Impossible Music

by Sean Williams

  Doing one idiotic thing doesn’t make you an idiot, Maeve pronounces. If she doesn’t get that, then she’s the idiot, not you.

  I hesitate to agree, so she writes IDIOT on my arm, then adds (1) Don’t be an above it. I ask her if there’s a (2) and she writes, See (1). It sounds so simple like that. How is it that my little sister is the most help to me these days?

  If G were here, she would say something like You had one job: be a good boyfriend. That, and the coffee.

  * * *

  Professor Dorn sends me a note to ask if I’ve thought over her email. I feel provoked by her reminder and resist the impulse to shoot back a snappy How come it’s okay for you to be slow but not me? Particularly when she’s trying to steal my idea . . .

  But I know I am overreacting, and although I wouldn’t tell her this, I have not given Impossible Music a moment’s thought since I realized my mistake. Something more important has been on my mind, a realization that comes as no small surprise.

  Quickly, I create a new version of “Doom Ballet,” replacing every word lifted from G with random gibberish, and attach it to a reply telling Professor Dorn that I am both pleased she likes the proposals and okay with the idea of bringing in other composers. Reconciled to would be a more honest way of putting that last part, and it took some considerable back-and-forth between heart and head to arrive there, at a place where I could accept giving this up in order to gain something that matters to me even more. At least I know Impossible Music will be in good hands. Professor Dorn is well aware of where I’m coming from. Who knows what amazing take she’ll have that I never thought of?

  Anyway, even if my original plan was feasible, the way I feel right now, I couldn’t write a lick of music if you paid me. That part of me has temporarily withered up and died in the fire of a feeling I hadn’t realized until now was quite this . . . passionate.

  I like G. A lot. And there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to bring her back.

  Great, Professor Dorn responds almost immediately. I force myself to read on.

  Great, great, great. This has to happen quickly, but I don’t think that’s a problem. As you say, the musical parts of the works aren’t heard, so it doesn’t matter if they’re not perfect. Or even new. However, what corners we cut on that front would be more than compensated for by the extra design of the visuals etc., so we need to get cracking. On paper it looks achievable, though.

  I’ll keep you in the loop but won’t burden you with the boring bits. I like doing that stuff on my own anyway. This is the fun part, before everyone else sticks their oar in.

  Good for her, I think, feeling an unexpected resonance with the early days of my deafness. It was torturous and unbearable, but I did bear that torture, and I bore it alone. Life has only become complicated since I let people in.

  Maybe opening up was G’s mistake too. Sharing only leads to losing what little we have left.

  I go into my room, dig out some old novels that do little to deflect me from my problems, and don’t emerge for the whole weekend. G doesn’t respond to my messages. Aunty Lou doesn’t text. Maeve makes endless toasted cheese sandwiches, hoping the smell will lure me out, and slides them under my door when I stay inside. Where once I would have composed solos and deleted them, or just played them entirely in my head, I write and rewrite what I would say to G if she gave me the chance. I get it. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Can you forgive me?

  Eventually I stop doing even that, and just sleep.

  All Hole

  January 19

  The flash of my phone wakes me in the dead hours of the morning. I’m disoriented for a moment when I look at the screen and see that the text is from G.

  Are you awake?

  My hands literally shake. Do I respond or not? Maeve would advise against it, I’m sure, and part of me wants to respond with silence. It would be fitting. That’s what she wants, right, to push me away before I can leave her?

  But it’s not what I want.

  Urd. I mean yes.

  What are you doing?

  Nothing.

  I’m at the old amphitheater by the river. At the Festival Theatre. You know the one?

  Yes.

  Don’t take too long. It’s cold out, and I’m close to convincing myself this is a dumb idea.

  I’m already dressing, mentally wording a note to Mum in case she discovers I’m gone and another to Maeve if I’m not back early and she needs the car.

  On my way.

  * * *

  G is right. It’s an unseasonably cold summer night with very few clouds, still and dark and everything you’d expect this late. The only cars apart from mine belong to cabbies and coppers, so I go easy on the accelerator. It takes all the willpower I possess.

  My one detour is to get coffee from a drive-through. Two cups to go, so not just a peace offering. My thoughts need to be operating at fully caffeinated speed.

  I can’t fuck this up. Whether G’s going to take me back or tear me a new one, she deserves me at my best.

  Haven’t cleaned my teeth. Wearing clothes that haven’t been washed for days. Not so much as a token spray of cologne. Unwashed hair like something out of a goth crime scene.

  Roo is my wingman, in absentia. He goes on dates wearing one item of clothing with a hole in it. Could be a T-shirt, his undies, the leather jacket he picked up from an op shop for a whole ten dollars. Whatever. His reasoning is that if the date doesn’t go well, he can blame it on the clothes. It’s not him. He’s fine. Shame about that hole, though.

  I am all hole tonight.

  * * *

  There are plenty of empty parking lots near the river. I slip into the first one I find and hurry across the grass, past the rotunda, to where she said she’d be waiting. The amphitheater is in shadow. I can’t see her anywhere.

