Cadenza

4/12/22

My thumb is bleeding again, and I’m annoyed.

To begin with, I’m annoyed because the blood oozing out of my cuticle is threatening to drip onto the hair of my bow. Sure, it’s not like this bow, stained at the base from years of manhandling by my sloppy grip, is exactly in pristine condition to begin with. It’s a perhaps bimonthly occasion that, whether for some gig or just the feverish need to cling to my self-ascribed identity as an artist, I wrangle my cello from its scuffed case, sawing away at a family friend’s bridal processional or some concerto I played better when I was fourteen. At some point, it inevitably occurs to me, I should probably get my bow restrung sometime soon. Then I strap it back into its sleeve and latch up the case. 

If you haven’t gathered, I’m not a particularly good cellist. I like to think I never stood a chance, having stumbled into the role at twelve years old; it’s a nice little delusion that allows me to brush aside all of the early mornings I chose sleep over practicing before school, all of the scales and grip exercises I sheepishly excused away with my busy schedule. No, it can’t be that I lacked the discipline to break out of my master-of-none tendencies and actually achieve prodigy in just one area of my life; my parents just didn’t start me early enough. I was doomed to mediocrity from the start. 

Back here, though, under the wooden rafters, perched on a faded green pew as winter sunlight dribbles in through the stained glass, I’m not mediocre at all. I’m exceptional. And after tonight’s service, I’ll float with calculated humility through the wrinkled hands reaching to grasp my shoulder and marvel at my beautiful playing, thank you for sharing your gift, the beaming of elementary-school-teachers-past asking how’s school? How exciting, I’m sure, you always did love to read, the clamoring of youth group seniors, you should’ve heard what Mr. Kamp said in catechism last week, wish you’d’ve been there to argue with him like you always used to. I’ll lather their words into my pores like inexpensive lotion: Yes, I am gifted. I am smart. My appetite for knowledge knows no bounds; I challenge authority and always speak my mind. The scent of praise is lovely, but like most cheap lotions, I know it’ll only last so long before I need to reapply; before my dry skin starts to itch with a constant, chafing sense of inadequacy. 

“So, how’ve you been? How’s college?” 

Right. Fuck. I’m annoyed because my thumb is bleeding, and my thumb is bleeding because here is Jack, swinging his viola with irritating ease and leaning over the pew behind me. Jack, tall and unfathomably confident and always leaning, always imposing, always making that too-intimate eye contact that is both earnest and deeply, deeply sinister. I’m annoyed, because even as he stands here in front of me— nose crooked on his face, old shirt hanging too tight, quiff failing to hide how his hairline already schemes to retreat at the age of twenty-three— the shape of his voice still turns my stomach into a knotted jumble of rat tails. My pointer finger returns to its task of boring a hole into my skin with its nail.       

Jack thought I was exceptional. Mature for my age. Well, four years later, I am exactly as mature as my age calls for me to be, and I still want to throw the tantrum that I never let myself have at fifteen. Instead, I take a break from obsessively checking for a text from Sienna and set my tone to my best impression of nonchalance. 

“I’ve, uh, been really good, actually. Classes are cool, meeting some really cool people… um, I’m in a choir now which is nice. And… it’s just great to be so close to so many things, ya know, and my dorm is literally right next to the subway station. So.” I start and finish lamely, bouncing my cello against my knee.  

“That’s great. Seriously, Abs. You know, I always knew you were gonna do anything you wanted to.” 

I hate that— the “I always knew.” It reminds me that on a shelf somewhere, he still has a version of me preserved in a jar; still knows things about me that I barely knew about myself. And suddenly I’m back in that humid day in the forest preserve, when, backs against the scratchy picnic table wood and faces turned up to the leaf-filtered sun, he told me to tell me a secret, something you’ve never told anyone, and so I did. 

⥇    

“I’m probably making it up, though, because I know I like guys. I mean, I know I like you,” I had rushed to clarify as I searched his face desperately for a glimmer of a reaction. “And it’s a sin and all that anyways, so I guess it’s like, why mess with it?” The joke, a forced attempt at lightheartedness, fell pathetically limp as he stared, eyebrows furrowed, at the sky. 

“I mean…” He sat up suddenly. “This is like, a huge thing that you’ve been keeping from me, Abby. Like…I don’t know what to say.” 

“Okay. I’m…I’m sorry, I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal.”

“I mean, it just kind of feels like you don’t trust me. Like, now I’m wondering what else you’re not being honest about, ya know?”

“Jack, that’s not fair.” 

“I just need a minute, okay?”

