While You Were Gone: A Thought I Knew You Novella (2 page)

“Passion
is a thing you chase, by chance or choice,” Nikolai says, his tongue curving around the Ss in his vague, expansive accent. “Passion isn’t a solid thing you can hold or tame or put in your purse and take to dinner, stroke it like a rabbit’s foot or a feather dream catcher. You can have it and lose it in the same piece, the same moment. It can seep away from you as quickly as water down a drain once you pull the plug.”

As my bow arches and stretches across that final note, a three-count D, I can tell I’ve chased it. I’m breathless from trying to catch it. Damascus nods once, a curt businesslike acknowledgement. An A for effort. Lesley hovers in the back of the auditorium and gives me an encouraging smile. The doors open, and a threesome clatters in, all whispers and giggles: the Sung family. Amy rushes to the back of the auditorium, just as Nikolai clears his throat and calls back, “Closed-door audition, please.”

Amy ushers them back out the door. I picture her mother, a short blunt cut, sleek against her chin, and her father, slight, with intelligent eyes and her sister, just fifteen and wanting her big sister’s life—her mother’s and father’s pride.

I swallow the caustic bitterness that has lodged itself in my throat. My mother, once that stage mom, reamed out a conductor for a youth orchestra for cutting me when I was ten. He’d laughed at her, and she’d brought her boot heel down, hard, on the toe of his dress shoe. I search my memory for his criticism. I was too stiff, he said. Too practiced.

I almost laugh at the memory. To be followed by the same critique your entire career is an accomplishment. I clasp the violin case shut and hover backstage. Lesley has disappeared, not wanting to be seen blatantly playing favorites at the audition, I surmise. There are two other violinists to hear. I could stay. I contemplate it as I move toward the back of the auditorium in the dark. In the lobby, I can hear the Sungs giggling. I could go say hi, exchange pleasantries, ask Mr. Sung how the veterinarian business is. I think of my mother, her one leg hanging off the bed, fully dressed but asleep, the run in her pantyhose ending in a gaping hole around her big toe, the wet air puffing from her mouth stinking like gin.

Amy chooses my other standard audition piece, another one of Bach’s
Partitia,
in E major. It’s light, quick, and her bow flies over the strings. Agile. Adept. The first five minutes is a show of skill until the notes deepen and slow to an emotional lilt. She hovers at each note a fraction of a beat longer than she should. It’s a risk, playing off the sheet like that, almost as if she’s trying to highlight my tendency to be technically on point. I exit the side door into the frigid March afternoon air. I don’t need to stay.

The wind slaps at my cheeks as I walk the full two miles home. The violin case strapped to my back bangs as I walk, puffing air out through my cheeks. My lips burn from being chapped. I pass Faraday’s Pub, and from inside, someone shouts a garbled word, and the sound of a crowd’s laughter floats out the front door. I consider going in, marching up to the bar, lining up a few shots. Being that person. Just for a moment, handle it the way Paula would.

My mood is black, the kind of hopelessness that makes you kick stones and mutter under your breath. I pull my phone out of my pocket and call Scott, but it goes to voicemail. I fumble with my cell, trying to shove it in my pocket.

I turn the corner onto my street and fly straight into someone, a man holding a folder of paperwork, reading as he walked and clearly also not watching where he was going. The papers go flying, scattering like leaves in the wind, and I’m at once apologetic. I grab as many as I can. We both kneel on the ground.

I hand him everything I could gather. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching. I’ve had a stupid, terrible day. I was lost in my own head.” I watch a few of the white sheets skip and flit down the street. I contemplate chasing them, but frankly, he wasn’t really paying attention, either. If he wants them, he can chase them.

“It’s fine. I don’t really need it anyway.” He stands up, straightening what he’s been able to salvage in the folder, and gives me a sideways smile. The sun glints off his glasses, giving him a penny-eyed look. He rubs his chin. “I’ve been meaning to go paperless…” His voice trails off, waiting, I suppose for some laugh, a girlish giggle.

“Sorry again.” My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I wave as I walk away, fumbling to answer before anyone hangs up.

“Wait!” he calls after me. “I’m looking for a place. Do you know where, uh, Faraday’s is?”

“It’s right on this street. About two blocks down. You can’t miss it. Sounds like there’s a real party in there.” I motion quickly, hot to get to my phone.

“Thanks.” He hesitates then waves good-bye.

I fish my phone out of my jacket, and the screen shows one missed call: Scott. I return his call and get no answer. I grunt in frustration. It’s been less than a minute. Where did he go?

