My smartphone registers an e-mail from
Overton Academy,
letting me know that my recommendation
has been received,
my application is complete.
I hit “delete,”
collect my stuff for Youth Orchestra,
wave to Dad behind his paper, Mom at her sink,
Steven, my only brother.
59
Youth Orchestra is easy for me.
Sixty-odd familiar faces, just a few
as musically accomplished as I am, just a few
boys whose faces my eyes linger on, just a few
friends I’ve made in the years we’ve shared
Saturday mornings together.
We are concert comrades,
connecting only outside the realms
of our private and academic lives,
though there is one other girl from my school:
Shelby, who’s in my math class
but doesn’t play in any ensembles at Evergreen.
She’s sat in the NHSYA flute second chair
as long as I’ve been first trumpet,
yet we’ve never carpooled or crushed on the same boy,
barely ever spoken
despite our common school, our years together.
Shelby the Asperger’s girl
(though I think they might not call it that anymore):
diligent, distant, somehow different.
I used to wince, watching her attempts to befriend,
as if her “mainstream” classmates would let her in,
as if we—or she—really understood the emotion
behind our rejections.
I’d sigh with relief that Steven was safely out of the mainstream,
would never have to endure this kind of floating
through a world politely tolerating, never really trying
to know him.
Now, I wish, wish, wish
Shelby’s life
for my brother.
I smile at her
as I disassemble my trumpet, wipe it down.
Her eyes startle behind her glasses before
she smiles back.
60
From practice
I go straight to my private trumpet lesson
with Aggie Nedrum
at the music school housed in the same arts complex
where the orchestra rehearses.
Outside Aggie’s studio door,
I’m surprised by the face of Cal O’Casey.
He’s got two instrument cases:
the bari and something smaller,
probably a tenor sax.
“Hey there, Daisy,” he says.
“You taking lessons with Aggie?” I ask.
I feel strangely offended,
don’t want to share my teacher.
“How’d you find her?”
“I asked Mr. Orson who you study with,
because you’re the best musician in our band.”
He isn’t fawning or flattering but almost businesslike,
folder of music tucked beneath his arm,
unable to hide the faint smile of satisfaction I often sport
after a good lesson with Aggie.
“I just started t’day. She’s good.”
He gives a funny little salute.
“Yeah,” I say, watching him walk to the elevator,
his stride light, happy.
Do I watch too many people walk away?
Cal? Dave?
Dad from Mom?
Will I watch Ned lead Justine down a path
away from our friendship?
I think I am good at this—
standing in the wake of departures.
Like eating hot lunch, I acquiesce, accept
what is dumped onto life’s tray before me,
even try to enjoy the bland potatoes, flavorless soups.
I allow people to simply exit doors,
never invite them in.
Yet despite Mom and Dad’s well-reasoned arguments,
my own secret plans to escape from home
for the summer,
and my million silent wishes
for a different life, something stirs in me
when I picture them sending Steven away.
I do not know if I can eat from this dish,
if I can celebrate this freedom.
Like a Civil War soldier pitted against his own kin,
I know I cannot merely watch this plot unfold,
that I must take my own stand.
Even if my greatest rebellion until now
has been flicking the channel
from the Cartoon Network to HBO,
even if I’m not sure what is right
or how to make myself heard,
I cannot just let Steven go.
61
“Hi, Daisy, how was orchestra?”
Aggie opens her studio door at my knock,
pushes up her sleeves. I see
the trickling lines of tattooed flowers,
music notes, and tangled vines
that end just below her elbows.
I used to meet with Aggie every week,
but school and bands and competitions and growing up
and Steven got in the way and now
it’s only two or three lessons a month,
squeezed in with a bit of luck.
I’m likely the last student she’ll see today
before heading down to Boston to play a nighttime gig.
Aggie is badass
in a totally different way from Dave Miller.
She looks like a pit girl, tatted and ringed—
not so much eyeliner, though—
and bleached-white hair shorn close to her scalp.
