Finding Yvonne

by Brandy Colbert

  “Conservatories are not on my list,” I say.

  Not that there’s an actual list. Every time I start to look at college websites, I get too overwhelmed by all the questions in my head: What will I study? Where will I go? Do I stay close to home to be near my father, even though we’re basically strangers? If I go far away, will our relationship become even more distant? What will happen with Warren and me? There’s always so much to think about that I end up clicking out of the websites and watching videos instead.

  “Normally I’d suggest applying to schools with a music program, where you can study other subjects that interest you and still have violin.” Ortiz pauses again. “But those require passion and drive, too. They’d expect you to take those classes seriously, and I’m not sure I could write a letter of recommendation knowing your heart isn’t in it.”

  “I’ll figure it out,” I say quickly, but I’m not fooling either one of us. Gradually losing my love for playing was bad enough, but realizing my talent alone can’t save me is demoralizing. Having no idea what I’m going to do is downright scary.

  “For what it’s worth, Yvonne, I still believe you to be a good musician. No one is disputing that,” Ortiz says after a long pause between us. “But you have to want it more than anything else in this world to give your life to it. And sometimes even that isn’t enough.”

  I take a deep breath. I wanted to study music in college. I wanted to play violin professionally because it’s comfortable—and, really, because I don’t know how to do anything else. Denis’s words hurt, but they weren’t a surprise. Hearing Ortiz say I just don’t want it, that my issues stem from an emotional place, is more of a gut punch. I can practice until my fingers bleed, but I can’t control my emotions.

  “It feels like I’ve wasted the last eleven years of my life,” I say, thinking back to that initial trip to the violin store and to my first lesson with Denis after that.

  Ortiz gives me a sad smile. “It’s not a waste. This isn’t as dire as it sounds. You never know where you’ll end up.” She squeezes my shoulder as we walk to the door.

  I step out into the hallway and look back at her. “Thanks. For the honesty.”

  “Thanks to you. For not making me feel bad about being honest.” She leans against the doorframe. “And, Yvonne, you know, you can always have music. Just because it’s not at the center of your life, that doesn’t mean you can’t have it at all.”

  4.

  When I was younger, my father would work the breakfast and lunch shifts at the restaurant where he was a line cook so he could get off in time to pick me up from school. Then, when I started at Courtland, he became sous chef for his mentor, Lou, whose upscale restaurant was only open for dinner. Large, white-haired Lou liked having me around, so it wasn’t a problem to go there after school while my father worked. If the restaurant wasn’t busy, I could sit at a high-top table in the corner of the bar area and do my homework, sipping on Shirley Temples that Lou would bring over himself. On the nights when the wait was long enough that the bar filled with people killing time, I would sit alone in Lou’s tiny office and my father would come back and check on me every once in a while, sweat glistening on his forehead as he slid a plate of whatever they were serving in front of me.

  It never occurred to me that I had developed a good palate until I started talking to Sabina about the food I’d eat during the week. Things she’d never had, like bone marrow and steak tartare and grilled ramps, which tasted like a head of garlic and an onion had a baby and made my breath smell the next day. I was so used to eating whatever Dad put in front of me, and I guess because of that I’ve never been picky.

  Nobody had to tell me I wouldn’t see much of my father when he opened his own restaurant. He was still working for Lou, and every minute he wasn’t there was spent crafting his own business plan. Sometimes the smell of his late-night smoking sessions would waft under the door of the sunroom and into my bedroom, waking me at odd hours of the morning. And sometimes I would go out and sit with him, enduring the stench for a chance to tell him about my day or ask him for something I needed at school or for violin.

  I always feel a little out of place at his restaurant and it still surprises me. Maybe it’s because there’s no Lou to bring me grenadine-laced ginger ale. Maybe it’s because I’ve never sat in my father’s office chair doing math problems while I waited for him to bring back a plate of food. Or maybe it’s simply because I don’t know my father that well. It’s always baffled me how critics who’ve never even met him can write about the restaurant with such authority, theorizing about his motivations behind certain dishes.

  I promised Sabina a free dinner if she met me here tonight, but she has to eat with her parents. Sabina’s moms aren’t as lax about child-rearing as my dad is—they definitely don’t know about his love for greenery—and they believe in meals with everyone at the table during the week. But they know me and love me, and they usually say yes when she wants to hang out with me instead. I think they feel bad about how much my father works.

  When I knock on the glass of the front door, Warren is the one to come get me. We just saw each other yesterday, but something flutters in my chest when his eyes light on my face. We smile at each other.

  “Hey.” He gives me a quick hug as I step inside, though I get the feeling, like always, that he wants to kiss me, too. He reaches around me to lock the door, then says, “You just missed family meal, but I could whip up something for you real quick?”

  Whatever they ate smells incredible. The peanut butter and banana sandwich only filled me up for a couple of hours; my stomach was grumbling even before I went to talk to Ortiz. But I shake my head. “You should save your energy for my birthday dinner. Five courses, right?”

  “Eight,” he says, not breaking into a grin until I do. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m not staying. I just need to talk to him.”

