“Found him,” he says.
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Ben Tristan, violin virtuoso.” With a flourish he pulls a printed page from his pocket and reads out loud: “Started playing when he was four, became the youngest member of the City Youth Chamber Orchestra when he was eight, won the mayor’s award for Most Promising Young Talent when he was twelve, traveled to Rome with the youth orchestra when he was fourteen. He’s seventeen — graduated from the Dalton School two years early. He’s a sophomore this year at Brighton.”
“Sounds like a talented dude,” I say, trying not to cringe. God, he’s so lucky. If I had even one-billionth of the opportunities he had, I’d be dancing at Alvin Ailey right now. “I’m over him, Cass. Really. I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
“I just did the best Sherlock Holmes–style sleuthing of my life and you don’t even care?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t get how you can be so totally nonchalant. He’s seventeen! Our age!”
“Cass …”
“I know his first and last name. We could probably figure out his address if we really wanted. I could call up Brighton and get his class schedule.”
“Cass!”
“What?”
“He has a girlfriend. I saw her.”
“Oh. Well, fuck.”
“Yeah.”
* *
Mom’s not expecting me at Spin Cycle until three thirty, so Cass and I take the long way down Broad Street when school lets out. We walk in silence for a few minutes, passing the clumps of kids smoking joints and e-cigs out front. Our school doesn’t have the money to offer after-school programs, but even if it did, I doubt anyone would join them. Instead you’ve got a weird mix of kids who rush out to after-school jobs to help their families, and kids who spend school nights selling weed and Oxy and stirring up trouble.
We stop for a second in the alley next to Adelia’s Drugstore. I rest my back against the cool brick and Cass copies me. He offers me his last stick of gum, and I don’t know why, but that makes me want to bawl. For someone who never cries, I sure have wanted to do it a lot recently. Cass puts his arm around me. We stand there for a while with the breeze blowing past us.
The apartment in front of us has wooden boards covering the windows and doors. I can’t remember the last time someone actually lived there. It’s not so bad — give it a few coats of paint and take the old folding chairs off the front lawn and, well, obviously install some windows, and it would be a fine place for a family to live. Then a rat runs out and down the front steps. We both crack up. It’s all too perfectly terrible.
Cass squeezes my shoulders. “When we’re living at Carnegie Hall or wherever, we’re going to think about this exact moment and shove spoonfuls of caviar in our mouths and wash it down with champagne and just laugh so hard. I’ll have seven Oscars and you’ll be a world-renowned dancer —”
“I quit, remember?”
“You’re just on hiatus. Until you can afford to take classes again.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“And we’re going to have our own butler. And an indoor tennis court. And did I mention the bowling alley?”
I know he’s just trying to make me feel better, but it makes me feel even worse. It’s impossible. Even more impossible than the imaginary love story I made up. We’re going nowhere. He knows it, I know it. Why bother pretending? In ten years we’ll be just where our parents are: buried in an avalanche of debt, working dead-end jobs and barely able to afford groceries. We’re stuck and there’s nothing we can do about it, no matter how hard we try.
But I can’t destroy Cass’s dreams. So instead I let him go on and on about our imaginary apartment, all the way to the laundromat.
* *
Mom is exhausted when I get to Spin Cycle, and it’s tough to shake the idea that when I look at her, I’m staring at a giant mirror: myself in twenty years. Her hair is tied back in a messy ponytail and her hands are red and dry. She lets out a huge sigh when she sees me, and gives me a pile of sweaters.
“I’m sorry, baby, but I want you here tomorrow night, too,” she says. “Dryer six broke this morning and Ralph can’t come check it out until next week. I need you on hand-washing duty while I fold and change out the loads. Otherwise I’ll be here all night.”
“Okay,” I say, knowing I owe her about a thousand favors for being so MIA this past week. It’s important that I’m here. Not chasing after stupid Violin Boy. Ben.
This is where I belong.
I plunge the sweaters into a basin of icy water, numbing my fingers. If I hold them under long enough, maybe the cold will crawl up my shoulders and numb my brain.
* *
Around seven that night, Mom runs home for a few minutes and returns with some cold rice and beans in a plastic container and a handful of hot sauce packets. We eat on the blue plastic folding table, with newspaper place mats and plastic forks. At first I thought it was fun to eat at Spin Cycle with Mom — like a secret picnic only we were invited to. Now it just seems depressing.
“Do you know anything about websites?” she asks out of nowhere.
“Why?” I ask, with more attitude than I mean to.
“I don’t know. Just wondering if there’s any way we can get some more business in here.”
“We can barely handle the customers we have, especially if the machines are going to break all the time. And websites cost money. You have to buy a domain and get a designer, and —”
“I don’t know, Dom. I was just thinking out loud. Maybe we could try something more high-tech and get some younger customers in here.”
“A store without functional dryers doesn’t need a website.”
“Okay,” she says.
And I immediately feel terrible for shooting her down. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be so negative. I’m just frustrated.”
