Night Music

by Jenn Marie Thorne

  “Half an inch,” I admitted, leaving the rest out. Half an inch in a year. A year.

  “And your voice must have changed too, to get in with Odile . . . !”

  All possible responses fled my head.

  “You’ll probably keep growing into college. I did. Oh, speaking of which . . .” She touched my shoulder. “Where are you going?”

  I stammered another non-reply, my mind buckling under the weight of everything wrong with that question—but was saved from answering by Victor trundling down the stairs in loose linen trousers and a matching jacket.

  “I’m not changing,” Mom called past me, shrugging, her resort sundress flouncing with the gesture. “We’re running downtown for a quick drink.”

  Downtown Charleston was half an hour away. She made it sound like it was down the block. And it was the afternoon—shouldn’t she be practicing?

  She started toward the door and panic blurred my vision. Mom was back. Mom was leaving.

  As if sensing my reaction, she stopped with a smile. “We’ll be home in time for dinner. I’m so excited to catch up, Rooster.”

  You don’t call me that, I thought. Dad and Win and Alice call me that. You always call me Ruby. It was as if parenting me had been a play, and now that she’d been off the stage this long, she’d started to forget her lines.

  The door shut.

  Grandma Jean brightened forcibly and said, “Your mother,” like I should know what that meant. “She was so excited to hear you’d be coming. Swore me to secrecy.”

  That was something. I sat at the kitchen island sipping sweet tea, toes tapping restlessly against my stool—whether from sugar overload or the thought of my mom finally detouring to see me, I couldn’t tell.

  * * *

  • • •

  Seven thirty. They still weren’t back. Gramps wouldn’t let us hold up the meal.

  “I’m hungry!” he shouted, his affable grouch routine. “Ruby’s hungry!”

  “I’m not that hungry.”

  He shot me an I-don’t-believe-you glare, his bald spot gleaming under the kitchen lights, and I let out a snort.

  Grandma Jean set five places at the table as slowly as she could while I dealt out the silverware. I’d clicked back into usefulness here, helping wash up, peel veggies, like all of us did every time we’d visited as children, even Win. It was hard to think of Mom doing that, growing up here. Maybe compulsively practicing the piano had been her way of getting out of doing chores. Maybe “a quick drink downtown” was her way of getting out of it now.

  We’d nearly finished eating our pot roast when they paraded through the front door, laughing like they’d just stepped out of a comedy club.

  “Sorry!” Mom called, slipping in her low heels. I hoped she hadn’t driven. “Ugh, the bridge traffic was insane! I swear, it gets worse every year.”

  That led Gramps into a rant about overdevelopment and infrastructure as they filled their plates and sat, Grandma Jean drumming up cheerful side-conversation with Victor. She seemed to know him already.

  I ate the rest of my dinner, drained my water, couldn’t take it anymore.

  “How long are you staying?” I asked.

  She must not have known this was the end of my trip. Maybe I could change my ticket, stay longer? Except . . . Oscar.

  Mom sipped her pinot noir, then swallowed, wincing, and said, “Two nights. I wish it were longer.”

  “Oh.” So she did know. At least she’d carved some time out, even if it wasn’t a ton.

  “We’re at the Gaillard Center tomorrow night, then we have to jet all the way to Tucson, which is three flights, if you can believe it.”

  Gaillard . . .

  “Wait.” My hands trembled against my lap. I clenched them around my paper napkin. “You’re . . . performing?”

  She froze, carefully placid. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “I thought you were here to see me.”

  I’d said it without thinking. For once, I didn’t wish it back. It was the truth.

  “Well, it’s a nice little bit of serendipity, isn’t it?”

  She beamed, stretching her hand across the table as if I would take it right now. As if I would let her anywhere near me.

  “Is that what you said when you got pregnant with me?” I didn’t recognize the voice coming out of me, but I let it talk. “‘What a nice little bit of serendipity’? Or did you even notice I’d shown up?”

