Saved By The Music

by Selene Castrovilla

  “Welcome home, darling. And it’s Agatha. Only tax collectors and solicitors call me Ms. Moon.”

  “Okay, Agatha.” He shuffled his feet.

  Good lord, how could the same guy who’d saved me from a dangerous situation out on the street, plus rescued me from a panic attack now revert to a nearly mute bundle of nerves, all in the same day? He needed medication or something.

  “I like your face, dear heart. It’s sincere. And my niece tells me you’re a cellist.”

  “Yes.” He looked down again.

  “You must come play duets with me. And I won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so… .”

  “I have the sheet music for Beethoven’s Duo for Violin and Cello in E-flat Major. You know, the one he subtitled in the manuscript ‘with two obbligato eyeglasses,’ but no one knows why.” She made finger circles over her eyes. “Fun, fun!”

  Axel stared at her, dumbstruck.

  “Come, come. What are the chances of two musicians meeting in a setting like this? We must take advantage of our good fortune.”

  “I’m not really up to it.”

  “Pish, posh. Is anyone ever up to anything in life?”

  “I need to practice.”

  “You can practice with me, darling. I’m not God or the devil. I’m not going to judge you or poke you with a pitchfork.”

  Axel laughed. “Well, when you put it like that… . Okay. I’ll come.”

  “Tomorrow morning, then.”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Indeed. Because I’m so tired, I’m forced to employ the cliché ‘There’s no time like the present.’ It does the job, does it not?”

  “Yes, it does. I’ll be here.” He turned to me. “I’d better get going.”

  “Dear heart, don’t leave on my account. I’m going to bed. You two are young. You can stay up a while longer.” She poked Axel in the chest. “As long as you’re here at sunrise, mister.”

  “Sunrise?”

  “Sunrise. If you don’t get going early, you don’t get going at all.” Aunt Agatha chuckled and elbowed Axel in the ribs. “I’m out of my mind with fatigue and am able to summon only trite platitudes. The one about the early bird springs to mind. Then there’s ‘He who snoozes, loses.’ Lord, what would Shakespeare say?”

  “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly?” Axel suggested. He seemed to be handling his first Aunt Agatha experience pretty well after all.

  “Indeed,” Aunt Agatha said. “Macbeth was talking about murder, of course, but practicing the fiddle may certainly be called deadly.” She slapped Axel on the back. “I like your style, my boy.”

  She yanked the door, then paused with it open. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about my adventure tonight, on the way to work.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I was stopped at a light. All of a sudden, I saw a tire go rolling across the street and up a telephone pole. It was the darndest thing. Then suddenly, the car flopped—voom! It was my tire!”

  “What did you do?” asked Axel, looking appalled.

  “I walked to a gas station and asked them to come and fix it. Lucky it didn’t happen on the Belt Parkway.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  * * *

  “Sorry about that. Aunt Agatha’s a bit … much,” I said after she’d closed the door behind her.

  “No, no. I like her. And to think I spent so much energy avoiding her.”

  “Why did you, anyway?”

  “Avoid her?” He shrugged. “I avoid all adults. They’re basically full of shit. But Agatha seems to be on the level.”

  “That she is.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked me.

  “Yeah, sure. I’m fine now.” Then why did I feel wiped out?

  “You surfed an emotional wave tonight.”

  “The ride’s over, so don’t worry about me.”

  He stared at me, like he was deciding whether I was lying. But I’m really good at burying things deep. I’ve had lots of practice.

  The yellow light on the dock behind him flickered and died. Lights out, everyone.

  “I guess I’ll go, then,” he said softly.

  “See ya.”

  “Good night.” He turned toward the ladder.

  Watching him go, I felt like a balloon with a leak, deflating slowly. “Axel, wait… . I’m … I’m sorry about what I said, um, suggested before.”

  “It’s forgotten. Don’t sweat it.”

  “Thanks for coming. I … I don’t know how else I’d have gotten through that.”