I let myself into my dark apartment and rest the violin on the chair. Without turning the lights on, I pull a fleece blanket to my chin and curl into the corner of the couch. It is five o’clock on a Thursday night, and I have nowhere to go. There is no one I want to see, except for my somewhat-absentee boyfriend, who makes only half-hearted attempts to see me as of late. I call him one more time, just to make sure, but the phone rings twice and goes to voicemail, as if he rejected the call.

I should call my mother. I ought to wait for Nikolai. I could call Amy.

I do none of these things. Instead, I sleep.

Chapter 2

I
ncessant buzzing pulls me from the deepest reaches of sleep. I don’t recognize it as my doorbell until I’m up, foggily pushing my hair off my face, where it has stuck in dried wetness on my cheek. My left foot radiates a dead buzz, having been tucked under me while I slept. I check my phone. It is nearly midnight.

I creep up to the door and peek through the peephole. Scott. He hits the buzzer again and runs a hand through his black hair. I yank the door open.

“Where have you been?” I ask, my mouth still sour and stuck.

He gives me a weak smile. “Hey, babe. I tried to call you.”

I look at my phone and see four missed calls. “I must have passed out. I had to go get Mom from Tig’s last night. I was up all night.” I turn and make my way back to the couch, pulling the blanket closer around my shoulders. I flick on the table lamp, and the room instantly illuminates in a soft, cozy glow. Scott sits on the cushion next to me, but he doesn’t relax, lean against me, fight for his section of the blanket. Instead, he perches like a waiting bird.

Scott and I met at a jazz concert in Woodbine Park more than four years ago. We had both dragged reluctant dates: his, a girlfriend, a fledgling relationship, precariously resting on mutual attraction and a shared like of caramel mocha cappuccino. Mine, a first date, a bored jock. A mistake. At the refreshments tent, we’d each ordered a complicated drink, his for his girlfriend, mine for me, and sat waiting off to the side, making small talk about the bands, our favorite jazz musicians. He’d seemed utterly shocked I knew anything at all, and I had teased him,
Why? Because I’m so young?
As though I didn’t have every Coltrane CD or couldn’t debate stylistic differences between Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro. I left him, my drink in hand, his jaw hanging open. Later, he spotted me in line at the Port-a-potty and asked me for my number in what he later proclaimed as, “the creepiest thing I’ve ever done.” He couldn’t leave me there, he said, rotting and unappreciated by some rugby player who thought that jazz was the instrumental top-forty Muzak played at Chinese restaurants. I gave it to him, of course, in a rush, both of us red-cheeked and flushed from the furtiveness of the whole thing.

At first, our dates were thrilling, a rushed talkfest comparing jazz styles. New Orleans versus Kansas City. Big Band versus Blues. Avant-garde versus soul. Scott was in a jazz band, and I went to see him play, all glassy eyed and ruby love. Later, backstage, I jumped him, his sax still around his neck, the horn digging painfully under my armpit.

Somewhere along the way, we stalled. No, that’s not right. We petered to a slow hum, meandering here and there but without an engine. I liked jazz, loved it even. Scott lived and breathed it. He even taught it, a high school music teacher and head of the Jazz Club. His enthusiasm for classical music was less. In the beginning, he’d gone to my concerts out of support. He said he didn’t understand how I could deal with so much structure.
Didn’t I have passion?

I lean against him, forcing the fix. I’m not willing to let him go. We’re dying, but I’m willing to give CPR one last time. His hair is dark, almost black, and his mouth full and sensual. I once asked him what the girls down at the high school thought of him. I could see them, falling all over themselves for one last rag on that sax, those big gorgeous hands working that brass. He’d rolled his eyes and elbowed me off him. He probably loved every minute of it.

He kisses the top of my head, and I pull his face against mine. I think of my mom then Nikolai, his mouth in that firm, straight line, telling me what I already knew, and I wrap my legs around Scott.

“I’ve had a shitty day. I’m glad you’re here.” I nuzzle into his neck, and he smells clean, like soap and aftershave. “First I had to get Mom. Then I cleaned her apartment because honestly, it looked like a disgusting mess. She’s getting worse. Next, I blew my audition.” I work my fingers up into his shirt, moving against the warm fuzz of his belly. His hand claps over mine, and he pulls it from underneath the fabric.

“Kar, I need to talk to you.”

“Is this about last week?” I sit back against the back of the couch, folding my arms across my chest. We were over it, weren’t we? It was a stupid fight. Everyone has those.

I’d pushed things, as I usually do. We’d been together for four years. We should be thinking about the next steps, at least moving in together. I think I said it in Paula’s voice. Later, I wondered if I was so desperate to please a woman who would never quite be pleased with me that I’d managed to shove that responsibility onto the shoulders of my boyfriend.

