I knew Ian came early to lessons to see me. I knew he stayed late, hanging around the front lawn. He even threw something at my window once, which I ignored.
“The boy is back,” Dino had said that first day, with this horrible glee in his voice. How I didn’t throw my water glass at him, I’ll never know.
“So it all works out,” my mother said.
I hated everyone. Dino. Even Mom sometimes. Dog William for being happier than ever, having Rocket back in his life. I fantasized about funding my father’s sabotaging-Dino efforts, the way one government secretly funds the destruction of another. Okay, the way our government does that. I hated school and almost everyone in it. They changed the seating chart in World History, and I ended up sitting next to these two girls who I always thought looked like those monkeys from Planet of the Apes. In science we started labs. My partners were Orlando, who didn’t yet know he was gay, and this girl, Julia, who already knew she was. So during one class it was the Bad Primate Movie film-fest, and the next it was the Rainbow Pride Hour, with Orlando using words like exquisite, and Julia showing us pictures of her and Allison Lorey at homecoming. Zach, of duct-taped-snake fame, had suddenly moved after his dad got a new job. I felt a sadness and inexplicable loss. Twins separated, phantom-limb stuff. I actually missed him. Worse, we were into that long spell where there were no vacations until Spring Break, unless you count that perennial holiday favorite, President’s Day. Such a time of revelry and celebration, where the whole country stops in joyful remembrance of William Howard Taft and Grover Cleveland. Party on.
The next time Ian had a lesson, I stayed in my room. Chuck and Bunny had given him a ride; I heard their car and Bunny’s deep voice calling out a good-bye. No Rocket that day—Dog William would have his heart broken. Good.
I held the snow globe, turned it upside down enough times to make the bear truly pissed off, if he could get pissed off. I thought maybe I should name him. I wondered what a good name for an unanchored bear would be. Bingo? Dave? Timmy? I ignored the goddamn beautiful sounds coming from downstairs. I wondered how Sabbotino Grappa, full of lemon trees and curved, cobbled streets could produce a man with a stone heart.
A knock at my door. Shit, a knock. I dropped the bear on my bed. I guess the music downstairs had stopped some time ago. It was Ian. At my bedroom door.
“Are you crazy?” I said to the door. “Dino will kill you.”
“Open up. Come on. Cassie, come on!”
“Ian, what are you doing?” I said through the closed door. “He’s right downstairs.”
“I don’t care.”
“Go away.”
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”
“Jesus,” I said. I opened the door. “Get in here before he sees you.” I yanked his sleeve, shut the door behind him. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I’m in love with you. I’m thinking I miss you and I’m sorry you feel I’ve let you down.”
His brown eyes were soft. I wanted to put my hands in his hair, inside his coat, around his waist. Pain versus happiness, I’d told my mother. There must be a simple mathematical solution to figure it out.
Some strange memory came to me then. A story from when I was little, told again and again by my parents. I was climbing the attic stairs as my mother stood behind me. Are you afraid of the stairs? My mother had asked. No, I had said. I’m just afraid of falling.
“Hey,” Ian said. “I’m in your room. I’ve never seen your room.”
He looked around at my lamps and my hula dancer dashboard guy, and at my Einstein Action Figure. He picked up the tiny plastic television on my dresser, looked inside the peephole and clicked through the pictures of Dogs on TV—tacky dogs in tacky costumes. He stared at the star chart on the back of my door.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” I said.
“Not yet.” Ian took his sweet time looking around. He read the quotes stuck up along near my bed, picked up my snow globe, which I’d ditched quickly on the mattress. He gave the bear a spin, watched him swirl.
“I’ve had him since I was a kid,” I said. “He used to be glued down.”
“I like him like this,” Ian said. “He looks happy. Free. He’s just cruising around.” Ian gave him another spin.
“He’s totally unanchored. Lost in space.”
“He’s smiling. Look, miniature painted lips. Smiling.” He held the globe above us, pointed out the tiny red line on the bear’s face. “Cassie, what are you so afraid of?” Ian said. He handed the globe back to me.
“It’s obvious.”
“No.”
