by Deb Caletti
“Can’t you make him take his medicine?” I said.
“Oh, sure,” she said. She was right. It was a stupid thing to say. No one could make Dino do anything he didn’t want to.
“I don’t get this. What’s going to happen here? Is he just going to keep getting worse? He’s going to start thinking he’s Jesus?”
She didn’t answer. I guess she didn’t know either. Great. Terrific. What did this mean? “Cassie?” she said finally. “There’s one more thing. I didn’t want to tell you, but you’d probably see the truck.” She was quiet for a moment.
“What?” I meant, What now?
“He cut our cable, too.”
“Are you kidding me? Why?” I didn’t know what to think or feel. None of this seemed real. I guess I felt a little panicked. My voice was high and shrill.
“He said … he said he did it so no one could listen in on his work in progress.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I’ve got a call in to the doctor.”
I felt a gathering in my chest, an on-alert tightness. Then, I knew what I felt. I was afraid.
That day at school, I looked at the people in my classes and thought about how different my yesterday must have been from any of theirs. No one in those rooms would have guessed what happened in my house last night. There was something about it that made me ashamed. And it was big. Too big to hold all by myself, even if it was embarrassing as hell. Zebe is the best listener in the world, even patiently hearing about your dreams in boring detail (And then I turned into a fern. A talking fern, and then I got onto a bus heading to Miami, only it wasn’t really Miami. It looked like the living room, and my second-grade teacher Mr. Bazinski, was wearing a kilt and sitting on an ottoman teaching long division…), so at lunch I tried a little of what happened on her. Not all of it. Just enough so I could handle the rest on my own. She had all of the basic facts—we’d been friends for a couple of years, and she knew my family.
“Dino’s going nuts,” I said.
“What? That cuddly, cutesy-wootsy teddy bear? I think you should write an essay and nominate him for Stepfather of the Year.”
“Don’t even call him that. My mother’s husband. Okay? I don’t even want father in the same sentence as Dino.”
“I noticed you weren’t acting like yourself,” Zebe said. “Here. Have some Cheetos. Nothing like overly orange food to give you comfort. Think about it. Orange sherbert. Orange Jell-O. I’m going to dye my hair orange.”
“Don’t you dare.” Zebe had this long, jet-black hair that was so shiny you could practically see your reflection in it. That day she was wearing fishnet stockings and a plaid skirt. She could wear anything and make it look cool.
“So what’s Senõr Loco done now?” she asked.
“Dino’s paranoid that someone can hear the new stuff he’s writing,” I said. “Through the television cable.” I used my can-you-believe-how-stupid-he-is? voice. It was Zebe and I loved her, but this was as far as I was willing to go. I couldn’t speak about how afraid it had made me. This craziness happening in my family, for God’s sake. People might think it was catching.
Zebe twirled her finger by her head. “Oh, my God, what a freak! My dad got real paranoid when my parents got divorced. He climbed in a window of my mom’s to steal her journals. He was sure she was going to post nasty stuff about him on the Web. She was even going to press charges, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.”
Zebe and I ate Cheetos. I thought about what she said. Really thought about what it must have meant to her. A ladder against a window. Your parent rooting around like an intruder. A police car in front of your house as the neighbors looked on. Maybe I was wrong when I thought no one at my school would believe what had happened to me. I looked around the cafeteria, the rows of tables jammed with people, scattered lunches, noise, crap on the floor. John Jorgenson grabbed some sophomore’s baseball cap and threw it to his friend, and Danielle Rhone was trying to find something she dropped under a table, and three freshmen were huddled together over open books, doing their homework. Reese Lin shoved what looked like a full lunch bag in the garbage, and Todd Fleming brought three small pizza boxes to his table. Angela Aris and James what’s-his-name leaned against the wall, making out. I wondered what went on behind the closed doors of these people’s houses. A mother that drank too much, a father that hit. Parents that fought, or tried unsuccessfully to hide an affair, or who couldn’t leave the house out of fear.
Maybe we all had our secrets.
