I am definitely gaping because he laughs now. A laugh that instantly makes me feel warm all over, negating the air-conditioning, and I don’t even mind. “You have to see it. Like, you know it’s fake, and that’s the whole point. It’s Ciano’s way of commenting on filmmaking and life in general.”
“What’s his comment, exactly?” I ask.
“I’d say art, how to tell stories.” He says it so seriously, so pensively, that now even my ears are warm. As if he is telling me a secret, whispering it inside them. “Will you try one?”
“Okay,” I say. Then quickly add, “Maybe not for my mom, though. I thought, er, Le coeur est une montagne looked good.”
My face heats even more at my abysmal French.
“Ah, oui,” the boy says, grinning at me as he reaches down to pick up a DVD case. His oui, which sounds like a New England boy speaking French (and by that I mean it is almost as bad as my attempt), makes me feel better. “I’d start with this one—The Sea in the Garden.” He is back to being serious, and I realize that this boy does not play around with his slasher movies.
“I’m here all week,” he says a few minutes later, when he’s checking out my movies. “I want to hear what you think.”
“Okay.” It occurs to me then that I might hate his recommendations, really hate them, and then what will I say?
“If I’m ever not out front, I’m most likely in the breakroom, so just ask for Zach.”
Zach. It suits him somehow, an energetic, slasher-loving boy.
“Thanks,” I say.
“No problem, Miss Sullivan,” he says, bringing up my mom’s profile on the computer.
“Addie,” I correct.
“Addie.” He is trying my name out, too, seeing if it fits me, fits my big, easily tangled black hair and the way I carry myself, except he is doing it out loud. He must’ve decided it does, because he grins at me one more time.
A bright, radiant smile that makes stepping outside and back into the heat wave on a cloudless summer day in Lyndale seem like stepping into the cool shade. I see spots as I get on my bike.
That night I watch The Sea in the Garden on my computer, just so I can come back the next day.
BEFORE
Early July
“Addie!” Zach exclaims when I walk into the movie store. He’s beaming as if I am an old friend. As I get closer to the counter, though, his expression turns serious. “What’s the verdict?”
“Horrible. Really, really horrible,” I say, watching as his face falls.
“Really?” he asks quietly, disappointed.
“He nearly married his sister!” I say dramatically, and understanding lights up Zach’s face.
“You’re talking about Le pontagne!” There is visible relief in his face, and a smile crawls across it.
“Le something montagne,” I say, glancing at the DVD case in my hand. “Le something shitagne. Though my mom loved it.”
Zach laughs now, and even though it seems like something he does easily, I feel proud. He slides the movies from me and puts his elbows on the counter, leaning forward. “So the real verdict? I promise I won’t mind. You can tell me if you hated it.”
I can’t. Not with his dancing eyes and his lips tilted up in a half smile, on their mark, ready to full-on sprint into a grin.
“It was good,” I say carefully. “Kind of confusing.”
Zach watches me, nodding slowly.
“Like, I just didn’t get what made the guy snap when he’d been so normal the whole movie.”
He nods again, squinting to take in what I am saying.
“And it was fake. Really, really fake.” He is fully smiling now. “I think I saw the ketchup bottle in the corner of the screen once.”
“I know!” Zach laughs, elated. “It’s fucking fantastic.”
His laugh is contagious and I laugh, too. There is a ding then as a customer, a middle-aged woman wearing a high ponytail and gym shorts, comes in to return a pile of DVDs.
“So what else do you have?” I ask. I didn’t lie to Zach. The movie was good. Weird, but good. And different. More importantly, it gave me an excuse to come back here today.
“I could tell just from looking at you that you’d appreciate it,” he says as we walk to the Horror section.
What does that mean? “I look like a slasher chick?” I joke.
His eyes take in all of me, and his cheeks redden the slightest bit. “Just, you know, someone who would understand.”
I don’t know what it means, but I like that answer.
