my body felt wired from the second I woke up, but it took sitting and stretching to remember why.
Tea parties. Possibilities.
A boy downstairs.
As I got out of bed, my grandparents smiled from the digital picture frame, sitting on the dock with their terrier who’d died two years ago. Every time Grandma Jean called, we sketched out plans to visit—Christmas, spring break—but time had flown by until April, when my days ground to a screeching halt, and I still hadn’t made it.
Maybe I could visit this summer. I had a life span of free time now.
Dad was in the kitchen, whistling Don Giovanni. He’d conducted it at the Met last season and I’d watched it twice from the pit. The ovation orchestrated itself in my head as I plodded downstairs.
“Morning,” I croaked, drowning it out.
“Coffee?” Dad offered.
I nodded, sliding past him to make it myself—black, one sugar, in one of our glass mugs so I could see the steam swirl and settle—then poured him a refill too.
“What do you think of Alban Berg?”
“Um.” I blew a black ripple across my cup. The steam retreated, came back.
“Would young people know him?”
“I am not the person to ask what young people would know.” I sipped. Too hot. “But . . . no. Young people would not know Alban Berg.”
“Eh. I figured.” Dad sighed, sitting next to me at the kitchen table—a slab of oak, the bottom etched with all our initials. “We need something fresh. Young.”
“Wasn’t Berg, like, early twentieth century?”
Dad waved his hand. “The aesthetic, though. You know what I’m saying.”
“Something to break up Mozart and Verdi.”
“Shake up. Nora’s words.”
I frowned. “I thought you were planning the opera season.”
“No, that’s all set, this is . . .” Dad’s voice drifted as he stood and shuffled away, head cocked.
I swirled my coffee and waited. This was Dad—as much as his beard or tuna melts or meandering pep talks. He was hearing Berg right now, trying to imagine how young it might feel to someone who wasn’t seventy-two.
Nora’s words from yesterday came to mind: of the moment. Amberley was trying to shake things up. Why? I could ask, but talking about Amberley hurt. Better to change the subject.
“What’s the deal with this Oscar kid?”
Dad leaned against the archway to the kitchen. “Incredible, right?”
“No, I mean . . . sure, but—what’s he doing here? What’s the plan, what’s he studying?” I swallowed my coffee. It burned my throat. “Piano, or . . . ?”
“No, no, no.” Dad chuckled. “Conducting. Composition.”
“But Amberley doesn’t have a summer program for—”
“He’ll study with me.” Dad knocked on the wall. “This is an exceptional case.”
“Is he really that exceptional?”
My voice sounded caustic. I hadn’t meant it to.
But Dad’s eyes had gone distant, like when he was conducting. “We popped by campus on the way from the airport.”
You picked him up from the airport. Yourself.
“We found Arnie, Cooper, and Li Chun all in the recital hall . . .”
Piano chair, violin professor, cello chair.
“And Oscar sat right down at the piano.” Dad laughed. “Like he wanted a place to sit, so why not there? And Arnie, you know Arnie . . .”
Dad made thunderclouds with his hands while I tried not to think about the last time I saw Arnold Rombauer, Saturday, April 12, 4:25 p.m., a stern silhouette on the other side of an audition screen.
“He said, ‘You gonna play that thing or just warm the bench?’ And Oscar started riffing, a fake polonaise. Pretty soon, everybody’s shouting requests. Mahler, Vivaldi, Shostakovich, Philip Glass, and by God, he nailed them all. Skewered them. A seventeen-year-old! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
“But you were like that, Dad. You were composing at fifteen—”
“Not like that.” He waved it off, picking up a pile of mail from the kitchen counter. “It was work for me. I had to sit down and figure it out—still do. Music bubbles out of that kid. This summer, we’re gonna figure out how to channel it, get it down, get it heard.”
“I saw him on YouTube,” I admitted. “Nora played it for me.”
