Three days. Two.

One day and a bad night’s sleep. A restless, tense household, my mother making tea at 3:00 A.M. Dino playing in his office at 4:00 A.M. The toilet flushing, doors opened and closed. Me turning my pillow endlessly to the cool side.

And then, the day of the concert.

It’s funny about those monumental events that you wait and wait for, the ones that have the big buildup of a rocket launch. There’s all the drama and the trauma and then the actual day comes in, soft as any other day, just appearing the way all of the other ones appear. Friday morning, the sun came up the same way it had for a zillion years. I tried to summon some feeling of importance, gather up a sense of the monumental, but instead I just felt cranky and overtired, got up, and went into the bathroom and checked my face for disaster, as I did every day. When I left for school, Dino was still in bed, and the only sign of an important night was catching Mom downing Maalox in the bathroom, and the newspaper on the kitchen table folded to the article CAVALLI TO PERFORM FIRST NEW MUSIC IN SIX YEARS.

The big thing that happened at school on Friday was that Mr. Robelard, the science teacher, caught on fire during an experiment in his second-period sophomore Life Science class. I was sitting in English class then, listening to Orlando, the gay guy from last trimester’s World History class, recite his poetry about love. He flung his arms out dramatically, and everyone rolled their eyes when he described the female object of his desire. Yeah, right. Her lips were pouting and red, he panted embarrassingly, just as the door shot open and this sophomore girl ran in yelling, “The teacher’s on fire! The teacher’s on fire!” Some kid in the back of the class actually laughed until we saw Mr. Robelard run past, the back of his coat in flames. Apparently some alcohol they were using for an experiment got too close to a Bunsen burner, and poof. I wondered how this was going to affect his elk calls.

My own day may have seemed regularly irregular, but the outside music world was greeting it with anticipation. I got my first sense of this at lunch, when I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find Mr. King, the orchestra teacher, standing behind me with bright eyes.

“I just wanted to pass on my best wishes for this evening and my sincerest congratulations,” he whispered. And then off he scurried, as if the performance had already begun and he was politely leaving the concert hall to use the men’s room.

Siang was treating me in that delicate fashion, too, telling me after school that she would not be coming over today, as it seemed best. Some kid with a violin case slipped me a note: I am a great admirer of yours, apparently missing the point that the only thing I could do with a violin was make it into a decorative planter.

After school, I started to get a weird bout of nerves. My stomach was rolling and pitching, and I understood Mom’s Maalox. I decided I needed something to calm me down. A huge sugar hit, some Twinkies or something. I got a ride from Zebe and she dropped me off at the Front Street Market in town. She took her neon yellow rabbit’s foot off of her key chain and insisted I keep it with me for good luck tonight, even though it was creepy.

“People have had them for hundreds of years,” Zebe said. “So they’ve got to be good for something.”

“Not for the rabbit,” I told her.

I perused the Hostess aisle happily, enjoying all of the beautiful possibilities. Momentarily, all would be joy. I was in the checkout aisle, purchasing more items than I care to tell about, when I heard some familiar voices over by that big ice compartment in the front of the store that you never see anyone near. You get to wondering if a dead body could be stored there, for all anyone ever opens it.

“Hey, Bunny! Chuck!” I said. I was glad to see them. We were bonded by our wonderful and terrible day together. Bonded by our love for Ian Waters.

“Look, I bought happiness,” I said, and showed them what was in my bag.

“Whoa,” Chuck said. “You won the chocolate lottery.”

“Not all chocolate. Fruit pies, too,” I said.

“We’re just here for ice,” Bunny said unnecessarily. The door was open, and big whiffs of white air were escaping the chest. If he stood there any longer, he’d start looking like that abominable snowguy in that geeky Christmas cartoon with the carpenter elf and the Land of the Misfit Toys. “My back is still hurting from that fall I took. You remember that fall I took.”

“Vaguely,” I said.