“I swear, it’s got nothing to do with honesty. I just….didn’t want you to be weird. I didn’t want you to hate me, I’m— I mean, my parents don’t know, fucking Margot doesn’t even know—“

“—What, so I’m the one being weird? I’m sorry, I just found out that the girl I love isn’t who I thought she is, so my bad for not acting like everything’s normal.” And my heart squeezed because I was letting him down, again, like I always seemed to do. 

“Okay. I’m sorry.” I reached out to grasp his hand, but it slipped through my fingers as he stalked down the trail towards the parking lot. I heard his car sputter to a start.  

I called Margot to pick me up; I wasn’t old enough to have my license. When I collapsed into her passenger’s seat, tears bristling against my eyes, I told her it was just something silly, something I said that I shouldn’t have, and I believed myself. She didn’t; I could tell by her grip on the steering wheel and the tightness of her goodbye hug. Still, she let it be, music playing softly over the radio as she drove me home in blaring silence. 

Jack and I didn’t speak of it again until the day, months later, that he told me about the girl from his college chamber orchestra and I finally got angry. That day, he flung my trust in my face like scalding water. 

“I mean, don’t we both have things to explore?” 

Then he told me he loved me; asked me to come over. I told him I was done.

⥇

So now, in this sanctuary where we grew up together, I look at him—old and unremarkable and still smiling—and resent that he’s always believed in me. More than anything, I resent that after all this time, his affirmation still makes a part of me feel good; that deep down, I still want to impress him: partly out of spite, yes, but mostly in the way I always have, a little girl desperate to be told that I’m more than what I am. And fifteen-year-old Abby pounds her fists against the inner walls of my chest as I swallow back the scream of you don’t get to be proud of me. Instead, I respond with carefully engineered indifference. 

“Thanks. I mean, here’s hoping, right? Gotta settle on a major first, though, so who even knows. But I’ll figure it out.” 

For the next ten stifling minutes before the organ begins its prelude, I watch myself plod through pleasantries as the sanctuary begins to hum with the chatter of congregants settling in. From somewhere up above myself, I listen to my voice ask about his post-grad plans, tell him I’m sorry to hear about his dog (I am) and that I hope his sister’s doing well (I do); yes, I still have that group of friends, and yes, we still host a fake New Year’s Eve party every first week of January (wouldn’t you like to know the details). Finally, I lay my cello on its side and excuse myself to the bathroom, where I watch the pink water swirl down the drain for a moment before blotting my cuticle with a paper towel. 

I think of pink water swirling in the studio sink where Sienna rinsed her brushes late at night, brilliant shades of red dancing across the canvas behind her, head bopping unconsciously to the beat leaking out of her headphones. The smile that spread across her face and crinkled her eyes when she turned to see me watching, flustered. Hey bug, how’s the homework going?   

I shut off the water and feel sick.       

When I return to the sanctuary, I take my place in the congregation beside my family in the fourth pew on the left, our seat for as long as I can remember. A little girl in a black velvet dress with a red satin bow reads the liturgy as the Advent candle is lit; she is precocious and promising like I used to be. As the candles flicker and dance, the pastor preaches about peace that passes all understanding, and I wonder, not for the first time, whether there isn’t just one good thing that I can understand, or if it all has to remain a mystery until I die. I steal yet another glance at my phone, much to my mom’s chagrin; the empty screen stares back blankly.    

Jack and I sound lovely together, like we always have. I can feel his eyes on me as we pack up our cases, but when the doxology is over, I linger just long enough to collect my stack of commendations before beelining to the car. By the time we pull into our garage, the warm glow of praise has already begun to fade away.  

⥇

  The first time Jack cheated on me was with a girl named Susan from his freshman orientation group. Susan had curly red hair that bounced at her shoulder blades when it wasn’t swept back in an effortless ponytail; she wore chaco sandals and played acoustic Taylor Swift covers on her guitar and spent the summer as a camp counselor, where she led worship around the fire and played capture the flag with middle schoolers in the serene haven of the West Michigan woods. In the fall, she wore baggy button ups and started her mornings drinking cold brew coffee from mason jars. Afternoons, she spent lounging under a tree in the quad with a book, which she stretched above her face with freckled arms to block out the sun. At least, this much I gathered from her Instagram. I visited at least three times a day, poring over her comment sections and tagged photos and wondering why no one ever took pictures of me like that. Looking back, I might have been in love with her myself, had I been able to look past how much I hated her.  

“The craziest thing is that it honestly only made me, like, more secure in my love for you,” he had insisted to me over the phone, after telling me a hilarious story about the expedition to the pharmacy they had taken to get concealer to cover up his hickeys before parents’ weekend. The story was so hilarious that my body forgot the appropriate response to humor was to laugh; tears clamored, spiky and hot, against my eyelids. 