I walked home alone from school that day, no Siang or Courtney. Zach and I had apparently had a successful operation to separate Siamese twins, at least for the moment. I was coming down our road, trying to ignore the fact that it was Tuesday, the day of Ian Waters’s next lesson, and so of course was consumed by thoughts of nothing else. Please let Dino act normal, I said over and over in my head. Please, please. I had decided under no uncertain terms not to fall for Ian Waters, but I still didn’t want him to think I lived in a nuthouse. Here was the thing—Ian was going to go away to school, and that was that. Letting myself fall for him was only going to lead to pain. I, for one, didn’t need to jump headfirst into some overwhelming feeling that would lead to disaster. I could make a rational decision about where I was going to put my heart, or if I was going to put my heart anywhere at all.
I was what you would call Steeled with Resolve when this old Datsun, a horrible shade of banana yellow, drove up behind me on our road. It stopped in front of our house as I walked up, and this beefy, motorcycle type got out of the passenger’s side, flipping up the seat to let Ian Waters and his violin out of the back. Rocket leaped out after him.
“Hey,” Ian said when he saw me.
God, he had beautiful eyes. Gentle brown. Like deer fur, or those elbow patches on the jackets of college professors. A soft, comforting brown. I’d forgotten what effect the sight of him had on me. Goddamn it.
“Hey,” I said eloquently.
“You’ve got to meet my brother and his best friend. Chuck, this is Cassie. Dino’s daughter.” I didn’t bother to correct him with the real version of our twisted family tree right then, as huge Chuck was holding out this bear paw for me to shake, and the driver of the Datsun, a twin of the other guy, was turning around to see me. “And that’s my brother, Bunny.”
“Howdy,” Bunny gave a wave.
Either Ian or his brother must have been conceived in a petri dish, because they were the unlikeliest brother combo you’d ever seen. Bunny was outfitted in a motorcyclist’s black leather pants and a vest with a T-shirt underneath. He was older than Ian, by maybe seven or eight years. He had a wild bunch of dark brown hair, and was solid as the side of a mountain. You wouldn’t dare point out the fact that he had the name of a cute fluffy animal. He looked like he could kill with his bare hands.
“Be good,” Bunny said as Chuck got in and shut the door. Boy, I’d be good if he said that to me. I’d sit and embroider Bible verses, I’d be so good.
The car pulled away. I saw something that surprised me. They had a bumper sticker: TRUST THE PROCESS.
“We’re twins,” Ian said, and grinned.
“I could tell by your matching outfits,” I said. Rocket had curled up on the lawn. I could hear Dog William whining on the other side of the fence.
“He’s my stepbrother. He moved us out here when my stepfather died. He thinks it’s his personal responsibility to look after us. He comes over and makes, like, six boxes of macaroni and cheese.”
“Wow,” I said. “I like his bumper sticker.”
“Oh, man. Don’t ever get him started on that stuff. I’m serious.” We headed into the house. “Chuck and Bunny are into the whole metaphysical thing. They’ve been friends since they were, like, two. They go around to their motorcycle groups giving talks on The Wisdom of Your Inner Voice.”
“Okay, this time you are kidding.”
“I wish I was.”
“That’s hilarious. Metaphysical motorcyclists.”
“It’s worse. Neither of them has a motorcycle. Jeez.” He shook his head and laughed. Okay, great. Ian Waters was nice, too. Beautiful, talented, nice.
“Shall we get started?” Dino said when we came in. I tried to check him out for any sign of irrational paranoia. His shoes were on. His eyes looked normal. I allowed myself the thought that maybe we’d all overreacted about yesterday. Or maybe Mom got Dino to take his medicine. This super-fast-acting medicine.
Dino grasped Ian’s shoulder and squeezed it in warm greeting. It looked like the lesson was going to go okay, and I went upstairs. After a while I heard the music starting. God, if I could only explain it. You wanted to let it take up residence inside you. Let it flourish there, like a garden of wildflowers. You wanted to possess it, hold it, become a part of it. It wrapped around you like the cape of a wizard, full of magic color.
