Mountain Solo

by Jeanette Ingold

  It took me a moment to realize what Mom was telling me. "Do you mean I'm not ever going back? That I'm going to homeschool?"

  "That's exactly what I mean."

  But what about my friends? I thought. I didn't ask, because Mom might have asked back, What friends? and I didn't have any particular ones to name for her.

  I considered asking, But what am I going to do all day? only there wasn't any point. Mom had already told me. I'd study and I'd practice.

  Study and practice.

  Practice and practice.

  "Tessie, where are you going?" Mom asked.

  "To the bathroom," I said, bolting from the table. I had to throw up.

  I hung over the toilet bowl gagging while Mom knocked on the locked door "Tessie, are you all right? Tessie, answer me."

  BEGINNING THE DAY I learned I wouldn't be returning to school, I did all my practicing alone in my bedroom. Mom didn't like it, but she let me. Maybe she thought I'd given in all I was going to. Maybe she just figured that even with my bedroom door closed, she'd hear if I stopped working.

  I hated Mom for a while, and I wanted to hate my violin. Resenting it was as close as I could get, though, and even that didn't last.

  Things were different with my violin now that I was working with it alone. I started thinking of it as a friend, and when I'd go to my room each day after lunch, I'd find it waiting for me.

  I didn't hear what Mom said to Dad when he came home from his conferences and learned she'd withdrawn me from school. They took that discussion out of the house. I watched television while they stayed gone for hours and hours. Then late that night, they came into my room and stood at the foot of my bed while I pretended to be asleep.

  Dad whispered, "Don't you ever just want to let her be a kid?"

  "She's not just a kid," Mom answered.

  The next morning Dad asked if the new arrangement was okay with me. "You say the word and we'll get you back in school. And with a different teacher too."

  Mom, scrambling eggs at the stove, said, "We've been over and over this, Stephen."

  "Tessie?" Dad asked.

  I didn't know what I wanted. I felt odd about not going to school, but I didn't really miss it.

  "Tessie?" he repeated. "Don't you want to be with other children? Playing games—soccer or jump rope or whatever kids do now—and having fun?"

  "Nobody jumps rope," I said.

  "You know, you don't have to play your violin just because you can. And you don't have to make it your whole life."

  But it already is, I thought, and didn't answer him.

  Still sounding troubled, Dad said, "Then I guess that's that for now. But remember you can always change your mind."

  He told Mom, "And you remember that the violin case stays closed on Saturdays."

  A sudden smile replaced some of the concern on his face. "Tessie," he said, "what would you think about going on the Thaler payroll? Saturday mornings at the clinic for five bucks an hour It would be a regular job so you'd have to show up."

  "I already show up."

  "This would make things official. And on Saturday afternoons, maybe once in a while you can treat your old man to ice cream, instead of the other way around. Is it a deal?"

  "Deal," I said, relieved to have things settled.

  A few weeks later Mr. Capianelli returned to Missoula to give a Christmas concert, and Mom invited him to dinner I played my violin for him, and he praised how my music had matured. "Although," he said to my parents, "you realize there's a limit to what Tess can do here."

  "What do you mean?" Mom asked.

  "That Montana, no matter how you look at it, is..." He hesitated. "Is a bit provincial. For a serious musician, that is."

  "But you said Tessie's music is maturing."

  "It is, it is. Just not to the extent that it might if she were in, say, New York. There, her opportunities to hear the best, perhaps to play with the best, would be unlimited."

  Mom got a faraway look in her eyes. But she laughed. "I'm afraid that's out of the question," she said. "Tessie is very young."

  "Out of the question," Dad echoed.

  Mr. Capianelli mentioned New York again as he was leaving Standing in the doorway with his overcoat on, he said, "The time to make things happen for Tess is while she is young Wait too long, and it will be too late."

  LATER DAD BUILT a fire in the fireplace. Mom and I poured mugs of hot spiced cider and put on some music.

