Quite senseless in this context,
but I am used to nonsense words
and, unburdened from my Steven secret,
feeling strangely light.
“You know that makes no sense, Ned,” I say.
“I don’t even know what it means,” Ned says.
“Just, your shoes make me think of Saint Patrick’s Day.”
“You’re way too tall to be a leprechaun.” Justine giggles.
In the corner of my eye,
I see true Irish Cal O’Casey
sitting on the fringes
of the bookworm crowd at a table nearby,
his long legs stretching into the lunchroom’s center aisle.
I think he’s even taller than Ned.
101
No yoga for Mom tonight.
No working late for Dad.
We’re a foursome around the kitchen table,
eating mac and cheese
as if it’s our last meal before execution
instead of dinner
the night before a two-hour morning drive.
With the exception of her reluctant stoop to Eggo waffles,
Mom makes almost all our food from scratch.
Tonight, each bite tastes of her carefully chosen
whole-grain elbow macaroni,
hand-shredded blend of cheddar and mozzarella.
There’s a bright green salad punctuated
by cheery cherry tomatoes.
Water fills the sturdy yet stylish acrylic glasses.
“This is delicious,” Dad says.
“Yeah.” I nod.
“I worry the food won’t be as healthy at . . .”
Mom tries to smile.
We all look to Steven, who says nothing,
just keeps working his spoon through the noodles.
He gets agitated more easily at night,
so Mom avoids giving him a knife or fork.
Dad wipes his mouth on a napkin.
“Don’t go to bed too late, Daisy.
We’re going to head out around seven in the morning.”
“It should be a nice drive,” Mom says.
She stands up to clear;
I notice her plate is still nearly full.
Dad gets up, too,
walks over to the sink,
puts his hands on Mom’s taut shoulders,
tries to rub her neck,
but she shrugs him off.
I can’t watch him try again.
I turn to Steven, still gulping spoonfuls
of his guiltily generous serving of mac and cheese.
“Steven?” I say softly.
He doesn’t look up.
“Steven,” I say again,
checking quickly to see that my parents aren’t watching.
His focus remains on his food,
but I have to try.
“Steven. Do you want to go to a new school?
Do you understand?”
I slide my hand across the table.
He starts at the touch of my fingers to his wrist
and I wonder if I am about to have to recite
another litany of “sorrys” to my parents.
But it’s okay; he settles again,
back to dinner.
“We’ve been through this a thousand times, Alice.”
Dad sounds exasperated as he stalks back to the table,
picks up the salad bowl to clear it.
“How much macaroni did you give him?
He’s still eating.”
102
The noise upstairs rises as Dad showers Steven;
Mom wants the people at Holland House
to see how clean, how nicely dressed we keep him.
In the basement, I play through all the jazz carols
I’ve missed practicing,
plus Ellington’s “Almost Cried.”
I don’t answer Justine’s “good luck tomorrow” text
or read the assigned pages for A-PUSH.
I don’t want to go upstairs,
to hear the horrible sounds—
sounds I admit in my heart I’ll be relieved not
to have to hear much longer.
I don’t want the night to pass, the morning to come.
I want time to stand still,
like the first time Dave kissed me,
in the chill by the lake.
I don’t want Christmas to come,
don’t want to hear applause for playing some happy
holiday tune.
That’s when I realize what solo to play:
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
Chords blending beauty with grief,
words of loss and praise.
I pull the sheet music from a drawer,
raise my trumpet, knowing the sound will be stopped
at my practice room door,
wishing my parents were listening,
hearing the lyrics in my head
as the notes flow through my horn.
I play it twice through;
my lips burning, I improv on the melody,
reaching, soaring into high notes.
Then I can’t do it anymore. I drop into a perfect,
quarter-note-covered listening chair
and pepper it with my tears.
103
The touch of Mom’s cool hand on my forearm awakens me.
“Hey, Daisy, time to go up to bed.
We’ve got to make an early start tomorrow.”
“But I haven’t finished practicing.”