“She does like that video,” he said, sifting through the mail. I made a mental note to go through the stack again once he’d finished. He had a habit of mistaking bills for junk mail and fan letters for personal correspondence.
“For you, my dear.”
He tossed a postcard onto the table. I slid it closer, taking in the familiar photo of a lantern-lit forest full of young musicians before turning the card over. No phones or email allowed at Wildwood, but my friends had promised to write.
“How’s our Farrah?” Dad sat. “Enjoying camp?”
“I assume so,” I mumbled, deciphering her messy writing.
. . . Wally and Max miss you desperately, their words verbatim . . . finally a new kid this year, a violinist from Texas, but alas he’s super awkward, not as hot as you might hope . . .
“You sure you don’t want to head up?” Dad put his hands behind his neck, voice carefully bored. “They won’t mind you skipping a week. It’s no Amberley, but it’s a solid program.”
I picked at a scuff in the wood. “Bit too solid for the likes of me.”
“Why would you say that?” He leaned forward. “This is the first year you’ve missed since you were—what? Twelve?”
“Dad.” I stared at him. “Come on.”
He let out a long sigh—as close to a confession as I was going to get. “It’s not as simple as you’re making it out to be, Ruby. What selection committees are looking for is potential, and legacy’s a damn strong indicator of—”
“I’m seventeen.” Lang Lang had been performing professionally since fourteen. Even Mom, a famous late bloomer, made her competition debut when she was younger than me. “Wouldn’t my potential have shown up by now?”
He didn’t have an answer. I didn’t expect him to. It was time to move on.
I got dressed while Dad was in his study, grabbed a notebook and a pen, shoved them in a canvas bag, and headed for the door.
“Popping out?” Dad shouted from the stairwell. “Wake up Oscar, would you? Tell him to come on in when he’s ready.”
I froze. “Um.”
“Thanks, doll.”
I tiptoed to the doorstep of the basement studio apartment, wary of vermin, but it looked like somebody had swept.
I knocked. My stomach tightened in the silence that followed. He was still asleep. I was lifting my hand to deliver a louder knock when the door swung open and there he was, YouTube sensation Oscar Bell, 1.8 million views. Wearing boxer briefs.
“Hey,” he said blearily, rubbing his eyes with one hand, leaning against the doorframe with the other.
I looked down, avoiding eye contact, but then there was his chest and his bare, broad shoulders, and, frantically avoiding that, there was his stomach, a light line of fuzz leading to the waistband of his underwear and oh my God, just look at his face.
His eyes widened slowly, like he’d only now regained consciousness.
“Morning,” I said, concierge-neutral. “Dad says to join him upstairs. Whenever you’re ready. No rush . . .”
“Ah great. Thanks. What, um, time is it?”
“Seven.”
“Right. Wow. Guess I need to stop staying out so late.” He grinned, like he would never dream of doing something so ludicrous.
“How late?” I had to ask.
“I actually have no idea. Before dawn.”
“So like . . . an hour ago.”
“Possibl
y.” He seemed awake now. Alert. And not one bit concerned that he was mostly naked to the street—to me. He’d even opened the door wider.
His boxer briefs were bright blue. And tight.
“What time did you go to bed?”
I blinked. Upward. “What?”
He smiled. “What time . . . ?”
“Ten twenty-seven.”
“That is specific.”
“I checked the clock before I fell asleep. It’s digital. So. Big numbers.”
Big! Numbers!
He was grinning at me like a kid on a carnival ride.
“Did you go out with Amberley kids, then?” I leaned against the stoop rail, super breezy, I talked to half-naked guys all the time, occupational hazard, NBD.
“Um? No.” He frowned, thought. “I went out . . . wandering. I mean, it’s New York, right?”
His eyes landed on mine, piercing, joyous—like that video. Which reminded me what he was doing here in the first place.
“Right, well . . .” I motioned to the street. “I’m gonna wander right now? I’ll see you around.”
I’d made it to the sidewalk when he called out, “Thank you, Ruby!”