“Losing you. Having you go away. Feeling too much. It doesn’t seem to lead to good things.”
“It’s like … you’re on vacation. But instead of enjoying the sun and the palm trees, you’re worrying the plane’s gonna crash on the way home.”
“You are leaving. I will lose you.”
“I’m here right now. We don’t know what the future will bring. Why don’t we let that take care of itself.”
I didn’t say anything. Ian resumed his survey of my room. He saw my scarf, draped over my desk chair, ran it between his fingers. He picked up my pillow, held it to his face to smell my scent.
“I love the way you smell.”
“Ian.” I could barely speak.
“Cassie, let go.”
I felt my throat close up with tears. Sometimes you build up these walls, you build and you build and you think they’re so strong, but then someone can come along and tip them over with only his fingers, or the weight of his breath. I started to cry. Ian came and put his arms around me, and I tried to think tough things because I hate to cry. I told myself not to act like I’d been abducted and brainwashed by evil Hallmark robots, but it was no good. He held me, and I tried not to think about what was really on my mind—all the times that people came together and really loved each other, all the times that meant they’d have to lose each other, too.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What are you sorry for? Don’t be sorry.”
“Just, how I handled things.”
“I’ve hated disappointing you,” Ian said.
I got myself together. Unburied my face from his shirt. I probably got makeup on his dark coat. I’m sure my eyes looked trés Ringling Brothers.
“God, Ian. What are we thinking? You’ve got to get out of here. Dino’s going to know you’re here. He’s like a hawk. A hawk with ESP. He notices everything. He catches every thought someone has that’s against him. He catches every thought about maybe having a thought someone has that’s against him.”
“I don’t care. I’ll do the audition, but I want a life, too. I told my mother the same thing. Dino’s going to have to accept it too.”
“It’s supposed to affect your focus. Spending time with me means you’re not giving everything to your music the way you need to. You only have two more months until your audition.”
“I can handle it fine. There’s no reason I can’t do both,” Ian said. “I don’t care if Dino knows. I don’t want to hide anymore.”
I felt a surge of brave glee. It felt good. No, it felt great. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said.
“I’ve never been more sure.”
“Oh, God. He’s going to kill me.” More glee in this, the anticipation of good conquering evil. Some sicko part of me was thrilled at the idea of the shit hitting the fan. It was very Romeo and Juliet, only we know what happened to them.
“Kiss me. Then walk me down.”
“Man, you are asking for it.”
“He’s going to have to understand.”
I knew when he said this that he didn’t understand Dino very well. We stepped out my door, walked down the stairs. Of course, Dino was coming out of his office when we reached the landing. I’m sure he knew where Ian was the entire time, and was keeping track of the passing minutes on his watch.
“Ian needs a ride home,” I said. “He came to ask me.” So much for conquering evil. I was already descending into fear-induced excuses and barely concealed panic. I realized that I’d have to make good on my quick thinking, was relieved to remember that Mom carpooled that morning, as she often did to save on ferry passage.
“Thanks for the lesson, Mr. Cavalli,” Ian said. And then he picked up my hand, laced my fingers in his.
“Good-bye, Boy Wonder,” Dino said.
I drove Ian home, my heart leaping around with Oh, Shit, What Have We Done jubilation and anxiety. And at just plain happiness at being with Ian again. You know what I’d missed? The smell of him, how he always smelled like he’d just come in from the cold, and like that vanilla shampoo. And now I could smell him there in the car beside me and it made me so happy. I felt like I could just drive around for the next twenty years and be perfectly content, there in Mom’s Subaru, with her half-eaten roll of butterscotch Life Savers in the ashtray, paper coffee cup crinkled on the floor, and Seattle Weekly in tossed disarray on the backseat.
I turned the radio up loud. Some old rock song. Something very un-classical. I guess even Mom needed a break from it too, while she was driving. Ian patted his thigh with his palm to the beat. We arrived at his house and kissed in the car for a while. Man, did I like kissing Ian Waters.
We steamed up the windows until Ian had to go. I hated to see him leave. Kissing him in the car made me want to never have to see the back of his coat going away from me. He walked up the steps to his house, and I watched him. He turned and waved good-bye.
