Wild Roses (17 page)

We started to clap. I was filled with a surge
of joy. Water rushed through the wire basket.

"We are ze king and ze queen of bicycle
tossing," lan said.

"Conquerors and champions," I said.

Ian took a pinch of my sleeve, brought me in to
him in a hug. I could smell his coat, nylon left outside; his hair, some kind of
clean vanilla.

"I'm quitting lessons, Cassie," Ian
said.

"Don't do it if it's just because of Dino.
Don't let him have that kind of power."

"It's not just Dino. Cassie? I don't want the
violin running my life. I want more."

"Okay, then. All right," I said.

"And I don't want to go away to Curtis," he
said. I set my cheek against him, let the hope fill me. I could hear his heart,
even through his puffy coat. It was beating pretty wildly in there.

"Then you won't go," I said.

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We pulled apart. Here's what I felt--our eyes,
they made a pact. To be away from the music, the all-encompassing enemy, to be
safe with each other. It was settled. No more violin, no more frenzied, singular
visions. Ian would be the place where everything was okay.

Ian leaned in, kissed me. Warm, so warm, soft.
A long, slow kiss. I didn't pull away, and I didn't run. He swallowed me up and
brought me in.

When we pulled apart again, we just looked at
each other. Because of course, everything had changed.

I started seeing Ian every day after school. He
hadn't told his mom that he'd stopped going to lessons, so he'd pretend to leave
at the same time each day and we'd meet somewhere. Sometimes we'd go to the
ferry dock, and sometimes we'd go to the planetarium, because Dave, the guy that
works there, always lets me in for free. We'd sit in the plush seats, and I'd
point things out to Ian and he'd interrupt me with questions. Every now and then
Ian would have Bunny's car, and we'd park somewhere and kiss and steam up the
windows and go to the edge of want. Or we'd sit in the chairs in the back part
of the library and talk, and once we listened to classical music on the big,
puffy library headphones, those old kind from when headphones were first
invented. He explained to me the difference between legato and staccato, and for
the first time in my life I actually cared. About the music, about someone else.
Cared--love. My God, love. Here it was, and it was fantastic. Everything felt
larger. I felt like

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things made sense. I was myself, and more than
I ever knew I could be. I wanted to be so close to him that I was of him. I
wanted to be in his mind, in his arms. I loved the way his hair fell in his
eyes, his gangly limbs, the way I had to stand on my toes to reach him. I loved
his sudden laugh, the way he thought about things, his intelligence. I started
wearing his coat around when we were together. I would have worn it when we were
apart, if I could. And Ian was a harbor. A place to hide from what was happening
at home. A gazebo to run to and take shelter in during a thunderstorm. If you
think that all of this is corny tough shit. That's the way it was.

I explained away my absences with my handy
Honduras project. It was the biggest project in the history of projects. It was
the longest, too, even though we'd given the oral report on it weeks ago, Nicole
holding and gesturing to the visual aids like a game show hostess, and Jason
sulking and not saying anything because we'd rejected his idea of playing music
in the background while we spoke. He'd brought in a tape recorder and a
compilation of Hawaiian favorites. He perked up when we let him pass out the
information sheets to the class, though. Of course, all three of us got an A,
even though the only thing those two really contributed to was my understanding
of homicidal behavior.

I kept different pieces of my life in different
places. I was overcome with this bizarre need to talk about Ian, to bring him to
me with words, but I only gave in and did this with my bonded twin, Zach Rogers,
the talented duct

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taped snake impersonator. I chose Zach to
mention Ian to because one, he had every class with me, and two, because he had
the memory of a goldfish. I didn't tell any of my friends about Ian, even
Zebe.

"What is with you?" she asked me at lunch one
day. "You aren't yourself. I feel like I'm talking to my Coke can. No, wait.
It's more responsive." She held the can up to her ear. "Yeah, uh huh, I know,"
she said to the can. "God, Cassie. You've been acting weird for over a week
now."

