{42}
Ben
Mom and Dad pretend not to notice the black scuffed indentation on the living room wall, but it’s pretty hard to miss. That night, Milo and my dad are watching Friends reruns on TV, but I can tell Milo’s gaze is shifted slightly to the right. He’s staring at the mark. I want to yell that it’s no big deal and to stop focusing on it, but if I did that, I’d probably look even more crazy than I already am.
Is Milo right? Am I crazy? Just because I’m not what he thinks a brother should be, he’s accusing me of …
Beethoven moved thirty-nine times because he forgot to pay his rent. His house was filled with rotting food — I bet he forgot to eat, too. He’d bang on the piano all night long and his neighbors couldn’t stand him. He’d fly into explosive rages, sometimes for no reason at all. He was temperamental and volatile and no one understood him, but he channeled everything, every ounce of passion he had, into his music. What would have happened if someone had forced him to go on medication or see a therapist? Would he have been as brilliant? Maybe he would have stopped composing altogether. Just because he wasn’t the textbook definition of “normal,” the world would never have had his nine symphonies, nine concertos and hundreds of other works. Operas and sonatas and string quintets and piano trios and bagatelles and …
No. I can’t let anyone take my fire away from me. I just need to learn how to master it. I need to sleep more. I need to eat more. And besides, I’m feeling much better now. I have the situation under control. I’m fine.
* *
The next night, when I’m supposed to be sleeping (but I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom in the dark, restringing again from scratch), I hear my parents whispering. I can only catch snippets of their conversation, so it sounds like “whisper-whisper-whisper-at least he’s playing again,” “whisper-whisper-whisper-he’s out of bed and that’s all that matters,” “whisper-whisper-whisper-back to school on Monday,” “whisper-whisper-whisper-extra sessions with Yaz.”
When they talk to me, they’re all happy and “isn’t it a beautiful day” and “let’s open the window and get some of this fresh air in here,” even though it’s cloudy and windy and 58 degrees. Mom says she knows for a fact it’s mono, and we don’t have to go to the doctor because she’s a nurse and she’s seen a million cases. It’s not like there’s any treatment. I look up the symptoms online, and it does sound a lot like what I had or maybe still have: headache, extreme fatigue, body aches. It all makes sense on paper. But you can only get mono once. This has happened to me before.
It happened last winter. Isaac Nadelstein was guest-conducting the Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major and I wanted to be the soloist more than anything. As a first-year my chances were awful, but I knew if I could just prove to everyone that I was the best, they’d have no choice but to give it to me. In high school I’d always had to balance violin with math and English and all my other subjects, but Brighton was the first time I could put every ounce of my energy into playing. Brahms’s concerto was all I could think about. At night when I couldn’t sleep I’d write these lists of questions to ask Nadelstein about the piece. Sometimes they were thirty pages long. At first I’d just wait outside Lincoln Center until I saw him, but then one day I couldn’t help myself and followed him home.
Even while I was doing it, I knew I shouldn’t be. But he’s been my idol since I was eight years old, and I figured just knowing where he lived couldn’t hurt. He’s in this amazing high-rise on the Upper West Side, all steel and picture windows. I watched him go into the lobby, and a few minutes later a light on the sixth floor flicked on. So I zeroed in on his apartment and tried to absorb some of his talent through osmosis. I even got it into my head that maybe if he noticed me standing out there, he’d come down and invite me in and we could spend the night eating Thai takeout and talking about the Brahms. I told myself I was going to stand outside for only ten or fifteen minutes — but the reports from the school said it was four hours.
So they forced me to take two months off to rest and talk to some judgy psychologist at New York Medical Center about my “progress.” She told my parents she thought the pressure of being a new student at Brighton had triggered some anxiety. As long as I managed my stress, she deemed me okay to go back to school again. And for a while, I was.
