Wild Roses

by Deb Caletti

  “Hello, my wonderful mother. How was your day?” she said.

  “That too,” I said.

  “I got off early,” she said. It seemed like a lie, but I let it pass. “What are you two up to?”

  “I was just heading home,” Siang said. “Chemistry test to study for.”

  Mom shuddered. “God, I’m glad I’m done with school.”

  “Then she’s starting a new hobby,” I said.

  “Crafts,” Siang said. I smiled. It was pretty close to a joke.

  “Puff paint. Shrinky Dinks,” I said.

  “Cool,” Mom said. She took a long drink of water. You could usually count on her to make her best effort to one-up your jokes. Obviously she was distracted.

  Siang left, and I went up to my room, turned on a few of my lamps. My head was achy and tired—I’d slept like shit for the past few nights. Dino kept turning down the heat below zero to save money, and in a few days my nose and toes were going to turn black and fall off from frostbite. Far as I knew, Dino had a lot of money, but he was really attached to it. Any time he had to spend any, he acted like he was parting with his cardiovascular system.

  I looked at my homework and it looked back at me, flat and uninspiring, growing to impossible proportions right in front of my eyes. Sometimes a little math and science is as easy as tying your shoes, and other times, it feels like an Everest expedition, requiring hired Sherpas and ropes, oxygen bottles, and crampons, which always seemed like an especially unfortunately named word—a mix between cramps and tampons. I picked up a book of poetry beside my bed instead, thumbed through e.e. cummings, my favorite poet for probably the same reason he was other people’s favorite poet—he chucked grammar and got away with it. It was like thumbing your nose at every one of those tests where you had to underline once the main clause, and underline twice the prepositional phrase. I stank at those. Grammar words were so unlikable—conjunctive, some eye disease you need goopy medicine for; gerund, an uptight British guy Gerund would like his tea now!

  I amused myself with these inane thoughts until I heard Dino’s car pull up. He had a Renault, and it made a particular clacka-clacka-clacka sound so that you always knew it was him (okay, he, for the above-mentioned grammar neurotics, although no one really talks like that). The engine was still on when he came through the front door. Then he went back out again and shut it off. It was entirely possible that he forgot that he’d left the engine running, as this was pure Dino, distracted to the point of barely functioning in the real world. Mom sent him to the store once for dinner rolls for a small party they were giving, and he came back two hours later with a glazed expression and a pack of hot dog buns. Another time, he tried to catch a bus from one part of Seattle to another, and ended up across the lake, calling my mother for rescue from a phone booth. He can play the first page of any major concerto off the top of his head, but doesn’t understand that it’s time to cross the street when you see the sign change to the little walking guy.

  I heard my mother and Dino talking downstairs, which for some reason actually spurred my sudden desire to do my homework after all. We were maybe a month into the school year, and every teacher was beginning to pile homework on as if they had sole responsibility for keeping you busy after school and therefore out of jail and drug-free. My head was really hurting now. I worked for a while, then I heard the crunch of bike wheels down our road. This was not an uncommon sound, as Dino also often rode his bike; we Americans drove our cars too much, he said. Growing up in Italy, it was the only way people got around, he said. It was no wonder Americans had such fat asses, he said. You could often see him pedaling to town and back with a few grocery items in his basket. Yes, he had a basket on his bike. It wasn’t a tacky one with plastic flowers or anything (thank God), but a real metal basket. The whole bike itself, old and quaint and squeaky, looked snitched from some clichéd French postcard, or stolen from some History of Bikes museum.

  The sound of bike wheels on gravel might not have been out of the ordinary, but Dog William (versus Human William) barking crazily at the sound was unusual. I pulled up my blinds and here is what I saw: the curve of our gravel road, and the line of maple trees on each side framing the figure in the center. I saw a boy about my age, in a long black coat, the tails flapping out behind him, with a violin in a black case in a side compartment. I saw a yellow dog running alongside him grinning, his tongue hanging out in a display of dog joy.