“Okay,” I had said, my tongue heavy and dumb in my mouth. It was better, in a way, to know for a fact what the gnawing in my gut had been whispering to me for weeks. We weren’t together anymore, after all, not really. He had wanted me to enjoy the rest of my high school years without the burden of a committed relationship; my parents, who had never approved anyways, had compelled me to agree. Of course, this didn’t mean we couldn’t talk on the phone late into every night; didn’t mean he couldn’t tell me he loved me. That I couldn’t ditch after-school play practice to meet him in his dorm room, a sock tied to the doorknob as I nervously adjusted my awkwardly-fitting push-up bra and convinced myself of how wonderful it was to be wanted by someone who was wanted by everyone else.     

“Like, I dunno. It was fun and all, she’s a cool girl, but I just kinda found myself wishing it was you instead.”

“Okay,” I repeated. 

“Abby.” He sighed my name, disappointed. “Like… you’re the one I want to marry, okay? And, grow old with and stuff. You believe me? I’ve never met anyone like you, for real.”

“I want that too,” I mumbled, my voice small, and scolded myself for being greedy.  

“Hey. I love you.”

“I love you too.” 

⥇

“What nineteen-year-old is named Susan, anyways?” Margot had scoffed as we sat on the roof of her car, passing back and forth a bottle of Coca-Cola that we had bought for $7 at the drive-in concession stand. “Like, are you a secretary at a family-owned law firm in the eighties?” 

“A freaking… gorgeous one, apparently,” I had muttered, fanning myself with a paper plate for some scant relief from the sticky September heat. The air was thick with humidity, and smoke from the trucks grilling burgers a few cars down. At the borders of the dusty lot, the trees thrummed with the relentless screech of cicadas; on the big screen, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, superimposed into the sky, aptly harmonized about summer nights. “But whatever. Fuck her, I don’t really care.” I took a swig of warm soda before flopping onto my back, rolled- up blankets lodged as a makeshift pillow under the roof rack. “How’s the evil stepdad?” 

Margot blew out a long, tired gust of air, her lips pouting outward. “Honestly, I’m just glad school’s back in so I can get out of that house. The latest thing is that he’s like, mad that I’m working more now?”

“Okayyy, weird? Hasn’t he been on your ass about getting a job for a while?”

 “Right. I think he just hates that I have my own money now. Because he can’t play the one card he has to play… you know, I pay for everything you have, I’m gonna cut you off, blah blah blah.” 

When Marley’s dad died, her mom checked out. For the first few weeks, she spent more nights at my house than not, an air mattress pumped up on my bedroom floor and my favorite stuffed pig out on loan in her arms. I was eleven and my only concept of grief came from my favorite novels; I cried when characters were killed off only to revive them by starting the book over again. But when the silent tears traced down her cheeks at night, I would curl up beside her, running my fingers through her hair until her breath grew slow, angry that I couldn’t bring her dad back and frustrated that what I had to give would never be enough to fill that gap. When we were fourteen and arguments with her mom’s new husband left her without a place to sleep, we’d share peanut m&ms and talk late into the night; I offered up silly anecdotes about the idiots in honors biology and the cute senior boy from orchestra, coaxing out her laughter until the darkness made it safe for her to cry.    

I pined for her briefly, of course. To be fair, if the kids at our school had realized that lesbians could have long hair, they probably would’ve assumed that we were dating. One evening when we were seventeen, tipsy on her roof from a few sips of stolen beer and a lot of delusion, I watched the sunset play across her face and a funny feeling stirred across my stomach. She looked back at me, honeyed sun and the hint of a dare glinting in her eyes; and with my heart thumping out really? really? in my chest, I leaned forward. 

Our lips met for the briefest of seconds before we pulled apart again, collapsing into laughter.

“No,” I giggled, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.  

“Yeah, absolutely not.”

That long-ago night at the drive-in, we sang along to the movie’s musical numbers and talked over the rest of it, tracing imaginary constellations in the hazy sky with fingers salty with popcorn and sweat. The year loomed uncertain but we had each other and, for a time, perhaps some small understanding of peace. 

⥇

The night of the Fake New Year’s Eve party is unnaturally balmy, and as I lean against Margot’s leg in front of the fire I am radiant and warm, drinking in the laughter of these people who are my own. For a few serene hours, I don’t think about what I look like; don’t notice the oddness of my laugh or count the number of times I speak, but relax easily into our familiar overlapping chatter, pleasantly high off the weather and the nostalgia and the weed that Clea brought home with her from Ohio. A small speaker at the edge of the circle murmurs happily to itself as we burn s’mores and try our best to catch each other up on the gist, at least, of our second lives away, each incoherent but amusing story requiring endless digressions and visual aids from our camera rolls. For my part, I stick to skimming the surface, but even my benign mention of Sienna as I recount a roach-killing misadventure fails to escape a cocked eyebrow from Margot. I raise one back at her and get up to roast another marshmallow. 

