Here We Are Now

by Jasmine Warga

  But when I’d started to suspect that Julian Oliver was my father, I felt a slight panic. Sure, my own interest in music was just one more thing that made my suspicions seem more like truth than fiction, but I felt like a copycat. I hadn’t wanted to tell him about my own songwriting in case he would mistakenly think I wanted something from him. Which I didn’t. Or at least not like that.

  What I’d wanted were answers.

  He tapped his fingers against his leg again. “The piano. Of course. I remember that now. But it was a huge fight with Lena, right?”

  I pinched my lips together. “A struggle for sure. She’s always been suspicious of my interest in music. I guess now I understand why.”

  “Will you play something for me?”

  I locked eyes with him. It was like staring at a fun-house version of myself. There was something so familiar about those eyes, but also something so alien. “You have a lot of nerve, you know that?”

  “Yes,” he said plainly. “I do.”

  “To come in here after years of absence and just start making all these requests,” I continued.

  He grinned a little. “Well, I thought maybe you could play something for me while you thought about my other request.”

  I considered this. “Okay. Fine.”

  I knew I should’ve been nervous. It wasn’t every day that I was asked to play the piano for a full-fledged rock star. I mean, this dude was the recipient of a Grammy Award. Responsible for a multiplatinum album. But somehow, I wasn’t that nervous. The idea of playing the piano actually felt calming. Looking back, I’m sure this was some sort of mind trick on his part. He probably knew it would be calming because we shared half of the same genetics, and playing music was obviously cathartic for him.

  Also, despite Julian Oliver’s frightening level of fame, there was no way he was as impossibly intimidating as my current piano teacher, a wrinkle-faced German man named Bruno—the most swelling praise I’d ever received from Bruno was “That didn’t make me want to claw my eyes out.” So there you have it. If I wrote for Rolling Stone, the headline of this moment would’ve been: “Julian Oliver Is No Bruno Kaufman.”

  He was silent and still while I made my way to the piano. I slid my legs up onto the bench and scooted to find a comfortable seat. My fingers hovered above the keys as I contemplated what song I should play.

  I knew Julian Oliver would want—would expect—me to play some rock anthem. Something that would confirm that I was his effortlessly cool offspring. But unfortunately, even if I wanted to play a rock ballad, my repertoire was severely limited.

  It’s not like Bruno was teaching me how to play Nirvana or Radiohead or the Black Lips. Let alone something edgier or less mainstream. Bruno was sort of a strictly Bach and Rachmaninoff guy. And Mom followed Bruno’s suit, so she flipped if she ever heard me playing something that you wouldn’t hear lightly pouring out of the speakers at a fancy French restaurant. Of course I broke Mom’s rules and tinkered around behind Bruno’s back—loosely teaching myself how to play a handful of angry rock goddess songs—but none of my self-taught melodies seemed right for this moment.

  I pressed down on the keys and began to play “Feeling Good.” I’d played the song so many times that my muscle memory basically took over. My fingers splayed out, moving back and forth almost as if an invisible puppeteer were controlling them.

  For my fourteenth birthday, Mom had purchased the sheet music for me. It was a big deal that she brought music into our home that wasn’t classical. Yes, that’s right. To Mom, even Nina Simone was a stretch.

  As I played the song, I smiled to myself thinking of the irony of the lyrics. I hummed under my breath. I loved how the song continued to build underneath my fingers. It felt like tossing gasoline on a fire. It literally smoldered. It made me feel powerful when I played it.

  When I finished, I turned around to face Julian. He was beaming, but there was something off about it. There was an artificial brightness to him—his face was not a cloudless sky, but more like a fluorescent lightbulb.

  He clapped once. “Bravo.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s not exactly the reaction I was expecting.”

  “What? I think you’re a really talented pianist.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “No but.”

  “Yes there is. I can tell there is most definitely a capital-B But. Just tell me.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Nina Simone. Really?”

  “What’s wrong with Nina Simone? She’s a goddess. And it’s a classic.”

  “It’s . . .” He stretched his legs out in front of him, dragging his heels along the woven carpet.

  “It’s what? One of the most perfect songs in the entirety of the universe?”

  He frowned teasingly. “You can’t really think that.”

  “You can’t really think that it’s not.”

  “It’s stuffy,” he argued.

  “No way! It’s sophisticated.”

  “Jesus.” He shook his head. “Lena raised you to be a snob. I should’ve figured.”

  “‘Raised’ being the key word,” I said, not missing a beat.

  He bristled. “I guess I walked right into that one.”

  I nodded. “It’s not exactly like you were around to show me the dark side.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Yeah. If only I’d been able to supply you with Nevermind and Loose Nut and Goo.”

  I played along. “If only. Maybe I would’ve even been cool enough to own White Light/White Heat on vinyl.”

  His face lit up. “You are my daughter.”

  I shrugged and stared at the woven carpet. If you looked at it long enough without blinking, the blues all started to run together.

  “That’s kind of typical, though, isn’t it?” I finally said.

  “What?”

  “That you, as a white dude, decide to disparage the music of a black woman by calling it ‘stuffy.’”