She can play any brass thing with a valve—hell,
practically anything made of metal:
trumpet,
coronet,
French horn,
sax.
A year or two ago, she said,
“There’s nothing left I can teach you, Daisy.
You should go down to the Conservatory in Boston
or over to Portsmouth to study with one of the teachers
at the U.”
But Mom and Dad couldn’t go looking
for some fancy teacher for their musically gifted girl.
Any energy they might’ve had for that
was spent on Internet searches
for teaching autistics to verbalize, for specialists, doctors—
flashing online dreams, visions of some kind of better day,
better week for their boy; for them.
A night of uninterrupted sleep
or just some daylight moments
with enough safety to simply sit and be still.
And I had known all of this
in the instant it took to tear my glance
away from Aggie’s, drop it down to the music stand, and say,
“I don’t think my parents could manage that,”
in a voice I’ve learned to use that’s clear and firm:
don’t-pity-me yet uncontestable.
There are things you learn from living like I do.
“How about you play me the Ellington piece?”
she asks now, rubbing her hands together
as if she were getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner.
I love that Aggie loves to hear me play.
It makes the music all about the joy of sharing,
not the advantages of escape.
I lift
my horn to my lips,
release my desperation into the purity of sound.
62
“So, Justine and Ned, sittin’ in a tree?”
I squeeze between two pairs of jeans and a pile
of sweaters sprawled across the rose chenille bedspread
that is also playing host to half a dozen pairs of shoes.
“K-i-s-s-i . . .” Justine stops, mid-rhyme,
to smear her lips with silvery pink.
“You like?”
“That color should be called Sexy Robot!”
I throw a metallic gray sweater in her direction.
It is the fourth lipstick shade, the sixth outfit
my usually decisive friend has tried.
“Take that, Callum O’Casey!”
Justine cinches her waist with a dark blue belt.
“You only ever liked his accent anyway.”
“But he can be such an ass. It just pisses me off.”
“I saw him at the music school today,” I tell her.
“He’s started lessons with Aggie.”
Justine doesn’t say anything else, just turns sideways.
She has a thin waist and the jeans-sweater-belt combo
looks great, especially finished with high-heeled boots.
It’s the kind of look I could never pull off.
It’d look too studied, like I was playing dress-up.
Besides, I’d feel naked
without a pair of customized Keds on my feet.
“You look amazing.
Ned is going to seriously drop his teeth.”
An unexpected wave of jealousy passes through me.
“He has a nice smile, I think.”
It’s weird to see Justine so tentative about a guy
she used to call “Ernie Earnest”
when we whispered about him in class,
while I called him “Judgie McJudgment.”
Some memories are better left in the past,
some thoughts unspoken.
And maybe Justine is right
to be thinking about the Black-and-White Dance
already.
63
I leave at seven,
half an hour before Ned is due at Justine’s door.
I cannot imagine that any HBO warnings
need to precede their date. More easily,
I can picture myself ninja-kicking Ned’s straight teeth
as he talks about his volunteer work with special-needs kids,
his eyes cast politely downward,
away from me and what he knows of my brother.
Ned is the darling of the PTA-mom crowd,
likes to wear a thin tie
and a dress shirt with sleeves rolled up
to show he’s ready to work.
Why shouldn’t Justine have a good boy?
The question guides my car
past the Main Street turnoff for home
to the town park.
I pull into the lot by the pits,
look for a black-and-red Fiesta, a dark, tousled head.
He’s over there, leaning against a picnic table.
My hands still on the wheel,
I watch girls and boys drink from bottles,
laugh and shove—easy movements, as if they were
dancing to unheard music.
Beyond, the lake is a glassy black foreground
to a live painting of pine and oak trees, nearby mountains:
a spectacular, dark tableau that
I think has somehow managed to stop time in this place.
If time stood still, there would be
no history to study,
no need to watch Steven,
no ominous institution to visit,
no guilt.
I put the car in park, turn off the ignition, wish for a second
I were wearing pink lipstick and boots with heels,
but all I’ve got are my sneakers and a blue fleece
that, I think, looks nice with my eyes.
