The Sound of Letting Go (20 page)

I know that somewhere

in Mom’s laundry list of unread e-mails

is one from the Evergreen High attendance office

(and maybe one from Mr. Orson, too),

noting my two days of unexcused absences

from zero-period jazz band.

I should feel guilty about this,

like I feel guilty about letting poor Irish Cal

do way more than half the work for our A-PUSH project,

about still not having chosen a solo

for the holiday band concert.

I should feel afraid for the possible consequences, but

they shrivel in the wake of Dad’s after-dinner proclamation:

“This weekend, we’re all going to visit Holland House,

a special school—a home—for kids like Steven.”

A hunger for Dave’s careless grin

is the only feeling in my stomach,

as I think I’ll skip jazz band again tomorrow.

Friday morning, Mom begins feeding my brother

a steady diet of

“Tomorrow, we are going to take a drive.

Tomorrow, we are going to visit a fun place.

We will visit for a little while,

then come right home and have lunch,”

along with the symmetrical waffles

and tepid mac and cheese.

I almost forget to pick up Justine, whose car is in the shop, on the way to school.

“Thanks for the lift.” She wafts into the passenger seat

on a wave of gardenia.

The first inhale is pleasure, but the second, third,

turn the scent cloying.

Justine grins as she watches my nose crinkle.

“It’s Calvin Klein. Mom brought home a sample from work.

Forgot your thing about smells.”

“No.” I try to unfurrow my brow. “I like it.”

“Ned does.” She giggles.

“He says it makes my neck smell delicious.”

“He says that? Ew!” I squeal. But now I’m smiling,

even though Justine has flooded my car

with an overpowering stink of flowers.

I pull onto Main Street,

finally finding a bit of sorrow in my numb heart

for the way our lives,

which used to revolve so much around each other,

have begun to drift into strange new orbits

polluted with scents and boys

and secrets.

Well, my secrets.

The high school parking lot is close to empty

at this early hour. Still, I pull into a spot far from

the building.

“Daisy, do you really need me to walk a mile in these

heels?” She wiggles her stilettoed feet, sighs.

“I do like how Ned is so tall.”

I flash to a memory of Justine,

dressed in high ten-year-old style,

down to her sparkle-toed half-inch heels,

standing between my parents

outside the artists’ exit of a concert hall.

(Shirley was at our house watching Steven,

still a manageably small, silent little boy

who would passively push cars across the floor for hours,

whose ticks and stims had not begun to destroy walls,

draw blood.)

It was my first time playing a solo

with the state orchestra, so, of course,

she’d come to listen.

I’ve never liked remembering that day,

its highlight feature being the mistake I made

just a few notes in.

Aggie had told me a zillion times,

“Don’t worry if you hit a bad note;

just put it behind you and play the next one.

Keep moving forward through the music.”

But the instant I heard that absurdly awful E-flat escape

my instrument, everything I knew about the trumpet

floated with it, out into the cavernous auditorium.

I could almost see notes, technique, counts

as sparkles of dust skittering

along the beams of stage light

away from my grasp.

I dissolved into four beats of silence,

redeemed only by the conductor’s hang-in-there smile,

his “and ah-one, two,” the encouraging lilt of his baton

that brought me back to the music.

After, I bowed at the audience’s polite applause,

did not break again until I was back in the greenroom,

awash in confused humiliation.

How could I, the prodigy,

the sister-of-the-living-mistake

who never made them herself,

fall so far from my pedestal so fast?

Now, the memory shifts,

the sting of the false note fading, replaced by the image

of Justine’s thousand-watt grin shining

from between my parents’ uncertain half-smiles:

“You looked amazing in that blue dress!”

“But I . . . but I . . .”

Even then, words had a habit of failing me.

“What, you missed a note? Nobody noticed.”

“You did.”

“No, I didn’t. You are amazing and I dare anyone

to say different.” Her eyes as defiant

as they were the morning of Cal O’Casey’s homeroom snub,

her preteen back straight,

balancing perfectly on her heels.

“Let’s go get ice cream.”

“What’s the matter, Daisy?” Justine asks me now.

“You look so upset.”

“Were you right? Are your parents splitting up?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Then what is it?”

I am hungry to tell her, to ask her what to do,

but I choke on the words, afraid

that Justine might finally fail to make me laugh—

be unable to piece the shattered mess of me

back together.

And then where will I turn?

“It’s . . . hard to talk about.”

“Are you in trouble?”

Justine’s question is so quick,

her implied worry so obvious,

that I wonder if she, too, is keeping secrets,

if what she’s doing with her new boyfriend

is maybe more than I imagined it could be.

