Guitar Notes

by Mary Amato

  As soon as school is over, his mom calls and reminds him that he has to come to the store. When he gets there, she peppers him with meaningless questions. Did you give the guitar back with an apology? Yes. Do you have your algebra book? Yes. Do you know what you’re supposed to do for science? Yes.

  He goes into the back workroom and enters his zip code and the word hospital in a search engine on the computer. Fifteen hospitals are listed. He calls each one and asks if there is a patient named Lyla Marks. No each time. A thought occurs to him. He puts in the address for the Pomegranate Playhouse and finds the nearest hospital. He calls it, and the woman on the end of the line tells him that she’s there. Time seems to stop.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Are you a family member?”

  “I’m a friend.”

  “Information about this patient is unavailable at this time.”

  “Why? Can’t you just tell me if she’s going to be okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman says. “It says here that family members only should have access to patient information.”

  He doesn’t know what to do. To keep his mom off his back, he does his homework.

  As soon as they get home, he disappears into his room. He listens to the recording that they made on the boat, their voices singing lucky, lucky me, and then he switches it off. It’s like a horrible taunt.

  NOVEMBER 25. TUESDAY.

  ROCKLAND SCHOOL; 8:11 A.M.

  A group of girls from Advanced Orchestra put a big white basket and a note about Lyla by the music room. Three stuffed animals are in the basket as well as cards that people are signing. Someone is going to bring it to the hospital tomorrow.

  All day he hears more rumors. Lyla is in a coma. Lyla is brain-dead.

  Annie is absent, and someone says she’s visiting Lyla. Someone else says Annie’s at home, sick because she’s worried that Lyla is going to die hating her. She and Lyla were in a big fight over him. People are talking. No one talks to him directly, but they know that he and Lyla were caught in the music room together; they know that they were eating lunch together. People are looking at him strangely. Like maybe he is to blame. Then he hears Marisse say that the reason Annie is sick is because she thinks she caused the accident: that day she had called Marisse and confessed that she was hoping that Lyla wouldn’t make it to the Coles audition. It was like a jinx, Marisse says.

  As soon as school is out, Tripp leaves. He calls Lyla’s home phone number and listens to the recorded message. “You’ve reached the Marks residence. Please leave your name and number after the beep.”

  Tripp takes a breath. “This is Tripp Broody.… I know I’m not supposed to call. But I just need to know how Lyla is. This is my cell phone number. Please call back.”

  NOVEMBER 26. WEDNESDAY.

  ROCKLAND SCHOOL; 8:21 A.M.

  Tripp hears from Mr. Sanders that Lyla was transferred to a special hospital nearby. He says that Lyla isn’t snapping out of it; yes—it’s really a coma. Tripp wants to ask what that means, but he is too afraid.

  At lunchtime, he sees Annie in the hallway and hears that she and another girl are going to take the basket, overflowing now with stuffed animals, to the hospital after school today. All day he wants to put a note in the basket, but he is worried that Mr. Marks will read it and get even more angry.

  TRIPP’S ROOM; 7:53 P.M.

  Tripp is sitting at his desk, reading articles about comas on the web. People in comas can often hear, but they can’t get a certain part of the brain to wake up, so they can’t respond. He clicks on a story about a woman who was in a car accident at the age of twenty-six and never woke up. The story hits him like a kick to the stomach.

  The door to his room opens, and his mom walks in, oblivious to what he’s going through. “I just got an e-mail from Crenshaw about your status.” She holds up a printout. “We have to talk about this sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner.”

  He holds his breath and stares at his screen, trying to keep from falling apart.

  “So you’re not talking? Is that it, Tripp?”

  “Please just leave me alone, Mom.”

  “Don’t give me that attitude.”

  Her voice shoves against him, and his composure breaks. He gets up, sending his chair to the floor with a crash, and meets his mother’s gaze. “Lyla got in a car accident on the way home from the wedding. Okay, Mom? And I don’t know if she’s going to be all right.”

