It was all wrong with Craig. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
And yet … he did have a nice touch.
Not that I had anything to compare it to.
* * *
Aunt Agatha came back, wearing a frown.
“Hello, chums,” she said, at half her usual pitch.
“What’s wrong?” I paused my scraper halfway down a strip.
“Oh … I … I just never imagined it would be this hard.” She sank into her practicing chair and leaned back with a heavy sigh.
“What? Fixing up the place?”
“No, no. Not that. It’s what I have no control over that upsets me. Finding a berth for the barge.” She looked out into the water. “What good is a concert barge with no place to dock?”
You’d think she’d have worked all this out beforehand.
“So you were calling about berths?”
“My dear, I’ve been calling about berths for months. I’m almost out of places to call. No one’s interested in a concert barge. You should hear what they say!”
I could just imagine.
“So what are you going to do?” I asked.
She looked at me and smiled.
“Don’t worry about me, love. I may be stalled, but I’m not giving up. Sometimes it just takes me a few seconds to restart my engine.”
“Hey, good one,” Craig said. It figured he’d like the car reference, stereotype that he was.
“Thank you, dear heart,” she told him.
To me, she said, “There’s something else, love. I’m afraid I’ll have to go back to work, starting tomorrow.”
Aunt Agatha played in the orchestra pit in Broadway shows. She despised playing the same mindless pieces night after night. She could actually play from memory and read a book at the same time.
“I thought you were taking the summer off,” I said.
“Yes, but apparently my fill-in just quit. Go figure.” She waved her arms up. “If I don’t go back, they’ll replace me permanently.”
This wasn’t good at all. It meant way too much alone time for Craig and me.
“Don’t worry, dear heart. There are only two matinees a week, and the rest of the performances are in the evenings. We’ll be able to get our work done without much interference. And you prefer to eat supper alone, anyway. Just let me know what you want to eat, and I’ll make sure it’s here.”
She rose and took my hand. “We’ll get by.”
I glanced over at Craig, who seemed to be hard at work, hammering wood to the wall. Only two matinees, and one was probably Sunday. He wouldn’t be working on a Sunday anyway. When she went to the other matinee, I could just leave.
That’s it. I’d leave.
Aunt Agatha’s back was turned now as she got to work on staining.
Craig gave me a lewd half smile.
Would I leave?
9
Confessions
By the end of the day, I was ready to scrape at my skin with tweezers. My feet burned like I’d walked over hot coals.
I peeled off my socks and showed Aunt Agatha. She said I needed to soak them in Epsom salts so the splinters would work themselves out.
She set me up on the couch with my feet in an aluminum paint pan filled with warm water and the Epsom salts and with a pair of tweezers at my side. I was amazed she had the salts, but apparently foot soaking was one luxury she allowed herself. Thankfully, the salted water put out the fire under my soles.
She’d also insisted on leaving me linguine, saying I needed a real meal. It was still in the blackened pot she’d cooked it in, on the hot plate. Aunt Agatha believed in eating right from the pot.
While I sat and soaked, the linguine sat and soaked, too—in the oil Aunt Agatha had globbed onto it and stirred. The fat count in that pot had to be in the high hundreds. I crunched on a carrot and thought of the Brady family.
Real meals always made me think of them. They were on this TV show I watched every night at seven, “The Brady Bunch.” It was on Channel 5, a station that showed old sitcoms.
Tuning into The Brady Bunch was like studying a foreign culture: Dad was always hard at work, supporting the family, and yet he came home every single night, just in time for supper. Mom was a homemaker, pretty much only leaving the house on errands. Alice was the maid and cook, which kind of makes me wonder what Mom actually did all day. Somehow, she seemed pretty busy.
The Bradys had six kids whose problems were a total joke, like breaking Mom’s favorite vase and trying to cover it up or not wanting to share a room anymore.
I would have loved those problems.
And the best part was that their problems were always solved by the end of every episode. Life was restored to a bed of roses in thirty minutes, minus commercials. You couldn’t beat that.
My mom was pretty much everything Mrs. Brady was not.
My mom didn’t have a favorite vase to break. She was too busy piling up unread newspapers all over the place. There wasn’t a chair or table without them.
My mom never cleaned or cooked, nor did she hire a housekeeper to do it. In fact, my mom never even showed up for dinner. Eight o’clock would’ve been early for her. A real treat for me.
When I lived with Mom, I sat on my newspapers and watched Alice clean. I ate my canned soup and watched the Bradys seated around the dinner table, discussing their day and passing the potatoes.
But on the barge, I had no TV. Three carrots later, I moved the linguine to the floor and slipped my headphones on. I dozed off, still sitting up and still soaking my feet, during a long instrumental part of a Doors song. Before I fell asleep, my last thought was, What on earth did Jim do during those parts at concerts? He didn’t play an instrument. The music wasn’t danceable. Did he just stand there looking sexy? Hmmm …
I woke up some time later, with my head arched back. My neck had an awful cramp.
I decided to check my feet. Darned if the splinters weren’t poking out a bit—most of them, anyway. I plucked them out, one by one.