  A panicked thought: What if she’s been attacked? I’d be nervous, standing out here in the dark, unable to hear even the clumsiest approach.

  Then another thought. Could this be an ambush? If she’s enlisted the Doom Kitteh Brawlers to beat the shit out of me, I don’t stand a chance.

  This is ridiculous. I see her now, sitting on the highest step of the amphitheater, no more than thirty feet away. She is dressed in black jeans and hoodie, and the hood is pulled up. That’s why I didn’t spot her at first, despite the streetlights and starlight.

  G is alone.

  The screen of her phone comes on, casting a cool glow across her face. My phone buzzes.

  Don’t come up here, she texts. Stay where you are.

  I do as I’m told, putting the coffee at my feet, opening my voice recognition app and holding it up to my mouth.

  I remember seeing a show here when I was a kid. Maeve got scared and cried so much Mum had to take us home, which made me cry too. I’ve no idea where Dad was.

  I’m talking because I’m nervous, and G isn’t interested in my reminiscences.

  You brought coffee?

  Yup.

  Bit late.

  Or early, depending on whether you’re looking backwards or forwards.

  Downwards. Do you know why we’re here?

  To talk, hopefully.

  Yes, but why here?

  I don’t know. The excellent acoustics?

  Close. The excellent sightlines. You want to talk? Talk.

  With that, she shuts off her phone and puts it into her pocket.

  I stare at her.

  What? she communicates with both eyebrows. Go on.

  Part of me wants to run. This is too important a conversation to have while fumbling for signs and finger-spelling. What about all those speeches I prepared? Half of the words I don’t know the signs for, and the ones I do I’ll probably get in the wrong order!

  Why?

  Why not?

  We stare at each other in mute resentment for a long moment. I want to sign Sorry, meaning for everything, but what if she misunderstands and thinks I’m sorry but I won’t play her little game?

&nb
sp; What if I won’t?

  She breaks the visual silence before I can.

  Okay. I talk, you listen.

  Possible Music

  January 19

  I don’t want to transcribe spelling mistakes and fumbles. What’s to be gained by counting out the seconds while fundamental misunderstandings are painstakingly corrected? No one benefits from an accurate depiction of two people trying to communicate in a language they never wanted to learn in the first place.

  This is the way we talk now. Like it or not, that’s how it is. No apps. No cheats. If we can’t work out this single basic thing, what’s the point of talking at all?

  There’s no shying from anything G tells me, not if I’m to avoid failing her like I did Mum, the night I ditched Sandra. To hear G, I have to look at her. To look at her is to see her, the real her, just as she sees me signing in return, feeling every word.

  Which is hard sometimes when your hair gets in the way.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  You stole from me.

  Steal in Auslan is the left hand held out flat, as though supporting an invisible object. The right hand, cupped or clawed, swoops inward toward the chest, snatching that precious object out of the air.

  I’m sorry. So, so sorry.

  Sorry is not enough. Tell me what you stole.

  Your words. I should’ve asked permission.

  What about the rest? My symptoms, my feelings, my fear, my anger—​

  I know—​

  I gave it to you! Not the entire world!

  I know, and I really am . . . sorry.

  Great, but that’s not the only reason you need to apologize.

  Reason is two fingers held in a scout salute to the forehead, tapped three times. I’ve forgotten what that sign means so she has to spell it out. This single point takes her ten times as long as it normally would to convey.

  What else did I do?

  You cheated on me, for a start.

  What?

  Don’t pretend. I know all about it.

  There’s nothing to know! I have never cheated on anyone, ever.

  Yes, you have. No matter how into someone you think you are, you’ve always been into music more. And music, to you, is like a girlfriend. A bad one. You gave her all your energy and attention—​and now that she’s cut you off, she’s all you can think about. It gets fucking tiring hearing about your great lost love, let me tell you.

  You’re jealous? Of music?

  Not jealous. Irritated. Because I may not be a great girlfriend, but at least I’m aware of my limitations. You, on the other hand, are completely oblivious to yours. I know you bent over backwards to give me space, and I appreciate that. I’m grateful for the time to sort myself out. But it’s not all about me. You have to do some work on yourself as well.

  Wait. I’m confused.

  Confused, appropriately, is a sign that’s far too confusing to describe.

  About what? What I’m saying or how I’m saying it?

  Both?

  Grow up, Simon. Or be serious. Whatever your problem is.

  All right. Why does it bug you that I love music so much?

  Because you’re deaf.

  Lots of deaf people love music.

  I know that! But they don’t love it like you do. They don’t turn their back on everything Deaf culture has learned and shared about their own experience of music. They just get on with enjoying it. Why are you afraid to do that? Why are you special?

  I’m not afraid.

  Yeah, you are. You go to concerts only with people who can hear. When you write music, you try to take it away from everyone by making it “impossible.” What’s wrong with enjoying what it is for you now? Why can’t someone else like it the way it used to be? It can’t be so hard to break up with something that’s causing you so much pain, can it?

  Music is not an abusive relationship.

