Steven beginning to wring his hands, knowing—
without us ever learning how—
that the time has come
for bathroom, bed, things he does not enjoy.
“Easy does it, big boy.”
Despite Dad’s tension, I remember
just days ago
one of Steven’s explosions yielded
to a melody.
Despite the new forearm bruise
Mom’s short-sleeved yoga shirt cannot hide,
despite the whirling, flailing bombs
that explode with barely a warning,
despite the resistance to everything not routine,
to everything wet and cold,
to everything spicy, loud,
I still want to believe
there is
something kind of
kind.
46
The second Dad and Steven head for the stairs,
the evil ritual of pajamas,
brushing teeth with bubble gum toothpaste,
tepid water,
I run, not to the quiet of the basement
but up to my bedroom
to write the rest of the Overton application.
The words of the essays fly from my fingertips
fast as musical scales.
Breathlessly, I complete another application,
and another,
casting desperate lines out into a lake of alternatives:
to Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, Maine . . .
I open the tin box on the top of my desk,
count out the eighty-two dollars inside it.
I can probably get Mom to write one application check
for the Boston school,
since it’s not too expensive, nor too far away.
I can pretend all the kids in jazz band are applying to it,
like an assignment.
Justine will cover what fees I can’t manage
until I can pay her back.
Cut and paste, search and replace:
My “musical inspirations” and “performance histories”
are tweaked for each program.
I want to have it all typed and saved
so it can be sent out
and I won’t have to think anymore, to wonder
if I’ll dare.
It’s late when I finish,
but I need to practice,
even if it’s just for half an hour.
So I turn off my computer,
tiptoe down to the basement.
47
Passing the kitchen, I pause at the pocket doors,
slid shut again.
Hear voices rise and fall. Tones sharpen and mellow.
I think of the stories Mom and Dad used to tell
about meeting in a college history class.
(Romance and A-PUSH? Unimaginable.)
About getting together for an after-class beer one night
and talking on and on
about the role of folk music in cultural transitions.
(Yes, they were both super-nerds.)
About singing together.
(I get my musical talent from somewhere.)
Could something behind that door be mended
with a song? Should I remind them
of their mutual love of history, of music?
Would they try harder if they knew how badly
I want them to fix what’s broken in this house
beyond the kicked-in closets and shattered dishes?
Or is what’s here unfixable,
like Steven, simply beyond repair?
“I need a shower.” Mom is using her exasperated tone.
“I’ve got e-mails to write.”
Dad’s voice is nearly emotionless, flat,
defeated.
48
“I finished the applications!” I announce to Justine
in homeroom that morning.
“Let’s go to my house after school
and submit everything,” Justine says.
Her excited grin is infectious, her voice so loud
Ashleigh Anderson sneers in our direction.
It’s Thursday, so no yoga.
I text Mom the plan, get the okay.
Justine is unlocking her front door by 3:15.
Her mother is still at work, as usual.
She refills the dog’s water dish, pours us two Cokes
while I scratch Dickens behind his soft cocker spaniel ears.
Up in Justine’s pink room,
we log on to the Overton website.
I cut and paste my essays into the appropriate boxes.
She types in the credit card name, address, number.
We clink soda glasses and click “send.”
I e-mail Mr. Orson the instructions for sending his recommendation.
“Woo-hoo!” Justine cheers.
“Now the Danielson Conservatory Program,” I say.
“That’s the one in upstate New York.”
An hour later, we flop onto her rose chenille bedspread.
“I can’t believe I did it,” I say.
“Your parents are going to be so surprised when you get into all these programs.”
“If I get in,” I correct her,
though Justine and I both know my chances are good.
“I bet it’ll be Overton,” she says.
“Imagine, a summer in sunny Pennsylvania.”
“Is it sunny?”
“I don’t know. It’ll feel sunny to you, I bet.
All that music.
All that peace.”