It would be great if you could squeeze the tweezers and pluck the problems out of your life.
My feet were still sore, but the severe pain was gone. I padded them up with the same two pairs of socks, then slid my sneakers on. I got up and took the pot of linguine out to the back deck, held it over the water and dumped it. Splash! The lump of twisted strands sunk like a lead weight.
“Hey!” someone called in a raised whisper.
I jumped, and fought back a scream.
“Willow!”
I peeked over the edge of the deck and saw Axel.
“You always go prowling around at one a.m.?” I asked.
“Actually, it’s a quarter to ten,” he said, checking his watch. “Close, though.”
Boy, I needed a clock. I was becoming more and more removed from time as the world knew it.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Just felt like talking. Thought maybe you’d feel like it, too.”
Oh, yeah I did.
“Come up the ladder at the other end,” I told him. “I’ll meet you there.”
I headed across the barge to the front door, stopping at the couch to drop off the empty pot.
Again, I had to feel my way through the dark patch of the room—I didn’t want to step on any protruding nails. Or wake Aunt Agatha up. At last, I made it out the front door.
“Sorry I took so long. It’s like running an obstacle course in there,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, go ahead—take a peek.”
I opened the door, and he stared inside.
“Yikes.”
“And you can’t even see half of it in the dark. I’m telling you, I don’t see how this place is ever going to be finished.”
I closed the door again.
Axel leaned against the wall. “What’s it going to be?”
I sat on a metal stump, just like the one I’d stubbed my toe on, there on the back deck. Aunt Agatha said it was used to wrap rope aro
und and to attach the barge to tugboats.
“It’s supposed to be a classical music concert hall—for chamber music. That’s music for a small group of musicians, as opposed to an orchestra.”
“Yeah, I know.” He played an imaginary bow across his chest. “The cello, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I’m just used to explaining it to people.”
“So how’d your aunt come up with this idea?”
“Strangely enough, it’s because of me. When I was born, Aunt Agatha decided she wanted a haven for me—those were her words. God, this sounds cheesy. Anyway, she wanted a place for me—and the rest of the world—to hear beautiful music performed as it was meant to be. In a place where you could see the musicians’ faces as they played. A place for the soul and the spirit. Yeesh, I’ve got the whole lecture memorized.”
“Sounds great.”
“Yeah, well, anything can sound good in theory. But when it comes time to actually doing it … ”
“So you don’t think the barge is gonna work out?”
“You see what needs to be done. I guess it’s possible. But she’s got a bigger problem. She can’t find a place to dock it in New York City.”
“That stinks.”
“Yes, it does.”
What didn’t stink was this night. Axel seemed to have stabilized. He wasn’t shy; he wasn’t overbearing. And he wasn’t drunk.
“Anyway, it’s time for true confessions,” I said. “I need to know: how’d you wind up in this boatyard of your own free will?”
Axel laughed. “I just needed to get away and chill for a while, and I’ve always liked the water. I told my dad I wanted to take some time off before college.”
He paused, and the smile left his face. “He didn’t have a problem with it. He gave me one of his boats. I changed its name, because Boardroom Antics didn’t work for me—and off I went.”
Interesting.
“How much time you taking off?”
“Jury’s still out on that.”
Hmmm…
“So, you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Three brothers: Wade, Wesley, and Will.”
“Are you close with them?”
“Ha. Like anyone could be close with those banana Republicans.”
“I take it they’re the short hair, dark suit types?”
“Yeah, but to blow your theory again, not one of them plays the cello. They’re only interested in playing the stock market.”
Something about the name thing seems off.
“How did Wade, Wesley, and Will wind up with a brother called Axel?”
“They’re my half brothers. They’re all a lot older than I am. Thirty-five, thirty-two, and thirty. Their mom died ’bout twenty years ago. Cancer.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
Axel shrugged.
“And what about your mom?” I asked.
“She was Dad’s secretary—or one of them. He was bonking them all, I imagine, but the condom broke in her.”
“Wow.”
“Well, you asked. Tell you the truth, she probably made a hole in it. And then—there I was.”
You couldn’t accuse Axel of holding anything back.
He continued, “Dad married Mom. It wouldn’t do for a little bastard to be running around, even though I suspect he’s always thought of me that way anyway. I’m told he wanted me named after a philosopher. But Mom didn’t want to name her son Aristotle or Socrates. He said she could pick, but it had to be a name having to do with philosophy.”
“I never heard of any philosopher named Axel,” I said.
“No, but it’s kind of funny what she did. She looked up philosophy in the thesaurus and found the synonym axiology. So she named me Axel for short. Needless to say, Dad wasn’t thrilled. Tricked again, by a bimbo.”
“That’s not a nice way to talk about your mother.”
Axel shrugged. “I suppose I should be grateful that my name’s not Phil.” He locked his fingers together and stared down at them.
“Seriously, I think my name was just another reason for my dad to hate me.”
“I’m sure your father doesn’t hate you.”
Axel looked up. “Yeah? You know him, huh?”
“Well, no… .”