  I cannot tell you what that moment did to me. That boy’s face—it just looked so open. It was as if I recognized it, that sense he had—expectation and vulnerability. He looked so hopeful, so full of all of the possibilities of a perfect day where a yellow dog runs beside you. The boy’s black hair was shining in the sun and his hands gripped the handlebars against the unsteadiness of the bike on the dirt road. Are there ever adequate words for this experience? When you are suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of feeling, a knowing, when you are drawn to someone in this way? With the strength of the unavoidable? I don’t know what it was about him and not someone else. I really don’t know, because I’m sure a thousand people could have ridden up that road and I would not be abruptly consumed with a longing that felt less like seeing someone for the first time than it did meeting once more after a long time apart.

  I watched him as he veered into our driveway, causing a snoozing Otis to bolt awake and flee maniacally across the lawn. What was he doing here? He was about my age, but I’d never seen him before. Was this a Dino pilgrimage? A fan wanting his violin signed? He parked his bike, set it on its side on the ground. He said something to his dog, who looked up at him as if they’d just agreed about something. The boy lifted his violin case. He ran his fingertips along it, as if making sure it was okay—a gentle touch, a caring that made me rattle the blind back down and sit on the floor suddenly like the wind had been knocked out of me.

  Here is something you need to know about me. I am not a Hallmark card, ooh-ah romance, Valentine-y love kind of person. My parents’ divorce and my one other experience of love (Adam Peterson, who I really cared about. Okay, I told him I loved him. We hugged, held hands. He told me I was beautiful. He told half the school we had sex.) has knocked the white-lace-veil vision right out of me. Love seems to be something to approach with caution, as if you’d come across a wrapped box in the middle of the street and have no idea what it contains. A bomb, maybe. Or a million dollars. I wasn’t even sure what the meaning of the word was. Love? I loved my telescope. I loved looking out at the depth of the universe and contemplating its whys. But love with someone else, an actual person, was another matter. People got hurt doing that. People cried and wrapped their arms around themselves and rocked with loss. Loving words got turned to fierce, sharp, whip-cracks of anger that left permanent marks. At the least, it disappointed you. At most, it damaged you. No, thank you.

  So I sat down on that floor and grabbed my snow globe, the one that had a bear inside. I have no idea where I got it; it’s just something I’ve always liked and have had forever. Just a single bear in the snow. He used to be anchored to the bottom, but now he just floated aimlessly around, and maybe that’s why I liked him so much. I related. I turned it upside down, let him float and drift as the snow came down, down. Oh shit, I thought. Holy shit. My heart was actually thumping around in some kind of heaving-bosom movie-version of love. I could actually hear it. God, I never even came close to experiencing anything like this for Adam Peterson, and look where that got me. I breathed deeply, but it was like a magnet had been instantly surgically implanted in my body, drawing everything inside of me toward that person out there.

  My headache had hit the road, replaced with some super energy surge. I told myself I was insane and an idiot and a complete embarrassment to my own self. The snow settled down around the bottom of the globe as the poor bear just floated, his head hitting the top of the glass as if in heartfelt but hopeless desire to rise above his limited world. I got back up and peeked out the blinds. The yellow dog sat on the sidewal
k with the most patient expression I’d ever seen on animal or human—just peace and acceptance with his waiting, appreciating the chance to enjoy what might pass his way. The boy had come inside, I guess. And then it finally occurred to me—he’d come inside. True enough, there were voices downstairs. I opened my door a crack, heard Dog William being forcibly removed from the house, his toenails sliding against the wood floor.

  “We’ll work in my study.” Dino.

  “Can I get you or your dog something to drink?” Mom asked.

  “That’d be great—my dog would love some water,” the boy said.

  “What’s his name?” Mom again.

  “He’s a she. Rocket.”

