Son of a Critch

by Mark Critch

  “That’s not right at all, Kevin,” she sputtered. “Space your fingers equally. You’re not gripping it. Keep your wrist flexible. Here…” When she started to place his fingers he pulled his hand away.

  “Free smack,” I mouthed at him.

  Sister Elizabeth forced his seized-up claw into whatever he was supposed to be doing to his frog and then made him do drills. At the same time, she gave me a crash course in the finer points of my violin-with-a-thyroid-problem. I tried to make the sounds she wanted, but it was evident that I’d never be a great cellist. At the end of my lesson, Sister Elizabeth and I looked at my cello like homicide detectives: we were both happiest when the case was closed.

  * * *

  —

  Over the next few weeks I actually started to enjoy my lessons. I had a new-found admiration for the cello, and having been such a big music lover, it was exciting to be able to make music myself. My father was sure I was on the path to Carnegie Hall. He pronounced it “Car-knee-gee” in the old townie accent that also changed “Chicago” to “Chi-car-go” for some reason. Mom was less excited.

  “My​Gawd​Mark​You​Can’t​Go​Lifting​A​Great​Big​Cello​Like​That​Around​With​Your​Hernia. You’ll​End​Up​In​Hospital!”

  My brother was as supportive as ever. “You’re going to get killed,” he scoffed. “They’re going to tie you to the fence and throw rocks at your nuts when they see you with a cello. Everybody’s gonna laugh at you.” He was right. I’d let myself get caught up in the artistry of it all, and now Mike was pulling me back down to the ground by the testicles. I’m sure Kevin had once had a chance at a normal childhood. But having gone deep with the cello, he’d sealed his fate. No one I talked to knew who Kevin was. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen him around school before; I may very well have. I just hadn’t noticed him. He was a wraith, roaming the halls like the Phantom of the Music Room. Was I, too, doomed to walk the halls in chains? A spectre invisible even to those who wanted to pants me?

  The more my brother teased me the more anxious I got, until I started to cry. I was weeping for myself. I had chosen the road not taken and now I regretted it. I wanted the other, more travelled road, the one with sidewalks and a McDonald’s. I threw myself on the couch and buried my head in the pillow as dramatically as one would expect. “God, you’re weird,” Mike said, retreating to the whirr of the lawn mower drowned out by the roar of his Sony Walkman. He wrapped his ears in bands of noise the way Canadians dressed in layers to stay warm tobogganing.

  My father appeared in a puff of tobacco smoke. “What the hell is wrong with that one?” he asked no one in particular.

  I spilled my guts as I lay back on the couch. This was the closest thing to therapy I ever got. “Sister Elizabeth made me play the cello and now everyone is going to beat me up and I don’t want to learn how or where to touch the frog. I never want to see that dumb frog again!”

  Dad sat down at the telephone table and calmly wrote a note on a steel-ringed pad. He tore out the sheet and passed it to me the way a psychiatrist would hand his patient a prescription for Valium. “Here,” he said, giving me his one-word analysis. He lit another Rothman’s and disappeared into a carcinogenic fog. I unfolded the note. It read: “Sister Elizabeth. Please excuse Mark from playing cello. He is not up to it. Please also excuse him from whatever experiments you are doing with frogs in science class. The boy is a bit soft, but I hope he will grow out of it. Regards, Mike Critch.”

  The old man had reserved judgment to my face but was perfectly willing to give me a mental autopsy in a note. I respected that. Later, at supper, I caught myself practising bow technique with my fork and immediately stopped myself. My orchestral life was behind me now. I slept better that night than I had since starting school. A detour sign now blocked off the road not taken and I could follow my brother’s well-mowed path of least resistance.

  There was no cello scheduled for the next day and so I sat in math class with the uncultured masses. My father’s note of reprieve burned a hole in my pocket. By this point I’d missed a lot of math and had fallen far behind the other students. I felt like a mathematical Rip Van Winkle, waking up to an unfamiliar world of long division and remainders. The other kids carried numbers over and stacked them like blocks to come up with new numbers. They seemed to speak a whole new language. “Have you been doing your catch-up work, Mark?” my teacher asked. I had not. After every missed math class, she’d written down a list of pages from our textbook for review so that I could keep up. I had ignored them all. I was a classical musician. What use had I for math?