But here’s the part I’d never tell anyone. Even now I still think the whole Nadelstein thing was worth it. Even if it didn’t turn out exactly as I planned, I made a name for myself at school. I went from being another faceless first-year to Ben, the brilliant, temperamental kid who almost got the solo. I thought I understood how to keep things from getting so out of control this time, but I made a mistake somewhere. I just have to be more careful. I haven’t even tried to play Kreutzer again yet. I’m taking it easy, sticking with slow scales. They sound simple, but they’re the best way to listen for raw tone quality, since there’s nothing to hide behind. It’s just me and the violin. But everything about it still sounds wrong.
At our sessions Yaz tells me he can detect a slight wavering in my tone, which he’s never heard before. He says it happens even to the best players. That I’m overthinking. That if I just take deep breaths, maybe start meditating, eventually it will work itself out. I know he’s wrong, though. It has to be the strings.
Mom wants me to stay home and rest on Friday, but my legs are live wires and my arms are lightning bolts, so when she leaves for work I wait fifteen minutes, then throw on a wrinkled undershirt and run to Lincoln Center. I try to slow down, to wait for the light to change before I go tearing across the street, but I can’t. It’s like once my legs start moving they won’t stop. There’s only one speed — prestissimo, prestissimo, prestissimo. They don’t stop when I push through Brighton’s double doors and run across the lobby and past the auditorium and the rows of classrooms and all the way to the back of the building, where there’s a line of glass-enclosed practice rooms. They don’t stop until I hear the first movement of Kreutzer coming from practice room six.
I don’t even have to look to know it’s them. I duck down behind the door and press my ear to the wood. I don’t care who sees me. I have to hear what’s so fucking fantastic about Carter. What he can do that I can’t. Why he’s replacing me. Why he’s stealing my piece, my friends, my life.
The first phrase. The land mine. He comes in like a cloud. Effortless, yet remarkably precise. Claire’s notes sound calm with him. He’s not guiding her. She’s soaring on her own. Something she’d never have been able to do if she were playing with me, the scene stealer, the one who makes everything too complicated.
By the time they reach the end of the first movement, I understand.
The door opens and my shoulder smashes into something hard and cold. I’m on the floor. Carter is staring down at me, with his violin still tucked under his chin.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I say.
“We don’t have to tell Yaz about this.”
“Tell Yaz. I don’t care anymore.”
“We’re worried about you, Ben.”
I turn my head and see Claire on the piano bench in the corner. She doesn’t look worried at all. She looks like she wants me to leave.
I jump up and fix my shirt, trying to be casual and normal, even though I’m sweating and my hip burns. “You sounded off on the first phrase, Carter. Might want to focus a little more right up top. You’re wavering. And at Claire’s entrance —”
He sees right through me.
“Okay, man, thanks.”
I feel Carter’s fingerprints burning into my arms. His hand on my back, on my shoulder.
“Stop touching me.”
“Can we help you get somewhere? Your next class? Robertson’s office?”
“Just stop touching me. Don’t you want to know where I’ve been?”
I’m the only one in the room moving. I’m the only one making a sound.<
br />
“No?” I ask. “No one gives a shit? Well, I’ve had mono, if you care. Horribly contagious. Wouldn’t want you to catch it.”
“I’m sorry, Ben,” Claire says.
But I can tell she’s thinking about last winter.
“You’re not sorry. Neither of you are. I’ll let you get back to your masterpiece.” I shut the door and run back down the hall and past the classrooms and out the double doors and past the fountain and all the way home.
The hours I’ve spent tearing open phrases and reconstructing them in my brain. The days I’ve spent pouring over each note with Yaz. The hours — years — I’ve spent awake. The friends I never had time to make. Everything I’ve given up. It all melts away.
As I run, the sidewalk rumbles. The stoplights snap off. The buses tip over. Every skyscraper in Manhattan collapses. First the Empire State Building, then the Chrysler Building, then the Freedom Tower. As I stumble through the mess and the rubble and the dust, I smile. In Dominique’s eyes, I’m still normal.
