by Noah Bly
I smile back at him and wave him toward a seat at the table. “I’m told that some primitives don’t put tea in their hot toddies, but I prefer not to associate with people of that ilk.” I bring him his mug and set it in front of him. “Let this cool a mite before you drink it.”
I settle across from him with my own mug, and we sit in silence for a while. I decide to not speak first; if he wants to talk about what happened to him earlier tonight, he will.
He sips at his drink and stares at the table. The grin he dredged up a moment ago is gone again, replaced by a bone-deep misery that declares itself in the slackness of his chin and the corners of his mouth. The seconds tick by and the house is so quiet it feels as if it’s holding its breath, waiting to hear what he has to say. The furnace is temporarily off and the air in the room is cool and light, and I can feel a draught pass through my hair, like a ghostly finger.
He clears his throat and raises his eyes to my face. “Did you ever do anything horrible, Hester?” His hands tremble a little as they cup the mug in front of him. “I mean, like something so bad you can’t even believe you did it?”
In an instant, Jeremy is in my mind, standing on the roof in the cold.
I close my eyes, then force myself to open them again. “Of course I have, child.” I lick my dry lips. “But so has almost everybody, I’d imagine.” I pause. “Why do you ask?”
He begins to shake. The quiver starts in his shoulders and works its way down his entire back as his eyes spill tears on his cheeks. “I did something bad tonight, Hester. Really, really bad.” He releases his mug and puts his face in his hands. When he speaks again I can barely understand him. “It’s not the first time, either.”
I gaze at the crown of his head. With his hair wet like this I can see a line of his scalp, pale and vulnerable under the dark red mass. He seems disinclined to continue, so I try to ease his way.
“You did something with Eric you regret?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah.” He swallows several times and fights to control his breathing. “We got wasted in his dorm room, and he passed out on his bed. And then …” he drops his hands and stares into my face, “… and then I started to do stuff to him while he was blacked out.”
His eyes are red and bleak, and his normally attractive face is knotted with anguish. “I unzipped his pants and started, you know, started to …” The rest of his sentence is utterly lost, mangled by sobs.
I sigh. “And I take it he woke up?”
Another nod. “Yeah.” He wipes his runny nose on his short sleeve. “He opened his eyes all of a sudden and completely lost it when he saw what I was doing. Like he went fucking nuts, and started beating the shit out of me.” He dissolves in another spate of tears. “All I wanted was to be close to him. That’s all. I didn’t mean anything bad.”
I reach across the table and squeeze his thin wrist. “I know, dear.”
And I do know. I really do.
He’s looking at me skeptically, as if he’s expecting censure rather than consolation. On some level he probably even wants to be punished, as a way to atone for his perceived “sin.”
But I can’t help him with that.
I’ve done so many things in my life I’m not proud of, and would take back in an heartbeat if I could. Drunken indiscretions not so different than his (including a botched attempt to seduce another pianist at his own engagement party when I was seventeen), and harsh words and deeds aimed at family and friends and colleagues, and harmful, ugly actions reserved for total strangers and the world in general.
Witness my behavior at yesterday’s reception, for example.
So if he’s seeking condemnation tonight for being young, lustful and foolish, he’s come to the wrong place.
I lean forward and search his eyes. “As such things are measured, Alex, what you did this evening doesn’t sound so terrible.”
He shakes his head violently and pulls away from my grip. “You don’t understand,” he blurts. “Didn’t you hear what I said? This wasn’t the first time! I did it the other night, too, only he didn’t wake up then because I didn’t go as far.”
I twine my hands around my mug for warmth. “Even so, I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, don’t you?”
“Am I?” He laughs, and it’s a dreadful sound. “What if I told you that I did the exact same thing last semester with another guy, in my hometown, too? And that time it got so bad the guy woke up my whole family screaming for help, because I was bigger than he was and he couldn’t make me stop by himself?”