“He’s sprained his lumbodorsal fascia, but he doesn’t believe me,” Chuck said.

“Ice, and deep-tissue massage,” Bunny said.

“Maybe a chiropractor,” Chuck said.

“Hey, get off my back, ha ha,” Bunny said.

“After the fiftieth time it’s not funny anymore, Bun.”

“I’m sorry you’re still not feeling well,” I said. “Would a couple of Ho Hos help things?”

“Waaay better than a chiropractor,” Bunny said.

I shuffled around my loot, found the Ho Hos, and opened the package with my teeth.

“I guess you heard Ian’s good news,” Chuck said.

“That he’s quitting,” I said through the plastic. At ee’s kidding.

“Quitting? No, that he got in,” Chuck said.

I’d heard wrong, I guessed. I must have heard wrong.

“What do you mean, got in?”

“Maybe she hadn’t heard yet. Shit,” Bunny said. “God damn it, Chuck. You and your big mouth.”

“What do you mean?” A sick feeling started in my stomach, some horrible dread. My face flushed red.

“He got in,” Bunny said. “Curtis.”

“How is that possible?” My voice sounded hoarse. I wanted to scream, and my voice sounded like I already had. “No! That’s not possible! How is that possible?”

“Mr. Cavalli. He had a tape. He’d taped Ian before he broke his wrist. Cavalli sent it in. Talked to the school and arranged for the tape to be used as an audition.”

“No,” I whispered. “No.”

“I thought maybe he should have asked Janet before he did that, but she’s obviously beside herself with happiness,” Bunny said.

“What about Ian?”

“I haven’t seen Ian,” Bunny said.

“No one asked Ian.”

“Janet said he was happy. I don’t know if this is the best thing for him or not,” Bunny said. “All I know is, he’s in. He’s going to Curtis.”

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

“Hey, Cassie. I’m sorry if I said anything before Ian told you himself. I didn’t know.”

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

I dropped the Hostess loot there on the floor and I got the hell out of there. I ran home. I ran so fast. Fury gave me this speed I didn’t know I had. I wasn’t myself. I didn’t know who I was, but I wasn’t me. Dino had taken Ian’s life from him. No wonder he’d lost his outrage about Ian’s arm. He’d already taken matters into his own hands. Well, now I would take them into mine.

I flung open the front door, slammed it behind me. How was that for turning the knob so it closed more quietly?

“Cassie?” Mom appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I’m glad you’re home. We need to eat something before we go. God, what’s wrong?”

“Where’s Dino?”

“He’s getting into his tux. You’ve got to hurry up and get dressed.”

I ignored her, went upstairs.

“Knock, knock,” I said to the closed bedroom door. I was trying not to shout. I was doing everything I could to keep those shouts inside. My heart was beating furiously. I was hot all over, from the running, from the anger.

“What is it?” Dino said. He opened the door. He stood there in the doorway in his tux, his tie loose.

“What did you do?” I breathed.

“I cannot handle your dramatics now. I’ve got to get ready,” he said.

My mother arrived at the top of the stairs. “Cassie, come with me to your room,” she said. “We’ll handle whatever needs handling.”

“Why did you do that? Why did you send that tape of Ian to Curtis?”

“So that’s what the upset is this time. Always the boy, the boy, the boy. I saved his ass,” Dino said. “Daniella, really. Would you kindly remove your daughter from our room?”

“He didn’t want to go,” I said. “He didn’t want that.”

“It’s not always about what we want,” Dino said. “If I had what I wanted, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d be in New York at this moment, preparing to go to Lincoln Center instead of Benaroya Hall. And do you know why I am not in New York preparing to go to Lincoln Center?”

“Dino, that’s not fair,” my mother said.

“Because I married your mother, and your mother has you to think about.”

“Dino. Stop,” Mom said. “Come on, guys. We’ve got a big night ahead, and …”

“You,” I breathed. “Are a horrible person. And a liar.”

