‘It’s okay. I don’t really drink. And I should go.’
He bends to peer into the car as I fiddle with the gear shift. ‘You owe me.’
‘I owe you? How’s that?’
‘For making me think you were drowning out there. Besides. That’s my favourite towel. Signed by Kelly Slater.’ He contemplates my lap, grins. My retort blows away like dandelion fluff out the window. ‘And I need a lift back to the beach, once I find my spare key,’ he calls as he walks toward the side gate, ‘after we warm up.’
I have no choice but to follow him.
‘Studio’s open,’ he says, pointing to it. ‘I’ll get that dress.’ He takes the backyard steps up to the main house two at a time.
A dozen different instruments clutter Jacob’s studio. It’s as if the Sydney Symphony Orchestra dumped their kit here after rehearsals. Except judging by the number of dirty scattered plates, glasses and bottles, they stayed for lunch too. A pile of clothes is bundled next to the kitchenette’s sink and I’m willing to bet that’s why the place smells of cheesy socks and stale armpits. The sofas are both odd – one’s in the shape of giant red lips and the other is a material replica of colourful Lego pieces. Behind them is a music system that’s bookended with shelves of CDs, and two huge speakers.
I move to the grand piano in the centre of the room and play a few scales. It’s a Steinway and has an excellent tone. Untidy stacks of sheet music are piled on either side of the piano’s music rack. I shuffle through them and find a batch of photos – all of the same girl: big white smile, long chestnut hair, tanned a deep brown.
When Jacob joins me, he’s changed into jeans and T-shirt. He passes me a plain beige long-sleeved cotton dress and as he does, stares at my clingy T-shirt. I hug the dress to me.
He makes a beeline for the fridge. ‘You strike me as the white wine sort. I hate drinking alone.’ He’s pouring a glass before I can answer, then grabs a beer. Because of the cast, he holds the beer between his knees and pries off the cap. I notice a long scar on his calf.
‘You were drinking alone before – when you were singing. Or do you have some hidden friends in here?’ I mock-search the room.
He chuckles, and I’m stupidly proud I made a joke.
‘Bathroom’s that way, if you want to change.’ He points behind me with his bottle.
It’s not actually a bathroom, only a toilet, but there’s enough space for me to wriggle out of my wet clothes and into the dress Jacob’s lent me. It fits, though it reaches below my knees thanks to me being vertically challenged. Jacob sits on the red lips sofa and nods his approval, which makes me blush. I choose the Lego sofa. It’s so soft and squishy that I sink backwards until I’m practically lying down. A small shriek pops from my mouth. I yank down the dress.
Jacob’s low laugh gurgles softly. ‘That thing’s a blob. If you stay there, you might never get out again. I won’t bite you know.’
It’s what the boy in the driveway said. Seems to me Jacob might bite.
‘I’m fine here.’ I slide to the floor, lean against the sofa. He points with his chin at the glass of wine on the table between us. I have drunk a little wine before, at rehearsal dinners and celebrations, but I don’t enjoy it. I can probably blame Kara for that after she stole her father’s wine when we were twelve. Since I have to drive home, I press my lips together as I sip and only allow the tiniest amount of liquid into my mouth.
‘You weren’t giving me the cold shoulder when you said you didn’t drink,’ says Jacob. He’s laughing at me again. I stare into the wine glass, but finding no comeback, search the room for inspiration.
A large framed photo of the same tanned girl rests on the table near the fridge. She’s thigh deep in the surf at the beach eating an apple, her hair tousled and sexy. In the back of the room a glass door leads into an area that resembles a spaceship containing a console with hundreds of knobs and buttons. ‘Is that a recording studio?’
‘Yup. Want a tour?’
I follow him, stepping over a flute and two guitars. Through the glass screen over the controls, a third small room emerges. The walls are covered in floor-to-ceiling grey curtains, and a baby grand piano graces the middle of the room. Zut. Two pianos?
‘Soundproof booth for recording stuff,’ Jacob explains. Then he shows me what the knobs and sliders on the console do. We listen to some music he recorded and as it ends he pushes a slider to distort it until we flinch.
