by Olivia Janae
Of course, she wasn’t going to tell this unfamiliar woman all of that. Instead, she cleared her throat and said, “It’s more that if there’re any mistakes, then it’s all me. There’s kind of no one else to blame when you’re the only cello.”
The bass player just shrugged one shoulder. “Maaaan,” she said through her laugh, her words slow and casual, “we all make mistakes. It’s whatever. No one is going to judge you for them, at least not yet.” She gave her eyebrows a devilish and entirely charming waggle.
Kate’s own eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Wow, talk about making the new girl feel welcome,” she dryly muttered, running her hand over the comfortingly smooth wood of her cello. “Should I be expecting some type of initiation, too? Gonna make me run around the Loop in my underwear?”
“Not the first week.” The stranger winked.
Kate gave an amused snort.
“Kay, just give me some warning, and I’ll wear some cute underwear at least.”
“You really talking to me about your underwear?” the bassist cried in mock concern, her hand placed reverently over her chest as she spoke in one of the worst Southern belle accents Kate had ever heard. “I just met you! I’ll have you know that I am not that kind of girl!”
Kate gave a loud snort of a laugh.
She grinned back, her bright eyes twinkling. “Ash. Er, Campbell.” She gave her a wide smile that was all teeth. “Ash Campbell. Is me. Hey.”
A little charmed, Kate took her offered hand, noting the chipped black polish and the tattoos littered up and down her forearm. Kate turned her arm to get a better view of the largest tattoo, a poisonous-looking bite wound riddled with streaks of purple and green as though infected and bleeding. In the center were the words “Love Bites.” It looked like the kind of tattoo you got when you were freshly eighteen and had just been dumped by your girlfriend for her ex-boyfriend.
Kate chuckled while fighting the urge to roll her eyes. “That’s quite a tattoo.”
“Yeah, well.” Ash shrugged. ‘It’s a tattoo. I dunno. What can I say?”
Amused, she swallowed it down, and, willing enough to be friendly, Kate gave her hand a quick shake. It wasn’t as though she had an abundance of friends or even acquaintances here. Besides, there was something intriguing about the bass player. “Kate Flynn.”
“It’s good to meet you, Katie.”
“Kate,” she corrected with a small shake of her head. She was definitely not a “Katie,” never had been.
“Okay, guys!” Her attention was drawn back to the front of the stage as Mary called for silence and began running them through a few notices. “And of course, as you all can see, our new cellist has finally made it. Kate Flynn. Welcome! We’re so excited to have you!”
Kate nodded with a plastic smile.
Mary spent a while going over the plans they had for the upcoming season, what they would play for the first concert, and explaining who would be playing with whom, something that was indeed new to Kate. Typically an orchestra played together, all working as one to produce something beautiful, but things were different in a chamber music organization. Unlike an orchestra, the ensemble employed a mere twenty people from specific instrument sections, often hiring a single trumpet, violin, cello, and so on. Those twenty rarely played together as a complete group. Instead, different pieces of music were programed for their concerts, and then those twenty people were divvied out into trios, quartets, quintets, or sextets, depending on the type of ensemble the piece required.
Kate was pleased to find that she was placed in several groups. She hated it when the new person was held back for a while to learn the ropes. She was very much a grab-life-by-the-balls, all-or-nothing girl.
Mary’s lecture carried on forever; she was clearly a fan of her own voice. At first the length of the talk made Kate’s skin itch. She hadn’t warmed up, and she wished that she had come in earlier. This information wasn’t new. Why go on and on about pieces that were already well known to the musicians? It wasn’t as though they hadn’t played the pieces before – ten or more times.
She was just slipping into another worried daydream about her son when a flurry of motion caught her eye to the side of the stage, snapping her back to her surroundings. At first she glanced around guiltily, hoping no one had noticed her inattention, this being her first day and all. When she saw that most around her had glazed, lost looks on their faces, too, she glanced back toward the motion, struggling to see past the stage lights.