“You’re wasting my time,” Dino said.

“All of the stories about Italy and Sabbotino Grappa. Who are you, really?” I let the bomb drop from my hands. I let it slip to the floor, where it lay, ticking.

Everyone was silent for a moment. I could hear Dino breathing heavily.

“Because if you’re really Dino Cavalli, your history is a lie. No perfect house and mother in a feathered hat. No lemon trees. Maybe not even any bicycles.”

“Get her out of here, Daniella. I have a performance to prepare for.”

“Cassie. Your room. Now.”

“He’s not who he says. What, did you pay those people to hide what you really are?”

He turned away from me. I couldn’t see his face, which had become so hideous to me. If I could have seen his face, it probably would have been fallen and pale, I know now Drained of cover and laid bare, just a human.

My mother took hold of my arm, led me out. “Cassie, what are you thinking? Do you know what you’re doing? Jesus.”

“There are things you don’t know.”

She closed my door with no small amount of anger. Her face was tight and her eyes flashed.

“I do know.”

“No, you don’t. Dino wasn’t born in Sabbotino Grappa. All of those stories were made up. He never even lived there. What do you think of him now? You never even knew him. It’s all a lie.”

“I know that.”

“What?” I sat down on the edge of my bed. My anger drained from me. Without it, I was suddenly exhausted. “What?” I wanted to cry. I was too tired for that, even.

“I know that. You’re right. None of it was true. He made up the story when he was sixteen years old to cover the truth, and he’s stuck with it ever since.”

“That’s crazy. That’s absolutely wacko. You knew this? Just one more nutso thing. I cannot believe this.”

“He was doing his first interview, and found the town in a book. He chose it because it wasn’t a place likely to be visited, and too small to bump into anyone from there. He held a magnifying glass to the picture of the town square, the church, studied the tiny map. The rest … he just made up the rest.”

“And all those people go along? Like you go along? I just don’t understand.”

“When Edward Reynolds did the oral history, William Tiero went to Sabbotino Grappa. He talked to the priest, who then spoke to the handful of villagers. They’d already read about themselves by then in a couple of articles. They thought they were famous. Most didn’t need to be talked into anything. They didn’t even have to be paid. They loved being part of things. They loved having this bit of excitement. It made them happy. Some of the old people—they started to believe they really did remember Dino Cavalli and his family living in the big house on Via D’Oro.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s fucking creepy. They all go along like they’re in some kind of trance? Come on.”

“It’s not about a trance. It’s a small village. It was fun for them, a thrill. They loved it. Some heard the stories so many times, they forgot what the truth was. This is not about creepy. This is about filling a boring life with something more interesting.”

“You knew this. You knew and it didn’t even matter to you. Someone just goes and makes up his whole history and this doesn’t bother you?” Nothing would matter then, it seemed clear. This was my mother’s life, and my life. Nothing was going to change if she didn’t have limits of what she would tolerate. I would have to make some decisions. I grabbed my pillow and held it. Put my face down inside. Dad could turn down the heat of his house. Mom couldn’t turn down the heat of hers.

“Honey,” she sighed. She sat down next to me, just sat there in silence for a while. “Dino needed that history. Needed it. And it made those people happy. They’re part of something bigger than the life they have there. I understood that.”

“Why? Why would he need it so bad? Someone just needs to go and make himself up?”

“Dino was born Dino Tiero in the inner city of Milan.”

“Tiero? They’re related?”

“They’re brothers. They were desperately poor. God, Cassie, they were so poor that they once had to eat a rat that William caught. Can you imagine that?”

“No,” I said. “It’s still no reason to lie like that. Being poor …”

“His mother was a prostitute. They never knew their father. They saw their mother hanging on the shower rail when he was fifteen. Suicide. He and William found her.”

“Oh, my God.”