I wonder how wrong it was not to tell my parents,
to borrow application money, to be so secretive.
“Wanna stay for supper?” Justine offers.
“Mom could bring home pizza.”
“I can’t,” I say,
because my mother has already texted
that she wants me home.
I guess she needs a break.
49
But it’s not a break Mom needs.
At least, she is not alone.
Dad is sitting at the kitchen table,
watching Steven chew methodically through a cookie.
There’s no smell of dinner in the air,
no moist green aroma of steaming broccoli
or warm welcome of something roasting.
No “Kiss the Cook” apron covers
Mom’s T-shirt and jeans.
“Glad you’re home, Daisy.” Dad smiles.
“We’ve ordered Chinese,” Mom says.
“But Steven doesn’t like . . .” I feel my voice trail away,
watching my brother’s innocence while my heart
has, possibly literally, stopped in my chest. I wait,
ears throbbing with heat, for the
“sit down, we’ve got something to tell you,”
for the “your Mom and I have tried, but this marriage . . .”
Do I take my usual solitary spot at the kitchen island?
Sit willingly at the table like a lamb at the slaughter?
I feel all limbs and fire,
suddenly furiously angry at Steven.
How can he sit there?
How can this—this—
not trigger the rocking, the smashing,
the need to call Dad at work?
Bite, bite, bite. Warm cookie in mouth.
Swallows of milk to wash down the sweetness.
Crumbs scattering like garden seeds
on the barren hardwood floor.
“Holy
shit, what is going on?”
I slap my hand on the granite countertop.
“Just. Tell. Me!”
And I, of course, succeed where they failed.
With a wail
Steven stands up, grabs his chair,
and shoves it to the floor.
Even after I whisper “sorry,” bow my head,
his violent momentum cannot be stopped.
It’s a bad one, long-lasting.
Luckily Dad is here with his strong arms
to protect Mom and me
while he looks over Steven’s thrown-back head,
mouths “see what I mean” to Mom.
The doorbell sounds with the long, intense rings
of someone who has tried several times without success.
It’s the Chinese food delivery guy,
wearing an exasperated expression.
Mom apologizes, pays cash with a giant tip.
We leave the neatly knotted, steaming white plastic bags
on the counter
untouched for two hours.
Afterward, Steven locked into his bedroom,
pocket doors open,
Mom and Dad invite me inside.
Over plates of congealed cashew chicken, cold rice,
they talk a long riff about autism, adolescence,
family dynamics, marriage,
skidding and turning while I wait for the word—
divorce—
that never comes.
Instead:
“Your Mom and I have decided”—
Dad looks over my head at my mother,
who is trembling a little,
her eyes, slightly wet, gazing
at some spot on the far kitchen wall—
“that it would be better for Steven,
for all of us,
if he were moved to a group home,
a sort of boarding school for kids like him,
where they could support his needs, keep him safe,
maybe teach him some skills for the future,
like tying his own shoes.”
He stops.
The house grows so impossibly still
I can feel the air quiver,
the earth rotate beneath our feet.
Or maybe it’s the oxygen rushing from my lungs,
the blood from my head.
I am going to fall down.
I cannot balance on this planet
twisting in an altered universe.
What?
Where?
Questions stagger into my brain,
but I cannot push them through my lips.
“It’s not going to happen right away.”
Mom’s voice is as unsteady as my heart.
“There’s more to do, paperwork and visits and things.”
I nod, not sure if I am understanding her words,
unable to process this digression
from the divorce I had anticipated.
Instead . . .
This is the unthinkable.
“This wasn’t an easy choice, Daisy.
There are a lot of factors,” Dad says.
“Your father put Steven on a couple
of program wait-lists last summer.”
The tendons in Mom’s neck stand out
like barren winter trees.
Her tone is both accusing and grateful.
“We didn’t think we’d need . . .”
Dad’s voice is low and deliberate.