I unclip the barrette,
shake my hair loose down my back,
step out onto the pavement.
About ten paces before I reach him,
Dave catches sight of me.
“You coming to invite me to The Movie House?”
“I thought maybe I’d take a taste of Belden’s brew.”
Dave’s eyes widen a little.
“We’ve just got Natty Bo tonight.”
“That’s okay.” I put up my chin,
imagining Ned Hoffman holding the door for Justine
outside La Parisienne,
the fancy place he reserved for their dinner.
Beside the picnic bench is a cooler of ice and beer bottles.
I grab one. “Have an opener?”
He laughs. “Twist-off.”
But he takes the bottle from my hand,
removes the cap, passes it back.
“Look who’s here!” Josh Belden joins us at the cooler.
His hand is in the back pocket
of one of the nose-ringed girls I recognize from school.
She’s new this year, I know, because most of us
have been together since we were six years old.
Most of us remember every win and loss:
my skirt-stuck-in-tights humiliation,
the time Dave got sent to the principal
for bringing a slingshot to school in third grade,
how Josh used to cry every time he struck out in baseball.
We’ve signed each other’s wrist and ankle casts,
attended grandparents’ funerals,
spun the bottle in so many basements
that we’ve pretty much all kissed.
The new girl’s name is Liese, and she doesn’t know
about Josh’s old tears,
or that Dave and I had marriage plans
before we lost our baby teeth.
“Hey there.” She raises her beer in greeting,
looping a possessive arm around Josh’s neck.
“Hi.” I steel myself and take a sip.
The taste of dirt mixed with seltzer floods my mouth.
“You can eat that disgusting tomato soup at school
but you wince at a beer?” Dave teases.
“It’s . . . fine. It’s good.”
Josh and Liese, Mark and Marielle,
and a few other uncoupled girls and guys laugh,
but in a friendly way.
I hope I don’t look as wide-eyed, as uncertain as I feel,
suddenly jealous of all the nights they’ve spent listening
to the lapping lake, huddling together
in the chill freedom of not practicing music
or giving their parents a “break.”
“I’m glad you came, Daisy.”
I gasp as his beer-chilled fingers wrap around mine.
He tugs me gently away from the group,
toward the water’s edge.
“Remember . . . ?” My voice sounds airy,
all my breath still busily reacting
to the tingling coolness of Dave Miller’s hand.
When I picture him in my mind,
we are both small, sandboxed, smiling,
fearless, without question
of what would happen
after we finished our make-believe.
“Remember eating jelly sandwiches?”
“I still hate peanut butter!”
Now my breath whooshes out,
all of me pulsing with gladness,
maybe even thankful to Ned
Hoffman
for whatever role he played
in guiding my Subaru here tonight.
“Come on.” Dave says.
We reach the water’s edge.
The tide has pushed a ridge of driftwood
and fallen pine needles onto the sand.
I shiver.
Dave reaches his muscled arm across my back,
his hand dangling over my shoulder.
Step, step, step.
We’re a little out of sync—his stride longer than mine,
a jazz hesitation,
trying to keep time with the lapping waves.
Water seeps above the thin rubber soles
into the canvas of my Keds.
I imagine the stamp ink dyeing my toes purple and
shiver again.
Belden and the gang are out of sight.
We’re at another clearing, a solo picnic bench
devoid of knife marks,
the ground clear of bottle caps, butts,
the detritus of the pits.
Perhaps it’s on private property,
belongs to the folks whose boat dock I see just ahead,
or the log cabin up the hill,
its darkened windows suggesting it’s just a vacation spot,
unoccupied now.
Dave slides his arm from my shoulder.
Without worry of trespassing (or maybe just not caring),
he climbs onto the tabletop, not the bench,
beckons with his eyes.
I scramble up beside him.
“Look up,” he says.
I lean back on my elbows,
watch minute flecks of yellow starlight
fight the blackness of space.
Inhale the lakeside air’s aroma of damp temptation.
The Sound of Letting Go Page 9