  “Talk to your aunt. Maybe she can help you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I would’ve loved someone like her to talk to.” He looked past me at the water.

  “It’s just not that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s because she expects so much from me.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Nothing. Everything. You saw how she is. Two minutes after you meet her, she’s got you playing duets at the crack of dawn. She’s like a bulldozer.”

  “Oh, come on. I don’t mind coming.”

  “But it wouldn’t matter to her if you did or you didn’t. She’d already decided what was best for you. Imagine living with that all the time.”

  “She cares, that’s all.”

  “She cares, yes, but too much. I mean, like, when I was little, she taught me violin. If I tell you I hated it, that wouldn’t be strong enough. But she … she wouldn’t let me stop. She pushed and pushed. She even paid me for each line I played—for years.”

  “Lots of kids have to take music lessons.”

  “But she’s like that with everything. Push, push, push. But it’s not just what to do. She even tells me what to think. She … she corrects my thoughts. And if I tell her about a problem, she tells me I’m suffering from ego sickness.”

  I glanced at the sky. The stars seemed so close. I wished I could just jump aboard one and head off into the galaxy. But instead, I was stuck on Earth, with hurt and resentment gushing out of me like I was an open fire hydrant.

  “Lately, she’s been a bit better… . I think it’s because she’s so wrapped up in this barge. I … I don’t want to get her started. She’d probably blame me for my own nightmare and tell me to wipe it out of my head.”

  “I doubt that. Have you ever really sat down and discussed things with her?”

  “No, that’s just it. Whenever I start she goes into this big philosophical speech … and that’s that. To her, the problem’s solved. Time to move on, get to work.”

  The tears were flowing again. Goddamn it. I was such a wuss.

  “Try and talk to her. She might surprise you.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and blew it out. “Right now, Axel, I don’t know if I could handle any more surprises.”

  13

  Duet

  Heading back inside, I kicked up a screw or a nail or something. It went sailing, clinking against the steel wall.

  I plopped down on the couch, hearing the ringing in my head. The sound of that screw hitting metal jarred the memory of long-ago dinging, back when I was nine.

  It was a Saturday. The plan was for my Uncle Sid to teach Mom to drive. I had my doubts about it, because Uncle Sid had tried to do things for Mom before, but he’d never actually been successful. That’s because he gets mad at her and leaves.

  The problem is that my Mom’s voice has this hook in it. It’s this sharp, jabbing hook that just sticks you, even when someone’s doing something nice for her. She needles you and starts a fight. But Uncle Sid, he’s not one to take her bait. He’d rather just take off. That’s why we don’t see him all that often. And that’s why Mom still doesn’t know how to drive. But there is one kind of driving that Mom’s really good at, and that’s driving people away.

  Anyway, here’s what happened when he tried to teach he
r how to drive: Mom and Uncle Sid sat in the front of the faded red Volvo Mom inherited from her other brother, Jerry, after he died. It’d been sitting in the driveway for as long as I could remember, and she started it sometimes to keep the battery from going bad or something like that.

  I sat buckled up in the back, even though no one told me to. I knew I was supposed to wear the seat belt or maybe I’d get killed. “Seat belts save lives”—that’s what they said on TV.

  The big plan was that after the driving lesson, we were going to Pancake Cottage. We’d have a nice family breakfast. Almost like the Brady Bunch, except it was my uncle instead of my dad. And the Bradys had home-cooked meals. And if they did go out to eat, you can bet Mr. and Mrs. Brady always told their kids to buckle up.

  Uncle Sid groaned. “It’s a stick. How can you learn to drive on a stick? It’ll take forever.”

  She said, “Shut up. If it takes forever, then that’s too bad.” And there was that hook.

  They were already yelling, and the car wasn’t even started yet. Then she turned the key, and when the engine started running, it was loud! Uncle Sid said maybe it needed a muffler, but Mom said it was just old.