It wasn’t until I’d gotten home that I realized he’d forgotten all about his violin in the backseat.
The bizarre thing was, Dino didn’t say a word about Ian and me all that night, or the next day even. He was only his usual depressed self, this morose person who was becoming our usual household companion, this man on a constant hunt for the ways he was sure he was being harmed. I wondered if he’d given up on the theory that he could feel more in control of his own life by controlling someone else’s, or if he just didn’t care anymore. What I really thought, though, was that it was all building up inside of him—his anger, his disease. The vicious mix was simmering.
Dino must not have even told Mom about Ian and me. She didn’t mention anything, or even seem annoyed with me. Dino stayed holed up in his office, then went to bed early. He just stayed disconnected from me. But then again, he’d never truly connected with me in the first place. I was like the dishwasher, or the coffee pot, and always had been. I just came with the package, and as long as I was doing what I was supposed to do and kept quiet, fine. Sometimes, in a step-situation you’ve got all the pieces, but it just doesn’t make a family Everyone is trying to make believe that it is, but you can tell the difference. No divorce book is going to help, no “new traditions” are going to help, and God, no family vacations are going to help (unless purposely staying behind at the rest stop and making a new life there fixes things), because it just doesn’t feel right. Your parent makes a choice, based on who knows what, and you’re forced to live with that choice. That’s the reality. “Family” is not the reality. Zebe had a stepsister who’s supposed to be a sister, and I had a stepfather who’s supposed to be a father, and we’re all just faking it, and not very well, either. There’s an aversion to the Required Relationship, same as I have an aversion to those miniature, creepy corns. They look unnatural to me, but I’ll eat them if I have to. Let’s just be honest. Sometimes there’s love there, and it all works great. But sometimes there isn’t. A lot of times there isn’t. These people are just strangers who live with you and take on assumed familylike names. And even the tolerance that usually comes with blood relatives isn’t there. It’s all painfully staged. It’s a bad play, that you sit in your seat and squirm during with awkward anxiety; it’s a pair of shoes that just don’t fit that you jam your feet into anyway. It’s not home. It’s people in a house.
Anyway, he didn’t say anything. I called Ian for the first time.
“Check it out,” I said. “I’m calling you at home.”
“Say something more so I can hear how you sound on the phone,” he said. “Just talk.”
“Four score and seven years ago,” I orated. “This country brought forth a new nation. Really important things started happening, and men who weren’t even gay started wearing white wigs and frilly coats. They looked lovely, but even more importantly they …”
“I like your voice on the phone,” Ian interrupted. I was just getting warmed up, too.
“I better not stay on long. I just wanted to tell you that he’s been silent. No screams. This is actually me talking, and not my murdered ghost.”
“See? We didn’t need to worry. He probably just accepts that there’s nothing he can do.”
“Ha. Calm before the storm,” I said.
And I was right. The next day I felt the tension, more than saw actual evidence of it. The air was thin and nervous, electric. Being in the same room with him was unbearable—you could feel that pebble that had just snapped into the windshield, the breakage line snaking up, the knowledge of an inevitable shatter. We bumped elbows in the kitchen the next day, as Dino went for the refrigerator and I went for the cereal bowls, and I could actually feel him flinch. Mom was making coffee and obviously talking Chinese, because I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. I got the hell out of there, fast. I thought maybe I should live at school. I could borrow the janitor’s room, that snug, weird place of mops in buckets and detergents, and a calendar with sports cars on it that was still showing September. I even made small talk with Courtney on the walk home, even though every talk with Courtney is small talk, if you know what I mean. We talked about nail polish, for God’s sake. She told me about a hair removal kit she got on the Home Shopping Network with her mother’s credit card. I fed her more topics—hairstyles, breast implants, the love life of Toby Glassar, this muscle-choked senior guy all the blond girls liked—until she looked at me as if we had really bonded. Thanks for the great talk, she said, and then told me she had to leave to go watch the soap All My Sex Partners. Okay, it wasn’t really called that, but you get my drift.