  Instead of taking their usual two chairs, my parents sat close together on the sofa, and Dad put his arm around Mom. Then Mom said, "Mr. Capianelli certainly surprised me with his talk of New York."

  I tensed up, sure she was going to ruin the nice mood, but she added, "It's unrealistic, of course."

  "It is," Dad said. "And as for hearing good music—how about I stop the CD and you give us some live piano music."

  Mom, who rarely touched the piano anymore, took some coaxing, but then she played well, and Dad and I clapped enthusiastically. "You could go onstage, Mom," I said, teasing, wanting to make her happy.

  Mom returned to the sofa, snuggling back into Dad's arm. "Not at my age," she said. "Talk about too late."

  Her voice took on a musing tone. "Maybe if I'd begun the way you did, but I was in high school before my family even got a piano. Or maybe if I'd had a bit more courage in college ... had at least walked into the music building to find out if I belonged there..."

  She broke off. "Who am I kidding? I could have started learning piano when I was a toddler and I still wouldn't play the way you play your violin, Tessie."

  "Don't sell yourself short," Dad told her "You're a fine pianist."

  "I'm an amateur pianist," Mom answered. "I doubt if I'd ever have been more than that no matter what opportunities I was given."

  She looked down at her hands, so long boned and slim. "It's different with Tessie," she said. "Sometimes I suspect we still don't grasp how much talent she's got. That's why I'm so afraid we'll do something wrong with it."

  "I'm more scared we'll do something wrong with her," Dad answered.

  "Hey!" I interrupted. "Did you two forget I'm here? I've got some ideas."

  Dad and Mom looked startled, but then they laughed. "And what are they?" Dad asked.

  "The first is that we go outside and build a snowman."

  "It's dark out," Dad protested.

  "There's a moon."

  "And it's past your bedtime," he said.

  "My second idea is that I get to stay up an extra hour."

  "I vote with Tessie," Mom said.

  We didn't build a snowman. We built a snow family that we gave pinecone eyes and our hats. They looked happy. Cold but happy, with their stick arms all interlocked.

  January began the arguing months.

  Mom spent her afternoons at the library and on the computer and telephone. At dinner she'd tell us what she'd learned. "The schools in New York ... she'd say, or "As to teachers ... Tessie would have to audition, of course, but..."

  One night she said, "I got in touch with Mr. Capianelli, and he said he'd be delighted to write recommendation letters for Tessie."

  Another night she said, "I know New York is more expensive than Montana, but I could work part-time."

  As Dad was doing more and more often, he looked at Mom as though she'd lost her mind. "Do you know how much our lives would change? Don't you understand that my clinic—our livelihood—is here? And even if I could start up in New York, what about Tess? Do you want her growing up in a place without open spaces? Without trees that don't have 'Keep Off' signs on them?"

  "A place with art museums and concert halls," Mom said.

  "We have those things. And there were reasons we chose to live in Montana and raise Tess here."

  "You chose."

  Then Mom dropped her voice back, like she really wanted to come to an agreement. "Tessie and I could try it out for a few months. And if we ended up staying, we'd still come home summers and Christmases, and you coul
d do your vacations in New York."

  Dad and I stared at her "You can't be serious," he said.

  "Mom, no," I told her.

  JANUARY SLIPPED into February which became March while Mom intensified her arguments and Dad dug in his heels.

  Mostly I stayed out of it, practicing my violin so loudly that I couldn't hear either of them. Also, I practiced because it was one thing I loved to do.

  That and my job at Dad's clinic on Saturdays. I loved doing that, too, and I had a lot of fun deciding how to use the money I earned. I bought CDs and saved toward new hiking boots. A few times I rented ice skates and tried to blend in with the crowd of kids darting about the town rink.

  Then April came, and the arguments ranged further Dad seemed to be struggling to hang on to ground that he was becoming less and less sure of. Mom's California upbringing came into the arguments, and I heard her tell Dad, "Stephen, I've given your precious Montana a try. There's not enough for me here, any more than there is for Tessie."