“I know you are, baby. I want you to be out with your friends right now. Seeing a movie, eating a giant bucket of popcorn slathered with butter —”
“Mom, you know I’m a Twizzlers girl.”
“You can have Twizzlers and popcorn. And a cherry Coke if you want.”
“Okay, that just sounds greedy.”
I laugh and hang up a damp sweater. Mom laughs, too, and everything’s okay for a minute.
* *
Folding the last few loads takes longer than we thought. We lock up around eleven and walk the three blocks home. Mom carries her Taser (even though I’m pretty sure they’re illegal in New Jersey) and I hold my pepper spray. Someone could be ducking behind a parked car, waiting.
“When we first moved here, I swear I thought the Burg would be an up-and-coming neighborhood,” Mom says out of the blue.
It’s too dark to see most of her face, but her voice sounds sad. Like three-seconds-from-giving-up depressed.
In the distance I can see the Lower Trenton Bridge, with its neon lettering making the water glow red. I can barely make out the words from here, but I know what they say. I’ve seen the sign almost every day since I was a baby: “Trenton Makes — The World Takes.” There used to be all sorts of manufacturers here. There were steel mills and a pottery company and an ironworks. The place was booming. The Burg — Chambersburg, our neighborhood in South Trenton — was full of nice families. Then I don’t know what happened. People started moving out to Pennsylvania. Gangs started moving in. And suddenly we looked around and everything was different. Now the sign is more ironic than anything.
“I should have been smarter,” she says. “I should never have let your dad decide. I should have gone to the city and taken some business courses and opened my boutique. I could have had my own life instead of getting consumed with his.”
She’s thinking about what her life would have been like if she’d never had me. But she’d never say those thin
gs out loud.
“You did your best,” I say. Like I always say when she brings this stuff up.
“We’re gonna get you out of here,” she whispers.
“I’m fine.”
“This isn’t fair to you. My mistakes don’t have to hold you back. We can look for college scholarships online and apply to every single one of them, and you can go to a top school on a full ride, and …”
I nod and we keep walking, but I’m not listening anymore. I don’t tell her I won’t be applying to schools. Only kids with 4.0 GPAs get scholarships. And paying tuition, even for a community college, would put me in too much debt. Besides, the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do is be a dancer, and that’s obviously never going to happen now.
Maybe I could get a corporate job — office manager or something — after I graduate high school, and help Mom out at night. We could save up enough money for her to open her own boutique in Princeton or Hopewell, like she used to dream about when I was a kid. And once it starts getting business, we could hire some other employees. Then she’ll only work when she wants to, not because she has to. On her nights off we could hang out at home, making dinner and watching movies and just relaxing. And when she’s too old to work anymore, I’ll manage the boutique myself and she can retire to South Carolina and get a nice little place by the beach.
Mom deserves to have a good life, and I’ll do anything I can to help her. Even if it means working at Spin Cycle every night. So that’s it. I’ve made up my mind. No college. And no dance. And no Ben.
{8}
Ben
Hour who-knows-what of hashing out Kreutzer at Claire’s house, and I’m so trapped in my head I don’t even know what I’m playing anymore. It was light when we got here and now it’s dark, and it’s way too quiet. There’s nothing but static coursing through my brain.
Claire’s getting tired and her parents have gone to bed already, probably with earplugs so they don’t have to hear the same fourteen bars over and over again. Claire’s finally starting to get it, and some of the piece sounds beautiful and painful and sad and shining. Then again, some of it sounds like absolute shit.
“Wait.” I rest my chin on my violin and wave my bow at her. “Something was off there, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not sure,” Claire says. “Want to try from the top of the second variation?”
“I can’t pinpoint what it is. Play your part again.”
She plays. Then she plays it again.
“What is it?”
“You keep slowing down at bar ninety-seven. Aren’t you hearing it?”
“But it’s written in the piece. It’s right there on the page. How could it be too slow?”
“Beethoven didn’t mean that slow.”
Claire laughs, a high, fluttering laugh that comes off totally condescending, even though I’m not sure she means it to. “Oh, you asked him what he wants? This part is supposed to be slow. Listen to any recording of the piano part there. It’s in tempo. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I’m not telling you to change the piece, I’m telling you that when I’m trying to get through these sixteenth notes and then you come in with this plodding, stretched-out phrase —”
“Plodding? Okay. You know what, Ben? We need to call it a night.”
“But we’re only halfway through. We haven’t even touched the third movement yet. Robertson’s going to skewer us.”
“We’ve been playing for five hours. I need sleep — it’s almost eleven. I’m not invincible like you.”
“That crap we just played is good enough for you?”
“It’s good enough for tonight. Robertson doesn’t expect us to be perfect. It’s just a check-in. I’m tired and we’re obviously not going to get any more productive work done tonight.”
“Obviously not.” I pack up my violin, not bothering to clean it. Not even the chin rest.
* *
I open the door and carefully put my violin case on the floor by the coat rack. It’s late, but Mom’s still up reading the New Yorker on the couch. Her face falls when she sees me.