“A teacher, Giovanni Cavalli, had already given him his first violin a few years before. He taught Dino to play. Dino had a natural talent. That part was true. William got him jobs, and the playing kept them alive. Dino changed his name to honor the man who saved his life. William kept pushing, pushing Dino to greatness. They were always running from ghosts.”

I was quiet. I felt horrible and cruel. Life could be so beautiful, and it could also be this mess of confusion and cruelty I didn’t know where to begin untangling things.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally.

“Cassie, I’m not saying this excuses all his behavior. Just explains some of it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“He didn’t even tell me any of this. William did. Dino’s doctor did. Dino fired William after he had Dino hospitalized. He thought he was ruining his ability to create.”

“I just don’t get it. People would understand. I would have understood. Maybe there would be more compassion for him. He didn’t need to worry about the truth.”

“I guess sometimes things seem too awful to say out loud.” I guess she was right about that. I still hadn’t told Ian the truth about what was happening at home. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to protect him, I wanted to protect you. He wanted to protect his mother. He didn’t want the world to know her that way.”

“I wanted to protect you,” I said.

“Oh, Cassie.” She looked so, so tired. She put her arms around me. “That’s my job,” she said. “To protect you. And I’m not doing it well enough.”

I hugged her too. “All this has been hard,” I said.

“How did you find out about Dino? We don’t even know for sure if Edward Reynolds discovered the truth, though I think he had to have. Every magazine and newspaper reporter since has taken their information from that book.”

“Dad found out.”

“What? Dad?”

“He was worried about you.”

“None of this is his business.”

“Don’t be mad at him. He did it out of love.”

Mom sighed. Shook her head. “All the things,” she said. “Done out of love.”

Karl Lager: Well, then the concerts in the piazza started every Saturday morning. Do you understand what that did to my business? No one went into the store for an hour or more. They came to listen to that horrible child, not to buy peaches.

Father Tony Abrulla: I will confess I am glad he did not choose Sunday! I was just an assistant then, to Father Minelli. I close my eyes and still hear that music. It brought the people of Sabbotino Grappa together as one. For a few hours, this small boy kept Mrs. Salducci and Mrs. Latore from fighting. Even Frank Piccola came outside and stood to listen, and the threat of hell couldn’t make him leave his house for Mass on Sundays. Maybe he was depressed. We didn’t have depression, then, of course, that we knew of.

Maria Lager Manzoni, grocer’s daughter: Father finally gave me Saturdays off Let me tell you a secret—that’s when my Pia was conceived. Eli and I held hands through that child’s sweet and tender playing, went home with passion. We barely closed the front door.

Honoria Maretta: No child was ever mine like he was. Like a son to me. I loved that boy.10

Here is what I remember about the rest of that night.

Dino puts a coat around my mother’s shoulders. His own smells of cigarettes, like the boys in detention. I tell him I am sorry, but it is really more the sadness of his life I am expressing compassion for, rather than my anger at him earlier. There is too much between us for that. And too much that he’s done that cannot be excused by the past. Still, I feel bad for the pain he felt. The pain he continues to feel. Maybe he chooses not to see me, as he has chosen to stop seeing other things in his life.

My mother drives. Dino sits in the passenger’s seat. I see in the reflection of the glass that his fingers are moving in the air, on the strings of the violin that rides in its case in the trunk.

We take the ferry, stay in the car. I have seen Dino perform only once before, and Mom has seen him several times, but it was never like this. Never a release of new work after so many years, never so much riding on the outcome. Last time he was not nervous, but now his edginess infuses the atmosphere. Mom turns on the radio, but Dino switches it off. She helps him straighten the wings of his bow tie, then he flips the visor down and studies it in the mirror. Unsatisfied, he undoes it, ties it again. His hands tremble. I smooth the velvet of my dress again and again with my hands. I think about Ian, who in a few months will board an airplane for Philadelphia, but will tonight be somewhere in that audience. I think about how everyone is just a small person on a big earth in a bigger universe. I think about how everyone struggles to do the best they can in this imperfect place.