“The program director feels that Steven
is no longer a fit for the special-needs classroom.
Mom can’t handle him here, all day, every day, alone.
We could try hiring more home health aids,
people like that,
but what if he hurts someone besides himself—
a repairman or caregiver?
That would wreak havoc on our lives, our finances,
our futures.
Your future.”
His eyes follow me the same way they watch Steven
when Dad thinks he’s about to erupt.
But I am the good-girl ghost
who floats past the dining table to the kitchen island,
disappears before Dad’s out the door,
quietly watches Steven line Blokus tiles end to end.
“I’m gonna go downstairs and practice,”
is the sentence I manage to force
through my clenched throat,
feeling nearly as wordless as Steven,
but I will not slap my own skull, my own mother.
I just need to go somewhere I can make a sound
that might burst through the horrible calm,
destroy the otherworldly stillness of this night.
50
I am numb as I leaf through my piles of sheet music.
There is the folder from Mr. Orson
with its cheery collection of holiday concert solos.
Unable to decide what to play,
I start with the top selection: “Silent Night.”
The tune is easy and showcases my skill at high notes,
but the unsung lyrics mock me
with their tantalizing promise of heavenly peace.
I crumple the pages, shove them aside,
page angrily through the rest of the choices,
every one too hopeful.
I, the follower—
of scores, of schedules, of plans—
do not want to play these tunes.
I imagine my life as a collection of dates
for performances, competitions, lessons, tests.
Each high mark, prize, night of applause
leads to another,
another—
ambling eternally, destination unclear.
I cannot picture how this existence will look
when it is not counterpointed
by a different set of endless rituals
performed by my brother,
nor guided by my carefully honed formula
of words and actions
to protect my stoic parents,
conceal (as much as one can in Jasper)
the truth of how difficult home life has become.
How will I reply now when Justine asks me to sleep over?
Or if Dave ever invites me again to The Movie House?
How will I play a hopeful tune
or answer if, some quiet day down the road,
Mom, Dad, and I sit—
three at the breakfast table—
and they ask if I am happy?
Because as much as I am their good, steady daughter,
Steven is still my brother,
their son.
51
In the morning,
it feels like nothing has changed as I sit at the island
choking down rapidly softening Special K
while Steven eats his nine waffle bites row by row.
Mom chatters doggedly about whether to order
poinsettias from the local Scout troupe.
Dad ogles the paper as if the headline announces
the meaning of life.
Tink, tink: my spoon against the bright blue bowl.
Slurp: Steven gulping down his juice.
Something about a new pink-and-red flower variety
that holds its petals longer.
A chair pushed back.
Dad’s “where the hell is his coat?”
And I wonder how it can be Friday,
this day that should have a new name:
the day after my pare
nts announced
they are severing our family,
cutting off the mangled limb,
the one that made outsiders stare and the rest of us
limp along.
Twelve hours after they threw up their hands,
pushed my brother from a Titanic lifeboat
to save themselves—their marriage.
The first sun rising upon their assurances
that now I can live like an “ordinary” teenager.
I walk my cereal bowl to the sink.
Back turned, I let the word ordinary roll over my tongue,
longer, more staccato than divorce.
Ordinary:
a state to which I’ve never aspired in my Kind of Blue life;
a word that stung the few times it was ever tied
to me or my horn.
I hate them for offering it up as some kind of prize
when it feels more like an accusation;
that this decision they have made is partly my fault—
attributed to some unspoken desire of mine
to be less than exceptional.
“We’re going to be late, Alice.”
Dad’s eyes are on his watch.
“I’m looking, Ted,”
Mom says softly but through clenched teeth,
pulling sweaters and fleeces
from the pegs by the back door,
searching for Steven’s smooth nylon coat.
I am tempted by the vision of a morning
where she snaps back at my father,
“Look for it yourself!” in a strong voice;
of a home where anger can be set free, like love,
The Sound of Letting Go Page 7