by Deb Caletti
“We’re talking mental anguish. Astronomy doesn’t cause that.”
“What if it did? What if, say, I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t a good comparison. Say you couldn’t get into a school to study it. Say your math skills weren’t good enough. Say you really had to struggle or something. What would you do?”
“Give it up.”
“But you love it.”
“It depends how much I love it versus how much pain,” I said.
“Love is not something that can be measured, Cassie. Sometimes love just is. Sometimes it’s a force with its own reasons. Reasons we don’t necessarily understand, but with a power that is undeniable.”
“You sound like an After School Special.”
Mom sighed. “Fine. Never mind. Sometimes you can cattle rope your heart and sometimes you can’t, is all.”
“Now you sound like a country-western song.”
“I’m shutting up with my motherly wisdom. You’re on your own.”
“He’s giving us all cancer. He’s giving the ficus cancer.”
“I’m going to make him smoke outside,” she said, though we had already agreed about her ability to make him do anything.
“I think he should become a bank manager,” I said.
“Without his music, Dino wouldn’t know who to be.”
Two nights later I went to a school music concert. I usually didn’t go to these things, but Siang had told me that she was doing a solo and hinted around that she’d like me to come. I wanted to do something nice for her after her kindness that day in Dino’s office. Usually once I got home on a cold night, any good plan I made didn’t seem as good as staying inside and warm, especially a plan like listening to classical music, which I got more than enough of anyway.
But I didn’t change my mind—I went out into the cold night and fought the cars jamming the parking lot, and found a seat with Sophie Birnbaum and her parents. Sophie’s little brother played the viola and was in the concert too. His group played first, and Sophie and I grimaced at each other at the squeaky parts and made fun of some of the names in the program, like Harry Chin.
I was having a grand old cultural time when Siang’s group came on. She looked so thin and scared when she walked up to the microphone in her long black skirt and white blouse, her hair straight and shiny black, almost blue, under the lights. I could see her hands shake, and all I could think of was the time Marna Pines puked right on stage during the second-grade play and how no one ever forgot it. Poor Marna would always be remembered as the girl who threw up right during her solo, stopping the show cold until the janitor could come out and deal with the whole matter with his mop and sawdust. Forever after she would be Pukey Pines, or one notch up on the cruelty ladder, Upchuck Woodchuck, due to her slight overbite. I didn’t want anything like that for Siang. Sure, her Dino hero worship drove me nuts, but there was something more than fandom at work in the way she tilted Dino’s painting straight again. Siang was a good person.
The orchestra had a false start, causing some of the audience to snicker. Then the orchestra began again, and Siang came in with a forceful stroke of bow against violin, her chin down, her fingers flying. Jesus, there was Siang with her little Indiana Jones Boy Sidekick voice and her annoying habits, just taking control of the whole situation and kicking the shit out of that violin, which I know isn’t exactly an appropriate musical critique but true anyway. The audience didn’t move. She just had them there right with her. My heart just got all full. I was so proud of her.
After the concert I waited for Siang and told her how great she was. Her parents told me about eight times that it was good to meet me, beaming at me as if I had just given them one of those huge Publisher’s Clearinghouse checks for a million dollars. I found the frosted sugar cookies at the cookie table and brought back one on a napkin for Siang and then headed back outside, feeling satisfied and happy and hopeful, though I’m not exactly sure why. I got out of the school parking lot, and instead of going home, I was overcome with a strange urge, which was to drive down to the ferry terminal, near the little house on the corner where Ian now lived.
Maybe it was Siang’s bravery that made me do it, frail and breakable Siang showing so much power in front of that audience, or maybe what was really knocking around inside my brain was what the metaphysical motorcyclists without motorcycles had been saying about fear. Mom’s voice was there too, I think (although she would not have been happy to be a motivating factor), talking about love as a force with its own reasons. Maybe all three things collided together and formed something new, some philosophical Big Bang in my brain, I don’t know. What I do know is that I parked across the street from Ian’s house. My body was cruising along without my permission—it got right out of the car and walked to the door, and it was only after I knocked that my brain caught up and I realized what the hell I had actually just done. The optimistic energy I’d been infused with after the concert had evaporated instantly, reminding me of my other failed surges of Yes! like the time I decided to redecorate my room with some leftover paint we had in the garage and got as far as the door frame before I realized I was tired, far from finished, making a mess, and running out of orange.