I stayed in my room until Mom came home and it was dinnertime. If there’s ever a time you feel the stepfamily disconnect, it’s at the dinner table. You’ve got to sit there and look at your differences until you’ve downed your lasagna as fast as possible. You learn that every planet teaches manners differently, and the one your new alien family members came from probably either didn’t teach them at all (making dinner a revolting nightly replay of a pie-eating contest), or taught them too well (making dinner a new Olympic sport called Every Food Has a Rule). That night, the tension was lying between us, sharp and thread-like. No one was talking, and the sounds of silverware on glass plates were painfully loud, seemingly capable of breaking apart what was holding us all together. You could hear Dino’s chewing (you could always hear Dino’s chewing), and he was drinking wine. Too much wine, I could tell, from the way my mother kept eyeing his glass as he refilled it. She was obviously on the wrong page; her own tension stemmed from the surplus Burgundy and not from what was going on between Dino and me right under her nose.
“My bike is gone,” Dino said finally.
I swallowed hard. It was either that, or blast out a mouthful of lasagna. I practically burst out laughing from nerves and surprise. His bike. Thrown in ze “canal” by ze two hooligans. I’d almost forgotten about it.
“What do you mean?” my Mom said.
“Gone. Stolen.”
“Who would steal that bike?” Mom said. She actually laughed. I felt like busting up too. I took a drink of milk. Trained my thoughts—death, destruction, devastation—so that I wouldn’t bust up and explode it out my nose.
“It’s gone,” he said. He chewed a chunk of bread. You saw it in there, being swirled and mashed to death. “I wonder if you know anything about this?” he asked me. “You are the one who rides it.”
“I don’t know what happened to it.” Lie. “I haven’t ridden it in weeks.” Truth. Couldn’t ride it since it was at the bottom of the sound.
“I went into the garage and noticed it wasn’t there.”
“I wonder who might have done something like that,” I said. “You never know” I mean, where was his paranoia now? Why couldn’t William Tiero have done this? He’d supposedly followed us, tried to ruin Dino’s career, sent us annoying junk mail, called repeatedly, and done a thousand other things. He should have at least been in the lineup.
“I spoke with Ian’s mother,” Dino said. “This afternoon.”
“Why?” Mom asked.
“About the budding lovers,” Dino said.
There it was. The beginning, and I was already lost. I was already gone to anger; he’d already won.
“We’re not lovers,” I said.
“Shall we count our blessings for that?” he said.
“Not yet, anyway,” I said. I wanted to put the knife in. I wanted to twist.
“You are such a silly child. Your immaturity is astounding.”
“I’m supposed to be immature. I’m the kid. What’s your excuse?”
“Wait a minute. What is going on?” Mom said. Her face was flushing red.
“You have no idea what you’re doing. No idea of the harm you can cause.”
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” I said to him. “You’re going to kill any desire he has to play that stupid fucking violin.”
“Listen to this tramp, Daniella,” Dino said to my mother. “Look at her. Listen to her mouth.”
“Hold on a moment here,” my mother said. “You just hold on. I don’t want to hear that kind of talk from you, Dino. Or you, Cassie.”
“She is ruining everything. Don’t you understand that?”
“What is going on?” my mother asked.
“Ian,” was all I could say. “Ian and me.”
“He’s got less than two months. Seven weeks, and he’s not ready. Even the Chaconne is rough. How can I help him? How can I make it turn out all right for him when he is running around in airy-fairy land with her? This child could destroy everything he’s worked for.”
“Ian has some say in this too. I am not some evil sorceress making him do things against his will.”
“Jesus, Cassie! What’s been going on? I thought we agreed. …”
“The boy must be managed. His career must be handled. He’s not to be trusted to know what he needs,” Dino said.
“Sometimes love just is,” I threw her words back at her. “Sometimes it’s a force with its own reasons.”
“Where did you get such idiocy?” Dino said. “This is a practical matter. Someone’s life is in your hands. He fucks up this audition, and his future is shit.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to play. Maybe you should let him be. His life has nothing to do with you.” I pushed my plate away.
“Cassie,” Mom said.
