Sam
Earlier today I sat next to Ramona on the piano bench and turned pages for her. Since I can read music it wasn’t too hard, but she still had to give me a nod sometimes. It was distracting, seeing how nimble her fingers had to be to take the notes I saw on the page and make them into the notes I was hearing, stretching out her thumbs, third and fourth fingers so far across the keyboard.
Between runs, she’d shake her hands and stretch, stretch her arms over her head, stretch her fingers all the way to the very tips, her whole being focused on her body, tranquil and strong, Ramona.
Her boob sometimes brushed my arm when she did this too.
When she was done practicing, Ramona pushed herself off the bench and flung herself onto the living room floor. The condo’s living room is not that big, and the piano takes up a lot of space. She would have been in danger of hurting herself if she wasn’t so practiced at doing it. I think she’s been flinging herself off that piano bench her whole life.
“Tom wants to teach me yoga,” Ramona said. Her tone gave these words more gravity than the statement should have had.
“Oh?” I stayed seated on the piano bench. I had a good view of her there.
“Yeah. He always wants to do physical things with me.” Hopefully, I didn’t make a face when she said that, but she added quickly, “We do a lot of urban hiking. The River des Peres was fun. We made a wind chime out of the bicycle wheel and glass bottles we found there.”
“That’s cool.”
“We make a lot of art. And listen to music. And we talk a lot. Then he drives me home.”
I felt like Ramona was trying to tell me something, or maybe she’s trying to tell it to herself, but neither of us was getting the message.
“Sounds fun,” I said.
“It is,” she said, but something was wrong. She scooted over. I pushed off the piano bench and lay down next to her.
We were quiet. She breathed. I listened. I wanted to be closer to that sound.
Her arm brushed mine as we relaxed into the floor.
My eyes closed.
“It’s nice to be still,” she whispered. “I’m never still with him.”
I was so focused on her that I could hear her hair against the carpet as she turned her head in my direction. I thought that she was looking at me. I kept my eyes closed and waited for her to say something.
She said nothing. She was still with me again.
With me.
Looking at me. Her breath slightly quickened. I couldn’t stop the slow smile that creased my face. Ramona sighed, and I thought it’s for me. Ramona sighed, and I was sinking into the floor as my soul flew up past the ceiling. Ramona sighed, and I realized that I never knew how she felt about me, because I never had anything to compare it too, because it was always just the two of us, being still together.
Tom
Suddenly it is spring. It is the time of spring when
people say it has sprung. Birds are building a nest
on the roof of my parents’ porch, and even
crabgrass is green again.
It’s been windy too, the kind of wind that makes me
want to run, to drive long distances.
At school the teachers leave the windows open, and
the rest of the world, the rest of my life,
feels so close and so far away.
We’re all lying on the concrete floor of the garage with the door open for the breeze, and just a few moments ago Ramona said,
“In four months, we’ll be moving into the dorms at Artibus.” And no one said anything. We all just thought our thoughts.
• • •
I’m not going to Artibus College. It’s crazy that
I ever thought I might go there, because I’m not
going to go to college anywhere. It’s crazy
that I ever thought I would. That I could.
I want to be educated. I want to read books at the
time of my choosing. I want to listen to classical
composers and modern jazz and drive across the
country. I want to make my music and my art, and
give it away as gifts to the people that I meet.
I don’t want a career, just to be able to find work
when I need it.
I don’t want to buy a house.
I don’t know if I’ll ever want a family.
I want to figure out my life as it happens to me.
I want to make my own way.
I want to find my own ambitions,
and to strive for what I value.
Yes.
Someday my mind may change, but I can’t make myself
plan for a future I know I don’t want right now. And
making plans doesn’t make you safe; it just makes
you feel that the future owes you something.
• • •
I squeeze Ramona’s hand, and she squeezes mine back. I owe her an explanation for why I did nothing after she placed my hand on her left breast last night. I owe her something. That’s what being in a relationship is, and if I can’t give this to her, I need to tell her now. Soon.
And I know, that if I want to live the
life of my choosing, it’s time
I’m honest about myself.
“I’m not going to Artibus,” I tell them.
“What are you talking about?” Ramona cries. “You have to go to college with us!”
Ramona
“I can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
I sit up too quickly. My head spins.
On either side of me, the boys push themselves up.
“We have to go,” I tell them. “We all have to go.”
We have to stay together. We have to
keep the music together.
I can’t free fall into adulthood without them.
Without Sam, how will I stay sane?
Without Tom, how will I be brave?
“I’m not going to college. I think I’ve
known that for a while now.”
“Oh no, Tom,” I say.