  “Shall we not waste valuable time?” Dino said. You should have heard his tone of voice. That’s what could really piss you off. I sent a silent curse his way, that his tongue would turn black and fall out. I heard my mother fish around in the cupboard, probably for a bowl for the water. My heart was doing a happy leap, prancing around in a meadow of flowers, tra la la, without my permission. His dog’s name was Rocket. I liked astronomy. It was that thing you do when you first fall in love. Where you think you must be soul mates because you each get hungry at lunch time and both blink when a large object is thrown your way.

  I started to put the pieces together. Boy with violin, Dino and his study. Maybe Dino was giving him some kind of lesson. But Dino wasn’t a teacher. First, the best music teachers weren’t necessarily virtuoso players. I knew that. Teachers are usually teachers and players are players. As far as I knew, Dino had never taken a student before. But more importantly, Dino didn’t have the patience instructing would require. He would get irritated when he couldn’t figure out how to turn on the television, for God’s sake. You’d think he of all people could locate a power button.

  I got a little worried for that boy now, alone with Dino in his office. I went downstairs, caught Mom coming back inside from giving Rocket her water. She had little gold dog hairs on her black skirt.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Dino’s taking a student,” she said to me.

  A student. He was going to be Dino’s student. I thought about what this would mean. He’d be coming back. And back again. I swallowed. Wished my jeans were a size smaller. Wished my hair was something other than brown, that I had a better haircut. Shorter, longer. Anything other than medium length. I forced the casual back into my voice. “Why’s he taking a student? He’s not a teacher.”

  “Well, one, because the opportunity came up, and two, the boy needed someone.”

  “Dino’s not exactly patient,” I said.

  “He’s a master. The boy’s lucky to have him. And Dino’s not charging a cent. A friend of Dr. Milton’s set him up.” Dr. Milton was Dino’s psychiatrist. “God, I’m starving. It’s a good thing I’m not home during the day. I’d weigh three hundred pounds.” Mom rooted around in the cupboards.

  Dino teaching for free surprised me. I knew how he glared when I threw away a bread crust. “That’s generous of Dino,” I said.

  “Well, they both get something out of it. Andrew Wilkowski’s got this deal in the works with Dino’s old record company and the Seattle Symphony. He’s got to have three pieces ready to perform for a taped concert to be held in March. He’s got two that he started a long while back, but they need more work. I guess the composing has been torture in the past and he’s only got six months.”

  “So, what, the student helps him?”

  “Aha!” she said, and held up the last Pop-Tart she found. She removed it from the foil, threw away the empty box, and took a bite without bothering to warm it up. “No, the student doesn’t help literally. The lessons just provide a structured environment—another focus, a place he’s got to be. They’re trying to avoid all of this open time spent obsessing about creating and not creating.”

  “Maybe he should pay the student, then.”

  Mom devoured the Pop-Tart like Dog William devours a … well, anything. “Ian needs Dino. That’s his name. Ian Waters. He’s preparing for an audition that’s coming a couple of weeks before Dino’s concert. Sometime in March, too, I think. You know who he really should have? Someone like Ginny Briggs. He’s that good, from what I hear. But you’ve got to mortgage your house to get her.”

  “What’s he auditioning for? The youth symphony?” I asked. It was a hopeful question. If he was that good the answer could be Julliard, which meant he was heading to New York.

  “No. Curtis.”

  “Wow,” I said. My heart sank. It more than sank; it seemed to clutch up and evaporate. The Curtis Institute of Music. Only the best of the best went there. Better than Julliard, lots of people thought. Every student was on full scholarship. He was heading to Philadelphia.

  “Yeah. Ian was asked to perform at the Spoleto Festival in Italy last year. He was only sixteen. You know who else performed there at that age.”

  “Clifford, the Big Red Dog?” I guessed. “No, wait. Donny Osmond.”

  “Very funny,” Mom said.