  He pushes past her, walks out the back door and down the steps, and stands in the backyard. The ground under his feet is cold, the air, too—he can see his breath. No moon. No stars. Nothing but black. Why is it that everything he loves gets taken away from him? It’s like there’s a black hole in the sky with his name on it and its job is to suck everything that he loves out of existence.

  Lining either side of the concrete patio are rows of autumn mums in clay flowerpots, and the cheerful symmetry, for some reason, makes him even angrier. He picks up a flowerpot and hurls it at their fence. Even as the satisfying crash hits his ears, he knows that it is pointless. The flowerpots are not to blame. He picks up another and throws it anyway and then another, until all six are broken, and finally he sits on the bottom step.

  After a few minutes, he hears the sound of the door opening behind him. His mom walks down the stairs and sits next to him, hugging herself to stay warm. She sees the broken pots and says nothing about them. Finally, she speaks. “I called Tina Chan, a mom I know from last year’s silent auction committee to see if she had any information about Lyla. I remember that she was involved with the music program and thought she might know Lyla’s family.”

  Tripp doesn’t move.

  “A deer jumped in front of the Markses’ car, Tripp. I don’t want you to blame yourself or Lyla’s dad, for that matter. It’s nobody’s fault. It just happened.”

  Tripp takes this in. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “Kids are resilient. I bet she’ll get better soon.”

  He looks at the broken pots. “That means you don’t know.”

  She is silent. “Yeah. I don’t know, Tripp. It’s definitely a serious injury.”

  He lets his breath out in a small stream. “I want to go to the hospital.”

  She puts an arm around his shoulder. “It’s really nice that you want to visit her, Tripp. Really nice. But … I don’t know … her dad must be so overwhelmed, and it might upset him. I don’t think we should be adding tension to the situation, do you?”

  Tripp looks at the black sky.

  She pats his leg. “It’s freezing. Come inside.”

  He nods, but he doesn’t move.

  “You know you can’t go around breaking flowerpots, either.” She attempts a smile. He nods again. “Come inside, honey.”

  “In a minute.”

  She goes in, and he closes his eyes.

  Lyla … just wake up. Please.

  HOSPITAL; 9:06 P.M.

  “Sweetie, feel this. Feel how soft it is.” Lyla’s dad picks up her hand and slips a small stuffed teddy bear underneath it. “Feel that? If you can hear my voice, just wiggle your fingers.”

  The voice washes over her. She has sunk to the bottom of the lake, too deep for the voice to reach her.

  “The doctor said the swelling is gone. The medicine is out of your system. All you have to do is open your eyes.…” His voice chokes. “Sweetie, please …”

  NOVEMBER 27. THURSDAY.

  THE BROODYS’ CAR; 3:07 P.M.

  The drive to Aunt Gertrude’s is long and quiet. It’s Thanksgiving. Tripp thinks about Lyla, and Ruby, and Romeo, and Annie, and even Benjamin Fink, but mostly he thinks about Lyla and how much he misses her. He imagines her in the hospital, and his body aches. Over and over, he says her name in his mind. His mom had said nobody was to blame for the accident and maybe that’s true. But Lyla’s life might have been better if she hadn’t met him, and this is the thought that makes him the saddest. She would not have been on that road, and the dee
r would not have crossed her path, and she and Annie wouldn’t have gotten into such a big fight, and she would have aced the Coles audition and would live happily ever after. He should’ve stayed away. That was the trick. To stay separate from people. Keep a block of ice around his soul. Don’t dream. Don’t sing. Don’t thrum.

  “You can turn on the radio if you want,” his mother says from the driver’s seat.

  He shakes his head, leans against the window, and closes his eyes.

  Lucky, lucky me. He hates the fact that they were singing that in the boat right before the accident. He isn’t lucky at all. He is cursed, and he brought that to Lyla. Just when he feels he won’t be able to breathe, his mom turns to him.

  “Tripp,” she says gently. “If you want, I can try calling Tina Chan later today to see if I can get an update.”

