The Mozart Season (17 page)

“Speaking of China,” Jessica said, “did I tell you bamboo is a big important symbol there?”

Sarah said, “Of what?”

“Bending without breaking. It's a symbol of that. Like Mr. Trouble,” Jessica told us.

When I got home from the zoo, Heavenly had thrown up in Bro David's shoe and he was putting up signs all over the house with pictures of headless cats on them.

9

By the time I'd had my day off and had actually missed Mozart—really missed him—there were other things to practice, too. The Youth Orchestra was probably going to play the last of the Waterfront Concerts because my mother's orchestra didn't have its contract yet and the musicians would probably be locked out, and we had three rehearsals scheduled. I felt nervous about not having Lois there, calling me her Little Buddy. I'd have to get used to a whole new stand partner.

The music librarian at my father's department called me and said her staff couldn't find a Waltz Tree or Waltz Three or Waltz in Three, and asked me how soon I needed it. I didn't know what to say. It had been lost for probably more than fifty years. He didn't want to die without finding it. I didn't even know if he was sick.

I'd started depending on my midnight bike rides. I saw old people walking their dogs, once a lady pushing a sleeping baby in a stroller, and I saw a man sitting on a bench in the park flossing his teeth, all alone. I saw people coming home and putting their cars in their garages, and a couple of people coming out of their houses with lunch boxes, going to work on late shifts. And the bushes and trees with their leafy shadows in the night, and once in a while a rabbit scampering in the park. One night I saw a man and lady arguing beside a tree. She said, “You always do that, every single time.…” and he said “
You're
the one that always” something. Once I saw a porcupine in front of me on the trail, going along in its slow waddle. And usually there were cats crouching or springing, their lemon-shaped green eyes eerie in the dark. They were little stories I was seeing; they helped me get unfolded inside. The night riding helped me go to sleep.

But somebody saw me one night and phoned my mother the next day. I heard it happen.

“
Our
Allegra? No— No. She was fast asleep in bed. You what? She
what?
Allegra, come here right now— Allegra? She— No, no, I had no idea— It was
what
time? I can't believe— Alan, come here— On her
bi
cycle? Are you sure? Thank you, thanks. Thanks. Of course. I just didn't—Thanks, good-bye.

“Alan, you won't believe— I can't believe— Allegra, where were you at seven minutes after midnight last night?”

My father and I had both come almost running. We stood in the living room listening to my mother's voice all choppy and afraid. I took a deep breath.

“In Laurelhurst Park,” I said. I tried to say it as quietly as I could, and I was hoping the neighbor was wrong, that I'd actually been home in bed.

My father took a few seconds to understand. My mother put her hand over her mouth and leaned against the end of the sofa. They both stared at me. My mother's hand fell down from her face. “On your bicycle,” she said.

I felt my head pull back into my neck. “Yes,” I said.

“By herself,” my mother said to my father.

He shook his head. My mother nodded hers. It was very quiet in the living room. My father looked at me and believed my mother. He leaned toward me with his whole body and said, “Why?” I felt terrible for both my parents, being so afraid of something.

I couldn't think of a single reason that would make any sense. I didn't dare tell them about the porcupine waddling across the trail. Watching stray cats when I could be in my room watching Heavenly wasn't logical, either. I couldn't tell them I'd seen a man sitting on a park bench all by himself flossing his teeth.

My mother said, “What reason could you have? At seven minutes after midnight?”

“No reason's good enough,” my father said.

And then I was angry that I was supposed to have a good enough reason. Adults don't always have good enough reasons for what they do. I didn't say anything. I thought of a rabbit I'd seen, with its long feet kicking out behind as it scurried under a bush. I couldn't mention the rabbit.

“All the pernicious things out there,” my father said, accusing me.

“I can't believe you'd do such a…” My mother didn't finish what she was going to say.

“It's the
most
irre
spons
ible
thing,
” my father said.