“I’m his teacher. He is my responsibility. I can change his life. I have a chance to make things go right for him. You think you understand him? You don’t. You don’t know the first thing about him.”
“Oh, you don’t think so,” I said. I hated him saying that, I really did.
“I understand him.”
“Come on, you guys. Let’s all just calm …”
“You can’t possibly understand him. You’re making him do things he doesn’t want to.”
“I know him. I know his life.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to turn out like you. Maybe he doesn’t want your life.” I couldn’t help the words falling from my mouth. They had a will of their own, the same as thunder does. The same as some storm that needs to be released. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be depressed and crazed and making everyone unhappy because his beloved music has made him nuts.”
“God damn it, Cassie, that’s enough,” Mom said.
“Maybe the tortured-genius thing just doesn’t look too appealing.”
“You’ve raised an imbecile, Daniella,” Dino said.
Mom stood up. “I said that’s enough. Both of you.”
“I have that book by my bed. I’ve read it. All about Sabbotino Grappa, all about your beautiful parents. I feel sorry for them. Your mother must have been ashamed that she raised such a nasty person.”
Dino shoved out from the table, knocking over his wineglass. His hands were flat on the table, and I could see them shaking. “Shut this child up,” he said through his clenched teeth.
“People …” Mom said.
“Shut this child up about my mother!”
I had gone too far. I knew it even before he picked up the chair with one hand and threw it. It crashed to the ground, a horrendous clatter. I shut my eyes against the sound, against the scene. When I opened them again, I could see that Dino was leaving the room, and that my mother had covered her face with her hands and just held her head there, as if trying to hold the pieces of herself together.
“Mom?” I was afraid to talk. I had already done too much of that. “Mom, I’m sorry.”
My mother raised her head. She sighed. “You know, Cassie, I’m sorry too.”
“I hope you’re okay,” I said.
“And I hope you’re okay.”
We sat in silence.
“I guess none of this is all right,” she said finally.
You know what I was most sorry for then? I was sorry for her. That things had turned out like this for her. That she had made a leap and ended up crashing onto concrete.
“Probably not.”
“Life’s messed up at the moment.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“If you’re fine just now, I’m going to go talk to Dino.”
I nodded.
Every circus needs a ringmaster, and ours gave my shoulders a squeeze and disappeared out of the room.
Dino found a way to solve his problem with Ian, which was that he would allow Ian to have a private life, only he would give him no time in which to have it. His requirements for continuing to help Ian were that Ian must commit to daily lessons with him and to evening practice at home. Dino and Ian’s mother had had a meeting. They’d jump off a bridge if I told them to, Dino had said. Ian’s mother had a talk with Ian. He had no choice, Ian told me. Curtis was the single scholarship-only college in the country. Affording even a small part of a partial scholarship was out of the question, paying living expenses was out of the question, and a degree from Curtis would ensure his best shot at a job and performance contracts.
What about trees? I had asked.
I can’t do trees, Ian had said. I just … I can’t explain. I’ve got to make his happen.
I don’t get it. It’s your life.
It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up.
I had the sick feeling that Dino had been right about one thing. He understood Ian in this way that I didn’t. There were things I couldn’t see or know. I didn’t realize then that everyone had their secrets.
I didn’t see much of Ian, which was obviously part of the plan. He studied in the morning at home to finish his requirements for school, came over in the afternoons for lessons, and had to leave quickly in order to get his practice time in. We only had a moment for a quick hello and good-bye, and the times I saw him he was tired and strung out. The only real piece I had of Ian was his music, traveling up the stairs during his practices, or coming through the door as I sat my back down against it and listened to what was happening inside that office. I savored what I had. I’d close my eyes and let the music lift me up and hold me. Yes, yes, good. Very good, Dino would say. I would imagine lemon trees and cobbled streets made warm by the sun, orange-colored buildings and baskets of figs. I would imagine us sharing a cup of coffee at a small iron table, sneaking into an old church to gulp cool air. A life together of simple, good things. I imagined bicycles in canals, Sabbotino Grappa at sunset.