I follow him to the checkout, and someone who looks like a carbon copy of Zach in thirty years comes out to join us. He is just as tall, his hair a reddish brown and thin on top.
“Oh, damn, I’m so sorry,” the man says, addressing me. “He’s pushing Ciano on you?”
“He’s not pushing,” I say at the same time Zach says, “She likes it, Dad.”
The man—Zach’s dad—raises both hands in surrender. “It’s an acquired taste. But at least he’s giving you one DVD at a time, not the whole collection.” He turns to his son. “You could do that, you know. They’re not exactly in high demand.”
Zach keeps his eyes on the computer when he says, “I want to hear what she thinks of each one.”
“Oh,” is all his father says.
Oh, is all I can think as Zach hands me the DVD, signature smile in place. And then I am stumbling out the door, heart fluttering a little bit. I’m trying to figure out how other girls manage to mount bikes while wearing a skirt, praying he isn’t watching me.
Hoping he is.
AFTER
January
Since he’s just gotten back from his trip—and I guess he wanted to see me after he heard about the bus crash—I spend Tuesday night at my dad’s, even though I rarely see him on weekdays.
My father lives in a tiny apartment, in the busiest part of downtown Lyndale. He isn’t in it often, but even when he’s home, when he’s not flying, it’s not my favorite place in the world. I love my dad, but I feel like we exist on separate islands. Like with my brother, whenever we are in a room together, it’s as if there’s this enormous gulf, a wedge between us that nothing can fill.
The sad thing is, I remember that my dad was my favorite person in the world when I was a kid. I remember him hoisting me into the air, letting me walk with my feet on top of his in the grocery store, teaching me to ride a bike in the driveway of our old house on the east side of town. He bought me my first viola. He called me Sunshine, in what remains of his lilting Caribbean accent, because he said I lit up every room I walked into. And I didn’t walk, I burst into every room, according to him.
Some days when I’ve broken through on a piece I’m learning, the melody still thrumming through the tips of my fingers like an electric shock, and I feel so happy I could dance, I want nothing more than for him to see my face. To be the bubbly kid he remembers, and for him to be the dad I remember. For us to recognize each other the way you catch sight of your reflection in paneled glass. Even for a second.
“You know Dad can fly, right?” Caleb would tell me when we were really little, tricking me into thinking it was true in the literal sense. Superman-type flying with a cape and the forehead curl and the whole shebang. “Duh,” I would say in whatever way four-year-olds do. Then my dad would get home from his trips and put me on his shoulders, and I always felt so high up that every time he lifted his foot, it seemed like we were teetering, picking up air.
All my memories until about twelve—right around when my parents separated—are like that, and then suddenly they are distant and different and tinged with this sadness, an uncertainty I can’t explain. There’s just a trace of it in every memory with my dad, like the aftertaste of something bitter you’ve eaten, and I’m only really sure he loves me because I remember he once did.
Dad is different with Caleb. Less distant. But maybe it’s because Caleb is older; maybe fathers and sons are just different. Sometimes I think my parents’ divor
ce split us right in half: my mother and me on one side, Caleb and Dad on the other.
My parents met at a dinner party when Mom was doing the weather for radio. Dad used to listen to the six-thirty forecast before he went up, back when he was a training pilot, and he claims he fell in love with her voice. Her calm, matter-of-fact voice, which would inch up just a little bit when there was bad news. A storm, a tornado warning, bad weather for the Fourth.
When someone introduced them, Dad exclaimed, “You’re Sandy Fairweather!”
“Sandy Houston,” she’d said, trying not to let on that she was pleased at the recognition.
“I didn’t mind bad news if your voice was the one giving it,” I remember my dad telling her as they recounted the story for the billionth time, before everything changed.
Before Dad stopped coming home and then got his own place on the far side of town.
Still, I sometimes catch him watching Mom’s report.
