by Abby Sher
“Fear is the path to the dark side.”
“Fear leads to anger,” Gus chimed in.
“Anger leads to hate,” I added.
Then, in almost-perfect unison, we said: “I sense much balls in you.”
I even got a high five from Gus after that, which made me feel mighty triumphant. We hadn’t connected in dweebitude like this in what felt like forever.
Only, just as instantaneously, the cord was severed.
I told Gus, “I swear, we’ll move as soon as this train pulls out. It’s the 8:03. Always packed.”
And he said, “You know, Elan used to ride on the 8:03 with Dad.”
He said it matter-of-factly. Like it was a mundane bit of trivia.
“Wait—what?” I asked.
“The 8:03,” Gus said, pointing outside. As if the actual locomotive was what I didn’t understand. “I guess they even sat together once or twice,” Gus added.
“Who told you that?” I challenged.
“Elan.”
I stomped my foot on the brake, even though we were barely crawling forward.
“Well, that’s a lie,” I snapped. “Our father did not take the 8:03 train. He took the 7:29.”
I could feel Gus’s quizzical look, but I kept my focus on the road. “Maybe sometimes he took a later one?” Gus suggested.
“No. Never!” I shot back.
“Oh … kay.” Gus made this weird sound through his nose. I couldn’t tell whether he was sneezing or scoffing at me.
“What? You don’t believe me?” I pounced. “Ask Mom. Dad took the 7:29. I know this for a fact because that’s why he could only walk us partway to school. Remember? He’d peel off at the corner with the mailbox because he had to catch the 7:29.”
“Okay, okay,” Gus said, putting up his hands as if in surrender.
“No. You don’t remember this?”
“I guess not.”
“Well, I’ll make you a bet if you don’t believe me.”
“That’s okay,” Gus said. “I don’t need to make a bet. I believe you. It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not fine. I’m sick and tired of Elan telling these stories and trying to rewrite our history. He never rode in with Dad. If he did, I would know that.”
“How? Why? What the hell is going on?” Gus asked. All noble questions, but I was not willing to answer any of them. I had a score to settle.
“Here’s the deal. If I’m wrong, I’ll empty the dishwasher for a week straight and do the recycling cans and … whatever. Fold your undies.”
“No thanks,” Gus replied.
“And if you’re wrong—or really, if Elan is wrong—then he has to take his tempeh burgers and get the hell out of our house!” The 8:03 pulled away just as I finished my unplanned tirade.
“Whoa,” Gus said. As we started moving again, I heard him breathe in and out very slowly. Letting me steep in my nasty tantrum for a full Gaia cycle before he spoke again. “I’m sorry if I upset you. I probably just misheard.”
“Misheard what?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Gus said firmly. “Why don’t we say I’m wrong and let’s concentrate on getting to school.” He was definitely done with this conversation. Only I couldn’t let it go.
“But do you think you’re wrong? Don’t punish yourself if you think you’re right.” From the train station it was a straight shot down Carlton Avenue to the high school parking lot. As we zipped toward the last light before the entrance, I could hear the late bell clanging. A mess of kids poured out of Yoshi’s Bagels, clogging the crosswalk ahead of us.
“I don’t think anything,” Gus muttered. “I don’t think as much as you do. Now please pull over and let me out.”
I pulled over by the curb, even though I knew there would be a chorus of angry horns blaring at me. I wanted Gus to know that I heard him, and that I respected him immensely and was only getting this fired up because I needed to protect our endangered past. Mom had obviously given up on preserving our family unity, but we could be the generation that turned that around. It was up to us.
“Gus, wait. Can we just—”
He already had the car door open though. When I went to grab his hand I actually yanked off his backpack and scattered his pens all over the front seat.
“Really?!” He scooped up what he could and shut the door.
“Have a good day,” I mumbled. Even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. Nor could I fix what I’d just done. “Hope it’s balls-tastic!” I yelled as he ducked into the crowd.
In a galaxy far far away.
So I’ve been here 3 weeks
2 days
5 hours
and 37 excruciating minutes.
But who’s counting?