  I wanted to curl up in my closet, but I didn't. I settled near a door from where I wouldn't miss hearing anything, because I knew more was being discussed than just Montana.

  "Any child belongs with her family," Dad said.

  "I've told you and told you Tessie isn't just any child," Mom said. "Don't you want what's best for her?"

  Later that evening, when Mom and I were alone, she said to me, "Tessie, I just want you to try New York. If you're unhappy, we won't stay. But if you don't give it a try, you'll never know what you could have done there."

  As May went by and then June, it seemed as if every part of my life was being weighed; as if each piece was being put on one side or the other of an old-time balance scale. Dad and the clinic and my home went on one side, along with exploring in the woods and living in the only town I'd ever known.

  On the other side of the scale there was just Mom and my violin and a chance to learn music the way people like Mt Capianelli said I ought to. Just those three, but in the end they seemed to weigh more than everything else.

  Mom called a travel agent and booked one-way tickets to New York.

  Tess

  By late afternoon we've gained enough altitude that we're hiking through a rocky, subalpine terrain of low grasses. There are still trees, but they're not as big as the ones lower down. Amy starts asking, "How much farther?" and Dad answers, "We're almost there."

  Then we reach a place where the trail runs directly below the mountain's highest point, and another twenty minutes of climbing up a narrow, branching path takes us to the rock-strewn top of Stuart Beak. A chain of blue-green lakes stretches off in one direction, and the Missoula valley lies in the other And on all sides, mountains, layers on layers of them, stretch into the distance.

  "Wow!" Amy exclaims, and Meg murmurs, "Oh, my."

  It's so lovely it brings tears to my eyes, the way unexpected music sometimes does! In fact, it doesn't take much effort to imagine music in the wind's sound as it blows across the exposed peak. We pass around binoculars and take pictures until the wind picks up strong enough to make us want our sweatshirts, which we've left with our gear down on the trail.

  "It's time we were making camp, anyway," Dad says without lowering his binoculars. He's looking in the direction where we'll be hiking tomorrow. "Jake Randall and his wife are coming this way. I'd know his neon yellow backpack anywhere."

  "Who's Jake Randall?" I ask.

  "A bird guy—ornithologist—from the university. They left a few days ago to hike the loop we're doing but in the opposite direction." Dad turns to Meg. "I told Jake about the gulch where you hope to locate that old homestead. His wife's a history buff."

  Amy, tagging on my heels as we head down off the peak, says, "I hope those people go someplace else. It's supposed to be just us camping."

  Surprised, I realize I was thinking the same thing.

  WE SET UP on a gentle slope below the ridgeline. Dad takes our water-filter and empty water bottles down to the nearest lake, Meg starts dinner and Amy and I haul out the tents.

  The ground is lumpy with stones and clump grass, but we eventually find two fairly flat spots. And aside from Amy almost poking my eye out before she gets the hang of snapping poles together the tent setup goes pretty smoothly.

  "Done!" I say, admiring Dad and Meg's blue tunnel tent and Amy's and my new green dome.

  Amy, though, gets paper and a pencil from her mom's pack to make a sign for ours: TESS AND AMY'S TENT, PRIVATE! STAY OUT!!

  Laughing, I tell her "That's probably not necessary."

  "We don't want any boys coming in."

  "What boys?"

  "In case," she says, placing the page at the tent door like an unwelcome mat and anchoring it with a stone. "Or anybody. Do you have a boyfriend?"

  "You're not too curious!" I tell her.

  "Well, do you?"

  "Kind of." I don't know, not anymore. "A guy named Ben."

  "Ben that's in the magazine picture?"

  "That's him, the cello player."

  I expect Amy to ask what I meant by "kind o£" but instead she says, "I'm glad he's not a total boyfriend, or else you'd miss him."

  "I do miss him," I tell her.

  WE HAVE SPAGHETTI, all of us eating like we're starved. Then the Randalls walk in and Dad introduces us. When Dad gets to me, Dr Randall says, "The famous violinist."

  After they set up their tents, the Randalls join us again, bringing along marshmallows for the hot chocolate Meg makes.