I flinch a little without meaning to, and he sees it and closes his eyes. When he opens them and speaks again, his voice is dripping with self-laceration.
“His name was Wei-shan. He was a Chinese exchange student at Buckland.” He sees the question on my face and halts to give me an impatient explanation. “Buckland’s the college in my hometown. My mom works there.”
Ah. So that’s where he attended school before transferring to Pritchard this term. I know next to nothing of Buckland, other than it being a small liberal arts college somewhere in Iowa.
“Anyway, Wes—that’s what everybody called Wei-shan—came to stay with me and my family at Thanksgiving, because the dorms were closed,” he continues. “He had to share my bed since it’s a small house, and we were drunk and stoned and one thing led to another, and I thought he was into it, too, but he wasn’t and then things got so fucked up I can’t even begin to describe it.”
But he does.
He tells me about the Chinese boy bucking beneath him and bellowing in panic as Alex attempted to cover his mouth and calm him down. He tells me how he, Alex, realized at the last moment that Wei-shan wasn’t just “wrestling” with him as he’d first thought, and he was trying to defuse the situation when his parents and his two younger sisters barged into the bedroom and saw both boys naked on the bed, with Alex pinning the smaller, struggling, and nearly incoherent Wei-shan beneath him. He tells me how his parents—conservative Lutherans—gave him no opportunity to explain what was happening, and instead threw him out into the night with nothing but a backpack full of clothes and toiletries. And he tells me of arranging a transfer to Pritchard over Christmas vacation, and how he somehow managed to cobble together enough loans and grants and scholarships to cover his tuition and living expenses, after his parents withdrew all financial support.
I listen to him until the flood of words becomes a trickle and finally dries up, and then I watch him drink his hot toddy and wait for me to say something.
I clear my throat at last. “I see.” I sip my drink. “So you’ve had no contact with your family since Thanksgiving?”
He blinks, apparently anticipating a different response. “None. They told me they never want to see me again.” He searches my face for some sign as to what I’m thinking. “So I guess you must think I’m a piece of shit?”
I shake my head. “Not at all. I don’t believe for a moment you intended harm to either of those boys, or that you would have continued to try to force yourself upon them once it became clear to you what their wishes were.”
His eyes are a wasteland. “You weren’t there, Hester. You didn’t see what I was like.” He stares at the wall. “I may have stopped tonight if Eric had asked me nicely instead of punching me in the face, but I’m not sure at all about that. And even though I was going to let go of Wei-shan when I finally figured out he wasn’t playing, I sure as hell didn’t let myself see how upset he was getting until he was a complete basket case.”
His head swings back around and he pierces me with his gaze. “I’m a fucking asshole, Hester. A sick fucking asshole.” Once again, his face crumbles, like a sand castle. “I don’t think I can live with myself after this.”
The desolation in his voice is the twin of what I’ve been feeling for years. I can’t help but wonder if mine is as obvious.
“Yes, you can.” I take several calming breaths. “You can live with anything, if you have to.”
And wi
thout intending it, I begin to tell him about Jeremy.
CHAPTER 12
When Jeremy finished his undergraduate degree at Curtis he was only twenty years old, but by then he’d already been a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra for two years, and had won four young artist concerto competitions around the country. He was also a featured soloist with the Boston Symphony at Tangle-wood in the summer between his junior and senior years, and had released an album of chamber music, in collaboration with some of the top names in the business. The New York Times had referred to him as “a magnificent, prodigiously gifted musician,” and the Los Angeles Times dubbed him “the finest young classical artist to emerge in the United States, bar none, in the last decade.” Elijah Jenkins (that crotchety old tosspot at the New Yorker) even went so far as to joke, “Scoff if you must, but it seems plain to me that wunderkind Jeremy Donovan has made a bargain with Satan. Granted, his sterling musical pedigree accounts for much of his vaunted prowess on the French horn, but not even a child of Arthur Donovan and Hester Parker can do such impossible things without supernatural assistance.”