I turned back with a wary wave and watched as his eyes, shoulders, lips, everything about him sort of . . . loosened.
“Thank you for waking me up.”
A wince flickered over his face, and I wondered if that wasn’t quite what he’d meant to say.
“No problem.” I spun away, then called behind me. “You might want to set your alarm. Dad does his best work in the mornings.”
The crosswalk light started flashing. I jogged to catch it before either of us could expose anything else.
On the other side of the avenue, I pulled myself together, as Mom would say. It took effort.
A droplet of sweat trickled down my back. My breath felt funny, like my veins were full of ginger ale. And I was overdressed again in a long-sleeved cotton dress, looking like a shut-in who got locked out of her apartment.
The truth was, apart from commuting, my life till now had rolled out inside the confines of my air-conditioned house, school, rehearsal rooms, performance spaces. I got cold easily, I bundled up. But this real-life air was sticky-hot and the sun hadn’t even reached the skyline yet.
The park felt cooler, at least, dew dampening my bare ankles as I walked the green path toward the sheep meadow, where there hadn’t been sheep for a good eighty-five years. The smell of grass here was heady and strong. I sat against a tree, pulled out my notebook, clicked a fresh pen, and thought about my next big step toward making an impact.
And thought. And zoned out. And pictured Oscar in the doorway, stopped myself, refocused. Wrote:
Buy clothes.
And couldn’t think of anything else.
Not, stretch, morning scales, Czerny, Brahms, battle with Liszt, wind-down with Schumann—just . . . shopping? To go to fundraisers, be a part of that world, I needed new clothes. Still. How empty. How . . . surface.
I shut my eyes for a second, blotting out the thought of what Mom would say, then scribbled:
Follow up with Nora re: possibilities at the Met—*museum, NOT opera*
There. New life. New interests. It wasn’t a lie. It was a pivot.
As I was sinking into images of dusting off some gilded antiquity, wearing glasses I didn’t need, a real image jostled me back—a recognizable blur. She passed at a light clip without so much as a nod, our standard non-greeting for the past six years.
I usually looked away. Today, I gawked.
Julie Russo had the outfit, new-looking sneakers, the almost crisp blond ponytail, music gear, the whole thing. She didn’t look like a runner, though. She traced a zigzag down the footpath and her lips were clenched like she hadn’t figured out how to exhale and run at the same time. Not that I was any expert. I only ran for buses and didn’t even catch them most of the time.
The Julie I used to know was a loud talker, sporadic baker, collector of plastic horses—and later, I’d surmised from down-the-street observation, a late-night partier, attractor of boys, winner of screaming matches. But a runner?
I stared at the two items in my transformation notebook. I stared at Julie’s retreating ponytail. And then I sprinted after her.
“Julie! Hey!” She didn’t look back.
A full turn around the volleyball courts and skate park before she finally stopped to tie her shoe, but when I caught her, I found to my surprise that she was as winded as I was, and oh my God was I winded.
She jumped with a low scream at the sight of me, her face hydrant red.
“Am I that scary?” I tried to laugh through my labored breathing but wound up hacking a cough.
“Depends,” she panted. “Are you stalking me?”
She straightened, hands on hips, the blood in her face receding into two cheek circles, like a little Dutch girl in an illustration.
I wasn’t sure what I looked like right now, but not Dutch, and sweatier than any picture they’d put in a book. “I wanted to ask you how long you’ve been running?”
“Seriously.”
It seemed like a fair question to me. “It doesn’t strike me as very Julie-ish.”
“Oh! Doesn’t it?” Her blue eyes sharpened even as she moved away. “First of all, I haven’t been Julie since the seventh grade. It’s Jules.”
“Oh.” How was I supposed to know? We weren’t exactly Facebook friends.
“Second . . .” She laughed up at the sky. “That’s what you want to ask me? We haven’t spoken for six years and you want to know how long I’ve been running?”
“We’ve talked,” I tried feebly.
