Wild Roses (5 page)

From what I have learned from my mother all of
these years, no one pretends to understand musicality, that certain something
that a human being brings to the playing of his instrument. A machine can play
an instrument, but it is that something of yourself that you bring to it that
makes a player really good. That piece of your soul that you reveal as the music
comes through you. I know nothing of this personally--I played the tissue paper
comb in the kindergarten band--but you can hear it. You may not have words for
it, but you can hear it. Maybe feel it is more accurate. There is a
communication going on at some ancient and primitive level when music is played
from somewhere else other than simply the fingers. This playing--it was his
energy and heart rising from the notes. His dreams lifted from the instrument
and carried out to where I heard them.

I don't even know what he was playing, and
that's not even the important thing to this story anyway I shut my

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eyes; it was as if he was painting with sound.
I saw tender, vulnerable pictures. I was a child in a village, a child who'd
just plucked a tangerine from a tree. Around me were the sounds of a town,
Sabbotino Grappa maybe, voices speaking in Italian. I watched other children
playing under a fig tree, and because it was so orange and shiny, put my teeth
into the tangerine peel before remembering that this is not a good thing to do;
it tasted terrible.

"Stop, stop, stop." This I heard loud and
clear. Dino's authoritative voice could be heard two states away.

"Technically nearly perfect. But purpose. There
is feeling, yes. But no purpose. You must have it. Without direction, you will
drown. You may be young, but you don't need to hesitate. If you don't give
everything to your playing, Ian, you will go hungry."

"I know."

"Hungry."

"All right."

"You know what I am talking about." "Yes, I
do."

Ian started to play again. The paintbrush
stroked the canvas. I peeled that tangerine, broke off a sticky segment and
popped it into my mouth. It was juicy and warm. The juice trickled into the tiny
hammock between my fingers. I watched two old Italian women cross the street
while arguing. One wore knee socks that had given up on the job and gathered in
clumps at her ankles. The other had a bad dye job--her hair was blacker than a
briquette while her face was older than time. Everyone knew her

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hair hadn't seen that color since dinosaurs
roamed the earth.

The music filled me with vivid-dream
drowsiness. I watched two teenagers snitch a bicycle from the street, running
like anything to the canal where they would toss it. Just like Dino's stories.
When it was summer and the boys had too much time on their hands, the canal was
filled with bicycles. A grandfather leaned down to speak to me. His breath
smelled of a wine-soaked cork, his chin had a dent in it that split it right in
half. . . .

I fell backward suddenly, jolting before my
head hit the ground. Shit, I had fallen asleep, right there against the door,
and Dino and Ian came out of the office and nearly stepped over my tumbling
body. Oh, God, I could be such an idiot. I had fallen asleep, right there, and
the first impression I left with Ian Waters was my body rolling into the room
like the corpse in some Agatha Christie novel.

"What have we here?" Dino said. "Either a very
bad Romanian gymnast or a spy."

Oh, the humiliation. I gave him the
black-tongue curse again, added an essential part of the male
anatomy.

"Guilty on the spy thing," I said. I hoped to
sound casual, which is tough to do when you are reclining on one elbow and your
face is hot enough to ignite a Bunsen burner. I struggled to stand. "Actually I
was listening. I'm sorry. It was really beautiful. I must have fallen
asleep."

"Rule one. Keep your audience awake," Dino
said.

Ian grinned. I wondered if I should hate him
for

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colluding with Dino. Then he said, "Classical
music can do that. Someone ought to put lyrics to it." He smiled.

"Ah!" Dino said in mock horror, and pretended
to strangle Ian. "This is Cassie Morgan, astronomer. Ian Waters, talented,
struggling musician. And heretic." All right. Since Dino attempted to restore
some of my dignity, he could have his penis back.

"Astronomer," Ian said. "Wow." His eyes were a
very gentle brown; his black hair threatened to swing over them. An angular
face, long legs. He was tall and thin. In spite of performing before what must
have been hundreds of people, he seemed shy, poetic.

"Still learning," I said.

"Tuesday, then?" Dino said.

"Tuesday," Ian said. "Thanks for listening," he
said to me. "Next time I'll stay awake," I said. "No problem."

God, I was still kicking myself. That feeling
of something being done wrongly, left unfinished, needing to be recaptured and
played again, started churning inside as they headed out. Jesus, I should be put
on some island for the terminally socially inept. Fuck-Up Island. It could be
another perverse reality TV show. Mom came down the stairs, called a good-bye,
and checked them both surreptitiously for blood and scratches.

Dino clapped Ian on the shoulder three times at
the door before Ian left. Dino shut the door behind him, looked up at my mother,
and smiled. "His mother is Italian," Dino beamed.

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I went out to let Dog William back in. He was
peering through the slats in the fence, no doubt watching as the figure of
Rocket got smaller and smaller in the distance. I took a spot next to him, and
through the narrow slat watched the black speck of Ian until he was gone. Dog
William sighed through his nose as if saying farewell to the most interesting
day of his life. I patted the top of his ugly head.

"I know it," I said to Dog William.

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CHAPTER THREE

My father's house is also on Seabeck Island,
and both of my parents live here to Minimize the Impact of Divorce. We all used
to live together on a street not far from here, but Mom sold the place after she
got together with Dino. Dad now lives in the house he grew up in, right on
Outlook, one of the nicest streets in town, where a row of Victorians sit
overlooking the waters of the Puget Sound. From his porch you can see the
ferries gliding to and from Seattle, and he has a front-row seat every March,
when some thirty-two thousand gray whales migrate down the coast and a gazillion
tourists come to town to watch. Dad bought the house from Nannie, his mother,
who now lives at Providence Point Community for Seniors. But Nannie comes over a
lot and rearranges things back the way they were when she lived there. She's
been forbidden to empty

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the dishwasher after she reorganized every
kitchen cupboard when Dad was out mowing the lawn. He couldn't find the cheese
grater for two weeks. Once we caught Nannie in the living room, trying to shove
the couch back against the window where she'd had it for forty years. She did
pretty well, too, for someone who must weigh about eighty pounds--she had it
about halfway across the floor.