I mention all this not only as a gloating mother, but also by way of explanation for why Carson Conservatory was so eager to offer him a faculty position immediately following his graduation, in spite of his age and lack of an advanced degree. Arthur and I didn’t even have to pull any strings for him; the instant Jeremy received his diploma he was contacted, without our knowledge, by Bonnie Norton, who somehow wooed him back to Carson, even though he was receiving teaching offers from all over the world. (Nor was teaching his only option; he could easily have walked into any of half a dozen major symphony positions available at the time, in cities as diverse and appealing as San Francisco or London.) I know for a fact he was offered a tenure track position at no less than three major universities.
But he chose to return home instead.
Until the moment he called to tell us the news, I had been certain Jeremy would be our one child to leave the nest forever, and nothing could have astonished me more than to hear he was taking the job at Carson, and would be home by the end of the week.
I stared at the phone receiver for a moment, dumbfounded.
“Why in God’s name would you do such a thing?” I barked. “Did you injure your head?”
“I’m fine, Mother.” He laughed. “Believe it or not, I thought you’d be happy to have me home again.”
“That’s not the point, and you know it.” I put my hand over the mouthpiece to talk to Arthur, who had just walked into the room. “Jeremy says Bonnie offered him a job, and the glue-sniffing idiot is actually going to take it. Can you believe the stupidity?”
Arthur crowed. “That’s fantastic!” He tried to seize the phone, and failing that, contented himself with bellowing so Jeremy could hear him. “Hurry home, son!”
“Oh, hush, Arthur.” I spoke to Jeremy again. “Pay no attention to the dimwit in the background. All I’m saying is you should take a while and spread your wings. Go do something exciting before you settle down.”
“Like what?” Jeremy giggled. “Join the Hare Krishnas? Become a ninja?”
He loved getting my goat.
“Don’t be difficult.” I paused. “I only want what’s best for you, son. You have the opportunity right now to build a wonderful life. There’s nothing for you in Bolton that can possibly equal what you’ll get elsewhere.”
He grunted. “Nothing except a great job at one of the top music schools in the country. Nothing except my home and my entire family, including my wonderfully supportive mother. Nothing except easy access to Chicago and St. Louis and anywhere else on the planet I want to go, by plane.” He hesitated. “Come on, Hester. Why all the resistance? What’s going on?”
All my children called me by my first name when they were irritated with me. It was as if they were too ashamed at those moments to claim me as their mother.
“I just want you to stop and think a little bit.” I played with the phone cord. “I was forced to abandon my solo career when I was only slightly older than you are now, and I can’t tell you how much I missed it when it was gone.” I turned my back on Arthur, so he couldn’t see my face. “I’m afraid if you move home this soon after college, you’ll become like Paul, and settle for less than you should.”
Paul, too, had been hired at Carson a year before, after earning his master’s degree, and had since made it clear he had no intention of leaving for the rest of his life. (In his case, Arthur and I had pulled strings to get him the job; unlike his younger brother, Paul had no claim to fame aside from having “Donovan” as a last name. Not that he didn’t deserve the position, mind you—he was, and is, one of the finest cellists in America—but without our assistance, Carson would have overlooked him for somebody with a more established reputation.) I had, of course, argued with him, too, about staying in Bolton, but given his deep-seated phobia regarding the outside world—and his likely inability to survive elsewhere—my resistance was only halfhearted.
But Jeremy had no such handicap.
Jeremy snorted. “Don’t be dumb. I love Paul, but I’ve never been like him. Why should I start now?”
“I’m just saying that teaching may end up sapping the energy you need to sustain your soloist aspirations.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” I could hear him grinding his teeth. “The only thing that ever saps my energy is talking to you.” He took a deep breath. “Dad tours six months a year, every year, and teaching at Carson hasn’t slowed him down at all. Why should it be any different for me?”
I didn’t answer and after a moment amusement crept back into his voice. “And by the way, I’m beginning to understand why Dad enjoys leaving home so much.”