“No.”
“We say hi, or . . .”
“No.”
“In six years—?”
“No.”
I opened my mouth. Shut it. God damn, I was dying of sweat. I pried my dress off my midriff and held it out so I could draw a breath.
“I just thought it was interesting that you’re doing something that, to outward appearances, seems brand-new for you. Whoever you are now. And I guess I found that interesting because I’ve quit piano—”
“You . . .” Julie’s smirk dropped away.
“And I don’t know what that leaves me with now, as, like, a human being, or what I have to offer the world or even what to do with my day and I can’t even be at home because there’s this kid there studying with my dad and he’s straight out of my fantasies—”
Her eyebrows shot up.
“Not like that.” Sort of like that. I swallowed. “I fantasized about being him, all my life, but I’m so far from being him that his presence is . . .”
I couldn’t think of the right words, so I made a weird disintegrating gesture, and she nodded like she got it.
“And so now I’m avoiding my house. And I’m thinking about getting into philanthropy but I’m worried if I’m going to stretch that far, I might as well become, like, a cowgirl. An astronaut? Um.”
Julie—Jules looked at me. Then she wiped sweat off her forehead and shifted her weight with a sigh. “Yeah, so, two weeks. I started running right after school got out.”
That explained the zigzag. “You just decided—”
“Ty, my . . . ugh, my boyfriend”—she said it like it was the worst thing you could call someone—“made some joke about me running the marathon. Like, who do I know who would be the absolute worst at running? Oh, obviously my girlfriend, she’s so lazy, hahaha! And then he did this run.” She imitated it—wrists high, hands flapping. “And everybody died laughing, so funny, so I threw my drink in his lap and started training the next morning because fuck him if he thinks he knows what I’m capable of.”
If I’d been embarrassed about my own rant, I wasn’t anymore. “And this Ty person is still your boyfriend?”
>
“Tyler,” she groaned. “Yes. Pending probation.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant relationship probation or legal trouble, so I mirrored her knowing nod.
“You wanted to be a cowgirl. Do you remember?” Jules squinted at me. “They asked us at Bridge to Learning so they could put it on a poster.”
“I don’t—”
“Doesn’t matter.” She scratched her head. “Listen, I can’t help you with the philanthropist-socialite thing . . .”
Socialite? I winced. I wouldn’t say they were the same thing at all.
“But if you want to run with me, that’s fine.”
“Oh, I wasn’t—”
“It’s not, like, life-changing so far, so don’t get your hopes up, but it’s . . . I don’t know. It’s something different.” She shrugged. “For me anyway. You might be some fitness nut, I don’t even know you anymore.”
I glanced at myself.
She burst out laughing, then smothered it. “Sorry. I . . . that wasn’t cool.”
“It’s fine.” I knew what I looked like. I was skinny, but not in a Self magazine way. More of an “all my exercises involve sitting on a piano bench” way.
“I’m starting earlier tomorrow,” she said, her voice a warning. “Before it gets stupid hot.”
“Early’s good!” I shot her two thumbs-up.
“Like six. In the morning.”
“I’m up then anyway!”
She snorted. “Course you are. All right, then. Meet you on the corner.”
And she jogged clumsily away.
I pulled out my notepad and, next to Buy clothes, wrote: Buy exercise clothes.
I had no idea why, but that felt a million times better.
5.
triumphantly homeward I marched, arms laden with bags bearing swooshes, bold colors, feet with wings. I would try running! I would see where it led! If I could become a runner, I could become anything!
Almost. I turned the key to the house, met with a sound that lifted my heart only to pummel it—my Baldwin, happy at last.
Oscar still wasn’t using the bench, just composing upright with the same concentration level other people used to send a text. When I came in, he let the melody trickle away. He was fully dressed now, to my disappointed relief, wearing the same chinos as yesterday with a fuchsia polo shirt, its collar extra crisp against the deep brown of his skin.
Night Music Page 3