  He told her how to back up, but the stick made a really bad noise when she moved it—like someone choking a duck—and then the car stalled. Uncle Sid cursed and told her again how to do it. After, like, thirteen tries, we finally got out of the driveway. I wasn’t really bothered by all this because I was reading The Hardy Boys, volume 33. I loved those Hardy boys. I loved them more than Nancy Drew.

  We were moving now, but I was still reading, trying not to listen to the driving lesson. The car kept stalling; Uncle Sid kept cursing: “Goddamn it!” And Mom kept cursing louder: “Shut the fuck up! How can I concentrate?” This was how she was with everyone. It was better for me, really, because she had him to yell at instead. She was too busy to remember to go after me.

  She didn’t use her little girl voice much when Uncle Sid was around. I was glad. Sometimes I thought that baby voice was scarier than her yelling one.

  He yelled, “Goddamn it, Isadora! You’re stalled on the fucking train tracks!”

  Then came her hook again: “Shut the fuck up! How can I concentrate?”

  I tried to concentrate, but the words train tracks kept playing in my head. Train tracks. Train tracks. Cars honked at us now.

  “Goddamn it, start the fucking car!” said Uncle Sid.

  “Shut the fuck up! I can’t concentrate!” My mom hooked back.

  But there was a dinging now, and the lights on the long red-and-white-striped barriers started flashing. Then the gates came down, and we were on the wrong side of them. I dropped my book to the floor.

  “Goddamn it, press the pedal down! Hurry the fuck up!”

  “Shut the fuck up! I can’t concentrate!”

  Ding, ding, ding, ding! Ding, ding, ding, ding!

  The red lights flashed back and forth, back and forth.

  I heard someone crying. It was me.

  The train was coming. I saw the white lights heading for us down the tracks.

  I was screaming now. “Mom! Uncle Sid!”

  But they didn’t even hear me. They were just yelling and cursing. And the lights were flashing, and the bells were dinging, and we were gonna get hit. We were gonna get crushed!

  There was a big horn blast! And the train was coming, it was coming, it was coming!

  My hands pressed tight against my seat belt strap, squeezing, squeezing.

  “Mom! Uncle Sid! Do something!”

  I saw the train so close, those white lights were so close, and we were gonna get crushed.

  Ding, ding, ding, ding! Ding, ding, ding, ding!

  The car roared to life, and the stick made that dying duck sound, but it didn’t stall—and we got through the space between the barriers, and the train passed right behind us. And I screamed and I screamed, and I was so, so scared. But they didn’t even turn around. They just yelled and yelled and yelled, and we weren’t going to Pancake Cottage—no way.

  “Goddamn it! Let me drive!” said Uncle Sid.

  “Shut the fuck up! I couldn’t concentrate, that’s all!”

  In my head, the bells rang: Ding, ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding, ding.

  Six years later, sometimes they still did.

  * * *

  I woke to the serenade of two bows gliding across strings in a catchy harmony: a journey of two tones, similar yet different, one high, one low. Two opinionated rhythms, not clashing, but joining, intertwining.

  I lay on the couch, listening, until Aunt Agatha and Axel finished playing. Chairs grated, pushed back against the metal floor. Axel and Aunt Agatha were talking, but I couldn’t hear the words. Aunt Agatha said a bunch of stuff, and then Axel said his typical couple of words.

  They went like that for a couple of rounds before I dragged myself off the couch and across the room.

  “Morning,” I said to them.

  “Dear heart, this boy is a wonder,” Aunt Agatha said. “A marvel. Help me convince him that he needs to go to Juilliard.”

  Wow, Juilliard. That was like the greatest music school in the world. If Aunt Agatha thought he should go there, she had to think he was good.

  “You don’t want to go to Juilliard?” I asked him.

  “I can’t commit to anything past getting up tomorrow morning, and even that’s iffy.”

  Aunt Agatha shook her finger at Axel. “You’re wasting your talent, young man.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Axel, telling him silently, “I told you so.”

  “If it’s money you’re worried about, I’m sure you can get a scholarship,” said Aunt Agatha.