She squinted and saw a brunette standing in the shadows off stage left, back perfectly straight, chin high as she glared into the face of the man she was speaking to. She looked as though she wanted to claw his eyes out. Kate winced for him as the woman snarled, saying something that made the man cower back a step or two. She couldn’t blame him for being nervous; that woman looked fierce. Next to the angry woman stood a younger, sweet-faced Asian woman, her rich eyes sparkling as she gave a grin that didn’t seem to go with the conversation they were all having. She stared in clear concentration at the man, her hands jumping and dancing as he spoke.
Kate frowned, the lecture from Mary forgotten. She didn’t know much about it; only a few things she had seen on Sesame Street with Max, but that was the language deaf people spoke, right? Um, Sign Language; yeah, it was called Sign Language, a name she had always thought was beautiful, and perfectly described what it looked like.
This was definitely something that she had never seen before. Well, she had seen a deaf person or two in her life, someone walking down the street and talking with their partner, or perhaps on TV, but she had never seen a deaf person in a setting like this one. What was a person who couldn’t hear doing in a chamber rehearsal? Both of the women were dressed too well, too perfectly, to be anything other than there on purpose. It wasn’t like they had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
The younger and taller of the two finally let her hands fall still to her stomach as if in rest position, her expression blank as she turned toward the other, expectantly waiting. The other woman’s face had only grown ever more lethal, her deep red lips curling back in open fury. She pinned the man with her eyes, saying something that made him quake in his boots as she pointed, threatening to jab in him the chest. He was in the middle of a fast and nervous nod when he turned on his heels to escape, walking just a bit too quickly for him to keep a strong hold on his dignity. Kate had a moment to feel bad for the guy before her eyes were pulled back to the women. She watched the younger woman’s eyebrows shoot into her hairline as her hands flew into beautiful, fluid motion again. The other rolled her flashing eyes in response, and with quick stabbing motions she answered in the same language.
Kate was intrigued by the mystery of deaf women in a classical music setting, but just then her attention was drawn back to Mary as she finally separated them to rehearse.
The rehearsal went as smoothly as she could have hoped. The group played beautifully, as she had known they would, and it was a confidence boost to be among them, which was great since the first gig was scheduled for only a few days later.
On occasion, as she played, her eye was drawn from her sheet music to the wings, looking for the flying hands again, almost like a tic. Despite her interest, she hadn’t been able to take a moment to watch as she wanted to. It was difficult not to keep glancing back; something about the language, something about the hand motions, about the flow – it was so intriguing.
“So, stranger. Where did you come from?” Ash appeared at her side just as Kate shoved out of the stage door. She was done for the night and eager to make her planned detour and then get back to Max and save him from the unknown sitter. Yet again she considered skipping it and going straight home. It was smarter, since she didn’t know this Teresa girl at all, but… she was so close. How could she be this close and not go and see it in person?
She glanced at Ash, impressed by her friendliness, and sighed. “Well,” she cracked her neck as she thought, “last place was Pennsylvania; I h
ad a one-year contract with a few of the regional groups around there. Before that, I was in Southern California, and before that, I was in New York.” She clicked her tongue, shivering in the night air as she chuckled, her hands burying themselves in the pockets of her jacket.
The outside wind was still chilly in early May, coming directly off of Lake Michigan and roaring through downtown’s wind tunnels so fast that the sixty-five-degree air felt like forty.
Ash gave her another large smile, and leaning in, she conspiratorially hissed, “The life of a freelancer. Constantly moving, unsure of how you’ll get by. We’ve literally all had to do it at some point in our career. Yeah, no, not fun.”
Kate laughed a little. “Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I’m looking forward to staying in one place,” she huffed, “for a little while anyway.” She let her head fall back and stared up at the sky as it cracked. “Who knows what’s next when this contract is up.”
