Dirty Wings (25 page)

“It took you a long time,” he says. “To come see me.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Come inside.”

She follows him through the house to the piano room, her heart leaping at the sight of the Steinway.
This,
she thinks,
this is what I am missing.
She crosses the room and touches it, reverently.

“It can be yours again,” he says behind her. “This life, it was so bad? Come back, child. Come back to me. Tell me you will go to school in the fall.”

“I'm pregnant,” she says.

He sighs. “You are joking.”

“No.”

“You can have this taken care of.”

“I don't want to.”

“You are ruining your life.”

“Maybe,” she says. “But it's my life to ruin.”

“Why,” he says. “Why are you doing this? Your whole life is in front of you, Maia. Your career. Go to New York. Forget about this summer. Forget whatever foolishness you have been captured by these last months.”

“I'm broken, Oscar. Something in me is broken. You saw it all along.”

He comes to stand next to her and puts his hand on the piano and looks at it with a love that is so naked Maia almost steps away from him. “I know what it is like,” he says. “There was a time when I was young when I was like you also, always searching, always unhappy with myself, and I made a mistake, and it undid me. I cannot watch you do the same thing.”

“I'm not making a mistake. It's what I want.”

He dismisses her with a wave of his hand. “You are seventeen years old. Forgive me, Maia, but you are too young and too stupid to have any idea what you want. It will be years before you know anything about yourself, and by then, if you do this, it will have been done, and you will be like me, looking back on all your life with nothing but regret. Do you know what I was? I was a great pianist, Maia. I could have been a Horowitz or a Rubinstein, everyone around me knew this, I knew this. I was teaching a little in the conservatory, you understand, but it would not have been for much longer.”

“What happened?”

“I fell in love,” he says. “I fell in love with one of my students. I was young. He was younger. We were careless, I was found out. It was a terrible, terrible scandal. His father threatened to sue the school—he was tremendously wealthy, you understand, a major donor. All very well for the Greeks, but this is a newer time.” He sighs. “The young man was not—he was not courageous, I think is how you say it. The father threatened to disinherit him. So the boy said that it was I who had seduced him and it looked bad, you see, as I was his teacher. Martha Kaplan was not the head of the department then, of course, but she disliked me, as I was quite a lot better than she was, and so she was most pleased to encourage him. It was the ruin of me, this foolishness, and when it became public the boy never spoke to me again. I had thrown away my life for him, and he would not even see me.”

“What happened to him?”

Oscar laughs. “He went into the stock market. He was not an especially good pianist; it was not his musicianship that I loved. The father had always been mistrustful of the arts. An entire field of homosexuals and destitutes.” He touches the piano again. “My other students rallied for me, but it was no use. It was kind of them. They stole for me this piano.”

“They stole a
Steinway
?”

“Well, you know, they were fond of me. I think it was quite a project for them.”

“Didn't the school notice?”

“Oh, of course, I am sure. But it was already such a nasty business, and they did not wish to have any more questions asked. I am only telling you this because I regret it every day of my life, Maia. It is a great joy to me, you must understand, to have taught you all these years, but I had a real life, the beginning of a real career. I would have been great, this is not a doubt. Now instead it is you who will be great. I will not allow this foolishness. You will go to the doctor and have this thing taken care of, and you will leave me here, sad old man that I am, and go to New York, and have a fine destiny ahead of you, have I made myself clear?”

“Oscar,” Maia says. “I'm not you.”

“Young people think they are all different from one another,” Oscar says quietly, “and in this they are always quite incorrect.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispers. “Oscar, I—”

“Do not talk,” he says. “Let us not ruin our afternoon with any more talking. Play for me.”

“What do you want me to play?”

“Play me the Ravel.”