  “It’s not money,” Axel said.

  “Then what is it, darling?”

  “I … I just can’t jump into anything.”

  “That’s no way to live, dear heart. You must pursue your passion. He who hesitates is lost! ”

  Axel sat back down and stared at his cello case, fingering the handle. He said in a low voice, “Agatha, I appreciate your suggestion, but right now, Juilliard’s not for me.”

  Aunt Agatha didn’t say anything for a moment. She wasn’t used to objections. She watched Axel, who was flicking the case handle back and forth.

  “All right, my dear. I hope you’ll keep it in mind.”

  Axel, still flicking, nodded.

  “Okay,” Aunt Agatha said, clapping her hands together. “Who wants to get me some coffee?”

  * * *

  Aunt Agatha and Axel were sipping coffee and eating buttered rolls, and I was crunching a carrot when Craig sauntered in. He nodded at us.

  “Good morning, dear heart. I’d like you to meet Axel.”

  “Yo,” Craig said to Axel.

  Axel stared a minute, then said “Yo” back.

  Craig nodded an acceptance of the greeting. Then he said, “Yo, you related to Axel Rose?”

  “Yo, here’s a hint, dude,” said Axel. “When people are related, they have the same last names, not first names.”

  “Huh,” said Craig. He turned to me. “S’up, baby.”

  Axel raised his eyebrows at me. I just shrugged.

  As usual, Craig wore a shirt that could have been painted on him. It was still early morning, but his skin had a sweaty gleam already.

  Axel studied him, but Craig was oblivious. He nodded at us, then went to work.

  Aunt Agatha stood. “Well, I’d better get started, too. You two relax. I know it’s time-consuming to eat a carrot,” she said. She ruffled my hair as she walked by.

  Axel took a long sip of coffee and stared at Craig, who hammered away at a mahogany strip he’d positioned against the wall.

  “That’s the guy you work with every day?” Axel asked.

  “Obviously.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Twenty.”

  “He seems pretty … familiar with you.”

  “That’s the way he is.”

  “Let’s go outside,” A
xel said.

  On the deck, Axel paced again. Back and forth. I watched, not really getting his problem.

  Finally he stopped. “Willow … I … I’m worried about you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How you acted … what you said to me … ”

  “Hey, you said you were gonna forget that.”

  “I’m trying. It’s just that when I saw this guy… . I feel like I need to protect you. It’s like you’re my little sister.”

  Great. That’s just what I want to be. His freakin’ kid sister.

  “I told you, I don’t need your protection.”

  “You are fif-teen, god-damn it.” He pronounced each syllable slowly, through gritted teeth.

  “Oh, but it was okay when you offered me vodka, wasn’t it?”

  He took a deep breath. “You’re right. I never claimed to be the most responsible person ever, but I’m telling you you’re making a mistake rushing into sex. Especially with a no-brainer like that guy!”

  “It’s none of your business, Axel.”

  “Maybe it’s not, Willow.” He stood there, frozen, looking like he was going to cry. “I’m sorry I even care. Believe me, I am sorry.”

  * * *

  Axel left, hoisting his cello down the ladder. I got dressed and went to work.

  It was truly maddening, scraping gunk for hours on end. The only thing that helped was my iPod. Jim boomed in my ear, singing about the future being uncertain and the end always being near.

  You said it, Jim.

  I was busy concentrating when my headphones were suddenly lifted. Craig blinked in my face.

  “What?” I asked, annoyed.

  “Your aunt said she’ll be back in an hour.”

  Wow, a complete, coherent sentence. Is this one of the seven signs?

  “All righty. Can I have my headphones back?”

  Oh boy, he was giving me that sexy look. Houston, we have a problem.

  “S’up wit you an that guy?” Oy, back butchering the English language.

  “We’re friends.”

  “Friends?” He repeated the word like it was foreign. “Whatayamean?”

  “You want me to explain the concept of friendship?”

  “He doin’ ya?” This guy’s gift with words just keeps on giving.