While You Were Gone: A Thought I Knew You Novella (10 page)

I’m ashamed to admit I felt almost proud of the comparison at the time. My father left, sure, but as a victim. She practically chased him out. It’s easy to remain a hero from a safe distance traversed only by occasional birthday cards and echoing, silence-filled phone calls. He was a pointillist painting, a Seurat, perfectly formed from a safe distance. It would be at least five years before I’d realize my father didn’t just leave her
.
He’d left us
.
In that five years, he’d accumulated almost hero status, the one who got out. I wanted to be like him.

Later, I fished the glass plate out of the trash, washed the dishes, and dried them. The kitchen looked the way it had for the last fifteen years, as long as I had memories: dark wooden cabinets, Formica countertops, patterned linoleum. Dated but clean. Gleaming surfaces, like Mom always liked them. Before it smelled like liquor, my entire childhood smelled like lemon Pledge.

I moved out three days later with little fanfare: a friend’s pick-up truck, some bungee cords, and the contents of my bedroom. Mom never came out of her room, not even to say good-bye. I stood at her bedroom door, my fingertips resting on the door handle. I jiggled it one way then the other. It was locked.

Four thousand dollars.
I pick up my phone, rolling it around in my palms. My fingers decide for me by dialing the number. Shockingly, he picks up. “Pete?” I say. “Mom’s in jail. You’d better go get her because I’m not.”

Chapter 8

“I
’m ready to come back.” I sit firmly across from Nikolai, who strokes his mustache, curling it around his pinkie, and pats his wobbling jowl.

“We’ve been over this, yes?” He leans forward across the desk and taps the flat calendar. “The season is more than half over. Sit out then re-audition for your chair. That’s what we decided.”

“That’s what
you
decided.” I slap my palm across the big March page, and he jumps back, just a little.

“Karen,” he says in a way that he means to be soothing but is anything but. “You’ll be back in the fall. Come to rehearsals three days a week for now. In the meantime, take a vacation. You’re healed, no?”

I ponder the word.
Heal: to make whole, or healthy.
I remain silent.

“No matter,” he continues as if I’ve responded. “Take a trip. Come back when you’re ready. Practice. We are traveling to New York City next week. Come, be an alternate. Then join us again at the end of August.”

August.
When the new recruits would start. Weeks before the returning members. My career is going backward.

I sit back in my chair and stare at him defiantly. “Do I have a choice?”

“It does not seem so, no,” he says softly.

I stand to leave, but he keeps talking. “I believe in balance, Karen. In joy. Find joy, and come back. You’ll be a better musician for it.”

I leave abruptly with a curt good-bye. I swing open his office door and almost walk right into a man I don’t recognize hovering outside.

“Were you listening in?” I snap.

He steps back, startled. “No, I, uh, had a meeting with Mr. Maslak.”

“He’s all yours.” I wave toward Nikolai’s office with one hand.

“I’m Calloway. Cal for short.” He holds out his hand and smiles, sideways and shy, and oh, God
,
he’s flirting with me. I back up, but he keeps talking. “I was recently hired as a replacement trombone. Are you new?”

“Apparently.” I turn away and feel bad for being so flippant. I turn back, half-facing him. He’s tall, lanky, and sandy haired with a smattering of freckles across his face and arms. “I’m sorry, it’s been… a day. I’ll see you around, okay?”

He nods and waves as if I’m the friendliest person around, and who knows, maybe I am. Orchestras can be particularly exclusive. I wave back half-heartedly. I have a summer to plan.

June ascends like a big ball of fire—thick, wet, record-breaking fire. For the first time in my life, I’m free. Free of the arduous rehearsal schedules, free of teaching classes, free of the stress of not doing enough. I want the spring break I never had, the summer fling I never got, holed up in hot, underfunded university rehearsal halls.

I drag Greg to Prince Edward Island, and the temperatures soar into the nineties, almost unheard of in that area. We take a bicycle tour of the area lighthouses and visit an Angora bunny farm. We eat same-day-fresh lobster every night and get drunk on local wine.

We bring a blanket to the beach, watch the sunset, and lie in the sand talking until midnight. The waves lick the edges of the blanket. I’ve never seen so many stars.