I rub my eyes, muster a shard of consciousness,
remember where I am,
grab my trumpet again.
Mom sits down in the other chair.
“Play something for me, then.” She smiles.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen her sitting there.
I don’t hold it against my parents.
It’s like that story I once heard of a poor family
who, in despair, called the police
on their knife-wielding autistic teen son.
Instead of taking him away, Social Services
whisked the two younger boys from their beds
and put them in foster care,
leaving the bereft parents to manage their eldest,
their volatile home life.
A quicker, cheaper solution
than finding another place for a dangerous, nonverbal
man-child.
You hear stories like that.
There is a point you reach
where there’s no real help, only indentured servitude.
Parents dominated by a child-master who hits, shrieks, smashes,
while they quiver beneath
the umbrella of family-preserving silence,
absent themselves from the concerts,
awards ceremonies, listening chairs
of their other children.
I clear the spit valve, take a few breaths, start to play
the Christmas medley I’d been practicing for jazz band.
Get to the riff on “The Little Drummer Boy,”
who bangs, beats on his drum; don’t let the irony
distract me from tonguing the tune correctly.
104
The drive Saturday morning is without incident.
Well medicated, Steven sits obligingly,
forehead tilted against the window,
focusing on the headrest of Dad’s chair.
Dad makes no wrong turns.
By ten o’clock, Mom is urging Steven from the car and<
br />
up the well-swept brick steps that lead to the front door.
Everyone at Holland House is so nice.
Insanely compassionate,
morbidly understanding,
as we sit in their community room
with its soothing, gray-green walls,
chairs upholstered in inoffensive, symmetrical
blue-and-green squares.
No sharp edges anywhere.
Everything simple, subdued, ever-so-faintly piney.
It smells of anti-antiseptic,
as if whoever chose the stuff with which
they washed the tabletops, mopped the floors,
knew to avoid the aromas of ammonia, bleach.
Everything about this place is so mild, generic, unremarkable;
so nice.
105
“Wasn’t that fun, Steven?”
Mom chitters on the way home.
She makes no mention of the slap he gave the caretaker
who tried to put a crayon in his hand,
or the way I’ve chosen to ride home
in the third row of Dad’s SUV
to avoid the edges of Steven’s hand-twisting,
head-snapping attempts
at processing our unusual morning.
“Very nice people.” Dad glances into the rearview
mirror. “Capable staff.”
“And so clean. It smelled so fresh, didn’t it, Daisy?”
I rub my unembellished eyes.
My late-night practice session made me too tired
to line them with kohl this morning.
The dark glaze on my nails has worn off at the edges.
My nails do not like the feel of polish.
It’s as though they are being suffocated
under a layer of shellac.
Fingertips that cannot breathe surely can’t play, I think.
And jazz band or no, I keep playing.
Ever since I picked up a horn
in the “mixed abilities” music class
to which Mom took Steven and me
when I was in third grade,
the trumpet has been part of me:
a layer, unlike polish, that I cannot chip away.
“It smelled piney,” I say.
106
It’s not quite two when I escape from home.
On the way to the Arts Center, I stop by Bouchard’s
for a colossal cup of steaming Bear Mountain Blend,
sniff deep the smoky aroma that chases the smell
of sanitized evergreen from my nose.
“Cal tells me you haven’t been in jazz band,”
Aggie greets me bluntly.
“Not Cal’s business.” I press my lips together.
“It’s mine, though. I don’t want to waste my time
teaching music
to somebody who won’t share.”
Dark brown roots divide Aggie’s scalp from the shock of white-yellow hair.
She is wearing a prim blue shirt and khaki slacks.
“What’s with the outfit?”
She tugs at her L.L.Bean sleeves.
“I’m having dinner with my folks after this,
so I’m toning down the ink with some preppy.”
I smile at my trumpet case,
consider designing a new bumper sticker—
“Tone Down That Ink with Some Preppy”—
on Mom’s new color printer, something twisted,
contradictory in pink and green and black and purple.