  We drink it watching the sky change colors where the sun has set. It's going on ten o'clock. That's something I'd forgotten, how long daylight lasts in a Montana summer.

  When the talk turns to Meg's project, Myrna Randall says, "We spent some time exploring the gulch you're interested in. We wanted to surprise you with something helpful, but we didn't see so much as a piece of old barbed wire."

  "I'd be surprised if you had," Meg tells her "The forest covers things up pretty well."

  "I know, but we had hopes. We even climbed up to a rock ledge thinking it would give us a vantage point from where we might spot the outline of something."

  "But you didn't?"

  "The only straight lines we saw were tree trunks."

  Dr. Randall puts his cup down. "I hate to be the one to break this up, but we need to turn in. Myrna and I have to hit the trail early." He pauses before adding, "Stephen, I meant to say that I'm sorry about your owl. Tough news."

  I'm sitting near enough to Dad that I'm aware of him bracing himself as he asks, "What news was that?"

  "Didn't Fish and Wildlife call? Someone found that great horned owl you took care of—"

  "Midnight."

  "—by the side of the highway last week. He apparently got into some poison that killed him."

  "I don't believe you," Amy cries.

  Meg asks, "Are you sure it was Midnight?"

  "They'd have known," Dad says, his voice flat. "His leg band would have ID'd him. Poison..." He shakes his head once, quickly.

  Amy jumps up. "I hate you," she yells at Dt Randall. Then she runs to our tent, and after a moment Meg goes after her.

  I follow Dad to an overlook above the dark chain of lakes and valley.

  "I'm sorry about Midnight," I tell him.

  Dad is quiet a long time, but just when I decide he's not going to answer he says, "I wonder what the point is. Midnight's not the first animal I've patched up only to have it get killed in a world that has less and less space for wild things."

  "You're not thinking about stopping rehab work, are you?"

  "Sometimes I'm tempted."

  "But you've spent all these years learning how to do it," I say. "You can't just not use what you know."

  Dad shoots me an odd look. "I said tempted. No, I won't quit. The successes are too precious."

  This time the silence stretches out even longer until I say, "Amy sounded pretty upset."

  "I know." Dad sighs. "It's harder seeing your kids hurt than it is being h
urt yourself. You ache for them, and you wonder what you could have done differently."

  A little later when we see Meg stirring, he asks, "Ready to go down?"

  "I'll stay up here a bit," I answer.

  I stay a long time, thinking and remembering Wondering if there was anything Dad would do differently for himself.

  I think of the comment his assistant, Janie, made about how Dad's rehab work wasn't what paid the bills. Maybe she was referring to how much it costs to keep me in New York, in my academic school and in music school. Mom's salary doing public relations for a museum doesn't begin to cover it all, but I've never heard Dad complain.

  But would he give up some of his pet-care work if we didn't need all the income it brings in?

  And what Dad said about parents aching for their kids. Was he talking just about Amy, or about me. too? And if it was me, did he mean me now or when I was her age?

  I gaze out over the valley below, wishing I could find answers in its calm. Except of course I know the valley's not really as still as it looks.

  Right this minute bears are roaming down there, raccoons and bobcats are starting rounds of nighttime hunting, deer and elk are bedding down, and beavers are gliding along creeks.

  I can picture the valley a couple of months from now, on a day bright with the glow of a larch yellow autumn. And I can imagine how, after that, it will become a winter white landscape of snow and ice. And each animal will know what it's supposed to do to get through the cold months.

  They won't all make it. Some will freeze or starve, and some will know moments of panic when predators close in. But at least they won't have spent their lives worrying and planning and wondering what they're supposed to do next.

  I DON'T COME down from the overlook until several stars appear Returning to camp, I see Dad and Meg sitting with their arms linked, their heads touching.

  "Good night," I call softly.

  I try not to listen in on their conversation as I go by, but their voices carry. I hear Meg say, "Surely taking care of Midnight can't have been anything but right. All you can do for any creature is give it a chance."