I wanted it. That music, him. I put my pillow over my head. That boy and his violin scared the crap out of me. My heart was beating so hard it felt like it was trying to make an escape attempt.
An eternity and an hour later, I heard the front door close as Ian left. Mom came home shortly after, and we shouted greetings to each other from different floors, something that never failed to piss off Dino. Soon, dinner smells rose up the stairs.
Dino’s face was tight at the table, stern and rocky. The favorite game of temperamental people is Try to Guess Why I’m Ticked Off. (Contestant number one, Why do YOU think he’s pissed off? Why, I’m not sure, Bob, but I’m going to go with ‘Because I Left the Faucet Dripping. BEEP. I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. The correct answer is: ‘Because You Happen to Exist.’) Even if I’m determined not to play, I get sucked in. My brain just does what it wants anyway, same as when I’m sitting in calculus, wondering if Mr. Firtz could possibly have a sex life, even though the thought is revolting. The brain can be a sicko, out-of-control thing sometimes, and at dinner I started wondering who did what wrong this time. Likely Dino was doing a Mount Rushmore imitation because we’d shouted at each other across the house. I put my money down on that one.
“How did the lesson go?” my mother asked Dino. She seemed more relaxed than she did that morning, in spite of Dino’s obvious attitude. Like me, she was probably relieved to find Dino more “normal” again. Which meant, back to his old asshole-ish self.
“A beautiful lesson with the boy. Except for the fact that he was late. Cassie was entertaining him.”
I never thought Dino was very attractive—if you’ve never seen a picture of him, his nose is chunky and his forehead is broad, and he’s got full lips. He’s pretty short, too, just a little taller than Mom unless she wears heels. His crowning glory was his headful of curly gray-black hair, but it’s like the game you can play with the blond girls at school—imagine them without the hair and there’s not much there. I’m not sure why women liked him so much. But right then, he was downright ugly. That’s the thing with mean people. Eventually their spirit shows through like mold on cheese.
“Entertaining him? I talked to the guy for maybe a minute and a half,” I said. I let the irritation show in my voice. I didn’t care. I plunked a dollop of guacamole on my taco salad, took a forceful bite.
“The lesson started late.”
So that’s what his problem was. In forty years when he got Alzheimer’s, he might forgive me.
“He needs to focus on his music. Nothing else.”
“I said hello. He introduced me to his brother.”
“Sounds harmless to me,” Mom said. “She’s not having a love affair with the guy, Dino. Hello won’t kill his focus.” She speared a tomato.
“This is not some high school boy, Daniella. We are attempting to train a genius. He has no room for kissy face.”
“Darn, and I thought you didn’t see my tongue down his throat,” I said. I got up. Shoved back my chair. I wasn’t hungry anymore. If there is something that can make you as angry as being unjustly accused, tell me. Or being disproportionately accused. You do well in school and you don’t do drugs or have sex, but they get mad at you for not making your bed.
I went outside to the shed, got out my telescope. Swore under my breath at the psycho creep. It was late October and cold out, and I’d wished I’d interrupted my anger by getting a sweatshirt. Too late now. The clouds were doing this manic fleeing, in a hurry to get somewhere, and as they whipped past, they’d reveal these bursts of brilliantly clear sky. I hauled out my equipment and set up in the open grassy patch by the front of the house. It was the perfect viewing place—open sky, the garden ringed with hydrangeas and a view of the sound. The water smelled cold and deep and swampy in the darkness, the smell of thousands of years of whale secrets.
I sprang out the tripod legs of my telescope, swore at the fact that I only wore socks, which were now wet from dewy grass. Hey, cool. Now I could take them off and be a lunatic like Dino. Dog William whined for my company from behind the fence. If I was lucky I’d see Mars in between cloudbursts. It was more work than it seemed, looking through a telescope, as the Earth was continually moving and you had to move along with it. You don’t realize how fast this actually happens, and it’s kind of both creepy and wonderful when you stop to think about it. And it makes you realize there is absolutely no way to avoid change. You can sit there and cross your arms and refuse it, but underneath you, things are still spinning away.
