickenbach raised his eyebrows, giving her a teasing smile. “This is the part where you say, ‘Oh, hi, my name is …’”

  The stage door opened, and the previous competitor, an Asian girl with an immaculate bun, tapped out in her high heels, wearing a bright smile.

  “Mira Lewis.” The room monitor read from his list in a bored voice. “Mira Lewis.”

  Miriam leaped up. “That’s me.” She hurried through the heavy soundproof door, through the wing, and onto the stage. But she’d lost her concentration; all she could see was Gus von Rickenbach’s handsome face and that smile—oh, that smile!

  She had a memory lapse halfway through her first piece. It went downhill from there.

  Miriam barely held herself together long enough to get off the stage. She couldn’t go back out into that room like this. Instead, she melted into the shadows of the wings, stifling her tears while the next competitor filed out onto the stage and settled on the piano bench.

  When the music started, Miriam stopped crying. She’d never heard playing like that in real life. She looked up to see a neatly pressed fuchsia shirt and glossy black hair. She watched Gus’s entire performance through the gaps between the vertical wood panels, mesmerized by
the beauty of the music; the beauty of his face, rapt with concentration; and the beauty of his body swaying as his hands flowed over the keys.

  From that moment, Miriam Lewis was smitten.

  She came in fourteenth that day. Out of fourteen. Gus, of course, won. Miriam went to congratulate him, but he barely looked at her as he shook her hand and went on whispering in the ear of the second-place finisher, a blonde bombshell who’d draped herself over him.

  Miriam felt she’d been patted on the head by a rock star. It was exhilarating—and humiliating.

  For the next several years, what kept Miriam’s butt glued to the piano bench—and her body moving on the job when every neuron screamed for rest—was the determination to be good enough to challenge him. But it made no difference. No matter how hard she fought—and she never, ever again had a memory flub—he was always better. His bio kept expanding. He took lessons from famous players. He won awards. He went to camps.

  Miriam only knew she ought to be doing any of those things because he’d already beaten her to it.

  It took her four years to beat Gus in a competition. By then they were both at the Curtis Institute—no small thing for a blue-collar girl whose parents not only had no money to send her to a high-level performing arts school but had no desire to do so.

  By then, she finally understood why he acted like a Kennedy: he sort of was. Not literally, but he had that kind of history. Money, talent, charm. Oh, the charm. Even the teachers eyed him from behind as he walked down the hall.

  And her classmates? They had no chance. The female student body fell like dominoes before him. Long, long rows of dominoes. Every six or seven weeks, he had a new girl. Tall, short, white, brown, black—he liked them all. Except, apparently, Miriam. He’d walk right past her on nights she worked as an usher at the downtown concert hall, and show her the same charming, remote smile he bestowed on her at school—the one that made her question whether he even knew her name.

  Well, fine. Let him run through all those other girls. Miriam had no intention of being one of them. She intended to be the one who made him realize there was more to love than being fawned over by the masses. Like Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, when Gus noticed her, it was going to be because she was different. Worth committing to. When he noticed her, it would be as his equal.