"No, I haven't. I'm fine."

"Shit, you know? I thought I was your
friend."

"I'm sorry. There's really nothing . . ."I
thought quickly. "Things are messed up at home. More than usual. I'm thinking of
moving in with my dad. It's just really been on my mind a lot."

"You can't talk to me about that?" Zebe said.
"Man, oh, man, you gotta share this stuff or it kills you. I was going to tell
the counselor you had an eating disorder just so she'd call you into her
office."

I still got together with everyone on most
weekends, but inside I was rushing through those times and others. I had an
ever-present inner hurry up! until I could be with Ian again. So that I could be
free in the afternoons with the ease of one all-encompassing lie, I told my
friends and even Siang that Mom got me a job helping with symphony
correspondence.

I'm not sure why it felt so necessary to keep
Ian a secret. I guess I wanted what we had all for myself, to protect it. I
didn't want what was happening between Ian and

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me to become the usual thing, where you date
for a few weeks and everyone talks about it like it's a ridiculously moronic
soap opera, and your friends call his friends and his friends call you and it
all becomes stupid and shallow. It was too special to have as the news of the
day. It was too deep to be about other people.

I also didn't tell my parents about Ian for
obvious reasons, and though I did tell Ian about my parents, I didn't talk about
Dino. I didn't tell him that since Thanksgiving, Dino was up and down and
paranoid and rational. I was sure it was too bizarre for him to handle. It was
too bizarre for me to handle. Let's face it. Mental illness is embarrassing. In
a perfect world, we wouldn't look down on people too ill to hold it together,
who cry while looking out the window and don't bother getting fully dressed
before going out. We'd be patient and understanding, instead of letting out our
fear and uneasiness with the same kind of jokes we make about funeral directors.
But it does make you uneasy You do want to hold it away from you by saying his
tie would match his straitjacket, even if that's not nice. This is not me, this
is not mine. My mom makes cookies, too.

I couldn't show Ian that part of my life. It
was something I wanted to run from, so why wouldn't he? And there was another
thing, too. Ian was a part of the situation in a way a stranger wouldn't be. I
can honestly say that I lost track of who I was protecting, and why.

"He didn't show up for his lesson again," Dino
said one night as we were all in the car going out for dinner. "Two times, now.
Two times!"

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"I told you, just let him sort it out on his
own. He's obviously struggling with the music just now."

"I'm going to call his mother. You want me to
wait until it happens a third time?"

"Third, fourth. Let him have a rest. You know
how the pressure can get to you," Mom said. "Let him decide he wants this. Be
calm, Dino."

"We're losing precious time, Daniella," Dino
said. "Don't you see? We've only got three and a half months before his tape
must be in."

"Why is this so important to you anyway?" I
asked. I never did get that. I mean, why not let Ian bel

"How can you understand? I can make a
difference in his life. I can save him the struggle I had," Dino said. His eyes
in the rearview mirror looked disgusted at my question.

"You see yourself in him," Mom said.

"Youth, need, talent . . ." Dino said. "But how
can I help him if he doesn't help himself? It's a waste, and I detest waste. He
will lose his chance if he doesn't stop these foolish games."

"Maybe he quit," I said. I couldn't help
myself. I was a little smug at having the inside information. I also wanted to
help Ian out. He was so happy about not playing anymore that the sooner Dino got
it through his head, the better. Dino's pride at not having succeeded with his
first student would just have to hurt a little. Or a lot. The Curtis School a
zillion miles away would just have to do without Ian. If you're thinking here
that my motivations

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were selfish, you're right about that too.
Sure, I was glad he quit. If it meant he wouldn't leave, I'd have been happy if
he decided to become a ferryboat driver and live here forever.

"Ha," Dino said. "He'll never quit." A little
flame of anger rose up. "What makes you so sure?"

"I know. He will never quit. He'll be
back."