We arrive at the concert hall early, of course. We are backstage, where there is the chaos and noise of people and instruments and bright lights. My mother knows a few performers there, and I can see her watching Dino with sideways glances even as she speaks to them. Dino is using grand gestures and a big voice, but he is sipping water and once again I see his shaking hands. A violist asks me questions about school that I answer as I smile with a politeness that tries hard to hide my impatience. I feel like I am talking to her forever, as she tells me what a shame it is that our schools do not make music programs a priority.

Mom rescues me. She whispers that she feels underfoot, that they want to practice a few measures. The conductor looks relaxed, laughs a lot. She tells me that he will be good for Dino, and that we can go get a coffee. I guess we could use some Optimism in a Cup right then.

We go out into the lobby, where it is mostly quiet still, and where there are huge posters of Dino staring out at us wherever I look. It reminds me of The Great Gatsby, which we read in English last year—something about that big sign that signifies death, or something or other that I can’t quite remember. We find a coffee stand, share a latte, eat a biscotti, so that Mom must go to the bathroom again to fix her lipstick. By the time the audience begins to arrive, she will have made four trips to the bathroom, not that I can blame her.

It feels like we are waiting forever. My feet hurt in those damn shoes. Whoever decided that high heels were a good idea for women should have had to wear them every day of his life, which would be punishment enough. Everyone smiles at my mother, and my own face hurts from so much smiling. I keep looking around for Ian, but know that with all the people there it will be unlikely that I will see him and have the chance to talk to him about getting into Curtis. The ushers arrive, and Mom decides to go backstage and check on Dino one more time before the show begins. I go back to the bathroom for lack of anything else to do, and to avoid the stares of the Dino posters. His hair is swept back from his face in them, silver and black, and he looks handsome and intense. It occurs to me that he is someone I know, someone I live with. But do I really know him? Anything about him, except the way he wants me to walk down stairs, turn a faucet off, close a door? This strikes me as sad—what a stranger he and his life are to me. In the bathroom, I wish for a vice—smoking, drinking. My best vice, Hostess Indulgence, sounds stomach turning and hugely lacking in vice-ly power at the moment. The bathroom has the paper towels stacked in a basket, and I wonder how long they will last before the dispensers with the twirly narrow handles will have to be used.

The bathroom begins to pack with perfumed women in sequins and big coats. I leave to find that the lobby is filling fast, with rushing people and lingering people, people in heavy jackets and others fanning themselves with their programs. It’s amazing how loud it is in there, after the several hours where the only noises were footsteps on carpet. In spite of Dino’s complaints about his venue, I know that the hall is one of the best for sound, a building built within a building to keep the life of the street out. Now in the lobby, we are standing in the middle layer, the protective atmosphere.

Mom comes out again, finds me looking out of the glass wall into what is now night. It’s dark and has been raining, and the street is glossy. Cars are jammed up all along the road, and a light turns red and someone honks. In every one of those cars there is a story, or a hundred stories. For every light on in all of those huge city buildings, there is a story. No one knows what I am about to face, no one knows my story, and neither do I right then. I think about Ian and I scan the crowd for his face, and kick myself for not making a plan to meet him somewhere here. This place, a night like this, will be his place, too, his night. I wonder if his hands will shake as he takes a sip of water before his performance.

Mom grabs my arm. It’s the second time she’s done that. She tells me we have to hurry, that we should be seated by now. We walk past the ushers and down the sloped, carpeted ramp. Some of the family of the other performers stay backstage, but Dino has always preferred his support in the audience. I know from Mom’s own performances that when you look out from a lit stage, all you can see is a blackness, the sky without stars. You wouldn’t even know there were any living beings out there. I guess it’s nice to know that there is something familiar and loving in that sea of darkness.