  “I noticed.” Her cheeks twitched. “Believe me, I noticed, I was sick for months—what are you trying to say here, Ruby? You’re starting to sound like your sister.”

  Rage pulled me from the table. “Who are you? Who the fuck are you?”

  Grandma Jean went pale. I raised my hand.

  “Sorry Grandma, I don’t mean to curse, I just . . . I want my mom back. I had one once, I swear I did.”

  My face contorted but the tears didn’t come, scorched dry by my anger.

  “You left me and—look at you, you don’t even care. ‘A nice little bit of serendipity’? Who are you? Who says that about their child? What am I, a dollar you found on the sidewalk?”

  Mom had her face buried in her hands, Victor’s hand on her back, hiding from me even now.

  I backed away, grinning wildly. “And Victor, you seem like a great guy and you look super awesome in your pantsuit, but who the fuck are you?”

  Mom shot up from the table. “Ruby, say what you want to me, but—”

  “Introduce him, then, Mom. Introduce him. Not, this is a famous cellist. Say ‘This is the man I’ve been sleeping with this whole time.’ Or is he new?”

  Victor chugged his wine.

  “He’s . . . not new.”

  “Did you leave Dad for him?”

  “No.” Mom’s jaw twitched. “I left your dad for me.”

  There was such ferocity in her voice that I forgot to breathe for a second.

  She pointed to herself. “So I could live. So I could work. Out of his shadow.”

  “Do you—?” My mouth clamped shut. I couldn’t say it. I was marathon winded, vision spotting.

  Grandma Jean stood, rubbing my shoulders like she was trying to make me smaller. “Why don’t we cool down, honey? Get some air outside.”

  “Or we could see this through,” Gramps cut in—the retired judge issuing his verdict. “Anna, you’re my only child, I love you dearly, but you have a hell of a lot to answer for.”

  Mom let out a shocked laugh. “For what? Giving my teenaged daughter freedom for once in her life? Most girls would kill for that chance. And if what I’m hearing from Winston is right, she’s taking full advantage. It’s even been in the New York gossip pages, didn’t she tell you?”

  The sparkle had returned to her eye. It was a shield she was waving, lightness, breeziness, not a care in the world.

  “Is he as brilliant as everybody’s saying?” She winked, she actually winked. “The next—?”

  “Do you ever miss me?”

  The room fell silent at my question. Around me, everyone held their breath—while I exhaled for what felt like the first time in a year.

  “I do.” Mom stared at a knot in the floorboards. “But it hurts. So I think of other things.”

  I let out a sharp laugh. “Oh my God.”

  She glanced up, her eyes flaring right back. “It was a hard call. A brutal one. You or my career . . . one last chance at the life I’d always thought I would have. It ripped me apart.”

  Victor, silent as ever, reached out to take her hand, running his thumb along it like she was the child here, vulnerable and wounded.

  “You poor thing,” I said, unflinching. “That must have been so tough for you.”

  “Okay.” Her eyes stayed on mine—but something behind them shut off like a switch. “You want honesty, Ruby? Here’s hon
esty. If you’re asking me if I would make that call again, the answer is yes.”

  With that kill shot, Mom swiped her face dry and motioned to the stairwell with a nod. Victor stood, bowing politely to my grandparents as if this had been a totally normal meal.

  “We need our rest,” Mom murmured behind her. “I’m playing Rach Three.”

  And she walked up the stairs, away, away, away.

  “Ruby.” Grandma Jean started crumpling in on herself.

  I walked out the back door, still not crying—skirting the pool, tiptoeing down the long dock until I reached the end and stood staring at the moonlight contorting on the water, my bare toes inching off the edge.

  I felt curiously empty. My whole life, I’d struggled to understand her, make allowances for her, reshape myself to fit her mold, no matter how many times she told me it was impossible. Now the final burden was gone. The last thing that I’d always believed made me me.

  I didn’t care who I became, so long as it was anyone but her.