Now I just stood by Ian’s door, looking at this mosquito with its dangly legs all caught up in this spider’s web by their porch light, and thinking a panicky Shit! Oh, shit! I heard footsteps and a dog barking, Rocket, no doubt, and I had the urge to jump into the huge juniper plant, the same way as when we used to play Ding Dong Ditch when we were kids.
The door opened. Ian’s mom stood in the doorway, with Rocket peering around her legs like a shy toddler, and I wished I had something to hand her—one of those peanut butter cookies I was going to stick in my pocket back at the cookie table, a pamphlet about a politician, or a trick-or-treat bag (weeks late, but still).
“Mrs. Waters?”
“Yes?”
She had Ian’s eyes, but they looked different on her, wrinkled at the edges, like they knew things that had made her tired. She was wearing a T-shirt with some metal rock group on it, which surprised me. Golden wings spread out with a skull between them, and pictures of scary-looking guys. She was holding a towel, drying her hands, and I could smell something warm and buttery cooking inside. She opened the screen door and held it open with her foot. Her hair was pulled back, and her forehead was broad and sturdy. Ian’s mother. The one who taught him how to be in the world and who told him to clean his room and to get in the car because they were late.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m …” Okay, real functioning words were required, and if it says anything about my character, the first ones that sprang to mind were a lie. A bad one, too. The name that first popped into my consciousness was not my own but Harriet Chin.“Cassie Morgan. A friend of Ian’s.” I put my hand out for Rocket to sniff. She put her black nose against my palm and licked my fingers.
“Oh!” Ian’s mom said.
“Ian studies with my stepfather, Dino Cavalli.” What a shameless name-dropper I was.
“Cassie. Come in! I’m Janet. Ian’s mom. Ian’s not here, but please. I know this sounds very fifties housewife, but I was just making cookies. I had this incredible craving for fat and sugar.”
I liked her already. Her toenail polish was chipped. And anyone who has a craving for fat and sugar and gives in to it is okay by me. “No, thanks. I better get home. I just stopped by to say hi because I hadn’t seen him in a while. I’m always gone when he’s around lately.” I peered around her, into the house. Ian’s home. It was very sparsely furnished; well, pretty empty, actually. Trés minimalist.
“Well, I’ll tell him you came by. Are you sure about coming in? I gorged on dough, and now there are warm cookies. I’m going to make myself sick if someone doesn’t stop me. Hormonal chocolate frenzy.”
“What is it with that?”
“I have no idea, but I’m worse than the lions with the zebra carcass on Animal Planet.”
“Well, go
od luck. I wish you cold milk and the ability to fit in your jeans tomorrow.”
“Amen. I’ll tell Ian you came by.”
I crossed back over the street, got in the car that had already grown cold. Okay, so his mother was cool, too. I turned the key, just watched the dashboard lights glow for a minute. I looked over at Ian’s house, at the yellow light in the windows, at the lawn growing frosty-tipped in the cold night, sparkly by streetlamp. Small house, with a porch that needed painting, same as his mom’s toenails, and what I guessed was one of Rocket’s tennis balls in the driveway gutter. This didn’t have to be as large as I was making it out to be, or as scary. This was a houseful of normal, faulty people leading normal, faulty lives, and Ian was one of them. I liked the people in his world. And he did not, I realized, hold the secrets of the universe or the power to destroy. He was just himself, with a spirit and a talent who also lied to the dental hygienist about flossing every day, just like the rest of us.
I sat there, and my heart opened up, just a little. Go where you fear, Chuck and Bunny said. Participate. I could hear my heart make room. Maybe, is what it said.