Third Movement
Presto
{43}
Dominique
My silk dress swishes against my ankles as I walk, tickling my skin. I glance down at my feet, which look dainty and bohemian and actually kind of beautiful. You know, for feet. I see my reflection in the window of a boutique, and for the first time I look exactly like a girl who should be walking up Park Avenue to meet her boyfriend. I belong. I try to push down the guilty feeling creeping up my stomach and into my chest.
I turn right on Twentieth Street. At the next block I see Ben, leaning against a black gate. Just past him is an explosion of color, a garden full of trees with changing fall leaves and bright yellow bushes and impeccably manicured, brilliant green grass. His hair hangs in his face, and he’s staring at the sidewalk. I wonder what he’s thinking about.
“Hi,” I say, tapping him on the shoulder.
“You’re here,” he says.
He seems relieved. And then he’s hugging me, gripping me hard, pulling me in for a kiss. I can taste his toothpaste and feel the scruff on his chin. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him with stubble. It makes him look older and somehow cuter — if that’s even possible.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words muffled in his jacket. He tells me it’s okay, and that I could have told him the truth from the beginning. And that he’s sorry he didn’t respond sooner. He was so sick he didn’t even check his e-mail. I’m relieved, but deep down I’m also surprised. Why is he so quick to forgive me? I mean, I made up another identity and lied to him for weeks. I’m not sure I’d forgive me. But I’m so relieved and I need this moment so much I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it.
He hugs me harder, like he’s trying to hold on to me. I can feel his breathing, jagged and uneven, and for a second I wonder if something else is wrong. Then he lets go and smiles wide, and I’m too stunned to speak. I push away a piece of hair that’s caught in his eyelashes. He takes a step back and opens his arms in a flourish, reciting a speech I can tell he’s practiced.
“A Train, I’d like to welcome you to your One Perfect Day. We’re starting with the world’s most perfect weather, which I really had nothing to do with, but that just means the universe is working in tandem with us today. Are you ready to begin phase one?”
“Phase one? That sounds like we’re on a construction site.”
At first I think he’s angry, but then he twists his lips into an amused smirk. “Okay, what should we call it?”
“Chapter one.”
“Are you ready for your first chapter, A Train?”
“Never been more ready in my life.”
He holds out a fist, then opens his hand to reveal a small silver key.
“The mayor finally gave you the key to the city?”
“Better. My friend Amy lent me her family’s key to Gramercy Park. Only a couple hundred people in the whole entire city have one of these. Jacob Astor had one. John Steinbeck had one. Julia Roberts has one. And now — for the morning, at least — you and I have one.”
I shield my eyes from the sun as he clicks the key in the lock. The gate opens, and a carpet of colored leaves sprawls before us. It might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can tell Ben feels the same way, because he’s completely still and silent next to me. We have the entire city block, draped in yellow and red and green and orange and pink, all to ourselves.
At first we can’t decide where to sit. We try one empty bench, then think the view might be better from the bench across the tiny paved sidewalk. No, maybe it would be better over by that tall maple tree. Or next to that shrub that looks like a flowering birthday cake.
In the sun it’s warm enough to take off our coats. He drapes his arm around my shoulder and it fits, like it was always meant to be there. Like I was born with his arm wrapped around me, and I’ve had to search my whole life just to get back to it.
“Do you think this is Julia Roberts’s usual spot?” I ask.
“Nah, I think she sits over by the gate so people walking by can see her. I bet this is where John Steinbeck would hide away with his notebook and write about loneliness.” He kisses my head. “Glad it’s not the lonely bench anymore.”
The longer we sit, watching the falling leaves, the more I can see myself fitting here. The real me — my flaws, my past, everything I’m embarrassed about, everything, everything, everything. And I want Ben at the center of it all, making me feel safe and loved and protected.
After what seems like hours of saying nothing at all, he asks, “So are you ready for phase two?”
“Time to lay the cement?”
“Yep, put on your hard hat and let’s go.”