  “She was always a contrary one.” A gravelly voice rose up behind me. I turned to see Gramps kicking shells off the dock into the sea grass. “We’d say it’s time to go, she’d run straight back to the beach. After her mother passed, I was just outmatched. I’d tell her to study for her math test, she’d stay up all night playing the piano. I’d tell her to apply to a liberal arts program, she’d only apply to conservatories. I’d tell her ‘That man, however famous, is much too old for you. He’ll overpower you, your life will become his life.’ And she married him.”

  I sat, letting my legs dangle. Gramps sat beside me, chucking bits of shell even farther. I looked over at him, his bald head, sunspots, wrinkles, and realized he was probably a few years younger than Dad. It had never occurred to me before.

  “I’m glad she married Marty. For obvious reasons.” Gramps patted my hand. “And I like him! Still do. We email.” He shrugged. “But I’m not surprised your mom did what she did. I’m just shocked it took her so long.”

  Something about the way he frowned after he said it made me feel like there was another thought he was holding back. So I went ahead and quietly voiced the suspicion I’d held for a very long time.

  “Was she planning to leave Dad when she got pregnant with me?”

  Gramps clicked his tongue. “She never said so. She did say she was thinking about touring more.”

  We both knew what that meant.

  “She doesn’t love me.” I rubbed my knees. “I’d always thought she did. She acted like she did.”

  Even now, scenes were replaying in my head like a remake of a familiar movie. Me filling every page of a coloring book while she practiced the piano. The day she forgot to pick me up from school and my first-grade teacher had to take me to Lincoln Center in search of my dad. The day I found the courtyard. The party after the photo shoot, my disastrous attempt at a performance. All the hours I practiced from then on, timing them so they didn’t conflict with her hours but still overlapped, so she’d walk in and hear me and maybe even spark to me this time if I worked hard enough. The way she’d strained herself before that eighth-grade dance, visibly twisting herself into the shape of what she thought a normal mother should be. How much it had hurt to see her fake it.

  Not to mention all those fuzzy memories—climbing on the Alice statue, someone there to catch me. Was it Mom? Did it even matter if all she’d wanted in that moment was to be free from me?

  “She did love you. She does. Of course she does.” Gramps stared out at the night sky. “Just not as much as she loves herself.”

  Hearing that knocked the wind from me. But my next breath felt easier. And the next, even better, deeper, my shoulders relaxing, toes uncurling.

  If I’d been gifted, a piano virtuoso, the next Mozart, she would have left all the same.

  “I worry for Victor,” Gramps said, and I turned to see the corner of his lips twitching. “Poor Victor.”

  “Poor Victor.”

  “We’ve got tickets to the show, you know,” he said, rolling his eyes dramatically, like he was pretending to be a teenager. “If you want to go.”

  “I do.”

  He quirked an eyebrow.

  I tucked my legs in. “I haven’t heard her play in a long time.”

  “Yeah.” He stood, offering me a hand up. “Neither have we.”

  * * *

  • • •

  You couldn’t hear a single sigh, cough, shift of weight in the audience while Mom performed. I closed my eyes, transported back home to my living room, sunlight streaming like pixie dust—but it was Oscar I saw, standing at my piano, glancing at me for the very first time as if he’d been expecting me to turn up for years.

  I dug my fingernails into my palms, fighting the ache in my chest, clinging to it.

  It hurt to think about Oscar. It felt much worse to think about the person playing this concerto.

  We waited for Mom out on the gas-lamp-lit sidewalk after the show. She came out holding flowers from some unknown fan, fevered from greeting well-wishers, her expression shuttering at the sight of us.

  I leaned in quickly for a hug and said, “You’re amazing, Mom.”

  She pressed a hand to her heart, eyes brimming. “That means so much—”

  I walked away to the parking garage before she could finish.

  I’d now said every single thing I needed to say.

  35.

  as soon as I’d hugged my grandparents good-bye and made it through the security checkpoint in Charleston, I pulled out my cell and listened again to the last voicemail Oscar left me.