  Did Beethoven study math? Could Mozart explain what a quotient was? How many angles could Bach name? I couldn’t tell you because I wasn’t a very good musical history student either. I’d like to know, though. Even as I write this, I could very easily type “Was Beethoven good at math” into a search engine and ease a lifetime’s curiosity, but I won’t. Again. When I tried, the second I typed “Beethoven” and “numbers” into Google, it suggested the series of movies starring Charles Grodin and a St. Bernard dog, which reminded me of how funny Grodin was on the Letterman show, and that led me down a YouTube hole to episodes of his issues-oriented CNBC talk show—and I lost a whole day of writing. So, no, I did not do my catch-up math homework, for much the same reason.

  My teacher used my rare presence as a good opportunity for the class to recap what they’d been doing. Not only were the ideas flying over my head, but the very numbers seemed to disappear as soon as the teacher wrote them on the blackboard. I leaned into my friend Mickey and whispered, “Is she really writing numbers on the board?” He assured me that she was and showed his scribbler to prove he was getting it. I had to move up to an empty desk and, though faint, I could see the numbers now, too. My teacher saw me squinting and told me she was putting me on the list to get my eyes checked. Great. First a cello and now glasses: God did not intend for me to ever kiss a girl.

  The harder I struggled with math, the more intriguing the cello seemed. I was not a good math student to begin with. Now I found myself in a class where only 1/25 of people had trouble with fractions. I’d have to deal with my problems with math problems. But why rush it? Maybe I was giving up on the cello too soon. After all, only Sister Elizabeth and Kevin had ever seen me play. And it wasn’t like the school bullies would line up to catch the next orchestra recital.

  That night at the dinner table, Dad asked what the nun had said when I gave her his note. “Oh, she was very understanding,” I lied. “And she said you had lovely penmanship.” Mike shot me a quizzical look from across the table, then turned up the dial on his Walkman until I could hear Keith Richards’s guitar almost as clearly as the old man chewing.

  The next day, my feet felt like lead as I walked toward the music room. I rubbed the “get out of jail free” card in my pocket. To hand it over meant social renaissance. On the other hand, I’d have to face the life of mathematical illiteracy I’d been building for myself. As I neared the door, I could hear the strains of Kevin’s jellyfish fingers filling the room with elevator music. I took my place alongside him and listened to the end of his piece, expecting a door to open to reveal a sign that read “Housewares.”

  “Excellent, Kevin,” Sister Elizabeth said, causing his light-bulb-shaped head to swell even more. “Now, Mark. Your turn.” I fumbled the cello out of its case. I knew about as much about my instrument as I did about math and was beginning to realize that I’d been choosing between two things I hated. I hemmed and hawed as I went through the motions of rosining up my bow. Stroking it as if I were buttering a slice of bread, I sized up the nun. How would she react if I gave her the note? Would she be angry or relieved? Surely there was someone else she could use as the cello’s leaning post.

  “That’s enough rosin,” Sister Elizabeth said. “You’re not painting a fence.” Kevin waited anxiously to hear me play. Even I was curious to see what sounds would come out. I was having no more luck with music than math. For
two such vastly different subjects, they actually had a lot in common.

  There are whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes. A whole note lasts throughout the whole measure, while a quarter note lasts a quarter of a measure. A quarter note with a dot after it would be held for three-eighths of a measure, since that’s midway between a quarter note and a half note. This was not comforting to a young fella who’s trying to escape fractions. There was just as much math in music class as there was in math class, and with only two students your teacher was far more likely to pick up on the fact that you had no idea what you were doing. I was sure to get in trouble in both classrooms, and I couldn’t even plead the Fifth because I didn’t understand fractions. I knew only enough to know that I was only half interested in either subject.

