Wild Roses (20 page)

Anyway, he didn't say anything. I called Ian
for the first time.

"Check it out," I said. "I'm calling you at
home."

"Say something more so I can hear how you sound
on the phone," he said. "Just talk."

"Four score and seven years ago," I orated.
"This country brought forth a new nation. Really important things started
happening, and men who weren't even gay

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started wearing white wigs and frilly coats.
They looked lovely, but even more importantly they ..."

"I like your voice on the phone," Ian
interrupted. I was just getting warmed up, too.

"I better not stay on long. I just wanted to
tell you that he's been silent. No screams. This is actually me talking, and not
my murdered ghost."

"See? We didn't need to worry. He probably just
accepts that there's nothing he can do."

"Ha. Calm before the storm," I said.

And I was right. The next day I felt the
tension, more than saw actual evidence of it. The air was thin and nervous,
electric. Being in the same room with him was unbearable--you could feel that
pebble that had just snapped into the windshield, the breakage line snaking up,
the knowledge of an inevitable shatter. We bumped elbows in the kitchen the next
day, as Dino went for the refrigerator and I went for the cereal bowls, and I
could actually feel him flinch. Mom was making coffee and obviously talking
Chinese, because I couldn't understand anything she was saying. I got the hell
out of there, fast. I thought maybe I should live at school. I could borrow the
janitor's room, that snug, weird place of mops in buckets and detergents, and a
calendar with sports cars on it that was still showing September. I even made
small talk with Courtney on the walk home, even though every talk with Courtney
is small talk, if you know what I mean. We talked about nail polish, for God's
sake. She told me about a hair removal

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kit she got on the Home Shopping Network with
her mother's credit card. I fed her more topics--hairstyles, breast implants,
the love life of Toby Glassar, this muscle-choked senior guy all the blond girls
liked--until she looked at me as if we had really bonded. Thanks for the great
talk, she said, and then told me she had to leave to go watch the soap All My
Sex Partners. Okay, it wasn't really called that, but you get my
drift.

I stayed in my room until Mom came home and it
was dinnertime. If there's ever a time you feel the stepfamily disconnect, it's
at the dinner table. You've got to sit there and look at your differences until
you've downed your lasagna as fast as possible. You learn that every planet
teaches manners differently, and the one your new alien family members came from
probably either didn't teach them at all (making dinner a revolting nightly
replay of a pie-eating contest), or taught them too well (making dinner a new
Olympic sport called Every Food Has a Rule). That night, the tension was lying
between us, sharp and thread-like. No one was talking, and the sounds of
silverware on glass plates were painfully loud, seemingly capable of breaking
apart what was holding us all together. You could hear Dino's chewing (you could
always hear Dino's chewing), and he was drinking wine. Too much wine, I could
tell, from the way my mother kept eyeing his glass as he refilled it. She was
obviously on the wrong page; her own tension stemmed from the surplus Burgundy
and not from what was going on between Dino and me right under her
nose.

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"My bike is gone," Dino said
finally.

I swallowed hard. It was either that, or blast
out a mouthful of lasagna. I practically burst out laughing from nerves and
surprise. His bike. Thrown in ze "canal" by ze two hooligans. I'd almost
forgotten about it.

"What do you mean?" my Mom said.

"Gone. Stolen."

"Who would steal that bike?" Mom said. She
actually laughed. I felt like busting up too. I took a drink of milk. Trained my
thoughts--death, destruction, devastation--so that I wouldn't bust up and
explode it out my nose.

"It's gone," he said. He chewed a chunk of
bread. You saw it in there, being swirled and mashed to death. "I wonder if you
know anything about this?" he asked me. "You are the one who rides
it."

"I don't know what happened to it." Lie. "I
haven't ridden it in weeks." Truth. Couldn't ride it since it was at the bottom
of the sound.

"I went into the garage and noticed it wasn't
there."

"I wonder who might have done something like
that," I said. "You never know." I mean, where was his paranoia now? Why
couldn't William Tiero have done this! He'd supposedly followed us, tried to
ruin Dino's career, sent us annoying junk mail, called repeatedly, and done a
thousand other things. He should have at least been in the lineup.

"I spoke with Ian's mother," Dino said. "This
afternoon."

"Why?" Mom asked.

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"About the budding lovers," Dino
said.

There it was. The beginning, and I was already
lost. I was already gone to anger; he'd already won.

"We're not lovers," I said.

"Shall we count our blessings for that?" he
said.

"Not yet, anyway," I said. I wanted to put the
knife in. I wanted to twist.

"You are such a silly child. Your immaturity is
astounding."

"I'm supposed to be immature. I'm the kid.
What's your excuse?"

"Wait a minute. What is going on?" Mom said.
Her face was flushing red.

"You have no idea what you're doing. No idea of
the harm you can cause."

"You have no idea what you're doing," I said to
him. "You're going to kill any desire he has to play that stupid fucking
violin."

"Listen to this tramp, Daniella," Dino said to
my mother. "Look at her. Listen to her mouth."

"Hold on a moment here," my mother said. "You
just hold on. I don't want to hear that kind of talk from you, Dino. Or you,
Cassie."

"She is ruining everything. Don't you
understand that?"

"What is going on?" my mother asked. "Ian," was
all I could say. "Ian and me." "He's got less than two months. Seven weeks, and
he's not ready. Even the Chaconne is rough. How can I help

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him? How can I make it turn out all right for
him when he is running around in airy-fairy land with her? This child could
destroy everything he's worked for."

"Ian has some say in this too. I am not some
evil sorceress making him do things against his will."

"Jesus, Cassie! What's been going on? I thought
we agreed. . . ."