It is one of those Murphy’s Law things that if you have a group project at school, the more important it is to your grade, the more likely you are to get stuck with partners whose safest contribution is to color the map. Even that makes you nervous. The project in question was a report on the economic system of a Pacific Rim country.
Partner number one, Jason Menyard, studied the list of choices. “Let’s do Honduras,” he said. “My parents went there on vacation.”
“Honolulu. They went to Honolulu, you idiot.” Partner number two, Nicole Hower. Nickname, Whore, because if you said her last name fast, this is what it sounded like for one, and for two, because her clothes gave the impression that she wanted to share her boobs with mankind, some goodwill mission like those people who go to third world countries to spread knowledge of how to keep their drinking water clean and improve their educational systems. Jason’s eyes were already so glued to her exposed chest you would have thought a good movie was playing there. Pass the popcorn.
“How do you know?” Jason said to Nicole’s boobs.
“Your parents brought mine back a present. Macadamia nuts. You don’t even know where your own parents went. God,” she said.
“Show some respect,” Jason said. “‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T,’” he sang. “That is what you mean to me. Ooh, just a little bit.’” Jason snapped his fingers.
“Hey, he actually does a good Urethra Franklin,” Nicole said to me.
Right about this time I was working on dual theories: that Nicole’s parents were first cousins, and that Jason’s brain and a jockstrap had much in common. Basically made of holes and not holding anything too important. I was also coming to the quick realization that I’d have to go to the library after school that day, since I’d basically be doing all the work here. This meant I’d miss the chance to see Ian before his lesson. I’d been holding on to that little open feeling, preparing myself to take a step in his direction whether Dino liked it or not, and I was going to do it that day. I, for one, would let Ian decide what was good for him. This glitch in the plan filled me with the low-level annoyance that is actually rageful, crazed fury held in a straitjacket.
At the library I grabbed everything I could on Honduras and bolted out of there. Finally, I headed home. I breathed a grateful sigh of relief when I saw Rocket on the front lawn entertaining a gloriously happy Dog William. Call me a pessimist, but I started having the creeping fear that now that I had finally gotten the courage to make a move, Ian would not be there that day, so I was glad to see that I was wrong. I dropped fifty pounds’ worth of Honduras books on the table and looked in the fridge for something to quench my weight-lifting thirst. I could hear the rumblings of Dino’s voice in his office, intense, making a point.
I closed the fridge door, stepped back into the hall to eavesdrop. I would have put my ear to the door, just like they do in the movies, had it been necessary, but it wasn’t. In fact, Dino’s voice got louder and louder over Ian’s playing.
“Bam, bam, bam. You need to hit it.” I could hear something being smacked against a table, a book maybe. Ian continued to play. “Again,” Dino barked.
Ian stopped, started again. I don’t know what he was playing, something frenzied and fast.
“Bam, bam, bam,” Dino said again. The book cracked against the table three more times. The sound made me flinch. “Don’t you hear me?”
“I’m sorry,” Ian said.
“Don’t stop. Pick it up and do it again. It is forceful. Fast. One-two-three. Not one. Two. Three. You have no command.”
“I’m sorry,” Ian said again.
“What is sorry? Sorry has nothing to do with anything. I don’t give a fuck about sorry. I give a fuck about you doing it right. What is the matter with you?”
“I don’t know,” Ian said.
Something crawled up along my backbone. Shame. I’m not sure why—shame at Dino’s behavior, shame for Ian. I felt sick.
“I thought you were supposed to be such a talent.”
“I’m sorry,” Ian said again.
“Do it again. Show me that what everyone says about you is true, because it is not what I see.”
I held my breath. Prayed that my feet would stay where they were and not burst in to interrupt this cruelty. The prayers were unnecessary, though, if I were telling the truth. I knew I couldn’t go in there. It was nowhere I belonged, and something I didn’t understand.
“Maybe it’s not true,” Ian said. “Maybe I wasn’t born with some gift.”