“You find out you’re going to die in a year. What do you do?” I trace circles on his palm with my fingertip, continuing our ongoing game. Random questions, truthful answers. Anything, any time. I want to know every small piece of him with voracity.

“This.”

It’s dark, and I can’t see his face. “That’s not entirely truthful.” I am whispering, soft and reverent, under the black velvet sky. “What else?”

“The last time you cried.” He leapfrogs over me, dodging his answer.

“Oh, that’s easy. When Pete bailed Paula out and called me to tell me she was okay, but she wrecked her car. I hung up and cried.”

“Did I know that?”

“I’m sure I texted you.”

He gently pinches my thumb, teasingly, and nudges me with his elbow.

“Do you want kids?” I ask.

Silence for a beat. “I can’t imagine not. Do you?”

“I don’t know. I worry about taking care of other people. What if I’m like Paula? What if I don’t know how to mother?” This is what panics me when I try to picture a future, a marriage, children.

“It’s an instinct, not a skill.”

“Exactly. What if I don’t have it?”

He takes my chin in his fingers and kisses me lightly. “Impossible. I’m not worried about that, and look at my mother. Besides, you’re too gentle and kind. ”

I snort. I’ve never been called
gentle
in my life. My turn. “What else do you like about me?”

“Everything.” His answer is quick and sure. I playfully punch him with the side of my fist.

“Too glib. Answer for real.”

“Okay. I like that you’re passionate about your music. I like that you’re spontaneous, and you make me laugh. You never get too bogged down with worry or regret. I like that you hold yourself to a higher moral standard. I like that you’re mad at Paula for the decisions she’s made. You live in that condo like it’s temporary because you don’t really like it, yet you never complain about it.” He pulls me up until I’m straddling him. He runs his hands up and down my arms. “I like how you hold people accountable and even that you don’t let people in, although I think you should. I like that you’re learning how. You’re independent and think you don’t need anyone, but I think you actually do. You’re tougher than you want to be and stronger than you think you are.”

I push his shirt up, kiss his chest, and nuzzle against his warm skin. My lips graze his neck, his ear. His words feel like pins, poking sharp against the vulnerable skin of an overripe peach. I want him to stop talking, and at the same time, I want him to talk forever. I want to hear all the things he knows about me that I don’t know myself, and only then will I feel real. And whole. And healed.

“I love you,” I whisper. My hands fumble against his belt. The beach is deserted. I slip out of my sundress. I want the warmth of his skin against my skin. I want it all. Forever.

Something has changed. It’s barely perceptible. The summer is fading into fall, bringing with it the promise of a new symphonic season. August looms on the horizon, and with each passing day, Nikolai’s voice becomes louder and clearer in my head. I’ve been horrendously lax in my practicing, and I feel the stiffness of my fingers as they find their way to the positions a fraction of a beat too late.

I text Greg and hear nothing back for hours. This started a few weeks ago, and I don’t know how to fix it, how to find our way back to that night at Prince Edward Island when he could see every piece of me, every cell, every artery, every synapse of my brain. I want it back, and the idea that I’m looking into the back end of it sends me panicking. I’m texting too much, too often. I’ve even started calling. He picks up, distracted and faintly annoyed, I can tell, even when he’s trying not to be. “
I’ll call you, okay?
” He says his job is so demanding. The more I reach out, the more he pulls back, and if I think about it, I can’t breathe.

“When are you coming back to Toronto?” I haven’t seen him in four weeks, the longest we’ve gone. “I miss you.”

“I know, me too. Me too.” He says it with conviction, but he doesn’t say it because he never says, “I love you, too.”
Except for one time, when he climaxed and breathed it right into my mouth, and it was the sweetest thing I ever tasted
.
If I voiced all this, it would make me sound crazy and would lead him to sigh, these big empty Greg sighs. I want to be the Karen he thinks I am, the one who is independent and needs no one. But this is the problem: I let him in. And now he’s going away, fading slowly into the night, like my father. The way even Paula did, if not physically, then mentally.

I ask him if he’s all right, and he sighs. “I’m fine, Karen. Not every day can be your best day lived, right? Some days just… pass. Or does that not happen to you?”