“Then you’ll have to trust me on that. One thing’s for sure: Dad and my so-called brothers didn’t shed any tears when I sailed off into the sunset.”
“So, has being named after philosophy itself compelled you to spout out any words of wisdom?”
Axel reflected for a moment and said, “Life sucks.”
And there you have it.
“Where’s your mom now?” I asked him.
“Gone.”
“Gone?”
Axel nodded.
“Gone. She split. Took off with the gardener, a real class act named Eddie Cuccioni, Junior.”
“Jeez, I’m really sorry.”
He shrugged.
“Tell you the truth, I’m not a big fan of foliage. Kind of makes me think of them. That’s why I like it around here. No flowers anywhere.”
“That’s terrible,” I said.
Axel shrugged again.
“There are worse things than that in the world.”
He swiped his hands together, like he was done with the subject.
“Okay, your turn. Tell me about your rotten childhood,” he said.
“How do you know I had a rotten childhood?”
“You exude eau de rotten childhood. You reek of it. What do you think drew me to you to begin with? Your misery lures me.”
“You sure know how to compliment a girl.”
He shrugged again.
I told him about the loneliness. About getting off the school bus and heading down the block, walking past all the neat, orderly houses to our haunted-looking one.
It was something the Addams family would’ve been happy in. Paint was peeling off in chunks; the doorknob was taped up to try and keep it from falling off in your hand. You had to practically body-slam the door to get it to open, and we had this huge, unruly hedge that the town board always wrote to complain about.
I told him about having to fend for myself until Mom came home at around nine at night, if not later, and I told him about all the newspapers, the years and years of The New York Times Mom was saving until she had time to read them.
How Axel felt about flowers, that’s how I felt about newsprint.
And I told him about how Mom had different voices. How she could be a little girl sometimes, soft and questioning. I’d have to explain everything to her, like I was the grown-up. Then there was the mad voice, which was attacking, blaming, and vicious. Times like that, she wouldn’t even say good morning. Instead, she’d just hurl anger at me, like rocks.
I guess Axel couldn’t accuse me of holding back, either.
“Hmmm,” Axel said when I’d finished. “I guess we could open a chapter of Dysfunctions Are Us, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess we could.”
“But you haven’t explained how you wound up here this summer. Doesn’t seem like you volunteered for the job.”
“Mom found herself a boyfriend. A plumber she called to fix a leak a few months ago. God, it’s like a bad movie.”
“Yeah, a bad porno movie.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said. “Anyway, he made himself right at home. So he was in, and I was out.”
“What’s gonna happen in the fall?”
I didn’t know what was going to happen to me in the fall. Maybe Mom would decide she didn’t want me back. Maybe she’d run off with Steve to Paris.
What if I had to stay on the barge always? With no bed, no shower, no TV?
“You got any extra room on that boat?”
He laughed. But I wasn’t kidding.
He got up. “It’s late now. I’d better go.”
That reminded me: “Tomorrow, I need to get a clock somehow.”
“This should take care of it,” Axel said,
handing me a small white object. A cell phone. “I had it delivered today. Look, it has the time on it—and the date. So you can count down each day you serve.”
“Axel, why … ? ”
“I could see you were scared here. Now you know you can call 911 if you need to. And if it’s not an emergency, you can call me.” He took the phone and flicked his finger across the screen. “This unlocks it.” he said. A bunch of icons appeared. He hit the one that said “Phonebook.” The name “Axel” appeared. “You’re the first one to get my number besides the Chinese restaurant.”
“Your family doesn’t have your phone number?”
“I told you, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.”
“What if there’s an emergency?”
“What kind of emergency? The dry cleaner didn’t press Wesley’s suits to his expectations?” He laughed, but it seemed forced. “They wouldn’t look to me for help, and I sure as hell wouldn’t call them. Anyway, I’m beyond help.”
“I don’t understand… .”
“At least you’ve got a shot at salvation.” Salvation? He was talking crazy again. What, did he think he was Jesus Christ or something?
I must have given him a weird look, because he apologized. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. I just meant, now you don’t have to be lonely anymore.”
If only it were that easy.
10
Break on Through
The barge seemed more bearable with a friend to talk to. Aunt Agatha left for the theater at five o’clock every night, and Axel came by at six. I told him to come earlier sometime and meet Aunt Agatha, but so far he hadn’t wanted to. I said she’d invited him to play duets, but he didn’t want to do that, either. He said he didn’t play well with others.
Axel usually stayed until about eleven o’clock. We sat on the deck and stared into the water, talking about anything that came into our heads.
Axel also brought me a pile of books, to keep me from going nuts alone on the barge. He tried to give me Shakespeare, but I told him I was getting enough of the Bard from him already. I asked for Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters.
During the day, I tried my best to help Aunt Agatha. And I had to admit, we were making some progress. One-third of a wall was now covered in mahogany, and it looked great—and interesting, too. The strips varied in length and shades of brown, giving the overall effect of a giant wooden jigsaw puzzle, just like Aunt Agatha had promised. Craig wasn’t so bad with a saw and hammer. Too bad someone couldn’t hammer some grammar into him.
Saved By The Music Page 5