I glared at the phone. “That’s very droll, Jeremy. When your music career collapses perhaps you can earn a living as a court jester. I can hardly wait to see you in your pointy slippers and your codpiece.” I sighed. “Fine. Move back to Bolton, then. See if I care when the entire world forgets who you are.”
He was unfazed, of course. “There’s my optimistic girl,” he said brightly. “Always so gracious in defeat.” His tone mellowed. “I’ll be fine, Mother. I promise.”
When he was sweet, I had no defense against him.
“You better be,” I whispered. “You don’t get a second chance at life.”
“Are you sure?” He laughed again, breaking the mood. “I forgot to mention I’ve become a Jehovah’s Witness, and I get to come back and live happily ever after, no matter what. It’s a hell of a deal, don’t you think?” There was a predictable beat of silence. “Incidentally, do you have room for a few dozen boxes of pamphlets in your basement?”
I hung up on him, fuming.
He called back within seconds. “Lighten up, would you? I’ll be home in a few days, and I’ll let you lecture me for as long as you want. Think how much fun you’ll have.” There was another pause. “Oh, yeah. I also forgot to tell you earlier how much I love you.”
He hung up before I could answer, and I listened to the dial tone for a long time afterwards.
So for a while all the Donovans were living in the same house again. (When Jeremy returned to Bolton, Caitlin was beginning college at Northwestern, but she still came home “to visit” virtually every weekend.) And no, it wasn’t all picnics and parties and happy gatherings at the holidays, but for the first year or so it was peaceful enough, even pleasant. We had many common interests, and there was always good music-making to be had, and company when you wanted it, and more often than not some kind of stimulating argument going on.
Paul stayed in the attic apartment, and Jeremy and Caitlin slept in their rooms on the second floor, across the hall from Arthur and me. That kind of proximity between five prima donnas may seem like a recipe for open warfare, but Arthur was touring a great deal that year, and as Jeremy began receiving invitations to perform elsewhere, he, too (as promised), was soon spending much of his time on the road. In addition to that, Caitlin was in Chica
go five days a week, and Paul and I were both in demand at Carson, so with all these comings and goings, it was a crapshoot who would be home on any given night, and privacy, when needed, was usually not hard to come by—especially in a house the size of ours.
The brawls that did break out were mostly between the children, although Arthur and I seldom managed to stay out of the fray when a heated “discussion” was going on. Nine times out of ten, Paul was the instigator of the feud, but Caitlin, too, could never resist being part of a good bloodbath; the two of them thrived on confrontation, especially when the other was involved.
And then there was Jeremy.
Since his return to Bolton, Jeremy had, surprisingly, taken on the role of peacekeeper in the family, but now and then he’d wake in a wretched mood and pick a fight with Paul or Caitlin, for no other purpose than to rile them up. The mean streak he’d evinced as a child almost never surfaced as an adult—thankfully—but when it did, the tension level in the house ratcheted up several notches.
I remember a battle royal, particularly, that Jeremy caused in this fashion, and it happened to be on one of those rare occasions when all five of us were home. Caitlin and I were in the kitchen on a Saturday morning having a quiet breakfast, and both of us looked up when Jeremy appeared in the doorway, with rumpled hair and a black frown.
“Good morning,” I said. “Would you like some tea?”
He shook his head and wandered over to the refrigerator to hunt for his breakfast. He was barefoot and bare chested, and had on a pair of jeans. He was awfully thin; his ribs stuck out and he looked as if a lapdog could knock him down. When he walked by the table I smelled cigarette smoke oozing from his pores.
Both he and Paul smoked far more than was good for them. I didn’t allow them to smoke in the house, so when they were home they went outside dozens of times a day, no matter what the weather, to stand beside St. Booger and get their fix.
Caitlin smelled the smoke, too; her nose wrinkled up. “What’s your new cologne called? Eau de Ashtray?”