"You can't know," I said. "You can't know for
sure what someone will or won't do." I hated the look of the back of his neck,
that curly hair he was so proud of. What I'd have given for a pair of
scissors.

"Don't be ridiculous. He'll be back. I'll call
his mother in the morning," Dino said.

"No, Dino. It will be better if he comes back
here on his own," my mother said. "You know how it gets sometimes. You think you
never want to see a sheet of music again."

We pulled up to the restaurant. I didn't feel
like eating. I didn't want to sit across from Dino and see him get salad
dressing in the corners of his mouth. Hatred and nourishment didn't go
together.

"His mother will do what I tell her to do. They
always do. That idiot Andrew Wilkowski would jump off a bridge if I told him
to," Dino said.

"Wearing his music-note tie," my mother
said.

"Tacky man. William Tiero, that prick. He was
the only one who wouldn't. He told me what to do, and I hated it. How many
years, I followed like a lamb."

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"All right, love. Let's not think about that
now," Mom said. She opened her car door.

"They would all jump off a bridge if I told
them to." Dino snapped his fingers in the air. Just like that, those fingers
said.

Christmas came. A big tree was brought into the
house, delivered already decorated, a present from Andrew Wilkowski, who
probably had just gotten his first commission check for the deal he set up for
Dino, the CD currently titled, Then and Now, a mix of his old stuff and the new
pieces, a way of putting out a new album without a full set of fresh material.
You should have seen this tree-- it was the kind of thing that you see in
department stores, with miniature packages wrapped in gold paper and gaudy, huge
ornaments and sparkly pears and doves. It was either gorgeous or horrid. Either
way it didn't exactly give you what you would call a warm, Chestnuts Over the
Open Fire kind of feeling. More, Nordstrom's Holiday Home Sale. When it was
being delivered, Courtney and her media-monster brothers practically wet
themselves with excitement. They stood in the street and watched the tree--and
the two delivery guys it took to carry it--disappear into the house. Mom said
Courtney actually brought her parents by later to gawk. This wasn't hard to do.
You could be three miles away from the front window and still see it. Thank God
there were no lights on it, or the Coast Guard would think there was a ship in
distress. In spite of the tree, there were bits of evidence of the

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way Christmas used to be too, when it was just
Mom and Dad and me. There was this decrepit gingerbread house we'd made years
ago, the candy so ancient that it was pale and drippy and would kill you if you
ate it, and our old Nativity scene. Mom and I still liked to have fun with it by
moving the figures around in what you could politely call "nontraditional
positions." Mom's not very religious in any regular way. She called the Nativity
"Christmas Town," as in What's happening in Christmas Town today? I'd wake up to
find the camel in the manger, say, with Joseph chipping in with parenting duties
out front, and then I'd move them around to surprise her the next day with
everyone standing in a circle around the donkey. Several years ago, the scene
acquired a large plastic dinosaur, and later, a miniature replica of the Statue
of Liberty that Mom got when she played a festival in New York. The poor folks
of Christmas Town ran from Godzilla one day, and the Statue of Liberty got to be
a fourth wise man. I remember that my dad used to get a little ticked at us for
this, as Christmas Town had been a gift from Nannie, and he disapproved of our
sacrilege. I remember Mom sticking out her tongue at him, and him swatting her
butt. I don't think Dino even noticed Christmas Town. I'm not sure Dino even
noticed the Christmas tree that had invaded the living room.

I spent Christmas Eve with my dad. There was no
talk of his Dino detective work right then, thankfully but I saw that the books
and notepads were still in his room, stacked neatly beside his bed. Dad had
brought Nannie

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and two other old ladies home with him for the
holiday, and he made a fantastic dinner that all the old ladies loved. One of
them, Helen, drank too much wine and fell asleep before we had dessert, snoring
away in Dad's favorite chair. We opened presents, and Nannie and the other old
lady, Mary, got rambunctious.