She sits at his magnificent piano, the piano she knows as well as if it were her own. The tenor of it, the weight of the keys, the movement of its pedals under her feet. She knows its moods, the way its tone shifts a little in the winter no matter how dry Oscar keeps the room, the way it opens up again in the summer, like an animal breathing in. She hasn't played the Ravel for weeks, but it doesn't matter. She plays now for Oscar the way she played at her audition for those stone-faced Gorgons wishing her failure. Everything she has learned about loss this summer, about wanting, pours out of her and into the keys. Instead of the mermaid she thinks of the producer, his black eyes watching her, the producer in a palace with tall windows that look out over the sea, the producer calling her name, calling her down.
I will see you again.
The notes washing out of her like waves breaking against the shore, light sparkling across the breakers. Like a ghost she enters the music, her own self washed clear, dissolving away until she is nothing but motes of light, kelp moving in the slow deep currents, the silver wink of a fish glinting. She plays knowing the truth of the fate she's spun for herself: She could never have played like this if she had not learned what she learned when she left; but in leaving, she's undone her own future, taken away the chance she had to make this music her life.

After the final chords fade away from the still room, she raises her head and sees that Oscar's eyes are wet. “You are better than I ever was,” he says. “You are better than I ever was, and you are throwing it away in front of me.”

“I'm sorry, Oscar.”

He shakes his head. “I would like you to leave now.”

“Oscar—”

“Please,” he says. “Please, Maia. Go.”

She leaves the sheet music on his piano and walks through his house alone without saying goodbye.

 

 

The producer throws them a party the night the record releases. Jason is so nervous he gets drunk at eleven in the morning. Byron and Percy are beside themselves with anxiety. Maia is confident that if she stays in the house with them all day she will lose her mind.
I will see you again.
Tonight. Tonight she will see him again. She presses her hand to her chest, as if the flutter there were visible. “Come on,” she says, “let's go to the park.”

“It's cold,” Jason moos. “It's
raining.
”

“We'll go to the zoo, then.”

“Let's just go get breakfast,” Byron says.

“Fine,” Maia says.

“You go,” Jason says. “I'll stay here. In case someone calls.”

Maia refrains from pointing out that the phone's been shut off for a week, since none of them has money to pay the bill. “Okay, baby,” she says, kissing him. “We'll be back soon.”

“In time for the party.”

“It's not even noon yet.”

“But you'll come back.”

“We'll come back.”

Maia and Byron and Percy pile into Maia's car. They don't see Cass, with her hood pulled up against the rain, trudging down the sidewalk to the house, Cass climbing the steps to the front porch and knocking. Jason opens the door.

“Hi,” Cass says. “I came by to see Maia.”

“She just left. Did she know you were coming?”

“No,” Cass says. “Do you know where she went?”

“She left me,” Jason says disconsolately.

“Jason, are you
drunk
?”

“You can come inside.” Shaking her head, she follows him into the living room. Jason and Maia are still sleeping on the pullout bed; they haven't bothered to put it away this morning. Cass tugs off her wet sweatshirt and hangs it over a chair, perches on the edge of the bed.

“Well,” she says. Jason slumps down next to her and puts his head in his hands. “Did she actually leave you? Or did she just go somewhere?”

“They all left me,” he says, his voice muffled.

“You
are
drunk.”

“You know what we have in common?” he says, raising his head to look her in the eye. “We both love her. And she's going to leave both of us.”

Cass can't tell if he's baiting her.
Oh, fuck you, pretty boy,
she thinks, but if he is trying to make her angry she refuses to let him, and if he isn't, then he is genuinely sad. She feels sorry for him, as much as it pains her to admit it. And he's not wrong. His clear blue eyes are pleading. He's lost weight he can't afford in the last weeks, and his cheekbones are startling, his collarbone as stark and graceful as a girl's.

“I know,” she says.

“This record,” he says. “This record is going to make us rich. He promised.”

“Who promised?”

“The producer.”

Cass swallows. “Maia told me about him. What else did he promise you?”

