“Okay, Panda,” the judge said. “You don’t happen to have the time, do you, dear?”
She shook her head no, and all the judges laughed. Her cheeks turned as red as her shoes, and she looked down at her clock and then at the stage. She was obviously nervous.
“Where are you from, Panda?”
“Selma, Texas.”
“And you’re going to sing a cappella for us today?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you’ve got five pairs of ears here dying to hear it.”
The girl was still looking down at the stage as she took the gum from her mouth and wedged it behind her ear. Then she began to quietly hum. When she finally looked up, her mouth opened wider than any mouth Jane had ever seen, and she let loose a note that shook the house. The song she sang was almost operatic, and Jane could hardly understand a word, but the emotion of it was unmistakably beautiful. While she was singing, her crazy clothes and her clock seemed to fade away with her shyness and she was transformed into something else entirely, as if she belonged to her voice rather than it belonging to her, just a red pair of shoes to carry it around and a clock to tell it when to sing.
As soon as she finished her song, she looked down at the stage again, so she didn’t even see the five thumbs that turned up. The judges held them there until she did finally lift her head, and when she saw them, both hands leaped to cover her mouth, and she looked as if she might cry.
“Congratulations, young lady,” a judge said. “You’re going to the City of Angels, where that voice of yours belongs.”
“Thank you, thank you,” she said, her grin so big she looked to be all teeth. “I can’t believe I’m going through.” Then she turned and left the stage, and only her wad of pink gum that had fallen from her ear while she was singing remained. A stagehand scurried out and collected the gum, then carried it off cradled in his hands as if it might be precious.
When the judges had finished chattering about her, and after the handler had called again for quiet, an awkward pair of twins stepped out onto the stage with matching ukuleles.
Jane wondered how she had missed them in the other room. They were each at least six and a half feet tall and as thin as fence posts, their hair thick and as blond as straw. They gave their names as Buford and Billy-Ray, and their accent was so thick Jane could hardly understand them. One of the judges asked them where they were from, and they answered in unison.
“Sir,” they said, “we’re from L.A.”
The judge laughed. “Come on, if you two are from Los Angeles, then I’m from Mars.”
“Not Los Angeles,” the one drawled. “The other L.A. You know, Lower Alabama.”
“That’s right,” the other added. “Down around Mobile.”
Jane couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Okay, boys,” one of the judges said. “Let’s hear it.”
They had hardly begun playing their ukuleles and singing before the judges all turned aside and shook their heads, squinting as if they were in pain. And Jane could understand why. The twins were terrible. So terrible, in fact, that she wondered if they hadn’t come with hopes of their audition making it into the show just for the shock value of it. The judges all stuck out their thumbs, pointing down, of course, but the boys kept on playing anyway.
“Enough, enough!” the main judge cried. “Stop already.”
They stopped and blinked up at the judges as if stupefied. “We could play somethin’ else,” one of them said.
“I think not,” the judge replied. “We’ve heard too much.”
“Maybe jus’ a little gospel piece we wrote together?”
The judges all shook their heads, but the boys began plucking their ukuleles and humming anyway.
“Will someone get them off the stage, please?”
Two handlers appeared and took the twins by their bony elbows and led them off. They never did stop playing, and Jane could hear the sound of their ukuleles fading across the auditorium until a door slammed somewhere and shut the sound out. When Jane looked back to the screen, Caleb was already out in front of the judges. He was standing center stage with the guitar she had bought for him in his hand, and he looked so at home and perfectly made for the setting that she would have sworn he’d always been standing there, and that they’d designed and built the entire set around him.
“Tell us your name and where you’re from, fella.”
“Caleb Cummings,” he said simply. “Seattle.”
“Seattle? We were just up there.”
“Well, I’m here in Austin now.”
The woman next to Jane nudged her with an elbow. “This one’s really cute,” she said.
“I know,” Jane replied. “And he’s all mine.”
“And how old are you, Caleb?” the judge asked.
“Twenty-four,” Caleb answered. Then he cocked his head and scrunched his brow as if he were thinking. “Wait. Today’s the thirty-first, isn’t it? Today’s my birthday. I’m twenty-five.”
Jane almost had a heart attack. How had she forgotten his birthday? She had even made a note of it back in the spring, when she had signed him up for his health insurance.
“Happy birthday, then,” the judge said, chuckling. “I like a guy who doesn’t take himself so seriously. And it says here in the bio you sent us that you’re a synesthete.”
When Caleb nodded but didn’t say anything, Jane was a little worried that maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned that part in the bio she wrote for him. That maybe it was private. She silently scolded herself for writing something so personal but then forgetting his birthday.
“Did you know Billy Joel has synesthesia?”
“No, sir, I didn’t know that.”
“He does. And so did Duke Ellington, I believe. How did you learn about your condition?”
“I think of it as a gift,” Caleb said. “Not a condition.”
“Okay. And how did you learn about your gift then?”
“I told my fourth-grade teacher that I hadn’t been doing my homework because I’d been up at night writing music. She didn’t believe I knew how to write music, so she asked me to bring it in and show her, so I did.”