I opened my mouth. “I'm supposed to be a child and stay in my bed at night and I'm supposed to be an adult and be responsible. How can I be everything at the same time?” I heard my angry voice blowing through the room, and I thought of terrible punishments they might give me. They could ground me completely, telephone and all. Or even take my bike away.

“This is Deirdre's influence,” my father said suddenly, like a verdict.

“Deirdre, who doesn't even know how to ride a bike?” my mother said very fast.

“This living on the edge. This middle-of-the-night, this wandering around. I don't know—we've got a lunatic soprano in one room and a dish full of dead bugs in the other—I just don't know.” My father was exasperated. “There's something not normal going on. Normal people go to bed at night.”

“Alan—that's not fair. It's not because of—”

My parents went on talking to each other. The front door opened and closed, and David walked right past us and up the stairs.

I followed David. I don't think my parents even saw me leave. He went into his room and tried to close the door but I pushed it open and went right in after him and closed it behind me. I stood in the middle of the room and just breathed.

“What started all that?” he said and sat on a chair at his desk. The last time we'd seen Daddy and Mommy this upset was a long time ago, and it was about David getting his driver's license.

“I went out and rode my bike in the middle of the night and they found out about it.”

He looked at me. “Where'd you ride?” He has very intense eyes; they're almost black.

“Around. Laurelhurst. Around.”

“The park?”

I nodded my head.

“You know in New York you'd last four minutes—”

“This is Portland. I was on my bike. I could go faster than anybody that wanted to— And then Daddy said normal people go to bed at night, and he called Deirdre a lunatic, and.… Don't you think it's normal to go bike riding?”

He swiveled on the chair, which makes an awful screeching sound. He leaned back, looking like a lawyer in a movie. “I'll tell you what isn't normal. Practicing the violin six hours a day isn't normal. Playing nursemaid to a loony soprano isn't normal.” He put his hands together—he was looking more like a movie lawyer all the time. “Trying to track down a Waltzing Tree for a man who's lost his mind isn't normal.”

David can be a very cruel person. I asked him, almost in my regular voice, “Is going bike riding normal?”

He swiveled in the chair again, as if he liked hearing it make that screeching sound. “In fact, Legs, you want to know what would be normal?”

I was still standing in the middle of the room. “Yes, Mr. Wonderful. Tell me.”

He picked up a ballpoint pen. “You and your girlfriends could be mall babies, slinking from store to store and popping your gum—and buying useless things because if you didn't buy 'em you'd die. That'd be normal.” He twirled the ballpoint pen on one finger, like a baton.

It was the first funny thing I'd heard in hours. I sat down on his bed. “Mall babies?” I said.

“Capital M, capital B. Mall Babies from the black lagoon.” He tossed the pen across the desk. “Quintets of 'em, octets, battalions. They've got to be seen in every mall in the free world by the time they die, and it's—” He was bending over laughing. “It's hard work.”

We sat there and laughed and laughed and shook, and his chair squeaked little tiny squeaks, and I remembered the day he'd warned me about letting the competition make me a crazoid, and pretty soon we were both just sitting there looking at each other. I tried to imagine both of us in our little blue “Symphony Kid” T-shirts, dancing in the grass all those years ago. Mommy's and Daddy's voices downstairs were getting louder and then softer and then louder, but I couldn't hear the words. I opened David's door very quietly to hear what was going on.

“Why are you yelling at me?” Mommy said, almost yelling.

“Because I love you!” Daddy said, almost yelling.

Then there was absolute silence. I was scared and relieved at the same time. David and I weren't supposed to hear that, and I looked at him, and I had a feeling of being spies together. I tried to close the door silently and stood against it, holding the knob back so there wouldn't be a click. He whispered, “Did I tell you the world was crazy?” and picked up the ballpoint pen again. But he didn't swivel his chair; he didn't want to make a sound.

I had to keep holding the doorknob to keep it quiet. “Is all this my fault?” I whispered.