“The whole world,” Jason says. “Above and below. He said he would make me famous. He said within a year the whole world would know my name. He said I'd never have to think about anyone leaving me again, because everyone would love me, everyone, and Maia would follow me anywhere, and I'd have more money than I ever dreamed of.”

“Is that what you want?” Cass asks cautiously.
Did I do this?
she thinks.
Did I do this? Or did you? What the hell does he want with a walking tragedy like you?

“I don't want her to leave me.”

“She won't leave you,” Cass says. “If she were going to leave you, she'd have done it by now.”

“Everyone leaves me,” he says. “Everyone.”

“What is it, anyway,” Cass asks, sick to death of him, “that she sees in you?”

“Something she doesn't see in you, I guess,” he says. She raises her hand to hit him and he snatches her wrist and holds it there, staring her down, and she's surprised by the strength in his skinny arms.

“Go to hell,” she says.

“I'll take her with me,” he says, “and there's nothing you can do about it, it's me who has her, not you.” She pulls her arm free of his grip and slaps him for real, hard, and he grabs her wrist again. She hits him once more with her free hand and he grabs that one, too, their eyes locked on each other, Cass breathing hard. “Fuck you, Cass,” he says, “I won,” and he pulls her in and kisses her, his mouth as mean as a bruise. She knees him in the gut, but half-heartedly, the blow not even knocking the wind out of him, and kisses him back, his hands still vice-gripped around her wrists. He pulls her down on top of him.
I hate you,
she thinks,
I hate you,
but whether it's Jason she hates, or herself, she can't say. She lets him let go of her wrists long enough take off her shirt and push her back on the bed, raises her hips so he can undo her jeans. His body is bony and his breath smells like whisky. He pins her wrists above her head and holds her down and fucks her, and Cass looks over his shoulder at the asbestos-popcorned ceiling and thinks about birds and the ocean and Maia's hands on the piano, in her beige house, all those months ago. “I'm sorry,” he says in her ear when he comes. “I'm sorry. Please don't listen to me. I'm sorry.” She puts her face in the curve of his neck and inhales. He needs a shower.

“Put your clothes on,” she says. “They might come back.” She leaves him, goes into the bathroom to wash her face and between her legs. All the towels are dirty. She stares at herself in the mirror. She does not feel guilt, or remorse, or elation. She does not feel anything at all. Inside the bone cage of her ribs her heart sits like a dead thing, unmoving. She touches the Cass in the mirror, fingers meeting fingers in the glass. “You ruin everything,” she says softly.

She waits with Jason for Maia to come home. They watch television in silence, a PBS documentary about the savannah start fuzzed. “They're going to shut off the electricity soon,” Jason remarks, as a lion takes down a baby wildebeest, the rest of the herd stampeding.

“Guess you better get famous quick, then,” Cass says. They do not talk to each other again.

When Maia comes in the door at last she is flushed with happiness, her brown skin rosy. “Cass!” she cries, running across the room and tackling her. Cass lets Maia take her down without resisting.

“I came to help you get ready,” Cass says. Maia sits on her, gazing down at her solemnly.

“Do you know how to do makeup?” she asks. “I got eyeliner. But I don't know how to put it on, really.”

“Do I know how to do makeup,” Cass says. “Girl, please.” Maia clambers off her and kisses Jason.

“Hey, baby,” she says. He draws her closer to him, kisses her back greedily. Cass looks away.

“You came back,” he says.

“Of course I came back. Come on, the car is coming for us at seven. It's already four. Cass and I have to get ready.”

“I'm not dressing up,” Jason snarls.

“It's your party,” Maia says.

“Then they'll take us as we are.”

“Okay,” Maia says, soothing him. “Okay, baby. Whatever you want.”

“They're sending a car?” Cass says.

Byron laughs from across the room, where he's trying to get another channel to come in on the television. “They haven't paid us a fucking cent, man,” he says. “They told us our whole advance went to recording and we have to wait for royalties. But they're sending us a fucking limousine.”