  I began to play. It sounded more like hard work than music. Anyone passing by would be looking for the cat that had been hit by a truck. “It’ll have to be put down,” they would say. “Listen to it. The poor thing must have been dragged for miles.” A critic might pronounce that a bad cellist sounds scratchy. I sounded like I’d eaten a salad made of poison ivy.

  “Stop right there.” Sister put us all out of our misery. “Kevin, can you tell us what Mark is doing wrong?” Something told me Kevin would be up to the task. I didn’t want to give him the pleasure.

  “But, Sister,” I began, reaching into my pocket for the detonator that would blow my musical career to pieces. I had my father’s note halfway out when she cut me off, using the deeper nun voice that forewarned impending doom to all those who did not shut it immediately.

  “Go ahead, Kevin,” she said, twisting the knife in a little deeper.

  “Well…” He was relishing the moment. “For starters he’s pressing too hard with his thumb. He is bowing at the wrong angle. He’s holding it wrong. He is using too much rosin. He’s not reading the right rhythms. And he needs to trim his nails.” Music narc.

  “That is all true,” she agreed, delighting Kevin. Something about his smug smile made me shove the note deep into my pocket. I would not give him the satisfaction. I’d hand in my note when he wasn’t around.

  “But those are the symptoms,” Sister Elizabeth added, “not the cure. Mark is doing all those things because of what he’s not doing. Practising. Mark, I want you to take your cello home with you tonight.”

  Home? Was she crazy? How the hell was I going to get that crate on the school bus? I’d have to get the driver to open up the emergency door at the back. And what would Dad say when I walked in the house lugging a cello? I’d already told him I’d given in the note. I needed to stand up and be a man. I had to tell her that I’d never wanted to play the dumb cello in the first place. She needed to know that you can’t force people to play an instrument. You had to inspire them to do so. And picking me because I was the biggest kid in class wasn’t inspiring. It was body-shaming! “Yes, Sister,” I said.

  When the school bell rang I went to the music room to collect my cross. I struggled to lift it. Leaning it on my shoulder, I strained against its weight the way Our Lord did with his crucifix on his long walk to Golgotha. The crowds in the hallway parted to watch me pass. I shifted it so that the top was leaning over my shoulder and my arms were hugging its sides. It was as if we were slow-dancing to “Stairway to Heaven” and getting a little fresh.

  I tugged and pulled at the case to get it through the door. Somehow I manoeuvred it so that it came out bottom first. I struggled with the breech birth delivery, finally freeing it and dragging it onto the playground. A line of children had already formed at my bus, so I decided to wait until they were all seated and the aisle was free before I brought home my bundle of joy.

  “What’s in the box, fruit?” Silver Fox asked with an honest curiosity. In fact, the sight of me wrestling with the cello case had sparked the curiosity of the entire pack of Foxes. I dreaded telling them the truth: not only would I have to explain what a cello was but what an orchestra was as well, and I was getting pressed for time. The line to the bus was growing shorter as kids packed into their seats in straggly rows. The first bus was already breaking formation and leaving the parking lot. I didn’t have time to listen to Fox and his brothers mocking me. I had to get mocked on the bus so that I could get home for my brother to mock me.

  “It’s probably his mother,” Fox said, ramping up the satire. I didn’t think jamming one’s mother into a cello case showed weakness. If I’d done that I probably would have killed her. Murdering my mother and dragging her corpse around would have made me the toughest kid in school.

  “Yup. It’s my mom,” I concurred, pulling the case on the pavement and scuffing it. “Come on, Mom,” I said, lips pressed to the lid. “We have to catch the bus or we’ll be late for supper. We’re having Mozartrella cheese on Bach-choy.” That caused a moment of confusion; I took the opportunity to push through the wall of human befuddlement. I would have been home free if not for one devastating mistake: trailing the large round bum of my instrument behind me. Two of the Foxes grabbed it, jerking it away; I lost hold of the neck and it came crashing down onto the asphalt. A muffled blast sounded in protest, alerting the boys to the presence of something inside the case.

  “It’s a cat,” Middle Fox said. I crossed him off my list of donors should I ever join the local symphony.