Answer: Not you, I guess.
Just in case you’re jealous, here are some of the rollicking great times I’m having here!
Today I got to:
1. watch a documentary about the role of the esophagus, with all the lights off. Followed by “restorative stretching” on a carpet that probably hasn’t been replaced since the turn of the century;
2. make another collage of airbrushed images from celebrity magazines along with words or phrases we find misleading like “perfect,” “no-carb,” and “lose it all in 30 days!”;
3. eat five meals, each containing some form of either peanut butter, whole milk, bread, fruit, pasta, or cheese;
4. sit in a circle and talk about how each of these foods made me feel;
5. have a tête-à-tête with Dr. Marsh, who smells like yogurt and likes to ask such unanswerable questions as, “How do you think you’re doing?” and “Do you trust this process?”;
6. attend knitting circle (I’ve been trying to make a scarf, but it looks more like a jockstrap);
7. do blindfolded walking, which is just as terrifying as it sounds and involves us being led in circles, which I guess is a metaphor for life. We capped that torture off with yet another plate of food;
8. go to Drama Therapy with Ducky (and my inner child). Honestly, I can’t decide if Ducky is my favorite person in the world or my worst enemy. She’s 70-something years old and British. Shaved her hair into a silvery fuzz and is recovering from addictions to sugar, heroin, meth, and several other kinds of self-abuse. She has a puppet with purple skin and orange hair named Missy Me who asks our inner child to come out and play. Missy Me has been asking me for weeks now. It’s annoying, and terrifying, and inescapable. I swear, everyone who sits in that seat opposite Missy Me winds up hysterically crying. There’s no way past her questions, and yes, she’s totally a puppet with plastic eyes and nylon hair and how the hell is she intimidating us into submission??! But it works. And today I was the emotional wreckage in the middle.
PS. Remind me to tell you the part where I tore at her hair and called her Hank “by mistake.”
PPS. Did I mention we can’t go to the bathroom unattended (risk of purging) and I got in trouble for trying to do jumping jacks in the hall? Which I guess is better than the chick who tried to sneak in an enema, but still.
There’s more, but I’m too drained to keep writing at the moment.
Missyouloveyouhateyoubye!
CHAPTER 8
bananas and war
Mrs. Toobey was not pleased.
“What does that mean, ‘hip-hop ballad’?” She huffed.
“I don’t know. Just, maybe, something more modern?” I said.
“Still doesn’t make sense. Get back to your scales. I have to check my meat loaf.” She stalked off to her kitchen, her helmet of tight curls jiggling. Before I’d even made it one octave, I heard her screeching, “B-flaaaat!” while slamming the oven door.
I had been coming to the Toobeys’ house for piano lessons every Wednesday afternoon for almost a decade and we started the same way every time—monotonous scales from my Classical Exercises for Musical Precision book and Mrs. Toobey catching my stumbles even as she bustled around about two rooms away, preparing supper so it’d be ready by
five.
Mrs. Toobey was a firm believer in routine. She also had a theory about how our bodies and minds needed to empty and unwind in order to let in the music. To be honest, I appreciated this isolated hour each week, when all I had to do was seek out the next sound. It wasn’t like I had somewhere else I’d rather be. Whatever it looked like from the outside or inside, the Toobeys’ was the one place I felt I sort of belonged. The world could be spinning out of orbit and I could have twenty more tests to study for, but whenever I walked a block and a half down Harding Road from my house, then made a left onto Owen Drive, I found a little opening through all that nonsense by knocking on the Toobeys’ dented storm door.
Mom and Gus both said I had a gift on the piano. Once in a while, Mrs. Toobey herself told me I had great promise. I didn’t need to be spectacular though. I just loved sitting on that piano bench and releasing into a different dimension. These weekly lessons were my sanctuary—havens of time and space where no one and nothing else could reach me. The notes told me where to put my fingers and my thoughts. It was all there, just waiting for me to press into and become.