  So prove it. Move on. Let something else in. And don’t say you let me in, because look what happened. You stole from me to feed your vampire ex! It frustrates me so much that you don’t see it.

  I remember all those days recording solos and making Deafman for an audience smaller than my first gig. Were they one final fling or the actions of an addict in denial?

  But what about trying to study composition with Professor Dorn? That can’t be completely for nothing. I put so much into it. So much of me . . . and of her.

  We’ll be even if I give up music—​is that what you’re saying? Stop talking about it, burn all the things that remind me of it—​or you’ll push me away like you’ve pushed everyone else?

  Don’t put this on me. We’re talking about you.

  I made one mistake—​

  If it was just one, I’d find it easier to forgive. What about all those times you drift off, and it’s obvious you’re thinking about it?

  I never—​

  That time I was in hospital? When Aunty Lou gave you my notes?

  Shamefaced, I remember. That was when I came up with the very first impossible music idea. How many other occasions have there been?

  I can’t change who I am, I retort with some heat, because being angry is easier than admitting that maybe she has a point.

  Not all change is bad, she says. You act like giving up music would be a negative. What if hiding behind music is the real negative? Find a way to make giving it up positive. Try saying that music is different but not impossible at all. Try possible music, for a change. Try—​

  I know what you’re doing. My temper fully flares now. She’s sounding like Sandra channeling KO. You’re talking about Deafhood.

  That surprises her, me knowing something about this.

  Yes, I am. How did you—​

  I’m not a complete idiot.

  Who said you’re an idiot?

  So what are you saying?

  That things can’t go on the way they were. It took me almost dying to realize that.

  Anger turns to sorrow with a screech of mental brakes.

  Holding a palm forward to indicate stop, I bring her coffee nearly to the bottom of the amphitheater steps and back away to drink my own. It’s gone cold, but the hit of caffeine and sugar sorts me out a little. G comes down and squats there to drink hers. Is it a good sign that our eyes are on the same level now? Or is the second step simply more sheltered than where she was before? I can see the tops of trees swaying on the other side of the river. The desert night air is cool and bitter.

  G puts down her cup so she can sign with both hands.

  You never asked me why I did it. Tried to kill myself, I mean.

  We are back at that precipice. I want to turn and run, but I will follow where she leads. She must have a reason for bringing this up now.

  I didn’t want to pry. Wasn’t it your treatment failing?

  Partly, but that wasn’t the trigger. The trigger was you. Wait—​this is not your fault. You were trying to help, and I think you did, although it didn’t look like it at the time. That day we were in the university together, I started to write “Being deaf is stupid” on your phone. I stopped because deafness isn’t anything. It just is what it is. And then you changed it to “Tinnitus is,” and I felt this crippling mass come down on me so hard I could barely move. Tinnitus IS, I told myself, and it’s never going to NOT be. Because the treatment wasn’t working, and how could I possibly cope with that? Who could expect me to? After a few days of limping along, I’d had enough. I tried to explain it to you in that email I sent on Christmas Eve, so you wouldn’t blame me for what I did. Mostly, though, I wanted someone to know what I was going through.

  I move to go to her, recognizing the feeling of that “crippling mass,” but she waves me back.

  Neither of us is perfect. You’re the one I’m angry with, though, so you’ll just have to hear me out. Tinnitus is what it is, like deafness. But life isn’t over, as I’m proving in my own way—​by going to Deaf social club to meet other Deaf people, for one. Did you ever try th
at?

  You know I didn’t.

  Right. Just like you’ve never gone back to deaf class. You don’t know what you’re missing out on, because you’ve never actually tried. Because music won’t let you. It’s like . . . like you really think that if you become Deaf you’ll be giving up music entirely, and it’ll somehow be your fault—​but the only person telling you to give up music entirely is you, Simon. You without music is like me without swearing, but I can swear just fine in sign language. Cock! Shit! Balls! See? You don’t have to cut out everything you love to make room for Deafness. You just need to . . . rearrange things a little. And if you don’t do that, you’re going to slip through the cracks, and that WILL be your fault. You won’t belong to the Deaf community, and the hearing won’t accept you either. What reason will you have to live then? Taking music from people? Stealing other people’s stories? Feeding the vampire? I don’t think that’s going to be enough. I think you’ll end up exactly where I was before Christmas, if you’re not already there. But if you do—​if you REALLY do want that—​just say, and I’m out of here. What do you WANT, Simon?

  The signs for I-want-you and I-love-you are so similar that for a moment I am tongue-tied. Hand-tied. Afraid of revealing my raw underbelly, or of saying it wrong. Or of getting it wrong.

  Maybe she understands anyway. It’s her turn to look a little shamefaced.

  I know, I set a bad example in the beginning, when you were actually coming to class. If we hadn’t connected the way we did, maybe I would have worked all this out sooner, and maybe you would have too. But this is the way we talk now. Like it or not, that’s how it is.

  Is that why you went back to deaf class in secret?

  Secret? It wasn’t a secret. You just didn’t know. And why would I tell you? You made it clear you weren’t interested. You were busy doing your own thing, your Imponderable Moodswings.