Dad’s apartment is eternally stuffy because every now and then he’ll get a new piece of furniture that he won’t be home to use, so the space keeps getting more cramped, the stale scent of new leather and abandoned air mixing together to form something arid and claustrophobic. When it gets bad enough for him to notice, he’ll fling open all the windows and the door that leads out to the balcony, and the apartment will sound like squealing brakes, drunk couples fighting, and too-loud ambulances for the whole weekend I’m around.
I think the worst part is that the apartments are so close together, the walls so paper-thin, that I am not allowed to practice here. We’ll watch TV on opposite ends of the new leather couch he’s just gotten, and every couple of hours, he’ll pause the show to ask if I’ve seen the new lamp he bought or a new stool for the kitchen, and I’ll say no even if I have.
Tonight we’re watching hours of home renovation shows he’s taped, eating Thai food out of Styrofoam containers.
“Are you sure your mother isn’t using it?” Dad’s question jolts me out of a trance, and I glance at him, confused.
“Addie?” I can tell from his frown that I have a glazed expression on my face, and I try to blink it away.
“Sorry. What were you saying?”
“I was asking about Grandpa’s clock that we used to have at home. I thought it might add a nice touch to the living room. Caleb said it was in the attic somewhere—that your mother wasn’t using it?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say unhelpfully. “I’ll look for it when I get home.”
Today has been the worst day yet since the accident. I’m not in pain, but I feel like I can’t concentrate on anything. Probably because the last really peaceful sleep I got was on the bus before it crashed. Katy is at her wit’s end with me.
I’ve been tempted to mention it to my mom, but I know she’d just freak out and send me to the ER. And Dad—well, I’m not really used to coming to him when I need help. And what exactly is my issue—that I’ve been distracted and forgetful for three days?
I shake my head when Dad pauses the show again to ask if I’ve seen the new kitchen mat.
He likes the tour more than I do, the act of convincing himself his apartment is just as full as our house used to be. Or maybe it just gives us something to say to each other. Sometimes, watching TV on the couch, I’ll pull out my bow and just hold it or swipe it against the air to threaten away the sadness.
“Did you look for the exits when you got on the bus?” Dad asks out of nowhere. It’s the first thing he’s asked me about the accident since I got here after school today.
“Yeah, I always do,” I say. For a pilot, my father has no faith in planes. He hates for any of us to fly. Years ago, before the divorce, the four of us went on vacation to visit Dad’s extended family in St. Vincent—or Vincy, as he calls it. He grew up in the States, and his parents died here when I was little, but Dad always goes back every few years, and this was one of the few times we were going with him. Dad had the three of us in a semicircle at the airport, his Hawaiian shirt odd and ill-fitting on him. I remember I’d been hopping around singing every song I knew that mentioned the beach or islands or the sun. Dad looked each of us square in the face and said, “Always assume the plane is going down.”
It was the last trip we took as a family.
But his warning worked, because none of us will enter a plane or bus or train without knowing where the exits are.
“Your mom says all the colleges you ended up applying to were in New York,” he says now. There is no feeling in his voice, and he doesn’t look at me. He never looks at me. “They have a pretty high crime rate.”
“Lots of places do,” I say.
He nods, then unpauses the TV. I steal glances at the side of his face, wondering what he would say if I did tell him I’d been feeling strange ever since the accident.
Would it make him worry about me? Maybe he’d actually be able to help?
“It’s asking for trouble to be so far away from family,” he says, mostly concentrating on the TV now, and confirming what I suspect, which is that my mother got him to bring this up.
I bite the urge to say, Um, hello? You’ve made a career, a lifestyle, out of being away from family. But that feels like a low blow, so I don’t answer and focus on the screen.
Even though he’s not here actively doing anything to incite it, it’s times like these I resent my brother. He’s two years older than me, currently at community college—despite decent grades—and still living at home.