  He takes in a small silent breath of gratitude and nods his head, and she seems to know that he can’t say or do anything more than this.

  AUNT GERTRUDE’S HOUSE; 7:33 P.M.

  Just after dinner, Tripp’s mom steps into Aunt Gertrude’s foyer to make the call. Tripp follows her and waits until she is done.

  “She is off the ventilator, which means she is breathing on her own. She’s also swallowing, which is good,” she says. “And she’s getting really great care. The best doctors are on it.” She has chosen her words carefully and she tries to smile.

  Tripp knows she’s trying to make him feel better, but he can see through it. If Lyla were improving, she wouldn’t need the best doctors.

  NOVEMBER 30. SUNDAY.

  BROODY’S RUG & CARPET; 2:37 P.M.

  Tripp is in the back workroom. He is supposed to be tossing the old samples into the Dumpster in the alley, but he is pacing. Since Thursday, every report about Lyla has been the same: no change. She isn’t waking up.

  His mom has been more sympathetic, but she doesn’t really know who Lyla is or what their friendship was like. She has made it clear that she thinks the way to handle the tension is to keep on track with work. Neither of them has mentioned Crenshaw or the guitar. He can’t talk about anything. He can’t escape from the feeling that he brought nothing but trouble to Lyla. Lucky, lucky me. As he passes the closet where his guitar is hidden, he bangs the padlock angrily.

  After a few laps, he goes to the computer and checks his e-mail. He isn’t expecting anything, and so it is a shock to see something in his in-box after all.

  To: TrippBroody

  From: JamesDarling

  Date: November 30

  Re: Wedding video

  Attach: PSsong.wmv

  Hi. Thought you might enjoy this video clip of you singing. You guys blew us all away. You added so much to the experience. We’re really grateful you could share your music with us all. Thanks again.

  —Jimmy (Ruby’s son)

  Tripp clicks on the video and it begins to play. Framed in the small video window are Ruby and Romeo sitting side by side on the stage, beaming, in the crazy elegance of the barn; and then the camera shifts and focuses on Lyla and him with the guitar. He can see the nervousness that he was trying to hide, and then Lyla smiles at him, and he feels that rush of warmth again, as if she is smiling at him right now. They start to play and their voices rise together; and, as he watches, an intense ripple of joy dances across his heart. The song pulses through him and lifts him, and he can’t move until it’s over. He plays it again and again.

  When he finally turns it off, the silence seems to draw the walls of the workroom closer toward one another. He flashes back to the night his dad died in the hospital, to that feeling of helplessness he felt when he was sitting at home. He can’t just sit here and do nothing. He opens the back door, looking out at the alley as if he’ll see Lyla there in her Bonnie beret, blowing fake smoke through her lips. Puddles gleam on the black asphalt. A cat pokes through the empty boxes next to the Dumpster.

  Lost, he closes the door, pulls Lyla’s digital recorder and earbuds out of his backpack, and listens again to them singing in the boat, while he paces between the carpet remnants, the tool bench, and the trash bins. Lucky, lucky me. This time, instead of hearing the words as a taunt, he hears the joy in their voices as an undeniable truth. They were lucky to find each other. Nobody could take that away.

  Grabbing a piece of paper out of the recycling bin, he starts working on the new song. He starts to pace again, singing it to himself, jotting down the lyrics as they come, reading the song over and over and adding more. When he’s done, he stuffs it into his back pocket and walks into the showroom. His mom is behind the sales counter, thumbing through a stack of bills.

  “Mom.” He takes a breath. “Please open the closet. I’m going to get my guitar and I’m going to the hospital.”

  Her shoulders sag. “Tripp.”

  “I’m asking nicely.”

  “Tripp, I’m sure your intentions—” The bell on the front door jingles, and two women walk in. Tripp’s mom looks at him with pity, but he can tell she isn’t going to give. “You can’t barge in on a family at a time like this. We need to give it more time. We’ll talk about it in a few minutes,” she whispers, and turns to greet the customers.

