“Should I do them again?” she asked Evan, who was folding up his portable keyboard.
“You didn’t flub anything,” he told her. “Why bother?”
He listened as Maureen played the Moonlight Sonata. She played it twice, deleting the second attempt.
“I feel like I should use up the whole half hour,” she said. “Anything you want to record?”
“Maury, what happened to your face?” Evan asked.
So her carefully applied cover-up did nothing to conceal Sarah’s scratch marks. Maureen laughed and said she’d scraped her face on the sandpaper walls in the choir room—legendary for the number of girls’ tights they’d ruined.
“Ouch,” he said, reaching up to touch the scratches.
“Yeah, you know my right leg has a mind of its own sometimes,” Maureen told him.
“Do you want to do something together for the school coffeehouse?” Evan asked, abruptly switching gears. “Because I was wondering. We sounded pretty good together up there…at the concert.”
“I am your slave forever. You saved me.”
“Then let’s put together an act. Just two songs. We have two weeks. All kinds of people come. Not just trumpeters from the marching band.”
Maureen looked up at Evan. He, too, had changed. He was no longer Danny’s chubby, cuddly sidekick but a tall, slender, really kind of cute guy. No hard-core jock like Danny, though Evan golfed for fun and played wing on the soccer team—not well enough to be a star, but well enough. His family had recently moved to The Corners, where, he told people, he would walk downstairs to breakfast in his underwear and find golfers staring in the patio windows at him from the seventeenth green. He was funny and gentle. His aviators only made him look smart.
“Well, sure,” she said. “What’ll we sing?”
“So you know any Emmylou Harris? There’s this old song my mom taught me about that old loving-you feeling…. You ever hear it?”
“I love her voice, but I don’t know that one.”
“I’ll play you the CD.”
They practiced together at Maureen’s house the following night and then at Evan’s on Saturday.
When he drove her home, Evan turned to face her and slipped off his glasses, hanging them over the rearview mirror. When he kissed her, she thought, How nice, how nice to kiss a boy whose first touch doesn’t tie you all up in knots. She softened her lips and kissed him back.
“You’re not my best friend’s girl anymore,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “I don’t want you to drop into someone else’s lap before I get my chance.”
“Cut it out.”
“Maureen, I’ve been looking at you since middle school.”
Maureen flipped her hair, which now hung below her chin, from side to side. She knew the effect it had.
“Cut it out. No one ever saw me. It was always Bridge.”
“Some of us did,” he said, and kissed her again, flicking the latch at the front of her seat so that it reclined. “We’ll have to practice again tomorrow.”
A crowd of guys from the team helped Danny lift the three bench seats into the smaller of his dad’s two landscaping vans to head over to the basement of the Lutheran church for The Bulldog Café—somebody’s adorable name for the annual coffeehouse, a talent show that was literally underground. The coffee was lousy; but the hot chocolate was decent, and welcome. Since no self-respecting guy from Minnesota would wear a parka unless it was below zero, all of them had on light denim jackets without gloves or hats and were freezing after jogging three blocks from the closest parking space.
Danny thought there must be a hundred kids crammed into the room.
There were a couple of acts that were hysterical unintentionally: Three girls in pink cowgirl hats sang a Tracy Huson song about having their hearts tied to the fence post like a runaway horse, and a guy with a blond beard who wore a black Rasta wig plunked out an old Bob Marley song. There were two that were hysterical intentionally: The Three Stooges doo-wop band and two guys who sang traditional surfing songs of Northern Minnesota (“If everybody had a gun rack / across the U.S.A., / then everybody’d be surfin’ / the Minnesota way. / You’d see them wearin’ their blaze orange, / through the woods all day. / Everybody’d be surfin’ / the Minnesota way.”).
And then Ev came out and sat down at the bench of the old grand piano. Evan’s older sister Kate asked for the lights to be doused and turned on a spot they’d brought from home.
Danny didn’t recognize Maureen. She wore a floor-length red dress slit up the side, and her hair was swept over one eye. Evan lifted her onto the top of the piano in a way that made Danny’s stomach flip. She smiled at Evan. Then each sang longingly of how that old loving feeling came back every time the two of them saw each other again and then, together, how this was why it had taken “such a long time to say good-bye.”
The audience clapped like they were bonkers. Guys whistled. Maury tossed back her hair. There was something calculated about that toss.
“We’re going to sing one more thing,” Maury said into the cordless mike. “And actually, we wrote this. It’s called ‘But Not That Way.’”
“You called me just to say good-bye,” she began. “But I knew you’d already gone. / We just had nothing left to say. / You love me, but not that way….”
Danny had a hard time finding her among the people crowded around her and Evan.
“That was really good,” Danny said. To Evan, he nodded. “Bro.”
“I didn’t know you were here,” Maureen said. “I thought you had a meet.”
“This morning.”
“Did you win?” she asked.
That was Maury. It was never about her.
“Yes, ma’am, with a pin in twelve seconds. And on points in the second match. A few fine gentlemen from a college or two wanted to have a chat!”
“Oh, Danny, good! You can major in prelaw or music and have your sport! Good!” She patted his arm.