After practices, Dino himself would disappear into his office and his own place of creation. If he was paranoid then, I didn’t know it. I never saw him. But my mother was dealing with things I had no idea about. I heard her on the phone a lot with Alice, and Mom would hang up quickly when I came in. I would hear her crying, and when I would investigate, she’d wipe her face and lie and say she wasn’t.
It was as if Dino and Ian had both descended into some other dark world, where all thoughts and all moments were music, music, music. Frenzied playing, lost men. Italian phrases—sforzando, con calore, adagietto, a land with its own language, even. The repetition of passages; frustration at not getting it right, try again. Try again until it is perfect, the perfect translation of all of love and sorrow, of struggle and triumph. It wasn’t notes they were playing, not really. It was not songs. They were playing all the passion and drama of life, nothing less. Expressing the questions, searching for the answers. At least they were able to do this through their music. I had questions, questions that seemed to multiply like bad news multiplies. Even the vastness of the universe, looking through my telescope, did not put those questions into perspective.
Siang came over one afternoon, when they were at their height of joint possession, Dino with his composing, Ian with his practicing. I was worried about her being there, tried to get her to go home, as I was afraid of what she might see. The day before I’d experienced the first sign in a while that Dino was still in the throws of his illness. I had come home to the stereo blasting, and when I turned it down Dino stormed from his office. What are you doing? he had said. I need that on. If that prick is listening somehow, he won’t hear a thing.
Siang had practically begged to come in. When we finally went inside, I wished right away I had held my ground. The kitchen was a mess—filled with clutter and disgusting cigarette butts. Their snakey stink was everywhere—in coffee cups, on the newspaper, in the sink. I cleaned up as Siang either didn’t notice or pretended not to. She had slung her backpack to our kitchen floor, unzipped it and rifled through.
“I want to show you something,” she had said. “Something I found out.”
“I don’t want to hear obscure facts of Dino’s life, okay? I don’t give a shit how old he was when he first rolled over.” I clanked a coffee cup against the side of the garbage can to dump the ashes, saved it from getting cancer.
“It’s not that,” she said into her open backpack.
“I don’t give a shit when he first said goo goo.”
“Just wait,” she said.
“He got his first chest hair at sixteen. Whoopee.”
Finally, Siang pulled a folded sheet of paper from her backpack. She carefully flattened it out, smoothed out the creases with her palm. “That painting. In his office. The one over his desk.”
I looked at the image. Sure enough, it was the painting of the flowers that Dino had there, the one Siang had straightened so carefully that day we had seen the blank pages.
“So?” I said.
“And this,” Siang said. She fished around in her backpack some more, pulled out Strings Magazine. She folded back the cover to an interview that Dino had given, and began to read.
“‘Question,’” Siang squeaked. “‘Who or what was your greatest influence?’ Answer: Well, naturally it was my mother. She was a rose. A wild rose. Beautiful because she was wild. Wild because the world gave her too much beauty. More than could be tamed.’ ‘Question: Is that a good description of you too? Beauty that cannot be tamed?’ ‘Answer: I wish it weren’t so. Then I could be at peace. Wearing my slippers and smoking a pipe.’”9
“What’s your point?” I asked.
“That’s the name of the painting. It’s called Wild Roses. It was done by van Gogh.”
“I think it should be called Ugly Flowers on Bland Canvas,” I said.
“I think it is especially beautiful.”
“Jeez, Siang. Maybe if you cross your eyes. Maybe if you’re color-blind. Or asleep.”
“It’s beautiful because it was one of his last paintings.
It was done when he was at Daubigny’s garden, experiencing his most intensely creative period. Right before his suicide.” The word hung there between us. Suicide. This word that is usually so far away from you as to have a sense of unreality. Right then, spoken aloud, it became as real as those ashes, as Dino’s eyes searching for villains, as my mother’s hushed calls to the doctor.
Siang was trying to tell me something, I knew. Her urgency, these clippings, were both a warning and an attempt to get me to understand something important. I’m sorry, but it wasn’t anything I cared to hear.
I gathered the clippings, put them back inside her pack, and zipped it closed. “It’s just a stupid painting, Siang,” I said.