“Legs,” he whispered back, “use your brain. What if your little kid went out alone in the middle of the night—you know what I saw in New York?”

“Yes, I know you saw somebody selling drugs.”

“Right on the street—”

“I know it, David. You told me and told me.”

“They're getting old, just try to keep 'em happy,” he whispered. “You know what you are? You're an endangered species. They're just trying to keep you alive.”

“What do you mean, I'm an endangered species?” We both kept on whispering.

“What I said. They could have a Mall Baby instead of you. You
care
about something, and it gets them all excited.” He looked at my hand on the doorknob and went on whispering. “They probably love you so much they're terrified.” He squeaked the chair again. “Besides, they've completely forgotten it's their fault you're not normal.”

“They let you do anything you—”

“I'm not a child,” he said. He can even be cruel when he's whispering.

“What does ‘pernicious' mean?” I asked him.

“Evil,” he said. He turned on his African music.

I opened the door and went downstairs. Daddy and Mommy were holding each other tight, standing right beside the table where Mommy has her dead bugs and magnifying glass. I didn't even try to be quiet. Mommy had her back to me. She was holding tight to Daddy, and she was snuffling, “Hopeth, believeth, endureth all things,” and then she said in her regular voice, without even turning around, “Allegra, you will not go out in the middle of the night again ever, ever in your life.”

“With or without your bicycle,” Daddy said, looking around her head at me, still with his arms tight around her.

“Even when I'm forty years old?” I said.

“Allegra Leah, this is not something you can be flippant about,” Daddy said. He broke his hold on Mommy.

My mother said, “It's time to tell you about Deirdre.” She sounded as if she were blaming me for something.

“What's Deirdre got to do with—”

“Just listen,” she said. “Deirdre had a baby once, and the baby got killed, it was a little girl, and she had a husband, too, and somebody hit the baby, in her stroller, it was a drunk driver—actually, it was drugs and alcohol both, and—” My mother looked down at the floor and shook her head fast, as if she were trying to shake out bad pictures. She looked back up at me. “And that's why she's the way she is—and—and that's why.”

I saw Deirdre in my mind, crumpled on the floor in front of Daddy's cello, saying she always ruins everything, and hissing at me, “No drugs!” and then I saw her with her arm around the little girl in the Rose Garden, and I saw her mumbling in the car on the way to her concert, and I saw her singing the concert, with her eyes and her mouth wide open in those gorgeous, ringing notes, and I saw the word “genius” in the newspaper, and I saw everybody applauding while she bowed, and I saw her with her raincoat on so she could throw up before she sang.

“I didn't know anything about that,” I said.

“Of course you didn't,” my mother said.

I looked at my mother. That was what she was afraid of: that I'd die on my bike in the park and she'd end up like Deirdre, needing to be held and rocked and put to bed. I looked at my father. “Why do you make fun of her, then?” I said.

He rubbed his nose with his thumb and looked down at Mommy's collection of dead bugs. “No good reason,” he said.

My mother looked at him quietly. “It's your father's way of pretending it never happened, pretending Deirdre never had such a tragedy,” she said. Her words came out very slowly. “Because—if he admits it really happened, he'll have to admit it could happen to his children, too—” She stood there looking at him. I could hear her breathing. “A person can take only so much, Allegra.”

I watched my father pick up one of Mommy's dead striped beetles and hold it in his hand and look at it and then put it back in the dish with the others. He looked as though he was wondering if Mommy was right about him.

“I want you to grow up strong and healthy and happy,” he said to me in a very soft voice. “I want you to be someone who—”

“How about right now?” David's voice came from behind me, in the doorway. “Maybe you could worry a little bit less about what she's gonna be and notice she's right here, right now. Everybody's alive in this house. As of this morning. Everything doesn't have to be a matter of life or death. How about taking some of the heat off?” I kept my eyes on my father. Then I heard David walk away and out of the house. Everybody else just stood there in the living room, listening to the front door close.