We travel down the rows of seats and I am lucky I don’t fall on my ass in those shoes. All of those people in their suits and fancy clothes, holding hands or whispering to each other or reading their programs and scanning the names of all of the contributors to see which of their friends gave money, all of them are here to see Dino, to say that they saw him, to be able to tell the story tomorrow and in the days to come. You can feel the excitement in the air, in that reserved way of people in an elegant place—all good manners and shifting sideways to maneuver past each other and whispered excuse me’s.

We sit next to that weasel Andrew Wilkowski, and some other woman who is from the recording company, I think. I can smell her perfume from where I sit, one of those sorts that are not sexy so much as stalking. The strong odor jars me out of the nervousness that I feel, this psychic-hypercommunication that Mom and I have going between us, anxious electricity. The perfume is helpful because now I am just plain annoyed, and the annoyance puts me in full fault-finding gear. The woman has a little run in her stockings right at the point of her ankle. With any luck, well see it zip up her leg like a spider crawling up a wall.

I look behind me. Every seat that I can see is full. Every one. No one is even in the bathroom. I know that somewhere behind me, Siang Chibo sits with her parents. I know that Ian is there with his mother, tickets given to them compliments of Dino. I wonder if they can see me, if their eyes are on me. People in the front row turn to us and say things to Mom, shake her hands. They are probably the people whose names you see in the program under CONTRIBUTORS, the ones who have been in our house on Thanksgiving. We are in the second row by choice—my mom hates sitting in the front row. She says that all you get is a view up Dino’s pant leg, but I don’t understand how this is any better. If I had my choice, since I had to be there, I would rather sit in one of the overhanging pods, those special boxes that remind you of ladies with piled-up hair and opera glasses, or maybe of President Lincoln being shot, but Dino doesn’t like us in the balconies. Better yet, I’d sit in the farthest back corner. I’d put my coat around me, close my eyes, and pretend I’m listening to him on a CD. The idea of him on the stage in front of us is too intense. It’d be more comfortable watching the surgery channel on a big-screen TV This is not some stranger giving us a show—we will bring home his success or failure. We will live with the largeness of this event for days, the monumental fact of this one man with these people in his hands.

The lights dim, and Mom grabs my arm. We look at each other in the dimness, and I’m surprised at how fearful her face looks. We know Dino won’t be performing right away, so there is no reason for this stomach lurching just yet. But when the curtain opens and there is such silence, only a few rustles and a throat being cleared, and the symphony is revealed, dressed in black, with instruments held in readiness, you know it has begun and whatever happens is inevitable.

The conductor enters, and we like him already. His hair is loose, and it is as swinging as his walk. He bows to the audience, and his wide smile says he is enjoying every moment of this, that we should relax and come with him where he is about to take us. The crowd breaks into applause—Peter Boglovich is well loved, known for his passion for coffee and pastries and other men. He steps up onto the conductor’s stand, and raises his baton to a pinpoint in the air. And then they begin.

There is a frenzy of bowing, the slightly forward tilt of the musicians’ bodies, their slight sway. I can feel my mother relax through the piece. I look over at her and see her smiling slightly.

The symphony plays two more pieces. After the third there is silence, and my mother takes my hand and holds it. Hers is sweaty, and I wonder if she has stopped breathing. Peter Boglovich is speaking, although his words are underwater. He turns to face offstage, applauds to Dino, who emerges from the wings. There is thunderous applause, which goes on for a long time, as Dino looks out into the black sea. In spite of all of the people around him, he looks alone, this one man who was once this one young boy. He takes off his tuxedo jacket, hands it to the conductor. Dino takes his place slightly left of center.

The first piece is titled Giardino Dei Sogno, Garden of Dreams. It is surprisingly upbeat, almost cheerful. He smiles as if he is remembering something sweet. His white shirt billows softly. The symphony joins him after a while, an easy, lovely mix of a walk in good weather. My mother’s eyes never leave him; it’s as if she is breathing for him. The piece ends. The crowd’s applause is warm and full, but not overwhelming and astonished. Dino bows and his hair falls down over his face. He stands upright, gives the crowd a nod, and then raises up a hand in acknowledgment. This man, whom I share a house with and who uses the same silverware as I do, seems so removed from me that I could forget that I know him at all.