“Ramona?” Sam says. “There’s something
I have to tell you too. I’m sorry, but I’m—”
Sam isn’t coming to Artibus. Tom
isn’t going to college at all.
I’m falling. I’m melting. I’m barely listening.
My security has been shattered, my
safety net pulled loose. My head has filled
with cement; my heart’s been set on fire. It’s
all too much to handle, far too much to hold.
“Guys,” I say, “I don’t feel well. Somebody
needs to take me home.”
And we go together, just the way
I thought we were supposed to be,
except now I am
alone.
Sam
Ramona missed school after I told her I wasn’t going to Artibus or majoring in music at all.
I should have told her that I never applied to Artibus. I could have told her when I filled out the application for Saint Louis University, or even when my acceptance letter came. Any time before would have been better, but when Tom had dropped his bomb, I knew I couldn’t hold out any longer.
After school Tom came over and we sat in the silent garage.
“We should have told her sooner,” I said to him. He nodded.
“I knew she would be disappointed, but I never thought she would be so devastated. And I thought she would still have you.”
“And I thought she would have you. Are you really not going to college at all?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe someday I will. I want to travel and do my own studying first. But that doesn
’t mean that I’m going to stop being with you and Ramona.”
I felt myself smile.
“I’m not going to let that happen either,” I said.
• • •
My father lives a life of neat boxes.
He chooses the people in his life by what
expected function
they can provide him.
He loves me, within limitations.
I love Ramona for who she is, for loving music and humans
so fiercely.
She loves Tom for the same reasons I do: for his passion
and his idealism, his hidden vulnerability.
My father would want me to separate Ramona and Tom.
Have me secure Ramona in a Girlfriend box
and lock Tom far away from her in a Just Friends box.
My father has very little love in his life.
My father has never had friends like Ramona and Tom.
• • •
The next day, Ramona came to school. She smiled and said, “Hey.” She drummed on the picnic table and talked about math class, but it was obvious everything was still wrong. A spark had gone out; her smiles were too slow. Her hope for the future has turned into fear.
I texted Tom. He told me he had a plan.
I’d hoped he would say something like that.
Tom will know what to do for our Ramona.
Tom
There’s an empty warehouse near the Mississippi River with high, tall, broken windows that take in all of the afternoon’s sun. I scouted out this location weeks ago, but I didn’t know what would go here. It was a place to make an avowal; I knew that much.
Now Ramona needs a declaration. She thinks high school will be the end of us, the end of Vandalized by Glitter.
It’s time I told her (them) how I feel.
Yesterday, I started making the stencil. Today is the day of execution.
I sent Sam the address, but it takes them an hour to find me through the unused streets and forgotten buildings of the riverboat industry.
“Tom?” Sam calls, standing at the broken door. He holds one hand over his eyes, squinting in the sun. Ramona, pale and quiet, peers around his shoulder. “That you, Tom?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Come on in.”
They step toward me, and I see their eyes shift from my face to over my shoulder to the crumbling brick wall behind me.
In the brightest blue paint I could find, I painted three intertwined circles on the dirty redbrick wall. Each circle shares a part with the others’; each circle has a part in the center.
Underneath that, I’ve added, THINK DIFFERENTLY, LOVE MORE.
“So the way I see it,” I say, “Ramona is the heart. And, Sam, you’re our equal sign. I’m the question mark.” I point to each of them in turn. I’m nervous. What I’m trying to say is kind of a big deal.
“And the circles. We’re all our own person. We’re all a part of each other. We are all of us together.
“When I’m with you guys, I see the world in new ways. I’m less cynical. I think connecting with you guys has, like, opened up my heart. I care about other people more, everybody more. What I’m trying to say is—” Suddenly the truth of what I am saying gives me the confidence I need.
“This isn’t just a high school thing,” I tell them. “I’d been waiting my whole life to meet you guys. You’re a part of me now, and no matter where any of us goes, I know I’m gonna know you for forever.”
It’s like I’ve let go of the trapeze first, and I don’t know if they will want to catch me or not.
They step closer to me.
Ramona takes my hand and then Sam’s. I touch Sam on his shoulder. He meets my eyes and nods.
We stand together in the sunlight pouring down upon us.
Ramona
Emmalyn’s mother took a long time to die. That’s how Ava Schumacher put it to me in the girls’ bathroom. I know it’s weird that I asked her about it, but it was also kinda weird how eager Ava was to tell me about it. It’s just that I needed to know.
My mother took a long time to die too.
Cancer hits the body like ocean waves. It recedes, dies back like autumn, and is reborn in the spring. Like hope, it lingers.
My mother died when I was nine, and I remember her two ways.
I remember her at the piano, playing for me, teaching me, touching me, the keys, my fingers, her fingers. Her voice in my ear as we practiced, low and encouraging, firm, never scolding.