"The boy must be managed. His career must be
handled. He's not to be trusted to know what he needs," Dino said.

"Sometimes love just is," I threw her words
back at her. "Sometimes it's a force with its own reasons."

"Where did you get such idiocy?" Dino said.
"This is a practical matter. Someone's life is in your hands. He fucks up this
audition, and his future is shit."

"Maybe he doesn't want to play. Maybe you
should let him be. His life has nothing to do with you." I pushed my plate
away.

"Cassie," Mom said.

"I'm his teacher. He is my responsibility. I
can change his life. I have a chance to make things go right for him. You think
you understand him? You don't. You don't know the first thing about
him."

"Oh, you don't think so," I said. I hated him
saying that, I really did.

"I understand him."

"Come on, you guys. Let's all just calm . . ."
"You can't possibly understand him. You're making him do things he doesn't want
to." "I know him. I know his life."

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"Maybe he doesn't want to turn out like you.
Maybe he doesn't want your life." I couldn't help the words falling from my
mouth. They had a will of their own, the same as thunder does. The same as some
storm that needs to be released. "Maybe he doesn't want to be depressed and
crazed and making everyone unhappy because his beloved music has made him
nuts."

"God damn it, Cassie, that's enough," Mom
said.

"Maybe the tortured-genius thing just doesn't
look too appealing."

"You've raised an imbecile, Daniella," Dino
said.

Mom stood up. "I said that's enough. Both of
you."

"I have that book by my bed. I've read it. All
about Sabbotino Grappa, all about your beautiful parents. I feel sorry for them.
Your mother must have been ashamed that she raised such a nasty
person."

Dino shoved out from the table, knocking over
his wineglass. His hands were flat on the table, and I could see them shaking.
"Shut this child up," he said through his clenched teeth.

"People . . ." Mom said.

"Shut this child up about my
mother!"

I had gone too far. I knew it even before he
picked up the chair with one hand and threw it. It crashed to the ground, a
horrendous clatter. I shut my eyes against the sound, against the scene. "When I
opened them again, I could see that Dino was leaving the room, and that my
mother had covered her face with her hands and just held her head there, as if
trying to hold the pieces of herself together.

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"Mom?" I was afraid to talk. I had already done
too much of that. "Mom, I'm sorry."

My mother raised her head. She sighed. "You
know, Cassie, I'm sorry too."

"I hope you're okay," I said.

"And I hope you're okay."

We sat in silence.

"I guess none of this is all right," she said
finally.

You know what I was most sorry for then? I was
sorry for her. That things had turned out like this for her. That she had made a
leap and ended up crashing onto concrete.

"Probably not."

"Life's messed up at the moment." "Yeah," I
said.

"If you're fine just now, I'm going to go talk
to Dino." I nodded.

Every circus needs a ringmaster, and ours gave
my shoulders a squeeze and disappeared out of the room.

Dino found a way to solve his problem with Ian,
which was that he would allow Ian to have a private life, only he would give him
no time in which to have it. His requirements for continuing to help Ian were
that Ian must commit to daily lessons with him and to evening practice at home.
Dino and Ian's mother had had a meeting. They'd jump off a bridge if I told them
to, Dino had said. Ian's mother had a talk with Ian. He had no choice, Ian told
me. Curtis was the single scholarship-only college in the

181

country. Affording even a small part of a
partial scholarship was out of the question, paying living expenses was out of
the question, and a degree from Curtis would ensure his best shot at a job and
performance contracts. What about trees? I had asked.

I can't do trees, Ian had said. I just... I
can't explain. I've got to make his happen.

I don't get it. It's your life.

It's an opportunity I can't pass up.

I had the sick feeling that Dino had been right
about one thing. He understood Ian in this way that I didn't. There were things
I couldn't see or know. I didn't realize then that everyone had their
secrets.

I didn't see much of Ian, which was obviously
part of the plan. He studied in the morning at home to finish his requirements
for school, came over in the afternoons for lessons, and had to leave quickly in
order to get his practice time in. We only had a moment for a quick hello and
good-bye, and the times I saw him he was tired and strung out. The only real
piece I had of Ian was his music, traveling up the stairs during his practices,
or coming through the door as I sat my back down against it and listened to what
was happening inside that office. I savored what I had. I'd close my eyes and
let the music lift me up and hold me. Yes, yes, good. Very good, Dino would say.
I would imagine lemon trees and cobbled streets made warm by the sun,
orange-colored buildings and baskets of figs. I would imagine us sharing a cup
of coffee at a small iron table, sneaking into an old church to gulp cool air.
A

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life together of simple, good things. I
imagined bicycles in canals, Sabbotino Grappa at sunset.

After practices, Dino himself would disappear
into his office and his own place of creation. If he was paranoid then, I didn't
know it. I never saw him. But my mother was dealing with things I had no idea
about. I heard her on the phone a lot with Alice, and Mom would hang up quickly
when I came in. I would hear her crying, and when I would investigate, she'd
wipe her face and lie and say she wasn't.

It was as if Dino and Ian had both descended
into some other dark world, where all thoughts and all moments were music,
music, music. Frenzied playing, lost men. Italian phrases--sforzando, con
colore, adagietto, a land with its own language, even. The repetition of
passages; frustration at not getting it right, try again. Try again until it is
perfect, the perfect translation of all of love and sorrow, of struggle and
triumph. It wasn't notes they were playing, not really. It was not songs. They
were playing all the passion and drama of life, nothing less. Expressing the
questions, searching for the answers. At least they were able to do this through
their music. I had questions, questions that seemed to multiply like bad news
multiplies. Even the vastness of the universe, looking through my telescope, did
not put those questions into perspective.