Dino walks offstage, and the curtain closes. The lights come up, and it is intermission. He will play again afterward. I hear my mother sigh a breath of relief, and then she puts on her smile to receive congratulations of the people who turn to take her hands again. They are being polite, I can tell. Underwhelmed. I stand and stretch, look around. Look up into the crowd and try to meet Ian’s eyes, wherever they are.

My mother is leaning forward and talking to Andrew Wilkowski, who I notice for the first time is wearing a rose in his lapel. His wife is talking to the record company woman, who can’t seem to take her eyes off of my mother. I check out the crowd and have a weird surge of panic at the sight of one man in our row across the aisle. For a minute, I think I am looking at William Tiero. I think the man looks just like him. In fact, I become sure in a moment that it is indeed William Tiero. This is what living with a paranoid can do; it makes you fear the worst things. My heart actually thumps around in anticipation of trouble. When Mom leans back in her seat again, I point out the man. Isn’t that William Tiero? I ask.

Don’t even think such a thing, she says. And then she tells me who she thinks he looks like, names someone I’ve never heard of, a movie actor probably. She tells me this man’s nose and chin are too round, and that his hair is wrong. It is not William Tiero.

A woman comes to the front and asks if she can take my mother’s picture. Andrew Wilkowski intervenes and says no, but my mother says she doesn’t mind. The woman has a hard time figuring out her own damn camera, then realizes it hasn’t been wound forward. Andrew Wilkowski reminds her to keep the camera in her purse during the performance, and the woman snaps something back to him about knowing full well the protocol. She gives us something to talk about until the lights dim again.

The symphony performs one endless piece and then there is Dino again. There is a long silence before he begins, and when he lifts his violin to his chin, he closes his eyes. It is a solo piece, parts of which I have heard again and again, but have never known the title of until I had picked up the program earlier that night. Amore Dolce Della Gioventù, Sweet Love of Youth. He begins to play, and for the first time I hear the piece unbroken. I see the entire picture. I know its name. It is strange to me that I have before this moment only known fragments and not the whole. I wonder what made him write it. I wonder if it was memories of his days in Paris as a young man, or if it was something more recent. I hear the notes, this most beautiful, tender arrangement of feeling, and I see him drawing back the curtain of the upstairs bedroom window of our house, see him watching Ian and me on the grass that night. Could he have seen something more than just his anger that night? Or is every person in this room feeling as if he was there the moment they fell in love? When the piece is over there is silence in the hall, and then frenzied applause. Shouts of Bravo! The record company woman wipes a tear from her face. He has triumphed.

He barely pauses to accept the applause before he moves to his next piece, the dreaded third composition that has given him so much agony. It is titled simply Lunetta. It is a piece that begins with just Dino’s single, mournful violin, until the orchestra floats in, it seems, section by section until all the performers are playing so furiously that it is as if their instruments might alight at any moment. He has composed the music for each instrument, written every agonizing note, and it is true—he is a genius. The emotions pour forth, the definitions of love and life and struggle. Dino himself has his eyes closed—he is lost to this frenzied place. He grimaces, as if it is causing him pain; his shirt billows, comes untucked. His sleeves are swaying a rhythm of white, and this close you can see the sweat forming on his forehead. I hold my own breath—it is that kind of music, where you are almost afraid for what might happen next, afraid of where this group cry to the universe might bring us. I look over at my mother, and see her hands clasped in her lap. Her own eyes are closed, and she is smiling. She is gone to wherever music and passion can take her, and I see on her face why she loves this man and what it means to her to simply be part of this moment. I understand that that is what all this has been about—her ability to be here in a way that is more intimate than anyone else in the room. To have a piece of it that no one else has. This is why she has stayed.