“Nobody is born with that gift. It’s not about gift. It’s about need. A deep, ugly seed of need,” Dino said. “What is your need, Ian? In what need does greatness lie?”
“I don’t have a need. I play because I choose to.”
Dino laughed. Mocking. “What bullshit.”
“And when I choose not to, I’ll stop.”
“You know that’s a lie. Choice has nothing to do with it. There is no choice.”
“Maybe not for you.”
“Need. Ugly need. You’re no different.”
“How do you know?”
“You have no choice. You must save your mama, Ian. You must save her from despair. That is your need. You are the savior.” What the hell was he talking about?
“You don’t know anything about it,” Ian said. His voice was angry, full of tears.
“I know all about it. Play to save your mama, boy.”
“No.”
“Play! Bam, bam, bam. Play it.”
Silence.
“You think I’m hateful, don’t you? You think I’m a bastard. But you also think I’m right. I know you.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you. Play, God damn it. The need will speak.”
More silence.
“Stupid boy.”
And then, the beginning notes of the song. So tender, you pictured them floating in midair and then breaking in two. The music rose, gathered intensity. I recognized the part they had been practicing. It came, forceful. Building. Bam, bam, bam. I heard it; I knew nothing about this shit, but I heard it. One, two, three—driving into me, hard, so hard.
He stopped then, and the silence was abrupt. The kind of sudden, sharp silence that comes after a slap. And then Dino began to applaud. “Bravo!” he said. “Bravo, boy!”
I stood there, stunned. My heart hurt. My soul and insides felt wrung out, perched on the desire to sob. Oh, how I hated Dino right then. The office door opened and Ian ran from it. His coat was over his arm, and he shoved past me. He slammed out the front door, hard enough to rattle the windows.
Dino came out from the office. He looked at the shut door, shook his head.
“Bastard isn’t the half of it,” I said to him.
“You’re a child,” he said to me. “Silly child.”
Erik Satie, contemporary composer, wouldn’t wash with so
ap, and became so suspiciously obsessed with umbrellas (yep, I said umbrellas) that he had more than two hundred of them when he died. Tchaikovsky, of Nutcracker fame, killed himself with arsenic, and Schumann spent the last years of his life in an asylum. Beethoven was a Peeping Tom. When he was arrested, it is said that he yelled, “You can’t arrest me, for I am the immortal Beethoven!” Police later found that he had spread feces over a wall of his house. Crappy taste in decorating, if you ask me.
And since what happened next happened on Thanksgiving, let me tell you a few food-related wackygenius stories. Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an anorexic, due to her brother’s death and her father’s inability to let his children leave the nest (he disinherited any of them who dared to marry). Lord Byron was a bulimic, dieting and exercising down to the skeletal, and believed that if you ate a cow, you’d endanger the appetite of all cows. Charlotte Brontë basically threw up to death while she was pregnant because she was too whacked out to handle it. Vincent van Gogh ate his own paints. Yum.
Let’s also not forget that more people commit violent crimes on Thanksgiving than on any other day of the year. This is not just by people forced to eat Brussels sprouts, which would make the statistic understandable. Thanksgiving can be torture, and I don’t just mean the times when some well-intentioned person suggests, “Let’s all say something we’re thankful for,” and you want to drop through a hole in the floor. I mean that for some people life is already stressful enough without multiplying human relationships by five or ten or by however many napkin rings you happen to have.
Every year for the past three, my mother and Dino hosted a Thanksgiving party for certain members of the Seattle Symphony board of trustees, high-end givers, major players in the music arena, and Dino’s associates—his manager and agents and anyone from his recording companies and publishers who wanted to travel in for the occasion. I believe that he chose Thanksgiving in the hopes that most people would be with their own families—he’d be able to extend an invitation and get social credit for that, without having to have total follow-through. A good plan, really, but it never ended up that way. A gazillion people answered the formal invitations, mailing back tiny envelopes of RSVP.