“Everybody’s telling me to get back to jazz band,” I sigh.
But I don’t make any promises,
just pick up my horn and play through tones and scales,
start in on the Ellington piece.
Let in the good feeling of someone hearing me play,
pretend I am sitting beside Miles Davis, John Coltrane, sharing like Aggie said.
Even after banishing the pine smell with strong coffee,
it’s hard to play away the vision of tepid colors,
studied smiles,
long corridors of beige linoleum tile.
My teacher listens awhile to my pallid playing,
her eyes thoughtful.
Then she unbuttons her blue oxford, shrugs it off
to reveal a much-more-Aggie tie-dyed T-shirt underneath,
and picks up her darling piccolo trumpet from its stand.
“Maybe what you need to do right now is keep sharing,
keep reaching
for that sound, even if so much around you seems wrong;
even if you feel lost and judged and sure of nothing.”
She puts the trumpet to her lips
and launches into Louis Armstrong’s “Wild Man Blues,”
one of our favorite tunes to improv together.
We play it clean, then jazz it up,
twist the melody, take turns showing off.
I don’t even ask myself if Aggie will cover herself up again
before she sees her folks,
just let the rest of our hour roll by, faster than light yet suspended in time
like the best improvs should be.
107
Packing up my trumpet case, I feel looser, lighter
than when I came into Aggie’s practice room.
Until I see him sitting in the hall,
two sax cases on the floor by his chair.
“Nice to see you, Daisy.” Cal stands up.
“Been a while since you’ve been at jazz band.
Is everything okay?”
“You had no right to talk to Aggie about that!
It’s none of your business whether I come to jazz.”
Cal toes the big bari sax case with his brown-laced shoe.
His forehead creases,
fair skin reddening just like Justine’s does
when she isn’t certain what mistake she’s made.
“I didn’t mean to upset you. Honest.”
“I don’t need anyone else trying
to keep me on a schedule, Cal O’Casey.
So you just go be a good boy and don’t be late
for your lesson.”
I sound like I am channeling
Ashleigh Anderson’s condescending twang.
I feel bad, but I cannot stop.
Instead, I keep going, hip thrust out mean-girl style,
clutch my trumpet case in one hand,
and give him a dismissive little wave with the other.
Cal does not reply.
Just picks up his instruments,
crosses to the practice room threshold,
knocks on the door.
“Mornin’ to ya, Miss Aggie. Ready to play?”
lilts back to my ears
as I turn, walk down the hall, out the door, to my car.
108
Dave gets to our house at ten past seven.
My parents hover in the doorway:
two greyhounds, ears cocked back,
listening for dangerous sounds from Steven,
whom they’ve planted in the family room,
watching a cartoon about cars.
“You remember Dave,” I say.
He runs his hand through his hair.
“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Meehan.”
“Well, time to go.”
My sneakered feet feel for the invisible line,
wonder if it will stop me
from dragging Dave down the walkway to his car.
“Sheesh, Daisy, you could’ve let me spend a minute
with your mom and dad.
Mayb
e say hi to Steven. I used to live right there.”
He points to the house the Allen family lives in now,
with their two normal towheaded boys
and healthily chattering toddler daughter.
“Steven isn’t like you remember him.”
“What’s he like?”
The trillion-dollar question.
If there were an answer,
the decision whether to nod and smile
when my parents admire
the clean, fresh smell of Holland House would be simple.
What “Steven” does Dave remember,
that he would dare to say hello?
I buckle my seat belt. “He’s not too good. Let’s go.”
I reach for the radio, for once relieved
by the pounding beats of Dave’s alt-rock station,
for the repetitive lyrics about wanting to get close,
not wanting to get burned,
that suddenly make total sense
and don’t require conversation.
109
We’re at the town park in ten minutes.
Dave pulls into a spot under the trees.
I don’t wait
longer than it takes for him to turn off the Fiesta’s
rumbly engine. I don’t want
to join Belden and the crew I see in the distance
already clustered around a fire
The Sound of Letting Go Page 15