When midnight nears, we fill up our plastic dollar-store champagne flutes and start the countdown, devolving into teary hugs as the clock strikes twelve. January fifth. Time for a new me, I think with amusement; though it might help to pin down the old one first.  

⥇

The practice room on campus, shoved into a distant corner of the dormitory basement, smelled of stale air and perpetually undried paint. This much I told Sienna when she asked to come with me one day. I also exaggerated the roach problem, for good measure. 

“It’s crawling with them, like actually… you seriously don’t want to be there,” I had urged, playing absentmindedly with her fingers as we sat, legs dangling off the fire escape. 

“I can handle a roach or two, bug. C’mon; I wanna hear you play.” 

“You can hear me play at the concert next month,” I whined with a tinge of desperation.  

“Nooo,” she teased, mouth round as she dragged out the o. “I can hear your orchestra play at the concert next month. I want to hear you.” 

“I’m not… like, good, Si,” I protested, wincing at the childishness of my words even as I said them. I knew she told her friends about her girlfriend, the cellist; I hated to think she might stop if she found out the truth. 

“Okay, one, bullshit. Two, even if true, I don’t care. I let you come to the studio all the time, even though my stuff looks a mess like, nine times out of ten.” 

“Stop it. Your stuff is amazing, you know that.” More than once, I had begged her to let me salvage scrapped canvases from the trash; the walls of my room were now vibrant with strokes of color that I had watched come to life, her name scratched in the corner of each print. 

“See? We can agree to disagree. Look, I won’t insist if you realllly don’t want me to,” she offered, clasping my hand still between hers. “But. Please?” 

That afternoon, I played her the easiest sections of some old sonatas as she sat, cross-legged and bright-eyed, on the musty brown carpet. Finally, I pulled out the music I had actually come to practice, a dizzying piece filled with ornaments and tenor clef. The first time I landed an octave jump severely flat, I cringed and glanced up, face flushing.  

“What? It’s cool watching it come together,” she said, taking a sip of her iced tea. “I like to be behind the scenes.” 

When the hour ran out and I announced that I was done, Sienna jumped to her feet, and I moved the scroll of my cello to the side as she leaned in for a kiss. She smelled like men’s mint deodorant; lemon from the tea lingered on her lips. 

“Thank you,” she smiled. “My little musician.” 

For the rest of the semester, whenever I went to the practice room, Sienna came with.     

⥇

As the wheels of the last cars crunch down the gravel driveway, Margot helps me collect the plastic cups and graham cracker bags strewn across the yard. Not quite ready for sleep to speed the arrival of morning’s goodbyes, we settle back in front of the embers. The night air has chilled, and I pull my blanket tighter around my shoulders, slowly turning my roasting stick in the fire and watching as the marshmallow remains slowly char and crumble away.          

“I think it’s so funny that you’re, like, a stoner now,” Margot teases, nudging me with her foot. “I would say that I never could have predicted it, but the truth is that you’re kind of a stereotype… this is what happens when you spend like, all of your teenage years being an overachiever.” 

“Umm… so what I feel like you’re trying to tell me is that I peaked in high school,” I frown, feigning indignation.  

“Don’t even start.” She rolls her eyes, and we fall into a comfortable laughter that soon gives way to silence. The fire snaps and flickers. It’s an easy silence that doesn’t demand filling, built from hours of stillness over the years; from sleepovers after lights out, and car rides home with nothing or too much to say. Tonight, though, I watch the flames reflected in Margot’s eyes and know there is something aching to be drawn out.  

“Is it weird, going back tomorrow without having been home?” 

A sad smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Yeah.” 

“I’m sorry, Mar. I can only imagine.” 

“It’s okay. I mean, it was a long time coming, and I think deep down I always knew that.” She’s pulling out blades of grass, breaking them with her nail into smaller and smaller pieces.

“Does part of you feel relieved?” I ask gently.

“No, yeah. Honestly, most of me does. I mean, I knew that when I moved out this time, it had to be for good. It’s just, like… I’ve lived in that house forever, ya know? And…part of me just feels…I don’t know, like I’m leaving my dad behind, too.” The grass fragments pile next to her feet and a quiver threatens to break through her voice. “I guess, like. Fuck. I guess I’m worried that in a few years, I won’t have anything left to remember him by. And that’s really scary.” My hand finds hers and I squeeze it. 