“You have this crazy misconception that I’m over here living some kind of fantasy every day. I do nothing. I watch television. I read. I try to practice the violin, but I’m mostly frustrated at how I’ve slid, so I ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“I’m sorry. I get jealous. You have a career. I have a job.” He whispers this into the phone at two a.m. “You don’t know that you’re lucky.”

“You don’t understand that I work, too. That just because it’s music and not corporate, it’s not all artistic and fun and easy. Nothing about it is easy.” I slap my palm against my bed, tired. “If you want to do something else, do something else. It’s not rocket science. But nothing just happens on its own, you know.”

He pauses. “You say this like it’s simple. My life is entrenched here.”

“So untrench it. But don’t spend half your life unhappy. Happiness is a thing that is nurtured.”

“What if I moved away? Would you come with me?”

“Moved where?” I ask suspiciously. His voice is tinny, like he’s talking into a paper towel roll.

“They might transfer me to China.”

My heart thuds in my throat. “I can’t go to China.” My life is here, my job, the job that I’ve worked my whole life for, and no matter how up in the air it feels right now, I can’t just leave. My mother, God, who would take care of Paula? Not Pete.

“I know. Me either. It was just an idea.”

“Are you okay?” I ask. He sounds unmoored, floating.

“Maybe. Forget China, okay? It was a dumb idea.”

“Just come back soon.” If I see him again, I’m sure I can fix whatever is wrong, whatever has come unglued when I wasn’t paying attention.

He does come back, almost six weeks after Prince Edward, and I’m looking at my last week of freedom, the summer already taking on the orangey-hazy glow of hindsight. I’m back to rehearsing three to four hours a day in preparation for next week, but I want this last week of summer love.

“Maybe I’ll just come stay with you,” Greg says. He never does that. He’s always gotten a hotel. He’s never not had a home base away from my apartment that he can leave to, and I’ve never asked him not to. I hold my breath and want to ask why
.
Is it because he’s trying to save us? Move us forward? Move away, halfway across the world, and leave me here?

It’s stuck there like an itch now. I want to ask him all the girl-questions: What are we? Where are we going? Do we have a future? But I’m scared of his answers. Then he says it so easily—“I’ll just stay with you”—that I think maybe I’ve dreamed up the last few weeks, made mountains out of molehills.

I plan an elaborate dinner: shrimp carbonara and crusty bread, dry, expensive wine, and perfectly crisped radicchio. I buy a pricey, black slinky dress that shows more than a hint of cleavage and a push-up bra to go with it. I pull out all the stops, demanding his love with food and sex until it’s practically a bribe.

I buy a small sleeve of golf balls and wrap it with ribbon. On the back, I scrawl:
Passions must be nurtured.
I want to show him that it’s just one step—one hop-skip—to picking up a hobby he didn’t have before. That your life can change incrementally. It doesn’t have to change all at once.

When I let him in, the candles are lit. His eyes grow wide.

“Hi,” I say shyly.

“Hi.” His eyes travel down to my toes and back up. I’ve shocked him. “You look…” He crosses the threshold and kisses me. I wrap my arms around his neck, press my body against his, and feel his response. He drops his small overnight bag on the floor and kicks the door shut with his heel. His hands are hot through the silk, and I run my fingertips through his hair. He lifts me up and carries me to the kitchen table, where I giggle and blow out the candles before he sets me down. I unbuckle his belt and pull him into me before either of us can even get undressed. I pull him against me so fast our teeth clank, and he laughs into my mouth. When we come, I whisper
I love you
into his ear, unplanned and unbidden.

He pants, his lips hot and wet on my collarbone, and kisses up my neck. “God, you’re amazing. This is not how I thought the night would start out.” He laughs against my skin, and I run my fingertip up the back of his neck. He shivers against me. I love that I can do that. I gently push him back, and he looks around, laughing.

“Are you cooking?” His eyebrows arch.

“I can cook.” I straighten my dress and shoot him an indignant look. “We just always eat out.”

“I never said you couldn’t cook, and you’ve spent a large part of our relationship in traction.”