Mom and Dino bought the house we live in now on
Mermaid Avenue (yes, it's really called that) shortly before they married. It's
bigger than our old house, which was materialistic consolation for about a week
or so, until real life set in. The divorce, the wedding, it all happened
quickly. So quickly that you sometimes got the feeling that Dino was looking
around with no small amount of resentment, wondering how he got from there to
here. There being New York City, where he lived with his third wife, to here, a
small island in Washington State, tucked far away from the center of the music
world, married to a good but not great cellist, with a daughter who didn't
appreciate what an astounding human being he was (i.e., hated his guts). How
they got here was a tempestuous affair from what I have heard, although you
don't want to think of your mother that way. It's okay to think of mothers in
the same sentence as lunch box and garden gloves, but not in the same sentence
as passionate and tempestuous. I will spare you the gory details of that time,
the craziest, messiest kind of hell and chaos you never imagine for your life.
Okay, one gory detail--my father, who takes insects outside when he finds them
in the house, who rides them out

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on an envelope or some other handy airborne
insect express material and gently lowers them to the ground, actually smashed
his fist through his car window at the height of his anger and loss. Glass
shards poked from the skin, sent blood down his Dockers.

Not that I blame my mother, not really. First,
she's my mother and I love her and she's mostly a terrific person. But aside
from that, it sounds like Dino chased after her with the determination of those
dogs that travel thousands of miles to find their way back home after they
tumble out of the back of a pickup. My mother, Daniella Morgan Cavalli, is,
after all, a rather beautiful woman. Not in the sexy Barbie way, but like a
medieval princess. Long, dark, curly hair. Dark eyes, a serenity that seems
mysterious. People look at her, I know that. I have her eyes, I am told, but my
hair is brown like my dad's, and is straight but not long enough to quite hit my
shoulders. We both tend toward being full and curved and have to watch what we
eat, but I distinctly lack that serenity people seem to find so alluring. She
and Dino met when she was substituting for a cellist on maternity leave with the
Seattle Symphony, and he appeared as a guest for three nights, performing Amore
Trovato (Love Found), written for his third wife. In spite of this, my mother
fell for him as if she had been kidnapped and brainwashed, and my father was
sure this is what had actually happened. Dino's charm must have been intense, as
prior to then my mother was a practical person who barely sniffed at a sad
movie. My mother's charm mustn't have been too bad either--Dino stayed
for

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three weeks, went back to New York only long
enough to pack up his things. Lesson learned--charm is a one-way ticket to hell.
Better to fall in love with a man who is dull as a pancake than one with
charm.

Still, if I'm honest, I can't exactly blame
Dino entirely either. Blame is so satisfying that you can forget it's actually
useless. The truth is, there are a thousand reasons my parents aren't together
anymore, and nine hundred ninety-nine of them I don't even know about or fully
understand. I do know, though, that there are essential differences between them
that I've noticed over the years: my father reads a map, while my mother doesn't
mind getting lost; my father is consistently a believer, while my mother uses
religion like some people use vitamins-- when they feel an illness coming on.
Before he paints a room my father tapes the edges and covers everything as
thoroughly as an Egyptian mortician, while my mother's only preparation for the
same job is to put on old jeans and take off her socks so she can tell if she's
stepped in a paint drip. He cuts a peach; she bites it whole. The practicality I
thought Mom had was maybe more an adaptive response to living with Dad, rather
than her original, true self. Something like those fish that go blind after
living in a dark cave.

Whatever the reasons for their split, I now go
back and forth between locations, same as a letter with a bad address. I refuse,
though, to be a messed up Product of Divorce, which some people think should be
stamped on the side of you made in MALAYSiA-style before they stick
you

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in a crate and pack you off to the Land of the
Damaged. Broken home, remember? The message being that because a marriage is
broken, everything in the home is broken too, including you.

But there is one thing that I would say about
the going back and forth, and that is, you wonder if the adults would ever get
divorced if they had to be the ones to change homes every week. This is all
supposed to be all right, and we are required to be okay about it, but it's not
okay. Not really. We can handle it, don't get me wrong. But the truth is, it's
not okay. The truth is, you just start to get comfy, when suddenly you've got to
pack up and remember to bring your book and your favorite earrings and your
notes for your paper for Humanities. You've got to readjust to your
surroundings--the parent, the pet, the step-siblings or lack of them, who has
bagels, who runs out of milk, which drawer to reach for when you want a spoon.
The truth is that you have a day on either side where it feels as if you've just
come home from vacation. You've got to remember where things left off. Oh yeah,
that's right--my room's a mess. Oh yeah, that's right--my CD player's batteries
are dead and I haven't read my new magazine yet and I'd gotten in a fight with
Mom before I left. And the truth is, as soon as you arrive "home" you are too
often pulled into the perverse divorce game, Who Do You Love More. It begins
with what looks like an innocent question: "How did it go at Mom's/Dad's?" It
ends with this reverse Sophie's Choice, where instead of a mother choosing
between children, you are asked to choose between parents. If
anything,

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all this divorce stuff made you feel that if
you were anywhere near love you ought to don one of those suits those people
wear from the Centers for Disease Control.