“I’m really, really proud of you. And I think he would be, too.” 

“Thanks. I don’t know. Ugh.” She brushes a tear aside with the back of her hand. 

“And for what it’s worth. I can’t, like, think of a better testament to your dad’s memory than this…this ridiculously kind and smart and, like, super freaking funny person who I’ve known all these years. He’s there wherever you go, Mar. I promise.” 

“Ugh. Jeez, stop trying to do me in, please?” she laughs blearily as her tears begin to brim over the edge. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too. And, seriously, anything you need; you know that.”

We sit for a long moment, hands clasped, my head against her knee. Past the fire, I gaze into the patio beyond as if peering through seran wrap, the air shimmering lazily from the heat. 

“So. What about you?” she prompts into the silence. 

“Uhh, I don’t know. What about me?” 

“C’mon, tell me more about Sienna. I can tell you like her.” And here it is. The tightness in my stomach that the rest of the night had managed to unwind pulls taut again.

“Um, okay. Yeah, I like her. She’s… an artist, she paints. And she makes me really happy. Like, happier than I’ve ever been, honestly, which…is cheesy, I know, but I really mean it.” 

“Abby, that’s amazing. I’m so glad.” 

“Yeah, well don’t be too glad, because I messed it up.” My tone is unfairly harsh; I know that. “Sorry. It’s not your fault, I shouldn’t be rude to you.” 

“I’m sure you didn’t mess it up,” Margot frowns, rightfully defensive. 

“She told me she loved me, right before I left.”

“Oh??”

“And I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh.” I feel her eyes on me, worried. 

“Well, I said something, I said really?, and she said yeah, really, and I said oh, wow, thank you for telling me, and then… yeah, and so then, yeah. Then… that’s when I said nothing.” 

I can’t get it out of my mind. The peace, just before, her hair gently scratching the bottom of my chin as I held her, eyes closed as we drifted somewhere in that blissful fog between sleeping and waking. I could stay like this forever, I remember mumbling. And the hurt, in her eyes, as she sat up to pull on her shirt, and I tried to say it back because I realized too late that I should, of course I should, but the moment had passed. You don’t hesitate over a thing like that. 

Margot brushes tactfully over the horror of what I’ve just told her. 

“Okay. Well, do you? Love her?” she probes. “Because, and obviously you know yourself best, but the way that you described her to me just now, it sure seems like you do.” 

“I…think that I do, yeah.” It’s the first time that I’ve said it out loud. “It’s just, I’m so scared that I’m leading her on. I don’t want to like, use her to figure my own shit out. That’s not fair. And, I don’t know, she does make me happy— and calm, like, I’m really my best around her, I don’t know how else to describe it. But it just doesn’t feel the same.” I realize, with a jolt, what I’ve said. 

“The same as with Jack,” Margot finishes quietly for me. 

“Yeah.” 

Margot sighs. Then she slides off of her chair to join me in the grass. 

“Jack was an asshole, Abby. I believe you loved him, I really do, but… and forgive my bluntness, you were also being, like, big time emotionally manipulated. So if this doesn’t feel the same, that’s…good.”

“Yeah, I know,” I exhale, frustrated. “It’s just, what if because my first experience with love was so pathetically fucked up, like…what if I don’t know what it should look like? I mean, what if I say it and… and I’m wrong, and I hurt her, too?” 

Margot shakes her head gently back and forth, the hint of a smile pressing in her eyes. 

“You won’t. And you know how I know?”

“How?” I comply. 

“Because, silly. Jack wasn’t your first love.” 

She pulls me into a tight hug. And as I close my eyes and melt into her, I bid my arms to express everything my words aren’t strong enough to say; it’s a hug filled with memories, of late nights and early mornings, of secrets and tears, peanut m&ms and apologies and drive-ins and of peace, the kind you can understand, the kind that sticks around.  

 We sit there, blanket wrapped around us, until the fire spits out its last burning ashes. 

⥇

After Margot leaves the next morning, I go upstairs to finish packing my suitcase. Then I pull out my phone and craft a text. 

 can we call? something I need to say to you. that i shld have said a while ago. <3

When the message is sent, I power the phone off and lie back on the purple gingham duvet of my twin bed, drinking in my old room with enough detail to last me for the next few months. Then, when the agitation creeps in, I get up and unlatch my cello case. I should probably get my bow restrung sometime soon, I think. I make a note to schedule the appointment. 

Alone in my childhood bedroom, for an audience of stuffed animals, scruffy t-shirts, and high school trophies, I tighten my bow, adjust my endpin, and start to play.