Whisper to Me(119)

I didn’t even realize I was just around the corner from the plush warehouse until I saw your Ford F-150 turn the corner in front of me. It was unmistakable—white, with the Piers logo on the side, and of course your face, your beautiful face, behind the wheel.

You didn’t see me; you kept on driving toward the warehouse.

On an impulse, I started running. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I thought I was going to achieve. It had something to do with talking to your dad, I think, that new insight I had into your life. I wished you’d told me about him. About … where you came from.

I don’t know.

I just wanted you to know I was sorry.

About everything.

And that you … I guess I wanted you to know that you could be whoever you wanted to be. I know, I know. The arrogance of it. Like I was a counselor or something.

Which brings me full circle back to the sorry thing.

Anyway.

I veered around the corner, nearly knocked over an old woman pushing a Wonder Wheeler beach cart. I jumped some cardboard boxes that had been left out behind a Chinese restaurant, pounded down the street in my Converses, feeling the hardness of the concrete below my feet.

You were just pulling up outside the warehouse doors when I came running up, panting. You saw me, frowned, and put the pickup back in gear. You looked down as you started turning the Ford, to leave again. The afternoon sun caught the windows of the office block across the street, fired them like lava flow.

Suddenly I couldn’t let you go, not without speaking to you one more time anyway.

I sprinted around to the front of the truck, banged my hands down on the hood as the big Ford began to lurch forward. I saw your lips mouth a curse, and the pickup juddered to a stop. You opened the door.

“Cass, get out of the way,” you said.

“No. I just want to—”

“I don’t care.”

You started to close the door again, and I started to cry. My eyes were burning; I felt like I was choking. I felt like the anger on your face was the worst thing I had seen.

“Please,” I said. “Please. Just one minute.”

The scene in front of me blurred with tears—the truck, the street, the windows of apartments, the blocks of the air-conditioning units. I heard rather than saw your door open again, and then you were standing in front of me.

“What, Cass? What do you want?”

“I just want to tell you that I’m sorry.”

You spread your hands, like, whatever. “Fine. Can I go now?”

“I saw your dad,” I said.

Silence.

“He said you were training for the National team,” I said.

A shrug. “Just tryouts.”

“Still. You never told me that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Cass.”

I could hear the bitterness in your voice. I really didn’t know what I thought I was doing, what it was going to change.

“But I wanted to say … ,” I said. “I wanted to say … you don’t have to do what he wants you to do. I mean, you don’t have to live his dream. You could be a musician. You don’t even like sw—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Music! Your passion! I tried to give your dad your banjo or whatever it was and he wouldn’t even—”

“My banjo? I don’t have a banjo.”

“Ukelele, then.”

“I don’t have a ukulele either.”

“But … ,” I said. “It was on top of the wardrobe.”

“Cass, I don’t have a uke or a banjo, and I didn’t leave anything on the wardrobe. Just my necklace.” You touched your chest. “Which … um … thank you for finding.”

“Oh,” I said. An image came to me as a sudden flash—the hipster kid who had stayed in the apartment last summer. The one with the beard and the super-tight jeans. He was just the kind of guy who would have played a ukulele. Or a banjo. “But the swimming, you don’t have to—”

You shook your head sadly. “Cass, you don’t understand anything. You think my dad made me stop playing music? I’m my own ******* person, Cass. I can make my own decisions. I chose to stop playing, at home anyway. Because I could see how much it hurt him. Don’t you see? I chose.”

“Oh,” I said again. I sounded so dumb. “But you could go to music school, you don’t have to take the swimming scholarship, you could—”

You laughed, a hollow, bitter laugh that reminded me unpleasantly of my dad. “Colleges give sports scholarships,” you said. “That’s just the way it is. People watch American Idol, and they think there’s money in music, but they’re not even being logical. I mean, most of the contestants don’t win. That’s the whole thing. No one makes money from music. Hardly anyone anyway. I wanted to go to college. My dad couldn’t pay. So I took a swim scholarship.”

“But you’re so talented.”

Another laugh. “I passed a dude busking on the street yesterday, playing sax. He was, like, one of the best players I’ve ever heard. And he was busking, Cass. People don’t want to pay for music. But people will pay for sports.” You shrugged.

I looked down at my dirty Converses. I felt like such an idiot. I had shouted at your dad and for what? For no reason at all.