Anyway, the telescope always made me feel better. I could go to a different place and didn’t need chemicals or airfare to do it. I started hunting around for Mars when I heard tires on gravel. Bike tires. Oh, my God, bike tires. It was inky black out there, so all I could see was the white of his T-shirt underneath his black coat until he got closer. Ian Waters put his feet on the ground, balanced his bike with his hands. God, there he was, all of a sudden. Ian Waters.
“Hi,” he said. His breath came out in a puff. That’s how cold it was getting.
“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing here?” I tried to breathe. My heart was doing this charming maraca number.
“Performance tape.” He pulled a cassette from his pocket, lifted it up. “Mr. Cavalli wanted to hear one of my concerts. Can you see anything tonight?”
“Mars.” I was trying to ignore the fact that his presence was charging up the night like an approaching lightning storm. I swear, my insides felt this surge of energy, a hyperawareness. I could smell his shampoo. I tried to breathe deeply. I mean, this was stupid. This was no big deal. I forced myself to sound casual. “Want to look? You’ve got to be quick, before a cloud comes.”
Ian set his bike down on the grass, climbed over it. His coat was apparently a conductor of electricity, because when his sleeve touched my arm as he bent over beside me, I felt a jolt of current. I shivered.
“Cold?” he said, as he looked into the telescope where I had pointed it.
“I’m okay.” Which was a lie. Some cruel person had invaded my body and was squeezing my lungs. I could barely breathe, so I’m not quite sure why I was suddenly worrying about my guacamole breath.
“No way,” he said. “Is that it? Mars?”
“Big white ball? Yeah.” Casual. No big deal.
“That’s amazing. That’s Mars? That’s an actual planet? Man, that’s hard to believe.” He stood straight again. His eyes were shiny and happy. “We’re looking at a planet.”
“I know it. That’s how I feel about it too.”
“I’ve never seen inside a telescope before.”
“Never?”
“No. You know, this is my usual method.” He leaned his head back, looked up. “Wow. This isn’t bad either.”
He was right. I looked up with him and saw that the sky was showing off. The clouds had moved aside for a moment, and the blackness was deep, deep. The stars were both simple and magical, thousands of pinpoints of light. It was one of those moments you wonder how we could ever forget what was up there. There is that majesty, you are overcome by the wonder, and then the next day you’re worrying about your math homework.
/> We just stared up there for a while, and then Ian sat down on the grass, on the tails of his coat. It occurred to me briefly to worry that Dino might see us, and about the trouble I’d be in then. I sat down on the grass beside Ian. Right there next to him, and I started imagining his arms around me. Eight months, I reminded myself. Eight months and he’d be gone and not looking back. I remembered how much it had hurt when I broke up with that asshole Adam Peterson, even when that had been my choice and he was a creep. I remembered my father’s arm through the glass of his car when his heart was destroyed. I leaned down on my elbows. “This is the best way to see the stars this time of year, anyway,” I said. “The telescope gets impossible. Shaky images. The atmosphere is more …” I looked for the word. Moved my hand in the air.
“Unstable?” he guessed.
“Turbulent.”
I was sitting very close to him and he looked over at me, laid down on his side and propped on one elbow. He looked at me and I looked back, and he held my eyes for a while. I looked deeply inside of him, and he saw me, too. Something passed between us right then. Some force, some connection, and, God, I wanted it so badly, him seeing me that way, me seeing him. I wanted more and more and more of it. I granted myself a concession. Friends. That’s what I would do. I’d be Ian Waters’s friend, and I could still have some piece of this without getting my heart broken. I could do that. I was in charge of my feelings; they weren’t in charge of me.
Ian looked away from me, back toward the sky. “Wow,” he said. He shook his head. Stood up. “Whew.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’ve got to go.”
“Okay.”
He went to his bike, set it upright again. “You know, I’m jealous. You here, doing what you love.”
“You do what you love,” I said.
“I don’t love the violin,” he said.
“You’re kidding.”
“Sometimes I hate it.”
“You do?”
“It runs my whole life. Then I try to remember that I’m lucky to have a talent for it.”