“Well,” Ash said, pulling a dark tube hat over her dreads with care as her sympathetic laughter died, “you sounded great in there tonight. Seriously. I look forward to hearing more from you.” She flashed a wink as she reached out and let her hand rest on Kate’s arm for a moment. “I’ll see you later, yeah? Welcome to Chi-Town.”
She nodded a little, her mind drifting through the night-bright Loop. “Hey, Ash?” she called before Ash could take more than a few steps.
“What up?”
“Can you tell me which way to the opera house?”
Ash’s lips twitched. “Got aspirations beyond us, huh?”
Kate shoved her hands in her back pockets and didn’t answer. “I just got here. Thought I should see the sights.”
“Uh-huh.” Ash grinned for another beat before she turned. “Well, you know, Hancock Tower is that way.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “No,” she said in a voice she hoped sounded casual. “I mean, nah, I think I’ll stick with the one tonight. It’s, um, it’s closer.”
Ash clearly wasn’t fooled. “Down here to State, head over to Madison, and then all the way down to Upper Wacker.”
“Kay, thanks.”
“Uh-huh. Later, newbie.”
Kate started off down the street to get a glance at the iconic Civic Opera House.
2
Kate stayed downtown as long as she could, taking in the opera house’s carved drama masks, the huge pillars, the intricate carvings. It was a solid thirty minutes before her nervous tension took over, and she scurried to the closest “L” stop, joyfully taking in the night and shivering.
She hopped on her train as soon as it arrived, her teeth chattering despite the stale and lukewarm underground air. If she was this cold now, how would she handle the snow next winter? She badly needed to get a new coat. She made a mental note to stop by a thrift store soon and see if she could find something warmer for Max. The winter wear that was suitable for Pittsburgh could not hold its own in spring in “The Windy City.”
Her commute from downtown to her apartment in East Rogers Park was fifty minutes, assuming there were no delays. It was long enough for her to lose the feeling in her toes, her head bobbing slightly as she watched the high buildings and skyscrapers of downtown give way to the squat brick apartments that littered the city, the lights from the windows going from bright, warm, and welcoming to cracked and dark as the train moved on.
She frowned and pushed herself further into her seat as the people on the train went from young business professionals to menacing youths in overly large jackets, their pants hanging down so far that looking at them made Kate cold. She wrapped her jacket tighter around herself, shivering again. She needed to look into that coat as soon as she could.
“Hello?” she called into her quiet apartment, hoping with everything she had that she wouldn’t find the unknown babysitter doing something she shouldn’t be. Her eyebrows knit together as her eyes tried to adjust to the dark so she wouldn’t fall over the boxes littered around the apartment.
“Max?” she called again, sure that she could hear his sniffling, a sound that did not make her mental image of a violent robbery go away.
“Hi! I’m sorry, Mrs. Flynn!” The young babysitter came out of Max’s room just as Kate rounded the corner, able to see a little better by the pizza-shaped nightlight in the hall. The little boy was draped over Teresa’s shoulder, and though it was far past his bedtime, he was clearly only half asleep. He grumbled out a whine and reached for his mother, his thumb firmly inserted into his mouth. “I’ve been trying to put him to bed for two hours, I promise, but he’s been really upset.”
Kate could see his sleepy eyes were red-rimmed and swollen under his flop of blond hair. “Kate. Let’s just go with Kate instead of Mrs. anything. And yeah, it’s usually a problem with a new babysitter. Don’t worry about it.”
The young babysitter didn’t look as though this information made her feel any better.
With a smile, Kate held her getting-to-be-too-big-to-be-held three-year-old, paid the babysitter, and headed back to his bedroom, maneuvering carefully through the low light.
“Hey, kid.” She smiled as she laid him back on his bed, tickled his belly, and gently pulled his thumb from his mouth.
“You were gone,” he said, with a big sigh that rocked his whole body, his hand inching back toward his mouth.
“I had to work, remember?”
He nodded, rubbing his eyes with his little fist when Kate again kindly pulled his thumb away.
“You’re sleepy. Close your eyes.”