“Nothing like that.

It’s just that life has gotten so confusing lately.

I feel like everyone wants me to agree to things

I don’t even want to think about.”

Justine, puzzled, looks at her watch.

“You’re late for jazz band.”

“It’s okay.”

“You’ve never said that before.”

She squeezes my right shoulder.

“You’re my best friend, Daisy.

When you’re ready to talk, I’ll listen.”

She opens the car door,

plants her stylish shoes on the frost-covered pavement,

and gives me a friendly wave.

Her back is straight, her walk eternally confident.

As if on cue, Ned’s car pulls in. He drives up alongside her.

Justine’s bright laugh echoes across the parking lot

as she gets in and is chauffeured

to the closest row of spots after all.

What am I doing, sitting in this parking lot,

listening to raindrops pelt the roof of my car,

not playing my trumpet?

A tap on my window.

I roll it down for Dave.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in jazz band, Daisy-brains?”

“Is that all anyone wants to know?”

“Well, whatcha sitting here for?”

“I have a headache,” my stupid mouth answers.

I sound frighteningly like my mother.

Dave goes round to the passenger side of the car. Gets in.

I turn on the CD player.

Ella Fitzgerald’s unmistakable voice

eases into “Body and Soul,”

holding on to each note like it tastes good in her mouth.

“Thought you said you had a headache.”

Dave gives a lock of my brown hair a little tug.

“Not that kind,” I answer, as if that means something,

blushing at thoughts of the Dave-and-me fantasies

I’ve dreamed to this track.

“What kind, then?”

“The kind that makes me want to have a little ‘relax’

out here in my car.”

“Maybe it’s from all the dark eye makeup,” he says.

“Do you have a problem with my eyes?”

I ball my fist.

“Hey, hey, no. It’s a cool look; it just . . .

doesn’t seem
you
, y’know?”

“People can change,” I snap.

“I guess we’ve both changed.”

He scrapes his fingers through his hair.

“Change . . .” I let my hands relax.

Feel the fragility of the word as it sighs through my lips,

like
sorry
, its meaning easily worn away by overuse,

from a start that’s vague already;

as easily for the bad as for the good.

“. . . is scary.”

“It’s the story of life.” Dave puts his hand on top of mine,

rubs away the lingering traces of fist,

sending shivers of want up my spine.

“Then life is kind of a horror film.” I try to smile.

“Wanna go to The Movie House tonight?”

He tilts the seat back so he can look out the car’s skylight.

“We’re going to see the new Bond.”

“I already saw it with my parents.”

The words sound lame the second they leave my lips.

Worse than lame:

I-just-turned-down-a-real-date-with-Dave-Miller stupid.

“Besides, I have to babysit, er, hang out with Steven.”

He shrugs.

“I never let the twinlets interfere with my plans.”

“That’s different.

Your stepmom can just get a regular sitter.

We can’t anymore.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

Unlike super-citizen Ned,

Dave doesn’t pretend he hasn’t heard the gossip,

the story told by the neighbor lady

who was watching Steven the afternoon

of the Great Closet Door Kick-In Incident.

“Still, your parents kind of own your time.”

“I know. I wish I could go to the movies tonight. I just . . .”

His eyes lock on to mine;

fringed by thick black lashes,

those knee-jellifying, brown-flecked-with-yellow irises

meet my basic blues.

“I get it.”

He puts his hand behind my neck

in a way that’s starting to feel familiar.

A morning kiss, firm, tantalizing.

I lean forward, my elbow grazing the horn.

We are pulled apart by the sharp honk.

“Oops.”

“Very romantic,” he teases.

He is smiling, straightening the rumple

he’s made of my hair,

even though he never fixes his own.

“How ’bout I pick you up tomorrow at your house?

Seven-ish?”

“I’ll be ready.” Another lame reply.

He gets out of my car, saunters toward the school,

and I am watching him walk away again,

replaying my stupid words, wishing

that tonight I’d be going to watch James Bond

once again save the world

instead of laying out Blokus pieces,

even though I know it may be one of the last weeks

I’ll be living in a prison of boredom and frustration

and a little bit of fear.

Why can’t I be as casual about Steven

as Dave is about the twinlets?

Or maybe he isn’t.

Maybe he, like me,

is engaged in the kind of unspoken rebellion

you don’t want to perform too brightly,

since you’re never certain

anyone in your family will notice

your darkened eyes, skeleton shoes, tousled hair,

patchy attendance record.

You may be sacrificing body and soul

on a ghostly battlefield, fighting across a divide

seen by no one

but you.