  It must have been windy there—half his words were cutting out.

  “Um . . . it’s done! I feel . . . I mean, sort of good . . . empty. I think I’m done too. I can’t . . . really need you. Hope you’re finding . . . or whatever you needed. I’m not being sarcastic, I really . . . lost track of the point. Anyway, sorry for all this, only needed to . . . when you get back. Bye.”

  I’d only discovered it last night when we drove into Charleston for Mom’s concert, back into cell reception range. There were a lot of worrying things about it—but the thing that troubled me most was that he’d left it four days ago, on my cell phone. It was too spotty for me to even begin to figure out why there hadn’t been any calls since. Why, for the past four days, he’d skipped our nightly check-ins, letting my calls go straight to voicemail. Why he hadn’t picked up when I tried him again late last night, or this morning.

  For all I knew, that message was a breakup.

  A new text popped up, from Jules: When are you back? STOP IGNORING ME.

  I sat on the edge of one of the seats by my gate, crossing my ankles to keep them from jittering as I dialed him.

  Straight to voicemail. Again. I put my phone away and started to board. He’s busy getting the marching band together.

  When the plane took off, my body went still and calm, recapturing the feeling I got sitting on the dock—light on water. I peered out at the vista below, the marshes, the ocean, the endless expanse, the whole world one big curved horizon.

  I didn’t need a clear path forward. I just needed to remember this view.

  * * *

  • • •

  No band on arrival, no balloons, no Oscar at all. I scanned the waiting crowd as I walked out of the terminal, past security, into the baggage claim area, but then succumbed to reality. He hadn’t shown.

  I stepped to the side of the escalator, scanning now for a man in a suit holding a sign with my name on it. Dad would have sent a car if Oscar wasn’t picking me up. But I didn’t see that either.

  Which was fine! This is all fine.

  I pulled my bag off the conveyer belt, fighting growing disorientation, like I was in an old Twilight Zone episode—I’d stepped off an airplane and into a world in which I’d never been born.

  I t
ried Dad on the taxi ride into Manhattan. His phone rang but he didn’t answer. I pressed my knees together as the cab lurched its way to my neighborhood, dread spreading from my stomach until every breath I took seemed infused with it.

  As I passed Oscar’s low window, I peeked inside. The room was dark, AC unit off. He wasn’t there, so I let myself into the house, hauling my roller bag behind me.

  “Hello?”

  Upstairs, Dad’s clock ticked.

  I sat at the kitchen table, waiting for somebody to walk in. Something to happen.

  They were probably at Amberley, hard at work. I could unpack, get changed, unwind. Give them space. Extend my vacation from music that much longer.

  I bolted out the door.

  It felt like the current was with me. I made every light all the way to campus. My watch said 4:16. Just a few days until the premiere, so they’d be rehearsing the full program daily.

  Halfway across the plaza, I looked up at Lilly Hall—and nearly fell over. Oscar was on a banner, a monumental version of him, conducting at the podium in silhouette, his natural hair amplified by a graphic designer’s curlicued illustrations.

  They’d made him an icon. I wondered if they’d asked him first.

  Quick movement drew my attention—Liz Trombly heading toward Lilly Hall—and I teetered under a wash of guilt. Oh no. I’d never told her I was quitting the choir.

  I peered up at the sky, remembering that feeling of expansion I had in the airplane only hours ago. I’d apologize, check it off my list, feel that much freer. One less tie to the ridiculousness of my old life.

  I jogged to Liz. She glanced over and her face closed off like I was a panhandler.

  “Liz, hi,” I started. “I am so sorry I vanished on you. Some life things came up, but I should have called and let you know and—”

  “I wasn’t surprised.”

  “Oh.” I had no response to that. “Well . . . again, I apologize. I hope it wasn’t too big an inconvenience.” I smiled, hoping to convey what we both knew—that I’d added precisely nothing to the work she was doing.