I remember her on the couch, too sick to get up and sit at the piano. I played for her until she would smile. Her smiles were frail, often sleepy. I remember the bones of her face, the rattle of her chest, the whisper of her breaths. I remember the hospital bed we lay in together, the sheet music, and the electronic keyboard.
There is another prominent memory from those years. I went to a hippie charter school that pushed freethinking and health food. My classmates weren’t ridiculously rich, but they could all read, and I only sort of could.
I could tell you all the sounds of the letters. That wasn’t a problem. I had been fine when it came to learning that. But once the letters were arranged together for words Iw as lo st.
The l ett ers mo ved a nd rea rranged
and
lit tle d was ide ntical to l it ttle b db db bd db
At first, it was just that I took a little longer to read than my classmates, and because I was still obviously bright, no one was worried. But suddenly (one day, so suddenly, it seemed to me), I was DELAYED in reading. I couldn’t finish reading assignments on time, or even at all. The teachers recommended my parents seek a DIAGNOSIS.
“DYSLEXIA?” my mother said. “But she can read music just fine.” She had been well enough to come to the appointment. Her floral headscarf was the brightest thing in the office, until she said those words and I felt my face get warm.
It had been easy to fake. When my mother quizzed me on the notes, I knew their names. Looked at individually, I could read the note, hum the tone. But when I sat at the piano and tried to st r ing t he no tes to get her my ey es could not foll ow.
However, when my mother sat down to help me with the piece, all I had to do was watch her hands, and I would know what to do. Before long, I was able to stare straight ahead uncom prehe n ding ly, at the sheet music, and play from memory the song I’d been instructed to learn.
When my mother understood what had been happening, she wasn’t angry with me. She was heartbroken. She felt that she had failed me.
“I should have known,” she kept saying. Again, she tried to teach me to read music, but every teaching session ended in tears.
I still played for her when she lay on the couch. I played all the songs I knew from memory. But her eyes would stay sad even when she smiled. When I told her that I hadn’t meant to lie to her, she hugged me and told me that she knew, that she would always love me and be proud of me.
My parents hired a reading tutor who came twice a week. Her name was Miss Judy. She covered texts with cards so that I could see one
L e t t e r
at a time. Then one
Word
at a time
until I could read lines of text aloud at a slow but reasonable rate.
Mom had to go back into the hospital around then. We didn’t know it, but she wasn’t coming home. Miss Judy wanted me to read for twenty minutes every day, and suddenly Dad was acting like this was more important than piano.
Twice I had screaming meltdowns because Dad wouldn’t let us go to the hospital until I’d done that day’s reading.
Mom stopped responding to treatment, but there was an experimental drug doctors wanted to try.
When I told Mom about playing piano, she didn’t respond as eagerly as she always had before. She always wanted to know how reading
was going. Stressful, upsetting reading—it seemed like that was all anyone cared about anymore.
Finally, Mom and Dad told me that the doctors were moving her to hospice. Hospice wasn’t a new way of fighting cancer. The fight was over; cancer had won.
Mom was still alive, but her life was over. She’d toured Europe as a professional musician; she’d had a husband and child. It wasn’t a bad life, but it was over, and it was all she would ever have.
I was the only child my mother ever had, and as she smiled at me from her pink-sheeted hospice bed, I finally realized that unless I learned to read music, my promise as a pianist had come to an end. I could love music, I could feel as if I lived for music, but I would never be a musician if I could only play what I’d learned from watching my mother.
Every day after school, I did my twenty minutes of reading practice, and then Dad and I went to see Mom. She had a keyboard there in her room, always set to grand piano, and with it, she helped me practice reading sheet music for hours, until we were both too tired to continue.
Until Mom didn’t continue to be anymore.
I passed third grade with an average score in reading.
And I was playing through Mom’s old sheet music so fast that Dad realized that it would be worthwhile to replace Miss Judy with a piano instructor.
Anyway.
That’s the story of how my mother died and how I became a musician.
I don’t know how Emmalyn’s mother died, but I know that it’s the story of how Emmalyn became the person that she is, and it’s the story of every person that she will ever be.
And because I am someone with a story, someone who is more than just who I am in my worst moments, I know that I can’t judge Emmalyn because I don’t really know her. I only know some of her actions these past few years.
So even if I never hug her, maybe it would be worth it to make peace with her before we never see each other again. We’re about to start our adult lives. Maybe she’d like to start it with a clean slate too.
Sam
“Hey,” I said. We’d just gotten off the highway where we’d rolled the windows down and dragged our hands through the air and sunshine. We’d had a half day of school, and the afternoon was ours.