“And how did she know from your music that you had synesthesia?”
“She didn’t, but the counselor she sent me to did.”
“And how did the counselor know?”
“He had an uncle with it. He guessed it because my music was all written out in crayon lines of color instead of notes.”
A female judge at the end of the panel was staring at Caleb through narrowed eyes as he spoke, as if he might be lying. “And are you seeing any color now?” she asked. “As we sit here and talk to you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “I’m seeing yellow.”
“And why are you seeing yellow?”
“Because that’s the color of this giant light you’ve got pointing in my face.”
All the judges laughed except her.
“Well, then, young man,” the middle judge said, “let’s hear what you’ve got for us.”
Caleb draped the guitar strap over his head, took the pick from the frets, and began playing. It was a catchy melody that Jane hadn’t heard before, and it built layer on layer until it was ringing loud from his guitar to fill the set with sound. Then he fell to strumming and began to sing. His voice was crisp and clear, and it resonated through the auditorium in a way that was hard to describe. Not nasal at all, but somehow throaty and rich and pure. And then he hit the chorus and broke into a falsetto that made Jane shiver, it was so beautiful.
I love you will never cross my lips
’Cause it isn’t ever really true.
And if you’d never said it, honey
I might not feel so blue.
The judges looked at one another and nodded. Jane closed her eyes a
nd said a quick little prayer.
“I think I love this one,” the woman next to Jane said.
“I love him too,” Jane mumbled.
When Caleb finished, he let the guitar fall against his chest, suspended by the strap, and he clawed both his hands through his hair to pull it away from his eyes. Then he stared right at the judges with a sincere but stoic expression, looking to Jane like some sexy Roman warrior in the center of the Colosseum, gazing up to Caesar for his fate. The five thumbs came up from the judges and a huge smile erupted on Caleb’s face. Then the female judge on the end slowly turned her thumb down, and Jane heard herself shout, “No!”
The handler waved erratically at Jane to get her attention, holding a finger to his lips and signaling for her to keep quiet. When she looked back to the screen, the judges were arguing, and Caleb was standing there tight-lipped and gently nodding, as if he had expected it to go this way all along.
“Sorry, young man,” the middle judge finally said. “I think most of my fellow judges up here would agree that you have a unique style and an amazing voice. And you’re obviously a very talented songwriter too. But unfortunately, it has to be a unanimous decision. The answer for you is no.”
“Thank you for your time,” Caleb said. Then he walked off the stage with his shoulders pulled back and his head held high.
Jane was so heartbroken and so proud of him at the same time that she forgot they weren’t supposed to leave the viewing area until the last act in their group had performed. She rushed right through the yellow rope and knocked down the stanchions that held it up, ignoring the sound of them clattering on the floor behind her as she ran around to the stage exit and caught up to Caleb, then threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
He was obviously embarrassed, because when she pulled her lips away to look at him, he just looked away sadly. “I forgot it was my birthday.”
“I know,” Jane said. “I forgot it too. I’m sorry. But Caleb, you did so great. I loved it. Everyone loved it. And don’t worry about that stupid bitter-beer-faced judge. She’s probably just upset because you reminded her of some guy who dumped her sorry ass in high school. Let’s get out of here and go celebrate.”
Caleb smiled and nodded, then took her hand as they walked toward the exit.
“You know what I wanna do?” he asked when they were midway across the auditorium. “For my birthday, I mean.”
“We can do anything, sweetie. Anything at all.”
“I wanna go to the water park.”
“The water park?”
“Yeah. My aunt used to take me on my birthday. I think there’s one in New Braunfels that’s supposed to have a six-story slide that you go doubles down.”
Jane squeezed his hand in hers. “You’re just a big adorable kid, aren’t you?”
“Hey,” he said. “I’m twenty-five.”
The thermometer in Jane’s car read 107 degrees when they arrived, and she believed it. After cooling off in the wave pool and making two trips around the lazy lagoon on the kiddie canoe, Jane finally plucked up the courage to tackle the six-story drop from the park’s highest slide, the one that Caleb had been itching to ride. The Black Knight, it was called.
Wearing their gift-shop bathing suits and surrounded by hundreds of laughing and screaming kids, they got in line and slowly climbed the steps.
“It really is high,” Jane said.
“You going chicken on me?” Caleb asked.
“No,” she said, crossing her arms. “I’m not chicken.”
A small boy, who couldn’t have been more than ten, turned around and looked at her with enormous eyes. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, lady,” he said with great authority. “My grandmother even did it.”
Jane’s jaw dropped, but the boy turned back around before she could respond. “Did he just compare me to his grandmother?”
Caleb at least attempted to contain his laughter, which Jane appreciated.
When they reached the platform at the top, Caleb took a two-person inner tube from the pile and led Jane to the launch line, where they stood looking down the mouth of the slide.
“Hold on a minute,” the man said. “Okay, now go.”
Jane panicked and stepped aside.
Caleb waved her back. “Oh, come on, baby. You can do it.”