I also loved this crazy, overcrowded house that wound around like a wood-paneled maze. Every inch of wall space was covered in some exotic totem or mask from Mr. and Mrs. Toobey’s travels. There were two Steinways pushed together in the middle of the living room and a small jungle of spider plants drooping from different heights. Leaning against the few chairs and blocking the overstuffed bookshelves were huge canvases—usually an homage to either fruit or war.
Mrs. Toobey’s husband (whom she always called “Toobey”) was the visual artist responsible for these pieces. According to Mom, he once was a prominent urologist (is that really a thing?) but developed early-onset Alzheimer’s and now found great relief in painting with tempera. For as long as I’d been going there, Mr. Toobey was part of the strange decor. A specter, often shuffling in and out of rooms in a haze. He spent most of his time painting bright, misshapen bananas and battle-scene montages in the cellar of their dilapidated ranch-style house. Every few weeks there was a new picture on display.
From far away, these images always scared me. But when I got up close, the fruit skin was so delicately textured, the soldiers’ spilled blood so thick, I had to marvel.
“Toobey?!” Mrs. Toobey bellowed as I started on the F-sharp scale. She was now chopping something that smelled garlicky. “Toobey! We’re going to eat supper in fifty-five minutes!”
He said something back and she repeated even louder, “Sup-per!” I heard the rush of a faucet followed by a drawer of silverware jingling closed. “What’s the holdup?” she continued. “Are you with me?!”
I thought Mrs. Toobey was still barking orders at her husband until she charged through the kitchen doorway, waving a limp carrot in my direction.
“What’s going on? You seem moody. Is it that time of month again or something? What a mess. I’m glad to be done with that.” The thought of Mrs. Toobey as a teenager or even a vaguely sexual being stunned me. I had never seen her in anything besides one of her Mexican-patterned multicolored caftans.
“And what’s this with all the glittery schmutz on your eyes? I hate glitter,” she told me.
“Thanks?” I answered.
I had to laugh. Or else I’d cry. Mrs. Toobey was always brutally observant. It was rarely a compliment either. But coming from a five-foot-two fireball in cat-eye glasses who’d performed sonatas for two different presidents and toured globally, I somehow felt honored that she paid this much attention to my face or moods. She shook her stub of carrot at me as she spoke. “What do you think I’m going to say?”
“The price of fresh produce is ridiculous?”
“Ha!” At least I could still amuse her. “Nice try. Shoulders down, wrists relaxed, and breathe from your kishkas. Like this.”
She inflated her belly out like a balloon, her nostrils flaring in sync. As she exhaled, I could smell a hundred different spices and saw a speck of carrot fly across the room.
“Got it?” she asked.
“Got it,” I answered. She leaned over me and started up the F-sharp scale until I followed suit.
“Yes,” she said, letting me take over. “Yes, yes! Thank you very much. Exactly.”
Then in one seamless motion she took my Classical Exercises book off its little wooden perch and replaced it with a book I knew all too well. The cover said Claude Debussy in curly script and below that was an impressionistic rendering of an orange sun melting into a gray shore. There were two fuzzy people in a rowboat close to the binding. I felt a little seasick just looking at the illustration.
“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Toobey buzzed in my ear. “We’ll do it together.”
Once upon a time—as in six months ago, when I still believed in rainbows and second chances—I got to play the piano at Carnegie Hall. Or at least I was supposed to. It wasn’t in the ginormous concert auditorium where virtuosos and opera stars belted out musical miracles. It was in a toaster-size studio on the fourth floor of the building, with a baby grand piano, twelve students, and big rugs hanging from the walls. I’d had this very same Claude Debussy book tucked under my arm. Dog-eared at page fifty-nine.
“Hello, my name is Hannah Levinstein, and this afternoon I will be playing Arabesque No. 1,” I mumbled. My voice had lost all the bravado and swagger I had years before as a second-grade Oneida tribe reporter.
“What did she say?”
“Lervinstein.”
“Leavening?”
“Needs to speak up.”
And then to me:
“Whenever you’re ready.”
I knew this piece by heart. That wasn’t the problem. I never had trouble memorizing. My hands pressed those chords and syncopations into my leg while I was walking, reading, watching TV, and even going to the bathroom. I dreamed about the rise and fall of Arabesque No. 1 over and over.