He kisses me, sweet and messy and wonderful. Then he jumps up and races through the garden — I have to run to keep up with him. Billows of flowered silk trail behind me.
* *
He lifts his arm to hail a cab, and one pulls right up. Even though I’ve come to the city so many times in the last few weeks, riding in a cab is the one thing I’ve still never done. It’s somehow glamorous and terrifying at the same time — it’s exactly like you see in movies, except the driver is going about fifteen times faster and doesn’t have any regard for pedestrians, bikers, other drivers or general traffic laws. Ben rests his hand on my leg the whole time.
We pull up to a tiny storefront with a sign that reads Hermanita Ecuadorian Kitchen.
Before I can say anything, Ben grabs my hand and tells me, “One day I’ll really take you to Ecuador, but we’ll have to save that for One Perfect Week.”
I throw my arms around him and don’t let go until a gigantic feast is laid out in front of us: fritada (this really crispy fried pork), humita (kind of like corn tamales) and carne en palito (grilled steak with plantains), and mashed yucca (like sweet and starchy mashed potatoes) and yellow rice and lentils. I even get brave and try a few spoonfuls of tripe, and it isn’t as bad as I expected. Ben tells the waiter I’m half Ecuadorian, so he calls me “hermanita,” which means “little sister,” for the rest of our lunch.
The thing is, though, we keep ordering dish after dish, but Ben isn’t eating much. Maybe a bite here and a bite there, but not enough to justify the amount of food he’s ordering. At first I’m dizzy with the excess, with all the choices. But then I try to remember the last time my mom and I even ate in a restaurant together. I feel terrible that this food will go to waste when we leave. I wonder what Ben would think if I had it all wrapped up and carried it around for the rest of the day. At the last minute I decide not to, but seeing all the barely touched plates of food being carried back to the kitchen makes me feel sick.
He orders morocho, white corn pudding (ugh, more food) for dessert, and now I can feel nervous sweat pricking the back of my neck. This is too much, too big, too fast. But then, as we’re waiting for the pudding to come, Ben takes my hands i
n his, and time stops. I’m drunk from staring into his eyes, and I realize this is the first time we’ve ever eaten a meal together. He clears his throat and I can tell he’s getting ready to recite another speech.
“Dom,” he begins, eyes dancing, energy pulsing through his fingertips. “I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But at this exact second we’re less than a mile away from your dad.”
So that’s what this has been about. I cover my face with my hands and try to control myself.
“I know you’re scared,” he says. “And you don’t want to have a relationship with him, especially if he’s a bad guy. But please. It doesn’t have to be today. I just know it will make you feel better if you’re honest with him. Like you were honest with me. You don’t have to say anything. You could just go to his house, spit in his face and leave. Or stomp on his foot. Or just ask him about his life. Or ask him to help you with some money for college. But show him something real, Dom. Show him how much he missed by not being there. Turn this obstacle into the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
I cover my face with a napkin and try not to totally embarrass myself by bawling in this little restaurant. But I know Ben’s right. In that moment his advice is the greatest thing anyone could ever give me.
Permission to speak up.
Permission to be brave.
Permission to be unstoppable.
{44}
Ben
Chapter three of One Perfect Day: I take Dominique to see a dance recital at Alvin Ailey, her favorite company. The seats are right in the front, and we’re so close we can see the sweat and spit spraying off the dancers. This is nothing like the stuffy ballets my mom used to drag Milo and me to when we were kids. Instead of tutus, the dancers are wearing minimal black shorts, and tube tops that blend in with their skin. Their impossibly muscular bodies contort into even more impossible shapes. I can’t believe these people are even real their bodies are so ripped. Like living sculptures. I think of Dom wearing one of these outfits and I get totally distracted and then I look down at my shirt and I realize I’m sweating almost as much as the dancers are. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, and it feels like it’s seven million miles away, and I’m running, and I fling open the door and splash water on my face, but it doesn’t do much. I stare at myself in the mirror. You have to get it together. Please. You have to.
Someday, Somewhere Page 18