  “Open the suitcase,” Silver Fox ordered. I could hear the hiss of the bus’s air brakes. Still though, I had some time: kids were shuffling around inside, and there was always a lot of arguing over the back seat. We called it the bump seat, since you’d get a good lift when we hit a pothole. The kids would encourage the driver to hit as many bumps as possible. “Hit a bump, Bus Driver!” we’d yell. If he hit one big enough you could actually be sent flying from your seat, and in a perfect world you’d hit your head on the top of the bus. It was a simpler time.

  Kids were jamming the edge of hardcover schoolbooks into the tabs on the windows to get them open. The windows had seized up over time and only a grade six or higher could manage to get them down. It was crucial to do so or else an entire city’s worth of pedestrians would pass without being able to properly give them the finger.

  All this excitement was slipping away now because Fox and his brothers had taken an interest in classical music. They enveloped the case and pawed at its latches, kneeling down beside it and finally opening the lid. Fox pulled the bow from its housing and started hitting his brothers with it. It made a thwip! thwip! thwip! sound as it cut through the air, making it seem a deadlier weapon than it was.

  “Look at the size of that fiddle!” one of them shouted. The boys lifted up my cello and began to strum it like a guitar. They jostled for it, delighted to be holding something so comically oversized. Then two of his brothers grabbed Fox and shoved him into the case, closing the lid on him.

  “Let me out!” he screamed as the other boys started to kick the sides of the case with their sneaker boots. I had lost control of the situation.

  “Give me back my cello!” I shouted. Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! The brothers started to hit me on the backside with my own bow. “Give it up! You’ll break it,” I yelled, unsure if I meant the bow or my arse. “It’s not mine. Sister gave it to me.” I hoped invoking the name of the great hand smackers would scare some sense into them. Breaking a cello would surely earn them a strapping severe enough to guarantee they’d never again have fingerprints. This crowd would probably consider that a good thing, though.

  “If it’s Sister’s, then how come you’re taking it on the bus, spaz?” Silver Fox asked.

  “Because I have to practise,” I said, my voice rising into the high-pitched whine of a kid who sees his bus starting to pull away.

  “Yeah, well, so do we,” he decided. “We’re taking this home tonight.” They were cello-jacking me. Sister Elizabeth had come to my classroom door and forced me to become a cellist, I’d been worried that bullies would tease me for playing it, and now four of them were stealing the instrument from me beca
use they loved it so. I had not seen this coming.

  I looked at the four brothers and then back at my bus. The door closed with the hiss that indicated I was about to be stranded. A momentary concern for Fox flashed into my mind as I wondered how much air was in a case. The bus lurched forward. “To hell with the cello,” I thought, “to hell with Fox, and to hell with his brothers.” I ran to my bus and banged on its side. The brakes hissed and the door slid open. I found a seat facing the school and watched the brothers as they sat on the case, hitting each other with my bow. Substitute the bow for a bone and they could be the prehistoric apes at the start of 2001. I leaned out the window as far as I could and shouted, “This is your bus too, ya nimrods!” A flash of recognition crossed their faces as they realized they had a long walk home with a heavy cello. They went back to hitting each other. “Which of us is more screwed?” I wondered.

  * * *

  —

  On the bus the next morning Fox told me that his oldest brother had stashed the cello near the school and that if I wanted it back I’d have to go see him. Their parents had split and their father had a new house closer to school and he’d been none too happy when the brood he thought he’d escaped showed up at his door with a classical instrument. I’d never heard of anyone’s parents breaking up before. That just didn’t happen at Catholic school. You got pregnant, you got married, and whatever parent outlived the other won. That was how the game was played. I knew divorce was about as high up a sin as you could get, and felt truly bad for him.

  “Sorry ’bout that,” I said, and Fox hit me hard in the shoulder.

  “Shut up,” he replied, turning his face to the window. I knew what the scratch in his voice meant and I didn’t want to say anything else in case it would make him cry. Besides, his parents were going to burn in hell for all eternity. That was punishment enough as far as I could figure.