But the day I went to Carnegie Hall for the Young Maestros of Essex & Bergen Counties auditions, I lost those notes completely. They scuttled under the rugs and seeped through the warped floorboards. My knuckles locked like stiff claws and I shook so hard I could feel my teeth chatter.
“Why don’t we try again another day?” asked the judge from North Bergen.
“Sure,” agreed the other two, shuffling papers.
“Does that sound okay to you, Miss Lervinsting?”
I slumped out, hunched with disappointment. I looked at my hands, still quaking, and wanted to fling them off the rest of my body. When Mom met me in the hall and asked how it went, I just whispered, “Let’s go, please.”
A week later, I got a form letter that said the Young Maestros really appreciated my efforts and that there were many worthy candidates. They regretted to inform me that I couldn’t be presented a seat in the ensemble at this time but to try, try again. I showed the letter to my mom and told her maybe it was time for me to take a break from piano lessons. I had too much going on with schoolwork and I probably should look into a part-time job before the summer.
“I don’t know,” Mom said.
Mrs. Toobey would have none of that though. After I missed two weeks in a row with lame excuses, she demanded I come back and then told me those Young Maestros judges were certifiable idiots. She made me hand her my rejection letter and then together we lit it on fire in her bathroom sink.
“Ready. Set. Go!” Mrs. Toobey commanded now. She whipped her hand down the crease of my book so it would stay open and put my fingertips on the keys to begin. “Dooo da da dee da da dooo da da … Just ever so lightly,” she guided.
Arabesque No. 1 was everything I wanted to be—light and fluid and living on tiptoes. That first progression was always so familiar and comforting, taking me on a magic carpet of arpeggios. Dipping and gliding. Proof that I was continuous. Mrs. Toobey stayed behind me, humming along. Anything felt possible when we were soaring through it together. It was like when I was five and my dad brought me to Harding Road with my purple two-wheeler. He grip
ped the back of my seat as I rode up and down that stretch so many times. Without him I was sure I’d fly off and get sucked into a gutter. Stay stay, I begged him. Please.
Only, at some point he had to let go. And, of course, I fell hard.
I started the second section of Arabesque No. 1 at full tilt. Tripping over my left ring finger, then my right thumb. My hands felt like they were chasing each other. Bouncing and jittering like I’d drunk ten cups of coffee.
“Take your time. Don’t think so much. Just listen,” Mrs. Toobey instructed from across the room. I hadn’t realized she’d left my side. Or that her ghostly husband had wandered into the room.
As soon as I saw him, all the notes fell out of me, raucous and wrong. I was weaving and winding all over the place, missing flats and sharps and grinding my teeth. Until I just had to stop.
I heard him let out a pitiful whimper. “Where did it go?” he asked.
Mrs. Toobey nodded her head and said, “It’s all right, Toobey. We’re good.” Then she turned her attention back to me. “Are we good?”
I just shrugged. This was the part of playing the piano that crushed me. Once I stuttered, I could rarely find my way back again. Especially with someone watching.
“My Roslyn can play that piece,” Mr. Toobey told me with a big smile. “Da da da da da doo doo doo doo doo doo!” he sang. It was true. As she’d told me before, Mrs. Toobey played this piece to get into Juilliard decades ago. “She’s going to Juilliard,” Mr. Toobey continued. “Meet at six o’clock, Seventy-Second and Broadway. Maybe we’ll get some noodles before catching a bus home.” He was so eager to tell me the news. News from over thirty years ago, that is. As he came up to the piano, I could see that the zipper of his baggy tan pants was open partway. I shut my eyes fast, because that was the last thing I wanted to see.
“Okay, let’s go, mister,” Mrs. Toobey said, taking him by the hand and leading him back toward the kitchen. “I think you’re hungry. Should we get ready for supper?”
“Yes, Mommy,” he said in a tiny voice. Then he repeated the opening progression of Arabesque No. 1 again—recalling each flat, sharp, and syncopation perfectly. “Why did she stop?” he added sadly as they shuffled out.