She patted his arm.
She loved him…but not that way.
“We’ll have cut our CD by then,” Evan said, putting his arm around Maureen and nearly lifting her off her feet. “My little songbird.”
“I have to get on out,” Danny said. “Some guys came with me.”
She had already turned back to the group around the piano.
At home, Danny lay staring at the clock. It was ten forty-five. A Saturday night. If he had to guess, Maureen and Evan were tangled up on Ev’s basement sofa, the same one next to the heating pipe on which he and Evan used to eavesdrop on Kate making out with her boyfriends. What were they, in sixth grade then? Evan used to say, “I don’t know what love is, but I know what it sounds like.”
Danny threw himself out of bed and drove to Maureen’s house. Patrick had put up so many chasing lights for Christmas that staring at them could give someone a migraine. On the roof was Coach’s Santa Claus about to climb down the chimney. The light was on in the kitchen. Although he knew that Coach might be annoyed, he knocked on the door. Maureen answered, wearing a robe so white and spiky that it looked like a Hostess Sno-Ball.
“Hi,” she said. “You want a grilled cheese?”
“Is Ev here?”
“You want Evan?”
“No.”
“Because he had to go to his grandmother’s at the crack of dawn. His parents made him come home early. He almost refused, because of our magnificent debut….” She struck a pose, with one arm on her hip, the other holding an imaginary cigarette holder. “But Kate told him their dad would go savage. They’re having a big family reunion before Christmas.”
“Who’s down there? I’m not trying to heat the great outdoors,” Coach yelled.
“It’s Danny, Dad,” Maureen called back.
“Hi, Dan,” Coach called.
“Coach,” Danny called.
“Either come in or out. I’m freezing up here,” Bill called back.
They smelled burning.
“My grilled cheese!” M
aureen shrieked, running to pull the smoking pan from the stove and throw it out the front door, where it quickly melted a ring of snow.
“People are trying to sleep!” Bill called again. “What, are you moving furniture now?”
“Close your door, Daddy,” Maureen called back.
But Bill came downstairs. “She tell you about her news?” he asked with a broad smile.
Danny couldn’t help but smile back. Coach had on the most bizarre set of flannels Danny had ever seen: red devils and candy hearts that said KISS ME. Tops and bottoms.
Too late to retreat and put on a robe, Bill realized the error of his apparel and hid as much of his pajamas as possible by seating himself at the kitchen table.
“This girl has been invited to go to the Iowa Liberal Arts Academy, on a full ride,” Bill said. “They want her to study vocal performance and music theory. How about that, Dan? It’s one of the best boarding schools in the country. You ever think that that poor little busted-up thing in the hospital not so long ago would be asked to leave her old mom and dad and go to prep school? We’re sure going to miss her though, huh?” He hugged Maureen tight against him. “I’ll leave you two guys to talk. Night, Dan.”
“See you, Coach,” Danny said.
He thought he might fall down if he didn’t sit.
“Is this true?” he whispered.
“It’s true!” Maureen told him, twinkling. “I sent my application in a couple of weeks ago. I start January twelfth! They won…they waived the regular time period for acceptance because of my special circumstances.” Maury made quote marks in the air with her fingers. “I got the scholarship for academics and, uh, because…I’m, well, handicapped.”
“That’s great,” Danny said. A great hollow pit opened under his breastbone. He looked down. Maureen’s Uggs sat next to the door, on the mat. “Let’s take a ride. I’ll buy you a grilled cheese.”
“I’m in my pajamas! People will think I have a brain injury or something!”
“I’ll buy it to go.”
She shoved her feet into her boots, and they made their way down the steps to his car.
“Start it! I’m freezing!” she cried.
Danny reached in the backseat and gave her his blanket. “It’s not a white tablecloth and candles, but it’s clean.” Maureen stroked the frayed ribbon edging.
“How could I ever forget?” she said softly. “Oh, Danny.”
“So you’re leaving us for the big city.”
“Fall Creek, Iowa. Hardly. The nearest city is Dubuque! But it’s a great school, and I’ll never get another chance like this. You know they’re never going to let me…live it down…here. In two days, it’ll be the anniversary again, Danny. Sarah…Sarah Flannery practically jumped me in the hall after the Christmas concert. I guess I finally know the meaning of the old saying, Excuse me for living.”
Her voice was soft and low, and she spoke clearly, measuring each word. Danny backed out of the driveway, glancing at the Flannerys’ house, decked from eave to eave in lights like white chandeliers.
At Eva’s Diner, Danny waited at the counter while someone whipped up a grilled cheese soaked in butter. Without any of the mannerisms food usually brought out in girls, Maureen devoured it to the last crumb.
“Yum,” she said. “Thank you. What did you want anyhow?”
He kissed her salty mouth and pulled her to him so hard he thought he might crush something under her fuzzy robe. When he undid the tie, she let him, tugging his shirt loose and touching his chest. And then she breathed in sharply and sat back.
“We are…in the parking lot of a diner.”
“There are places we can…”
“We’re not together, Danny.”
“That’s just crap. You’re my girl.”