  The color drained from his face. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.” He squirmed as I stared at him. “You can’t possibly think . . . I mean, your mother.”

  “My mother?”

  “Well, you can’t think I’m, you know, prejudiced. You have to know . . .”

  I felt my whole body stiffen with discomfort. “Because you slept with my mother to create me and she isn’t white, you think that somehow adds up to you not being ‘you know, prejudiced’?”

  “Jesus!” he exclaimed again. He shoved a hand through his messy hair and shook his head. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes suddenly seemed more pronounced. For a brief moment, a sadness welled in me. I’d never seen him, known him without those wrinkles. He’d had lifetimes before this moment.

  I’d missed out on lifetimes.

  “Taliah,” he said, clearly trying to keep his voice calm. “I just don’t like that song. It’s not my type of music.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I know you’re angry with me. And you want to pick fights. But please.”

  I shrugged. “I was just making an observation.”

  A few long beats of silence.

  “Come home with me,” he said. “It’ll give you the chance to make many more observations. And for me to hopefully redeem myself in some small way.”

  “I am home.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I glanced up. He was looking at me expectantly with those freakishly familiar eyes.

  “Please,” he said. “We can spend the drive there fighting about music.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “You know what I mean,” he repeated.

  “You keep saying that. But I’m not sure I do ‘know what you mean,’ dude.” I didn’t mean to be so petulant, but I kept hearing my mother’s voice in my head.

  “Be careful before you trust people, Taliah,” she would say. She’s an extremely guarded person, and I never quite understood why she put up such thick and tall walls. Part of me always wondered if it
had to do with my absent dad, and the fact she’d unexpectedly gotten pregnant with me. Now, knowing about Julian, I wondered even more if it had something to do with how things had gone down in their relationship. Had he given her a reason to be so guarded?

  I also think it had something to do with her being an immigrant. And an Arab, Muslim immigrant at that. Given the cultural climate, which only seemed to be growing more hostile, she protected herself and me by never divulging too much about herself to strangers or random acquaintances. But the problem with this strategy, as I knew all too well since Harlow was my only close friend, was that those random acquaintances never had the chance to develop into anything else. I understood why Mom always wanted to be cautious, but sometimes I wondered what that cost us.

  “Sorry,” I said, staring at his face, which looked a little wounded. “I know I’m being difficult. It’s just this is . . . difficult.”

  “I know,” he said sympathetically. “I understand.” He leaned forward, pressing his elbows against his knees. It was a childish posture for a man of his age to take, and that seemed fitting somehow. “Please come with me.”

  “Mom would flip.”

  “I want her to come too.”

  “That’s going to be a little tough.”

  He nodded in agreement. “But I think I can convince her.”

  I paused for a moment and briefly enjoyed my position of possessing information that he clearly did not have. He seemed so confident. Like he knew that he had some sort of unearthly, magical pull over my mother. I wondered whether this magnetic confidence was a product of being a rock star, or the reason he had been able to become one. “Can you teleport her from Paris?”

  He coughed and straightened his spine. “Paris?”

  “Yeah. She’s currently in Paris.”

  He exhaled. “Wow. Okay. I didn’t exactly expect that.”

  “So does that mess up everything?” A sudden feeling of disappointment gripped me. I was worried he was just going to get up and leave.

  He shook his head. “Not busted. Just different.” His face was blank and then a smile washed over it. “Maybe this is actually better.”

  “What is?”

  “You can come now without her permission. When does she get back?”

  I momentarily thought about lying and then decided against it. “Sunday.”

  His face scrunched up. “She left you alone for this long?”

  I shrugged. “What’s wrong with that? Besides, she invited me. But I wanted to stay home.”

  His eyes darted around the living room. “You wanted to stay here instead of going to Paris?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled slightly. “Oh. That’s right. You are sixteen.”

  I groaned. “Really? You’re going to mock me now?”

  He quickly backpedaled. “Sorry, sorry.” His eyes met mine and he lowered his voice to that famous low-register octave of his. “Please come, Taliah.”

  “Would you excuse me for a second?” I stood up from the chair. “I need a cupcake.”

  Dear Julian Oliver,

  I have to admit I’m a little surprised that I haven’t heard from you yet. Part of me really thought you would come rushing to meet me.

  I’m choosing to give you the benefit of the doubt that my first letter got lost in the enormous pile of fan mail that you must receive on a weekly basis. So my new plan is to write you over and over again in the hopes that one of these letters will catch the eye of a curious intern and find its way to you. (You do have an intern, right? It seems like all famous people have assistants and those assistants in turn have interns.)

  I thought you should know I worked up the nerve to ask Mom about it. And guess what? Her face drained of color. I could tell she was about to start crying. And I can count on one hand the number of times I have ever seen her cry. She said she wanted to tell me about this one day, but that she wasn’t ready yet. And that my father was no longer in our lives for a good reason.

  But I don’t believe her.