‘Do you write music?’ I ask. He looms over me. He’s got to be six foot.
‘Yup. But I suck. Better at playing it. But now I can’t.’ He waggles his cast. It’s covered in handwritten words.
‘What will you do about the Con? You can’t play an instrument and you won’t sing.’
‘I thought you said no-one should make me sing.’
‘And I meant it.’ I recall Maestro in Berlin. ‘I really mean it.’
‘You sound as though you don’t want to sing yourself.’
My breath catches. ‘Why would you say that?’
He crosses his arms, the good hand in his armpit. His hair falls across one cheek, his smile sceptical. Or perhaps it’s wary.
‘I love all music and I love singing,’ I say, cautious. ‘But I’m not sure performing in public is – what I want to do for the rest of my life. I prefer writing lyrics and songs.’
He studies me, like he’s listening to every word with his eyes.
After a gazillion minutes, he asks, ‘Are you any good – at writing music?’
I band my arms over my stomach. ‘I think so. I don’t know.’
His features perk up. ‘Got anything you can play now?’
‘Only if you come back for your lesson tomorrow.’
‘There you go again. Tricking me into singing. The doc did send you.’
He’s teasing now. We study each other. My belly performs an instant hip-hop dance. If Jacob understood how Maestro would disapprove of me being here, alone with a boy . . . Soon Jacob’s going to guess this is the first conversation I’ve held with a guy my own age, other than some stranger in a concert hall surrounded by hundreds of people. He adds, ‘And what’s with this Maestro shit? I mean, it’s a bit corny.’
‘His students started it.’ When he continues to snigger, I scramble for a new topic. A photo of him cuddling that same tanned girl is tacked to the glass screen. Is that the girl who broke his heart?
He catches me staring at it. ‘Girl from next door,’ he says, impassive. ‘Her mum’s into photography.’ He glances away.
‘Is she why you won’t sing anymore?’
Jacob’s eyes flash, then go dark; a glint of sunlight on a lake that’s swallowed by the deep water. He swivels to the console, turns something on. ‘The band I was in. They’re – all dead. Accident – recently.’ I can see he’s battling against his emotions in the way he flattens his expression. ‘It’s not right that I carry on singing – as though I’ve moved on and forgotten them.’
The pieces of the Jacob puzzle start to fit together and I can almost forgive him his grumpiness.
I remember from my own experience that someone saying they’re sorry is unhelpful and offhand, so I refuse to say it now. But what else do I say? ‘Today, were you surfing in those conditions with a broken wrist so you could join your friends?’
‘Broken hand.’ Jacob’s jaw works from side to side. ‘My friend, JW. He broke his wrist once. Didn’t stop him surfing ’cept he wore a plaster cast instead of a waterproof fibreglass one. After three weeks the cast stank like the armpits of hell.’
‘That’s your answer?’ I coax.
Jacob reaches for his beer. Eyes bruised with memories watch me as he swigs. ‘It’s all the answer I have.’ I blink at our bare feet while he seems to tower over me. He adds, ‘Does your dad support you – with your songwriting?’
I fiddle with a button on the d
ress and shrug. After Berlin, I learnt that Maestro might not let me give up singing. Until then, I thought it was my choice.
Jacob cocks his head. ‘My dad told me who your mum was.’
Memories press in on me. I scratch my shin with the ball of my foot. ‘She died after I was born.’ I nearly mention Savannah, but it feels like too much information, too much tragedy, all at once. Instead I say, ‘I figured out that when I sang it was as though I was filling her shoes and my dad kind of recovered from his grief.’
‘So you keep singing as a stand-in for her. To honour the dead. That’s insane.’
‘It’s no crazier than someone refusing to sing because it dishonours the dead.’
Jacob hangs his head and knocks his knuckles rhythmically against the wall he’s leaning against. ‘This might be where I say touché.’ He’s teasing me again.
Our gazes bump into each other. A hush circles us. Heat rises through my chest and neck like a puddle soaking through sheet music. I inspect the words on his cast.
They were chosen instead of me
And you ask why I don’t feel lucky?
I was left behind to live
A forgettable life.
Jacob straightens, slides his cast behind him. ‘Play some songs? The ones you wrote.’ He indicates to the baby grand through the glass screen.