  “Is it George Jetson?” I’m sorry, but it just always bugged me how everyone was supposed to know Dino’s entire history. Dino composed his first piece of music at twelve. Dino made his first armpit fart on June 12, 1958.

  “Okay. Never mind,” Mom said. “You asked.”

  “No, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry.”

  “Anyway,” Mom said. She paused for a moment, deciding whether to forgive my brattiness. “That’s why he’s taking Ian on. He and his mother moved here when she lost her job. From California. You know that little house by the ferry terminal? Shingles? The one that used to put the sleigh in the yard at Christmas?”

  “And keep it there until spring? Yeah.”

  “They moved in there. Whitney Bell taught him in California. For little or nothing.”

  “He’ll be going to my school.”

  “Kids like that don’t go to school. They have tutors. They learn at home. He’s probably working on his GED now. They get into college early. More time for the music. I think the plan is, he applies in March and if all goes well, he moves to Philadelphia in June.”

  “Lucky,” I said. Nine months. That’s as long as he was going to be here.

  “I don’t know. This prodigy business … look at Dino. The ultimate love-hate relationship with that violin. I hope this teaching really does help. He’ll have to start writing, and he hasn’t picked up his instrument in weeks.”

  “Or his socks,” I said. Lately, whenever Dino arrived in the front door, his shoes and socks would come off immediately. They lay in the entryway like they’d just had a thoroughly exhausting experience.

  “He always went barefoot growing up. It’s hot in Italy.”

  Italy, Italy That was another thing you got sick of hearing about in our house. How much better it was than evil and endlessly annoying America. How Italy had per capita more beautiful and intelligent people than here, how they invented the human brain, how they could take over the world using fettuccine noodles as weapons if they wanted to.

  “Well, I hope Dino’s nice to him,” I said.

  “I know”

  “So that’s why you’re home early”

  “Just keeping an eye on things.”

  It was my personal opinion that my mother didn’t have a relationship as much as she had a babysitting job.

  Mom went upstairs, probably reading my mind and trying to prove me wrong. From the kitchen I couldn’t hear anything coming from Dino’s office. I lingered outside the door for a while, listening to the rumbles of conversation without the definition of actual words, and then I heard the tuning of a violin. I did something I shouldn’t have. I sat down right there with my back against the door so that I could hear better. They discussed music, what piece the boy should begin with, and then he began to play.

  I can tell you that I have heard Dino play many times, and have heard the best of his performances on his recordings. As I’ve said, they send chills down your spine, even for
someone like me who still chuckles when some musician mentions the G string or the A hole. Dino’s playing was a storm thrashing waves against rocks; all of the earth’s emotion jammed into a cloth bag, then suddenly released.

  But Ian Waters’s playing was different. It was tender as that hand brushing the violin case, as open as his face as he rode down that road with the maple trees on either side. There was a clarity, a newness. A hopefulness that made your throat get tight with what could be tears.

  From what I have learned from my mother all of these years, no one pretends to understand musicality, that certain something that a human being brings to the playing of his instrument. A machine can play an instrument, but it is that something of yourself that you bring to it that makes a player really good. That piece of your soul that you reveal as the music comes through you. I know nothing of this personally—I played the tissue paper comb in the kindergarten band—but you can hear it. You may not have words for it, but you can hear it. Maybe feel it is more accurate. There is a communication going on at some ancient and primitive level when music is played from somewhere else other than simply the fingers. This playing—it was his energy and heart rising from the notes. His dreams lifted from the instrument and carried out to where I heard them.

  I don’t even know what he was playing, and that’s not even the important thing to this story anyway. I shut my eyes; it was as if he was painting with sound. I saw tender, vulnerable pictures. I was a child in a village, a child who’d just plucked a tangerine from a tree. Around me were the sounds of a town, Sabbotino Grappa maybe, voices speaking in Italian. I watched other children playing under a fig tree, and because it was so orange and shiny, put my teeth into the tangerine peel before remembering that this is not a good thing to do; it tasted terrible.