“Sweetie, you look exhausted.” She jumps up and tries to give me a hug.
“Yeah,” I say, shooing her away, because my skin burns and I have a headache and I’m not sure there’s anything I can tell her at this point to make her stop worrying. “I’m just gonna go to bed, okay?”
“Did you eat dinner?”
“Yeah,” I lie. The living room is too bright and I want to be alone, and honestly, I couldn’t tell you if I ate dinner or not. I remember, vaguely, being offered a plate of pasta and salad by Claire’s mom, but I did I eat any of it? Maybe a few bites, just to be polite.
The light makes my brain buzz. I have to get out of here.
“I’m going to bed,” I repeat. “I’m not feeling great.”
“Like, you think you’re getting a cold?”
“Yeah,” I say quickly, regretting it at once. “Must be coming down with a cold or something. Better get some rest. Claire and I are playing the sonata for Dean Robertson tomorrow. A check-in to make sure we’re on track before the audition. It’s a pretty big deal.”
“Just a cold? That’s all?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think you’re ready?”
“I’m always ready.”
“I’m so proud of you, my talented, brilliant, remarkable boy.”
Mom’s eyes get all glassy, and I go to my room and shut the door before she can come over and hug me again.
The buzzing is no better in here alone with the door shut. My back is drenched in icy sweat, and it’s not even hot outside. I strip down to my boxers and air-dry.
Nothing is right. I want to press Rewind, to go back to when everything in my life was clicking. Back to the amazing Carnegie Hall concert and the effortless inspiration and the unlimited energy.
And the girl at the fountain.
Who is she?
She has to be somewhere.
And just like that, electricity surges through me. Like magic, as soon as I think of her. She makes me feel like myself again.
I have to find her.
I turn on my laptop, open an empty document and pick the biggest font that fits on the page. I type, holding my breath, hands in hyper drive, eyes blurred, until my pinkies cramp up and the whole page is full.
I read my writing over and over again. This is complete and total bullshit. What am I even talking about? She’s going to think I’m insane. Maybe I am insane.
I delete the whole thing and start again. This is all wrong. My words need to be more lyrical, more emotional, more fun, more exciting. More like her. The way I know she has to be.
I need to find her.
She’d never respect a guy who just sits there doing nothing.
She’d want me to do something grand and sweeping and romantic, like in one of her old movie musicals.
So I print out two hundred copies.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?
1. Wild, curly hair that’s so thick you could lose yourself in it. Like, you could take a walk in it for days, months, years and never find your way out. (But smooth and soft, not matted or tangled.)
2. A voice like liquid gold. Like if Norah Jones and Ella Fitzgerald were cloned and their genes were all mixed up together. Not sure if she can actually sing, but if her speaking voice is this good, the sky’s the limit.
3. Green backpack. Self-explanatory.
4. A smile that people write songs about. Whole albums. Sonatas. Symphonies. If her smile were a scale, it would undoubtedly be major pentatonic.
5. Answers to “A Train.” This is not her name. But if you call her this, she’ll probably turn around and smile.
Please send all leads to …
[email protected]
While the fly
ers are printing, I open a map of the city on my computer and drop virtual pins on every street corner I think A Train could pass during the day. I think about putting a flyer in every subway car — citywide! — but realize I’ll need a lot more than two hundred copies and I’m almost out of computer paper. Should I run out to Staples and buy some more? I could buy reams and reams and spend the whole night printing and the whole day papering, and by dinnertime tomorrow, the entire city will be plastered with my signs.
No. I’ll start with just two hundred. Let’s be realistic here.
She has to see it. Manhattan isn’t that big. She’s somewhere. I know she’s somewhere.
I open my window and crane my head out. Cars shoot by like rockets, headlights blurred and fuzzy, faster than my eyes can process them. Pushing up against the window frame, I extend my whole upper body out the window. The cold air feels so good, tickling my skin, like an air shower.
I could stay like this forever, bathed in the cold, quiet night.
A woman with a stroller and a man with gray hair pass underneath me, walking very, very slow. I try to fast-forward them with my mind, but they won’t budge. There’s no one with brown, curly hair. No one at all.
Whoa — my right foot slips and my whole body tingles as I grip the sides of the windowsill with my fingertips. Legs scrambling, slipping, I jam my toes into the carpet and brace myself.
I find my balance and ease myself back through the window, into my room. There’s a big red line on my stomach, like I’ve had my appendix out or something. At first it startles me, but then I realize it’s just from pressing against the windowsill. I shake my head and try not to think about falling, but my mind is still flashing pictures of me plummeting to my death on Lexington Avenue.
My palms are soaked and my back is all hot, and I think I need to sit down. I just need to sit down.
Sometimes I get like this, that’s all. It’s not getting worse. It’s always like this, and then it gets better and then I’m fine and back to normal. I just need to get through it. I always come out of it. Always.
* *
I tear into the classroom five minutes late, and Claire is already there, sitting at the piano and giving me death stares.
Someday, Somewhere Page 6