Relieved to put some distance between us, I sit on the stool in the soundproof booth. Jacob lets me warm up, hovering at the console. When he joins me, I play an intro and breathe deeply to make myself relax. At first, I can’t remember the lyrics, although my hands play the notes as if they’re on autopilot. After the first few bars, the words return to me and when the song ends, rather than deal with Jacob’s reaction, I sing a couple more. The acoustics in here amaze me and my confidence skyrockets.
‘I didn’t know what to expect, but I wasn’t expecting chart music,’ he says, after I finish a third song. He’s sitting behind me on the floor, elbows on bent knees. ‘I mean, the songs are awesome. I guess I’ve only ever heard you sing opera. I’m totally jealous. You have that voice and you can write pop hits. None of your talent should go to waste.’
‘Thanks. I wish Maestro saw it that way. I don’t get to write much because I’m either voice training or doing schoolwork, or he’s with his students and I can’t use the piano.’
‘He wants you to be a singer more than he wants you to write songs?’
I’m surprised by how much his question, spoken aloud, jolts me. I hadn’t realised how much this was bothering me lately.
‘Without sounding like a sleazebag, you’re welcome to use the piano out there, or this recording studio, anytime. It’s never locked – as you already discovered.’ His expression mocks me. ‘That talent needs to be nurtured.’
‘And you’re welcome back for your voice lessons. That talent needs to be nurtured.’
He blinks hard, twice. ‘I have no choice but to come back. If I don’t get into the Con, my parents won’t support me anymore. I’ll have to leave home and get a job. But I’m not cut out to do anything else. I’m someone who has to live the music – as if the sound of music flows in my veins and if you take away the music then the life drains from me.’
He’s described why I love music perfectly. But more than that, I’m ludicrously happy he’s going to return to his lessons with Maestro. ‘You’re very philosophical,’ I say, then grimace; he opens up to me and I respond with something glib. But he doesn’t appear to notice; his stare bores into the piano.
‘Been doing a lot of thinking –’ He contemplates me as though he’s weighing up whether to tell me something or not. ‘There’s this dude I’m helping out. Dex. In one afternoon he made me see how much singing makes me feel alive.’
‘And your friends from the band – they’d understand. You have to keep going, even if it means singing without them. They’d never ask you to stop.’
After a time he says, ‘You might be right.’ His eyes tremble with jagged memories.
He considers me, the room, his fingers, for about a million minutes. Then the memories slide away and a playful grin slips onto his lips. ‘I’ll sing if you tell your father you don’t want to.’
I giggle. ‘Et puis zut. That’s not going to happen anytime soon. Maybe when I’m older.’
‘I’ll ignore the weird “zut” stuff, but how’s it going to be easier then – when he’s invested more in your future as a singer?’
The setting sun tinges the room with a wispy pink light. Somehow the muted glow is calming; it cocoons us. I haven’t told anyone about my deal with Maestro. It’s private and so – disturbing. But the way Jacob’s opened up to me . . .
‘Maestro’s promised to explain how my mother died, on my eighteenth birthday. I’m speculating it was in childbirth. My birth. Maybe it was post-natal depression and she – you know. Which is pretty awful too. But I doubt it. After he’s told me everything though, it’ll be the right time to talk about my future.’
I wait for his shocked reaction. Instead he says, ‘Sounds to me like you’re just chicken and avoiding the conversation. And in the meantime you’re not doing what you need to do.’ The way his eyes are combing my face, as if he cares about my dilemma, as if he understands me on a deep level, makes me feel like I’m glowing from the inside out. He’s not offering a bland opinion, or saying what he should say, unthinking. ‘It won’t be any better then, than now.’
The room is absolutely still. As are we.
Something deep inside me stirs and stretches, an animal coming out of hibernation.
A lamp in the main studio switches itself on and we startle, then chuckle to cover our embarrassment.
‘It’s on a timer,’ says Jacob.