I think of my father right then. I think how my mother has needs that he cannot fulfill. In some part of him, held secretly in his palm, maybe, I know he holds out hope that she will return to him. There is a part of me that right then opens up my own palm, unfurls the clutched fingers, and lets the hope out.

The audience is transported, and Dino is the one leading the trip. I am afraid for him—he seems so overcome, so lost and found at the same time that I wonder how he’ll manage it. He leans over the violin, and the energy and fire he pours into that instrument is the brightest flash of light, a gamma ray burst, the death of a star and the creation of a black hole. The piece has ended, this piece that has caused Dino so much agony, and the audience explodes with applause, shouts, and rises to its feet. This surpasses triumph, but Dino looks depleted, exhausted to the point of collapse. He just stands there for a while, looking into the blackness of the audience as if wondering where he was and how he got there. Lunetta, I learn later means “Little Moon” in Italian. His mother’s name.

Someone has the bright idea to turn up the lights a bit so that he can see the people on their feet, their hands in the air. His eyes settle on us, the record company woman, my mother and I, then move across the performance hall.

There are lucky and unlucky things about that night. The unlucky things are obvious. The lucky thing is that someone closed the curtain a bit too early. As the heavy velvet drapes shut, the applause finally quieted, and the rush out began immediately. That was the lucky part, that there were many people who had already made it through the doors before Peter Boglovich and a French horn player lost their grasp on a Dino who was trying to make his way out to the audience through the side curtain. He had thrown his violin down—that’s how they knew that he was suddenly outraged and out of control. Thrown it hard enough to cause a thin crack down the back.

No one hears anything, although Andrew Wilkowski’s envelope wife would later claim she heard the splintering of the wood, which was an impossibility and a lie, given the noise in the auditorium and the chatter of the record company woman. We gather our coats. There is supposed to be a brief reception now for a few important people. This is fine for the record company woman, as her perfume is still going strong. I do not know that in less than a minute, Ian will know my secret. That everyone will.

The front rows are still making their way up the ramp when we hear it. This animal cry of rage. You son of a bitch! We turn to look, and in spite of everything that has happened up to that point, in spite of all that we have lived with over the past few months, the cry is a surprise, and I have no idea whose voice it is or what is happening. There is that sudden disorientation of trying to make sense of something unexpected.

And then I see him. Billowing white shirt, black tuxedo pants, and he leaps from the stage and stumbles. Andrew Wilkowski is the first one to understand that it is Dino, and that this is a disaster. He rushes down the ramp with a surprising degree of athleticism, but misses Dino coming up the side aisle. Dino is pushing past startled people, reaches the man who bears an unfortunate resemblance to Dino Tiero Cavalli’s brother. He grabs a chunk of the back of the jacket the man wears and spins him around. He raises his fist, and with the force of the agony and pain of his lifetime, punches the man in his face, sending him reeling and crashing to the floor.

There are screams—my mother screams beside me. Dino is kneeling beside the man. He is putting his hands to the man’s throat. Blood is coming from the man’s nose. Andrew Wilkowski reaches them.

Dino looks into the face of the man, and realizes what we already know. He realizes that this is just a man, an aeronautics engineer who played the bass in his high school orchestra and who lucked into good seats through an online auction. This is not William Tiero, who he is certain tried to ruin him financially by getting him the psychiatric help he needed. Who shared the ugly history that Dino tried to escape from but feared he never could. As my mother said, his nose and chin are too round.

This is when Dino rises. The part of him that is sane and rational, if still a perfectionist asshole, looks shocked at what he has done.

Two ushers and a security officer are trying to move down the crowd of people to get to the injured man. Andrew Wilkowski has his arm around Dino’s shoulder. But he doesn’t know Dino’s strength if he thinks he can hold him there. Dino wrenches himself free. He flees out the side door, the fire exit.

He runs out into the night.