“Do you really want to live together?” he’d asked. “Why?”

“It’s the next step. Are we going anywhere?” I was a sitcom cliché. Worse, a soap opera one.

“I like our life. We work. We have crazy schedules. I do the jazz club on some evenings. I like how we’re together when we choose to be, not because we have to be.” He faltered. “Is it the money?” I had thrown my coffee mug at the wall behind his head.

Now, he moves his hand across his chin, the stubble making scratching noises against his palm. “No, it’s not
exactly
about last week. But it made me think, that’s all. Are we going forward here?” His dark, brown eyes are bloodshot and red rimmed, and I see with sudden clarity all the signs I’ve missed. I’ve been so royally stupid. Him showing up here at midnight wasn’t because he desperately needed to be with me or was worried about me. It isn’t even a booty call. This is a break-up conversation. My arms goose bump. I shift to the right, putting some distance between us.

“Are you speaking hypothetically?” I won’t make this easy for him. I’ll make him say it outright.

He sighs. “No, Karen. I’m not. Do you think we’re going anywhere?”

“Did you hear me earlier when I said I’ve had a truly terrible day?” I don’t want a pity relationship, but later, when he feels guilty, I’d love it if he remembered this.

“I did.” He eyes me in his peripheral vision. “I just feel… compelled.”

“Compelled.”

“I can’t sleep, lately. I feel like we’re doing this thing to each other where we’re only… surviving.”

“What are you getting at, Scott?” I know what he’s saying, but I need him to actually
say it.
He’s a big fan of beating around the bush. In fact, his first
I love you
had a twenty-five-minute preamble.

“We should be more to each other by now. We should be engaged or married, or hell, at least passionately resisting those things for the sake of bucking convention.”

Passion. That effing word again. “We aren’t? You seemed to passionately resist moving forward last week.”

“No. I said I liked our arrangement, and you agreed. We just agree on everything. It’s maddening, really.”

Even now, his voice is even, and I feel only a minor tug of
something somewhere
. Mostly, I am pissed because this is how my day is going to end: with us agreeing to break up, the way some couples agree to share a chicken parmigiana at a family-style restaurant. He’s right. We don’t fight. Aside from that one fight last week, our most heated arguments have been about jazz.

“So you’re saying that because we agree too much, we should obviously break up.” I curse myself for giving him the out. I said the words “break up” before he did, thus filling in any blank for myself. He never had to say, “I’m breaking up with you.”

For a moment, I want to be that girl, the one who screams and cries and begs to be friends, thinking instead that I can change him, turn him from friend back to boyfriend. I want this to be hard for him to walk away from, these four years, a waste of my prime marriage years, as Paula would say. I am not that girl, although I am the girl who will throw a thing or two, should I get really angry. The problem is, this whole
break up
, which he still hasn’t confirmed, doesn’t make me really angry. I guess in that way, I concede his point.

I study his face: the soft hollow under his cheekbone but above his jawbone, a pillowy, concave spot I’ve kissed countless times. His too-large ears and the way they redden at the tops for hours after he’s been in the cold. His permanently swollen saxophone lips, smooth and ridge-less from years of vibrating against a reed. The mole that hides under his sometimes too-long sideburns. His dark eyes. His long, girlish eyelashes.

I prod my emotions—looking for sadness, grief—but come up empty. I think of how I’ll never feel those lips, those large hands, again. How the last time we made love was actually the last time, and had I known that, I might have paid attention instead of composing a grocery list in my head.

I take his hand, pull it against my stomach, and he tilts his head. He leans forward and kisses me, long and slow. I wait for the thump of my heart, the racing that maybe used to happen, but who knows when it stopped. I wait for the breathlessness. I wrap my ankle around his ankle, more out of curiosity. Will he take one for the road? I wonder then, almost irreverently, if I should, knowing it might now be a while? Could I keep him if I tried? I almost laugh into his mouth.

He pulls away, gently, with a smile. “This is the right thing, Karen. You know that.” He says it with such conviction—more than I’ve ever heard from him really—that something inside me clicks.

“There’s someone else.” It’s a wild guess, but as soon as I say it, I know I’m right.

“No.” He’s quick to reply, which confirms it. Scott is never quick with anything.

“Yes. There is. Who?” I’m again driven by curiosity, not hurt, which should be the biggest red flag, but I don’t take the time to consider it. “Who is she?” I press, inching closer to him. I touch his arm.

“Karen. Don’t.” He shifts away from me, his jaw set.

“Scott. You owe me this at least. Tell me. Who?”