  “Before you do—I got some good news,” he says, his smile turning sheepish. “SoCal Weekly wants to interview me.”

  “What?” I smile at him so hard I’m sure my face will split in two. “That’s fucking amazing, War!”

  “Thanks.” Then he looks down at his feet and I’m staring at the top of his light-brown head. Most people think Warren is white because of his light skin and his hair that hardly holds a curl, but he identifies as black. His dad is white, but Warren was raised by his mom and only knows her side of the family.

  I tilt my head at him. “It is amazing, right? SoCal Weekly is a big deal.”

  He shrugs. “I mean, yeah it is. Of course it is. I just don’t want them to wish they’d picked someone else. I’ve never been interviewed before. What if my answers are awful?”

  “You’ll be great,” I say. “Just pretend that you’re talking to me.”

  He steps closer and gives me a lazy grin. “So I should tell the reporter how much I want to kiss her right now?”

  “She might even say yes, if her father weren’t standing in the back of the room.”

  “Right.” Warren briefly touches my fingertips with his, making my breath catch. “Let me take you back there. Careful, though. He’s in a mood. There was an incident at the butcher’s.”

  “Got it.”

  My father is pretty chill in general, but he’s been known to go off on a hot-tempered tirade when something goes wrong at the restaurant. He spends a lot of time making sure things run smoothly, so he doesn’t like it when other people fuck up. He’s not so hard on me, but before I started at Courtland’s upper school, he said he wanted me to remember three things:

  1. To use protection if I was going to have sex,

  2. To never drive if I was going to drink, and

  3. To never forget that I had to work twice as hard as white people to get half of what they did.

  Warren walks me to the back and I find myself leaning closer to him, inadvertently searching for that clean, soapy smell that lingers on his skin until he really gets going in the kitchen. I
wave at the hostess and a couple of servers I know as we make our way to the rear of the restaurant. Warren leaves me by the entrance of the kitchen and walks across the room, clapping my father on the back to let him know I’m here. Dad looks up and if he’s surprised to see me, it doesn’t show. He holds up his index finger—he has to finish talking to one of the cooks. Warren looks back at me and smiles before he disappears into his work. The flutters start again and I wonder about my birthday dinner—if that will be the night we’re finally together.

  “Tell me nothing bad’s happened,” Dad says when he’s standing in front of me a couple of minutes later. He doesn’t sound as irritable as I expected. Just tired. It seems too early for him to sound so weary, considering they haven’t yet opened for the evening.

  “What?”

  “Yvonne, you’re here. You’re never here. Is everything all right?”

  “Oh. Yeah. I just need to tell you something. I didn’t want to wait up.”

  His face relaxes and he motions for me to follow him to his office, which is just as tiny as Lou’s but not as cluttered. He doesn’t like too much stuff sitting around. “What’s up?”

  I take a seat in the chair against the far wall, but he leans on the edge of his desk, clearly not wanting this to take too long.

  “I talked to Ms. Ortiz and… I don’t know what to do.”

  He frowns, his thick eyebrows furrowed. He’s a big guy, tall and solid, with a receding hairline that he tries to hide by shaving his brown head bald. “Ms. Ortiz…?”

  “Dad. My orchestra teacher.”

  “Sorry. I always think of Denis with you and violin.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Right. So, what did Ms. Ortiz have to say?”

  “She wants me to consider other programs besides music. She says the passion isn’t coming through… and I’m not good enough to coast on my talent.”

  “Come on now. You’re great. I’ve been listening to you play for years. I always thought that Denis was an entitled asshole.”

  My father’s not wrong about Denis, but I have to defend what he and Ortiz said. They both can’t be wrong. But most of all, I know in my heart that applying to conservatories was a false dream. I wanted to go because violin is the only thing I know how to do, not because I love it like I used to.

  “I’d have to practice almost nonstop to be good enough to even audition for conservatories. And… I don’t want it enough. I’ve always liked playing the violin… but maybe I’ve outgrown it.”

  “Ah.” He scratches the side of his head. “I thought you loved that thing. Sure paid enough for the one you have now.”

  “I know.” I sigh. “I did love it. I still do sometimes… just not enough. And now I don’t know if I should quit orchestra or finish out the year. What’s the point of being there every day if I’m just going to stop once I graduate?”

  “We can find you something else,” he says quickly, and I’m instantly reminded of all the lessons and activities that didn’t take when I was younger. How relieved he seemed when the violin stuck and I’d finally found my thing.

  I was relieved, too. I didn’t understand how some of my friends found such joy participating in multiple activities when I had so much trouble finding one thing that excited me. It wasn’t just about playing, though. My violin started to feel like a companion. When I’m lonely, I always have my music. The thought of leaving that behind scares me almost more than having no other options.

  “I’m not sure there’s anything else I want to do.”

  He pauses, and I can tell that he’s thinking carefully about what he’s going to say. “Well, after graduation… you could always work here for a while if you needed to.”

  “Here?”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “No, I mean, it’s great here. But what would I do?”