  She is wrong. She was wrong about not letting him see his dad in the hospital, and she is wrong about this. He walks into the back room and picks up a crowbar. He sticks one end between the closet door and its frame and pushes. The door doesn’t budge, but a dent appears in the frame. He tries again. Then he holds it with one hand, steps back, and gives the crowbar a good hard kick. The wood of the door frame splinters, but the lock is still in place. He wedges the end of the crowbar right against the tongue of the lock and kicks it again. The door pops open.

  His guitar is in the back, in its case, between a mop and a bucket. He grabs it and walks out just as his mom is heading in to see what the noise was about.

  “I have to go,” he says.

  “Tripp!” his mom calls out, but he keeps walking out the door, his heart pounding. The guitar case feels so right in his hand. “Tripp! Wait!”

  He runs for a full block without looking back and then stops and pulls out his wallet. Luckily, he never took the wedding money out. He catches the next cab he sees.

  When he arrives at the hospital, he tells the woman at the visitor’s desk that he is Lyla Marks’s brother—just in case they only allow family—and she gives him the room number. When he gets to the third floor, he sees Mr. Marks, back toward him, talking with several people at the nurses’ station in the middle of the hallway. Room 302 is on the right. He ducks in without being seen, and there is Lyla, lying still, a row of small stuffed animals lining either side of her bed.

  He can’t look at her.

  The basket from school is on a table next to her bed. Above it, a bouquet of blue foil balloons kiss the ceiling, their strings tied to the basket handle. Curtains are drawn against the window. A stack of get-well cards is sitting on the chair. He walks around her bed, sets down his guitar case, and gets out his guitar. When he finally turns and wills himself to look at her, his throat burns.

  Lyla’s face is so still, she doesn’t seem real. Her arms are on top of the blanket. An IV tube is attached to her right hand, which is bruised, and the other arm is bandaged. She looks so different, so fragile, like if he touched her, she might crumble.

  A part of him is so scared he wants to leave, but he fights the fear and keeps his eyes on her face. He remembers the articles he read describing how people in comas can often hear, even if they can’t respond. It takes him a minute to work up the courage to say her name out loud, and when he does, it comes out in barely a whisper.

  “Lyla … look …” He holds up the guitar, lifts the strap over his head, and manages a shaky smile. “I broke the door down, Lyla.”

  No response.

  One at a time, he plucks each string, tuning as he goes. He strums it once and lets the sound fill the quiet of the room.

  A yellow bruise still runs the entire length of the left side of her face,
but the curve of her ear facing him is untouched and perfect.

  He clears his throat and tries to get rid of the shakiness in his voice, to speak louder. “Lyla, it’s me, Tripp. We were in the middle of making up a new song, remember?” He thinks about how bright her eyes looked that day on the lake. “I worked on it, Lyla. So you have to wake up and listen.” He stops and pulls her digital recorder out of his pocket. “I’m going to record this. I came prepared … like a Girl Scout.” He manages a quick laugh and turns it on, gently setting it next to her arm on the bed. “I’m going to leave the recorder here so you can listen to it anytime you want, okay? All our songs are on here, too. Okay?”

  Her face is still. Her eyelashes are curved and pretty, the light on the wall behind her bed throwing tiny shadows of them on her skin.

  Open your eyes, Lyla. Just open your eyes. His throat closes and his eyes fill with tears. He blinks them back and leans in closer. “I really need you to wake up, Lyla. I’m hearing a harmony on this. It doesn’t sound good with just me. It needs your voice.”

  The room is silent.

  “You said … in the boat … you said that you wanted the verse to be sad and then the chorus to be happy, so that’s what I tried to do.” When he starts to play, his fingers falter and he stops. He closes his eyes. Then he takes a breath and starts again.

  As he sings, he imagines that he is pouring all of his energy into the air. He imagines that it is entering her ear and filling her, waking her up, molecule by molecule. He sings with everything he’s got, and when he’s done, he opens his eyes and sees his mom standing inside the doorway, tears streaming down her face. She can hardly get the words out, but Tripp understands her.