Jane stood her ground and shook her head. She had always been fearful of heights, and six stories up a rickety old waterslide counted as heights to her. She stood there for at least a full minute, refusing Caleb’s pleas to return to the slide, until the children in line grew restless and pressed forward, chanting, “Go, lady, go! Go, lady, go!”
“See,” Caleb said. “Even they want you to go.”
“I’m not taking orders from a bunch of kids,” Jane said.
The man working the slide laughed and shook his head. He’d seen this before. He pointed to a tiny girl anxiously waiting in line and called her forward. “Sweetie, would you show this nice lady how easy it is?”
The little girl grabbed an inner tube, stepped up, and launched herself down the slide without a moment’s pause. All Jane could see were her tiny legs and waving feet disappearing around the corner along with her happy scream.
Two more child demonstrations and a pep talk from Caleb later, and Jane was finally ready. She felt her heart thudding in her chest as Caleb counted down from ten. She decided to put her trust in him, and in the children, and in the engineers who had built this devil ride. When he said, “Go,” she dove with him—racing down into the blue blur, whipping around turns, rising and then dropping, faster now, steeper, and she felt the cool spray of water, the whoosh of air, and she heard her own cries of joy echoing in the tube behind them as they launched out into the air and landed in the pool with a splash.
She was clinging to Caleb’s shoulders and laughing when they surfaced.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked, spitting water.
“Let’s go again!”
They rode the Black Knight six more times before Jane had had enough. Then they bought hamburgers and onion rings and an enormous strawberry milkshake each, and sat with them in the cool shade of the gazebo, beneath the magic mist machine, and ate and laughed and watched the children playing in the pools just beyond.
“I’m sorry they didn’t have any birthday cake,” Jane said.
Caleb popped another fry into his mouth. “That’s okay. I think I’m getting fat.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “You’re sitting down and I can still see your abs.”
He stood and inhaled deeply, sticking his belly out like a Buddha. Then he rubbed it against Jane’s cheek. “Does this make me look fat?”
“No,” she said, trying not to laugh and pushing his belly away from her face. “It makes you look pregnant.”
Caleb exhaled and dropped back into his chair. Then he looked at Jane with a mischievous smile on his face. “I’d like to see what you look like pregnant,” he said.
“Come on, Caleb. We already talked about this.”
“No. We already talked about how you don’t want to talk about it. But we never really talked about it. Don’t all these cute kids running around here make you want one?”
“No,” Jane said. “They maybe make me want to have a friend with kids. You think it’s easy, but it isn’t. It’s hard work raising a child. You have no idea.”
“But you were alone when you raised Melody. You’re not alone anymore, Jane.”
The very mention of Melody’s name brought tears to Jane’s eyes. She felt silly about it, embarrassed even. As if she should be over it by now. But she would never be over it, and maybe only a grieving mother could understand that. She turned away so Caleb wouldn’t see her crying, and she watched a little girl feeding ice cream to her younger brother.
Caleb leaned forward and took her hands in his, waitin
g for her to look back at him. When she did, there was nothing but love and understanding in his green eyes.
“I know it still hurts, baby,” he said. “And I won’t ask you to talk about it. But I want you to know that I’m here to listen if you ever do want to talk. All right? I’m a good listener.”
“I know you are,” she told him, nodding.
He smiled. “I promise I won’t mention kids again, okay?”
Jane reached and placed her hand on his sweet cheek. The sounds of the children faded to just a beautiful murmur, and she and Caleb sat like that for several quiet moments—she with a hand on his warm cheek, he smiling at her with his kind eyes—and she knew that if she ever did want to have another child again, it would be with him. She wanted to tell him so, but the silence seemed too perfect to spoil with words.
When the moment had passed, the noise faded back in and Jane returned her gaze to the kids playing in the pool. She picked up her milkshake and polished it off.
“Just so you know,” she tossed out, “if you ever do want to bring up us having a kid again, mister, then you had better start planning a wedding.”
The sun had set by the time they finally left the water park, and Jane stretched her legs out and relaxed into the passenger seat, thankful that Caleb had offered to drive.
Her muscles ached in that wonderful summer way; her skin was flushed and pink and warm. The smell of chlorine in her hair took her back and reminded her of some fleeting time when she’d been sixteen or seventeen and everything that lay ahead of her had yet been empty road, limited only by her imagination, all the endless possible futures, and where that road might lead. She glanced over at Caleb. He was looking ahead and lost in his own thoughts. For the first time in my life, she mused, I don’t think I’d go back. She wouldn’t risk one wrong turn that might lead her somewhere other than here. Here now with him.
She rested her head back and turned to look out the side window at the dark hills and the silhouettes of cedar trees sliding past. She must have napped, because her phone vibrating against her makeup compact in her purse startled her awake. Caleb had the radio playing softly, and the sky was darker, with a crescent moon riding now just above the hills. She reached in and fished her phone from her purse. The bright light of its screen momentarily blinded her, and then her eyes adjusted and she read the first line of the e-mail she had just received.
Jane's Harmony (Jane's Melody #2) Page 5