  My father shrugs. “We’d figure something out.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re my only child, Yvonne.” His eyes fall to the floor before they move back up to meet mine. “It’s not in my interest to see you fail. And you’re young. College will still be there when you figure out what to do. You’ve got time.”

  “You already knew you wanted to be a chef when you were my age.” And knowing my father had it all figured out by eighteen makes me feel like I’ve already failed. If he and Warren both realized this was their calling, why is it so hard for me to find mine?

  “Don’t give me so much credit. I was a fuckup for a good long while before I got my shit together.” Dad laughs at my shocked expression, which makes me smile. His laughter is infrequent but always welcome. “What? You knew that.”

  I slide my hands over the front pocket of the leather backpack in my lap. “Yeah, but you don’t really talk about it now that you have all this.”

  “I don’t believe in dwelling on past regrets. I wouldn’t be the same person without them.” He gives me his best attempt at a smile, but his mind is already back on the problems he has to deal with here. “Anything else before I go back out there? You want to stay for dinner?”

  I look around his office, at how clinical it is compared with the coziness of Lou’s. It feels like a doctor’s office, filled only with necessary objects, and there’s nothing on display that proves he has a life outside of this place. He hasn’t changed the photo of me that sits on his desk in years. My braces-filled seventh-grade smile peeks out from the picture frame sitting crookedly next to his keyboard. I don’t know him any better now than I did then.

  “No, I’m not that hungry. Thanks.”

  “Let me send you home with something, then.”

  I leave a few minutes later with a hot dinner slipped inside a sturdy paper bag. Warren sneaks away to walk me out.

  “Glad I got to see you,” he says, his hand lingering on my arm.

  My skin tingles with goose bumps. I look at him and smile. “Me too.”

  He pulls me to the side, away from the front door, and presses his lips to mine. One of his hands rests on my waist, the other cupping one side of my face. I kiss him back, losing myself in the warmth of his mouth on mine, and I don’t realize I’ve dropped the paper bag I was holding until I hear it thunk on the sidewalk.

  I pull away and laugh, burying my face in his shoulder. Warren grins and picks up the bag, pecking me on the cheek before he hands it back to me.

  I squeeze his hand, then get in my car and drive home to eat supper alone.

  5.

  I try not to let it get to me, but the talk with Ortiz stings.

  I think about it every time I pick up my violin, which is every day, because I don’t want to quit orchestra. Not yet. Even though guilt seeps into my fingers every time I unpack my instrument and pick up my bow. It feels like I’m betraying a friend when I think of giving up the violin. I know our relationship has changed, but it’s hard not to feel sad about it when it’s always been there for me.

  It seems silly, but I feel like it knows what I’m thinking. The notes sound distorted. False. For now, I can blend in with the rest of the orchestra; we’ve just started learning a new piece for the holiday program, so it’s easy enough to brush off any sour notes. But my focus isn’t there. And I avoid looking at Ortiz because it reminds me that she’s known how detached I’ve been… maybe before I realized it myself.

  By the time the Wednesday before my birthday rolls around, I feel restless. Too full of extra energy I can’t burn off. I don’t know if it’s the anticipation of my Friday night with Warren or the new but very real anxiety of not knowing what I’m going to do with my life. Or maybe it’s just a precursor to the knot that plants itself in my stomach every year at this time when I wonder if my mother will acknowledge my existence.

  Locking myself in my room with my violin used to help, but now…

  I slide up next to Sabina’s locker after the last bell. She’s already there, grabbing a couple of books to stick in her bag. “I’m going with Damon to get alcohol for the party. Come with?”

/>   “He’s going to use his fake to buy all that booze?”

  Neither Sabina nor I have fake IDs. I’ve never needed to, not with Warren willing to do pretty much anything I ask. Sabina’s too worried about getting caught. She worries a lot, mostly about letting down her moms. They don’t put a ton of outward pressure on her, but they are so put together and so seemingly perfect that even I feel intimidated when I’m around them.

  “No, his older brother is going, too. We have to meet him over at USC.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, why?” She slams her locker shut and adjusts the bag on her shoulder.

  I strap on my violin case and we start walking out to the parking lot, weaving through the steadily thinning hallway as people make their way to practices and club meetings and outside, like us, to escape for the rest of the day.

  “I’m going to Venice. Thought you might want to come.” I shrug, trying to look totally nonchalant, as if Venice is somewhere I go often. Or somewhere she’d want to accompany me.

  “Venice. Like, Venice Beach?” Sabina makes a terrible face, as if I’ve suggested we go hang out in Skid Row for a few hours.

  “Come on, it’s not that bad.”

  “It’s dirty. And it always smells like a vat of patchouli exploded. Why are you going there?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. The beach sounds nice sometimes, I guess.”

  She looks at me and puts her palm over my forehead as we walk out into the sunshine. “Seriously, are you sick or something? You wouldn’t even go to Santa Monica for McKenzie’s birthday.”

  “That doesn’t count,” I say, ducking away from her hand. “I had cramps. And anyway, Santa Monica is so different. It’s so—”

  “Clean? Not scary?”

  “Polished.”