“You home?”
“Yes,” Kate sighed, understanding his toddler language, “I’m home for the night.”
Satisfied with that, Max rolled onto his stomach, and she softly rubbed his back until his breathing became deep and even. Once he was out, she quietly got up and stretched; he was going to be tired in the morning. They were going to be tired in the morning.
It was ten thirty, earlier than she had planned to be home, so she took advantage of the time to get in a quick but vigorous living room workout, releasing her stress before showering, brushing her hair, her teeth, and changing into her pajamas, her shins clumsily banging into every box in the apartment.
They had only been there for two days, but Kate was already tired of the boxes. No, if she were being honest, she was always tired of boxes. She hated them. She hated what they represented for Max. She hated the way they looked. She even hated their smell.
At least she and Max didn’t have a lot of them anymore. They had moved so many times since Max was born that after a while they had simply stopped accumulating belongings that weren’t absolutely necessary. All things were measured by two questions: Is this worth packing into the car? Is this worth having to rent a U-Haul?
It was rare to get a U-Haul. As a matter of fact, the only reason they had done it this time was because they had moved too quickly to get rid of their things.
Deciding to ignore the boxes for another day, she fell into bed with a sigh, exhausted, as she always was. She closed her eyes, feeling that familiar dissatisfaction creeping up her spine. Max had been with a babysitter. She didn’t know anyone in Chicago. She was going to bed alone.
She tossed over and hugged the pillow, forcing herself into sleep before those thoughts could fully blossom and ruin her night.
The sound of her bedroom door opening woke Kate the next morning. Max slowly crawled into the room, a wannabe stealth ninja in froggy pajamas. He was doing his best not to wake her as he scooted under the covers, but he was failing tremendously.
He stretched out next to her for a few moments, waiting, and then seemed to grow bored. “Mommy.”
“What? No!” She had been hoping he would climb up and pass back out for a while. “Go back to sleep, kid!”
He refused, pulling her eyelid back, and smiling, nose to nose with her. “But it’s time for cartoons! Where’s the TV, Mommy?”
Chamber ensemble jobs, as Kate was learning, were not like orchestral music. Unlike the nightly requirements of an o
rchestra, she only worked a few days a week now. Still, her job had always been and still was primarily in the evenings. Their early mornings were often spent in bed; Max nestled tightly against her as he watched cartoons on the bedroom TV while she got a little more sleep. “It’s not set up yet, bud.”
Max gasped, stricken despite the fact that she knew he could see it still under the blanket in the corner.
“Tell you what,” she forced herself up onto her elbow, blinking sleep from her eyes, “I’ll get up, and we’ll clean up the kitchen, and then we’ll walk to the store and get some more groceries. What do you think? You wanna go for a walk outside?”
Max grinned.
“Yeah?”
He nodded.
“Yeah?”
He nodded again, giggling behind his hands at his mother’s silliness.
“Oh yeah?” Kate buried her face in her little man’s stomach, blowing raspberries and making him scream with giggles.
All morning Max sang tunelessly as he “helped” his mother by pushing dirt from one side of the room to the other, grinning with pride as he went. Once they were done, Kate wrapped Max in their warmest coat, and together they started off down the street, hand in hand.
Two nights later, a teary, snot-laden face followed her through the house as she pulled on her concert blacks. Usually when she dressed this way he took her leaving better, understanding that it was time for his mommy to go and play music for someone. Tonight, however, he refused to calm, kicked-puppy whines tumbling from his soggy lips.
“Buddy, look,” she pointed into the kitchen at the large pot on the stove, “you get to have your soup with Teresa! You like Teresa, remember? You said she’s funny!”
She was grasping at straws. Max was using his greatest weapon, and she wasn’t sure she could stay strong. His bottom lip was out, his huge eyes blinking up at her as tears fell. The tears always made the green of his eyes, so much like her own, stand out so brightly that she felt like she was dealing with a bereaved Precious Moments’ character. It killed her.