There would be nothing wrong with it, if it was what Caleb wanted. But I know that even if he’ll never admit it, it’s not what he wants. He’s always been obsessed with planes like my dad, has dreamed of flying for years. But instead of doing anything about it, he stays in Lyndale, haunting parties and people he has outgrown.
The only thing my parents agree on is crushing any bit of desire Caleb and I have to go somewhere, to move, to stretch the seams of our lives. It’s spearheaded by my mom, but somehow she always gets Dad to agree with her. She’s convinced she can protect us from whatever dangers are out there. I’m seventeen and I have freaking parental controls on my computer.
As hyperbolic as Katy is about it, I know exactly what she means when she says she feels as if she was born for a place. I think I was born for the viola, to play music on one of the loneliest instruments.
But I chose New York because I want something else. The fact that Juilliard is in the same city doesn’t mean I have to go there.
I want buzzing lights and rowdy streets and the Philharmonic and Broadway and Carnegie Hall and artsy, passionate, vibrant people with places to go.
I know it’s the biggest cliché, but I love the idea of a city that reminds you every day that you’re alive. I love that it is different and bigger than Lyndale in every way, and I want to believe my life there will be, too.
I’ve worked so hard to keep my grades up, to stand a chance of getting into NYU.
Now Dad pats my knee awkwardly.
“Let’s think on it some more, okay?” he says.
I nod—Yes, let’s think on it some more—but already I am thinking of all the things that could possibly stop me from leaving, and deciding that they are all things that won’t.
AFTER
January
The next night, I practice longer than usual to make up for yesterday, when I was at my dad’s. As soon as I got home from the hospital on Sunday morning, I downloaded a version of Bach’s “Air on the G String,” and I listen to it now, falling in love again with the way it swoops, in and out, gently, insistently. The millions of stories I can imagine hidden in it. I’ve started trying to learn a viola version of the song, but it doesn’t sound as full and fantastic as it should. Instead of wistful and romantic, it feels desolate. Like someone waltzing alone.
Giving up on it for tonight, I decide to work on our new orchestra pieces. I almost have “Alla Hornpipe” from the second movement of Water Music by Handel memorized, but according to Mrs. Dubois, there’s nothing worse than t
eaching yourself a flawed version of a piece. Mrs. Dubois has a theory about firsts: that the first thing sets the precedent for everything that comes after. The way you first learn a song, the way you approach the first note, sets the tone for the rest of that movement and the whole piece. The first piece in a concert sets the tone for the rest of the performance. She also says the first mistake you make in a performance—and how you recover from it—sets the precedent for all the other mistakes you’ll make. But since I’d rather not have any mistakes, I decide to play from the sheet music until I have it perfect. Except that I left my orchestra binder in my car, which my mother let me drive today.
It’s only seven at night, but it’s dark and freezing out, so I throw my coat over my flannel pajamas and pad outside. I’m still humming “Air on the G String” to myself as I dig through my car and retrieve the black binder.
I’m halfway out of the car when the sight of a person across the road, illuminated by a streetlight, nearly makes me slam my head against the roof. I climb out of the passenger seat and am waving my binder at him before I can stop myself.
“Hey!” I say, watching as he registers my presence and a smile—that smile—stretches across his face. He is wearing the beanie again, but tufts of red hair stick out from under it now.
“Hi!” he says, and then crosses the road between us so we are both standing in front of my driveway.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
He scratches the back of his neck. “I just kind of found myself here, I guess,” he says. “I was taking a walk. You?”
“I live here,” I say, signaling behind me, but instead of looking at my house, his eyes travel down the length of me. Stopping at the place beneath my knee where my coat ends and my Rainbow Brite pajamas are tucked into slippers.
“You weren’t just prowling the streets like that?” he asks, his eyes twinkling playfully. Butterflies brush the cage of my chest.
“I certainly was not prowling,” I say, and scrunch my face up in mock offense. “Anyway, what do you have against Rainbow Brite?”
Everyone We've Been Page 4