“Danny, it’s not…”
“What, like your song? You want to be friends?”
“No. The opposite. I want this too much. Way too much. That’s partly why I decided to go.”
“Why?”
“Because we fell into this too soon! And we did it because we were both trying to replace something and somebody in our lives! That’s not a way to make something work!” Maureen wrapped her robe around her and tied it tightly.
“It’s not that way now,” Danny argued. “It’s not about Bridget!”
“When you came home before, it was all different. You were different. And now you just think you want me because you know I won’t be here. I have to see if the rest of the world treats me the way Bigelow treats me. Sure, it’s fine when I’m with Molly and Evan…”
“How much are you with Evan?”
“That’s not the issue, and…not at all like us,” she said firmly. “It’s fine when I’m with people I know, but for everyone else I’m always going to be that girl. That girl who was supposed to be dead but wasn’t. I want to be my own self! I want my parents to go on with their lives! I even want Bridget’s parents to go on with their lives. Every day I remind them of what they lost!”
“You’re going to let them run you out of your own home? You’re going to leave me?”
“Danny, I don’t want to leave you. But you’re going to Montana! You’re going to Colorado!”
“Not necessarily,” he said. But he realized that what he had planned was to do just that—try out life in another place, counting on the fact that Maureen would be here, or at UM, waiting for him to come home for Christmas, for the summer, waiting for him unless he was drawn to someone new. She’d turned the tables on him. It was she who was leaving him before he ever got a chance to decide…if he wanted her.
He had believed she was his for the asking.
“So this is, like, it,” he said.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” Maureen said. “If you want to know if I’ll miss you, I’ll miss you every day. I’ll come home at spring break and in the summer….”
“Big deal.”
“You’re right. Those things never work out,” Maureen agreed. “Take me home now, Danny.”
He did, getting out with her to make sure she negotiated the steps safely.
And when he turned to leave, it was Maureen who pulled him to her, holding his face between her hands as if learning it by heart. “It was you who helped me get here, Danny. You told me that I could do this.”
“I guess I dug my own hole,” he said. “I hope you love it, Maury. I hope you knock ’em dead.”
“I think my health issues were mostly why I got in,” she said. “I don’t think they expect me to be the next Julie Andrews. And don’t act like it’s the last time you’ll see me. I’ll come to see you wrestle at state. I’ll be cheering for you.”
“Will you write to me?”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” she asked.
“Probably not. It will just make it harder.”
“Danny,” she said. “I love you. I just wish it had always been me.”
“Me, too. I hope I don’t figure out it always was,” he said. “Merry Christmas, Maury.”
She stood in the doorway and watched until his car rounded the corner and disappeared.
after life
The workload at Iowa Liberal Arts Academy made homework at Bigelow look like making cupcakes in the sandbox.
Miss Bishop had made it clear right away that ILAA was not a “performing arts” school. It was a good college prep boarding school with opportunities to develop fine arts talent. But it wasn’t a conservatory. Maury would be held to the highest standards of performance in her classes—even more so than in her singing. Singing was only an enrichment. Many of the kids at ILAA were planning careers as doctors or teachers or athletes. They simply also had a love of drawing or creative writing or music.
Maureen had lessons the first week with two different sopranos and then was assigned to one of them, a beautiful woman called—oddly enough—Melody. She studied with Melody for an hour twice a week. She was expected to practice voice for at least a half hour each night.
And then th
ere were the academics.
History, math, HONORS English, ASL as a language, and her elective, Basic Acting.
She had two free tutors, both students from the college in Ames, to work with every night in the study center. She was never assigned exercises in acting that required her to run or leap. But nobody made concessions outside her special needs. They weren’t that special. There were three kids at the school in wheelchairs who were doing fantastically—one majoring in violin performance.
So Maureen had to keep up somehow.
Biting the bullet, she realized that if she could play the piano, even with many mistakes, she could learn to touch-type properly. She did it with a little program her mother sent her in the mail, typing for hours on weekends with a towel over her hands on the keyboard so she couldn’t see the letters.
After two weeks, she didn’t need the towel anymore.
But she was still studying four hours a night, and sometimes just grabbed a sandwich in the cafeteria and went back to her dorm to work through dinner.
Her first exercises in typing had been emails to her folks—a line or two—and longer letters to Molly and Evan, and to Danny.
She missed him so much she thought it would make her physically sick. Every night she allowed herself to take out and relive one of their moments together, turning the memories this way and that until, if they had been garments, they would have been soiled with fingerprints and tears. She could imagine the shape of Danny’s hands, the smell of his hair.
Hi Champ, she wrote. Well, I am really being put in my place here. Obviously the teachers at B. were giving me pity grades, but no one is here. I’m so scared of the first-quarter exams. I know I’ll flunk everything. Then I’ll be back, ha ha, and you will get caught with Emily Hay. Seriously, I hope you are having fun with her and with everybody. I wrote to Molly, but she does not write back for days. I guess everyone’s busy. It’s beautiful here. The campus is right down by a little lake, and people go ice skating. Not me! Dad told me you finished with a first in state in our division! Danny! Why didn’t you tell me? The scholarships must be lining up!