“Just. No one.” He stands. I jump up and position myself in front of him, studying his face.

“Rosalita. What is her last name? Juarez? The art teacher. Spanish girl. Small waist, curved into wide, round hips. High heels. Young.” I’m almost teasing now. “You like them young.” I am six years younger than Scott.

He looks decidedly uncomfortable, and I know I’ve hit the mark. I’ve been to enough retirement dinners and school functions to know most of the teachers. I’d caught him and Rosa chatting a little too closely more than once. When I interrupted at the buffet table, they’d jumped apart like I’d thrown a dead mouse between them.

“What does she have that I don’t? That we don’t?”

He rakes his hand through his hair and pulls it straight up. “Karen. Stop.” His voice is rough, but I can’t stop.

“I feel compelled,” I say snottily. “Tell me, and this whole conversation is over.”

“She gets me, okay?” He throws his hands up in the air, a rare loss of control.

“She gets you,” I repeat dumbly. “I thought I got you. Jazz, Coltrane versus Davis. I get you, Scott.”

“That’s not all of who I am. Jazz doesn’t define me. I’m more than that.”

“You’re a deep well.” Meanness is my go-to. He shakes his head at me like I’ve disappointed him somehow. He steps forward into my space and hugs me. It’s so unexpected that I feel my eyes well up. I don’t want to cry for him, especially not in front of him. We stand there, in the middle of my dimly lit living room, for what feels like forever. I wonder if they’re a thing, he and Rosa. If they’ve done this, gently swaying to some inner music. Scott always has inner music, a deep, soulful bass line in his head, waiting for the right notes, the right be-bop or scat. What I’ve been missing, Scott has always had in spades.
Passion.
I wonder if Rosa has that, if she’s a hot-burning stereotypical Latina with her art and her easels and her paints and her cleavage, while I was black-and-white measures and rests and decrescendos. Waifish blonde.

Scott thumbs my chin. He kisses my cheek. I walk him to the door. We say good-bye. It’s all very anticlimactic.

He’s gone.

I should sleep restlessly, tossing and turning, the sheets tangled up in my feet. But I don’t. I sleep the sleep of the dead and wake up late yet again. My back is stiff from lying in the same position all night.

I race to rehearsal and fall into my chair at five of nine, which is technically on time, although it’s later than everyone else. Susan Post leans over to Amy and whispers, “Congratulations,” and I notice the cardboard box of roses next to her chair with a large, enthusiastic card:
We’re so proud of you!

Before I can assimilate all this, Nikolai leans over me, sucking his teeth and rocking back on his heels. “Karen, my office?” My eyes dart from the clock back to his lined face, and he shakes his head. “No matter. We’ll start late. This is important.”

Nikolai’s office is lined with bookshelves, and his desk is large, ornate mahogany. I’ve been in here a few times, and I’ve always felt squeezed, as if the walls are a vise. It’s small, cramped, and filled with odd sculptures, statues, talismans.

“Karen. You left. And you were late this morning.” His voice is soft and filled with reproach. “Not the behavior of a leader.”

I chew on the inside of my cheek. He’s stating a fact. I say nothing but sit up straight and pick a small fuzz off my skirt.

“Why? Were you afraid? Angry?”

“Yes.” I blurt. My plan was to stay silent, say nothing, nod gracefully. But he hits a nerve. I am afraid. I am angry. I am all of the above. “Amy got it, then?” I have the presence of mind to clarify before I rant and rave.

“Yes.” He leans back in his chair, studies me, like this is some kind of trap or a test that I’m destined to fail. He reaches up on his shelf and pulls down a white, single-tusked marble elephant statue, mounted on a gleaming black platform. He holds it out across the desk as though it’s a piece of paper, and when I take it, one-handed, I almost drop the whole thing, it’s so heavy.

“What is this?” I narrow my eyes. Nikolai is famous for his glib, Delphic comments, given at any moment, especially during rehearsal and auditions. A citizen of the world, he likes to call himself, born and raised cross-continental, his accent a mishmash of Russian and something vaguely Middle Eastern. He quotes Buddha and the
Tao Te Ching
with equal regularity but is also likely to season liberally with verses from the Quran and the Bible.

“A white elephant is a well-known symbol of Buddhist strength. I have my own version. The one-tusked. Strength in the presence of adversity. Eh?” His face cracks in an almost-smile at his cleverness. I palm the heavy thing and stare at it. Its marble eyes gleam at me, almost mocking. After my past two nights, I’m not in the mood for enigma. I think of how Scott would love Nikolai, had they ever met. There is likely a reason we broke up.