Jamming a chord across the piano keys, I say, ‘Enough talking,’ and escape into the intro to Post Malone’s ‘Better Now’. Jacob stands and picks up the song in the fourth bar. He stares beyond me, as if watching a movie on the wall. Even though we’re disconnected physically, the music, flowing between and around us, somehow connects us, like we’re two separate musical notes, but in the same melody.
Afterwards, he says he needs a beer and we move into the main studio. We sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and ‘What I Did For Love’ in the dimming light. When I sing the songs in a more operatic style, he easily copies me. I’m shocked at how beautiful his voice is: smooth and low, powerful. Listening to him feels like sinking into a silky bed of pillows. His voice wraps around me, lifts me, so it’s as if I’m floating in sound.
‘Gone,’ he sings, then subtly flattens the note for the next phrase. The note tugs at my heartstrings. Tears cram into my eyes. The vulnerability in Jacob’s face, in his voice, makes me want to cry for Savannah, who often sang this song, for Mum, for me and my dad, for the beauty of the music. And then for Jacob, for his lost friends and the scar on his leg, whatever caused it, and the wounds in both of our hearts.
The studio door suddenly opens. The outside security light blares into the dimness like headlights in the early evening darkness. Jacob stops singing.
I squint, holding in a sob.
With the dazzling light behind him, I decide the silhouette belongs to Jacob’s dad. But as he steps into the studio I realise it’s the boy I saw earlier when I first came to find Jacob. The door closes, turning the room shadowy again; I swipe at my teary cheeks.
‘Wassup?’ The boy grins as he pans from Jacob to me. ‘Did I interrupt something? All I could hear was you, man. La-la-laaaaah.’ He raises his arms and drifts across the room, impersonating an opera singer. Then he cracks up, folding himself in half.
‘Well, scusami. Nothing wrong with popera.’ I get to my feet. ‘Jacob was great.’
‘Dex De Brun.’ The boy holds out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Scusami.’ As I reach for it, he pulls away and ducks into an elaborate low bow instead. I giggle. This must be the kid
who got Jacob singing again.
‘You speak Italian,’ he adds.
‘Um. Not properly. But I’ve visited Italy a few times. And I sing in Italian sometimes – mostly by rote.’
‘Holy coif. Can you sing in any other rote languages?’
‘French. Spanish. German. Some Czech. Rote means by memory or repetition. Although I do get the translation, and I study pronunciation and inflection.’
‘What you doing back here, kid?’ Jacob moves right beside me.
‘Missed the bus. Mamma’s gone to Aunt Ramona’s for dinner – blood sugar – and I said I needed to go to the library. So popera?’ He snickers.
‘Hey,’ I interrupt. ‘I want Jacob to like operatic pop. It’s just pop songs performed in an operatic style.’
‘It’s not that I don’t like it.’ Jacob peers down at me. ‘I’m just not sure – it’s me.’
‘Have you ever noticed how when a huge international event takes place it’s the classically trained singer the world calls on?’ I say. ‘Think “Amazing Grace” or Pavarotti at football finals, or the ceremony at Ground Zero in New York. Opera may have a smaller following –’
‘Time to step off the soap box, Maria Callas.’ Jacob jostles me with his elbow.
I need to fight for some personal space so I pick up an old plate heaped with leftover pizza crusts and march to the sink.
‘And you.’ Jacob wags a finger at Dex. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice the beer you swiped before I got here. It happens again, you’re out.’
‘But you drink it.’
‘I’m eighteen, and I’m not having your mamma smell it on you. Got it?’
‘I bet your papa would be straight round here to tick off Jacob if he found out you were drinking,’ I add.
Dex shrugs and rubs the back of his neck. ‘Not sure he’d care. He blew the joint before I turned one. Moron went to all the trouble of running away with Mamma to Australia, and then it dawns on him he doesn’t want to be married after all.’ For a moment, Dex’s bravado drops away, similar to a superhero’s cape unexpectedly slipping off and revealing the true person beneath – a vulnerable boy fighting to survive. But in the moment that follows he swirls on another cape. By the time Jacob flicks on a second lamp, mumbling something about people not being fit to be parents, Dex swings back to being Mr Attitude again. I suspect Dex is wearing all sorts of masks to hide a lot of hurt. Like Maestro did.
The Astrid Notes Page 7