  I’ve attached a photograph of me smiling so you can see the resemblance between us. I’ll give you that I probably look more like Mom than I look like you, but look at my eyes. Don’t you see it? And the way my lips curve? I think we have a similarly shaped mouth. I hope that isn’t a weird thing to say. Okay, maybe it is a weird thing to say. But dude, I don’t think you are in the position to judge me for being weird.

  Anyway, I have to go. I have a science report due tomorrow on the bubonic plague. Did you know that in the late Middle Ages, the bubonic plague wiped out one-third of the entire human population? Imagine that. And not to guilt-trip you or anything, but all the scientists are predicting we are due for another insane disease outbreak, and I’d sort of like to meet you before that happens.

  Write me back soon?

  Your maybe-possibly-probably daughter,

  Taliah Sahar Abdallat

  P.S. I’ve been doing some research on the illegitimate daughters of rock stars. (FWIW, I hate the word “illegitimate.” It makes me feel icky, but I’ll use it for now.) In my research, I came across the story of Liv Tyler and Steven Tyler, and it’d be pretty great if you could hook me up with a role in some blockbuster fantasy series. I have slightly pointy ears, so I might make a good elf.

  P.P.S. I’m not sure if I get my ear shape from you. It’s hard to find a good photo of your ears.

  V.

  I found Harlow in the kitchen. She was sitting on one of the elevated wooden stools at the breakfast bar, devouring a freshly baked pistachio cupcake, jamming out to something on her iPhone. When she caught sight of me, she slipped off her earbuds and pushed the tray of cupcakes toward me. “Want one?”

  I sat down beside her and grabbed a cupcake. I took a large bite. The nutty pistachio taste mixed with the sweet buttercream of the icing. Perfection. “These are so freaking good.”

  “I know,” Harlow said brightly.

  “Is Quinn still thinking about renaming her band Cupcakes on Crack in your honor?”

  The tips of Harlow’s ears reddened. Harlow never blushed in her cheeks. Only in her ears. “I think so.” She tapped her fingers against the rose-colored quartz of the breakfast bar. Her black fingernail polish was starting to chip. “But why are we talking about that when”—she thumbed toward the living room—“this is happening?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno. That”—I imitated her thumbing gesture—“is way overwhelming. Plus, I was trying to seem interested.”

  Harlow sometimes accused me of not being interested or invested in anything that had to do with Quinn. To be honest, Quinn’s band was still a bit of a sore subject between Harlow and me. Before Quinn, Harlow and I had been toying around with a music project. I don’t know if you could call it a band exactly.

  I wrote the music. And the two of us came up with lyrics, and then Harlow sang them while I played the piano. It was sort of jazzy—sort of cabaret with a punk edge. We would go to the thrift store and find ridiculous outfits to wear while performing—vintage dresses and pumps, leopard-print boas, cloche hats.

  We never performed for anyone except ourselves, and accidentally my mother a few times. But we’d had plans to maybe enter our school’s talent show or a local battle of the bands competition. But then Harlow met Quinn. And Quinn was the lead singer in a newly formed band. A real band. One that performed at real venues and had a real, if small, fan base.

  Harlow suddenly seemed embarrassed of our little project. She started making excuses about why she didn’t have time to practice and kept dodging my invitations to come over and brainstorm lyrics to a new melody I’d come up with. I quickly got the message and dropped it. I’ve never been good at confronting people. Especially when I’m afraid of the answer.

  On the afternoons when Harlow was busy hanging out with Quinn and Quinn’s friends, I sometimes would take out one of the vintage costumes we’d found at the thrift store, put it on, and play my heart out on the piano. That helped me to feel less lonely.
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br />   “I miss it,” I blurted out.

  “What?” said Harlow.

  “Everything.”

  Harlow licked some of the frosting off her cupcake. She glanced down at her fingers. “I know. Me too.”

  “Do you?” I pressed.

  She nodded, and somehow that was enough for now.

  I fiddled with the wrapper on my cupcake. “He wants me to go to Oak Falls with him.”

  “I know. I overheard.”

  I gave her a questioning look and pointed at the earbuds.

  “They aren’t completely noise-canceling,” she said sheepishly.

  I dipped my finger into the icing and licked it. “You’ve been eavesdropping?”

  “Obviously. I mean, I know he’s your dad. Or maybe your dad. But he was Julian Oliver first. That’s kind of a big freaking deal.”

  I laughed a little. “Yeah. I guess it is a big freaking deal. So should I go?”

  She sighed. “Honestly, Tal. I don’t know. I have a million questions. Like I’m sure you do.”

  I set my half-eaten cupcake to the side and rested my elbows against the kitchen counter. “Yeah. But maybe this is my chance to get answers.”

  Harlow touched my wrist. “Don’t you think you should at least call your mom?”

  “She’d flip out.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But what if she’s flipping out for the wrong reasons?”

  Harlow took her hand away and leaned back so she could study me. “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe the situation between them is complicated. I guess I’ve built up this big narrative in my head that he’s”—I thumbed toward the living room again—“this big asshole that left her. And maybe that’s true. But maybe it isn’t. The truth of it is that I don’t know anything.”

  “Right. But—”

  I cut her off. “And don’t you think it’s more than a little weird that she’s kept this from me my entire life?”