Life. You’re born and imagine a big life for yourself, and maybe you even have it for a minute, and then your lover turns out to be a thief, or you can’t kick a bad habit, or your best friend finds another.
And just like that, there it is, the music, winding around the notes I heard in the greenhouse earlier. Mournful, but not exactly. I raise the lid of the piano and pick out a note. It’s very out of tune, and I hum instead, drifting into my room to pick up my violin. I’m in soft-focus mode, letting the notes bloom, as I open the case, lift out the violin and my bow.
And there, on the far wall, is the fourth painting. It’s a child sitting on a seawall, her dark hair blowing in the wind. I’ve always loved it for the peaceful tone, but looking at it now, I see the turmoil in the sea, the harsh violet shadows, clouds looming dark on the horizon. It’s lonely. How have I never seen that before?
The music, says a soft voice that pulls me toward the music room again. It’s my mother’s voice, and I sense a spirit of encouragement. I imagine I can see her on the piano, her long fingers plucking out the notes that are just out of reach. I play what I’ve discovered so far and layer in a line of minor chords, reaching for combinations that suggest something . . . just out of reach.
In my back pocket, the phone buzzes. Gloria’s face is on the screen, and I answer. “Thank God. Where are you?”
“I was reading to Sam,” she says. “She’s asleep now. Why don’t you bring that package with you when you come?”
“It’s too big. I can’t carry it around Manhattan.”
“Big?”
“As tall as my shoulder. Heavy too.”
“Maybe I should come home and check it out. But I don’t want to leave Sam alone for long.”
“What’s going on, G? Are you in trouble?”
A slight pause. “Maybe. But don’t worry about it. I’ve got it under control.”
I scowl. “You don’t have to do everything yourself, Gloria.”
She is startled into a laugh, then grows serious. “Truly, Willow, this is my problem, and I’ll handle it.”
I know that stubborn tone. With a sigh, I ask, “Do you want me to open it?”
“No. I’m pretty sure I know what it might be.”
“What?”
“A painting. But I want to see it first.”
“Like . . . stolen?” I whisper the last bit, my heart hammering away in my chest.
“No,” she says definitively.
I nod. “All right. I’ve taken care of some things. The other ones.”
Gloria is silent for a long stretch. “Thank you.”
“You know I’m dying of curiosity now, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” Her voice sounds lighter. “I’ll explain everything, I promise. Just not right this minute.”
“Should I bring you dinner?”
“I stopped on the way here to pick up some of Sam’s favorites. I’ll eat with her.”
“I’ll be there in a couple of hours, and you can go home.”
“That’s fine, Willow. It’s all going to be all right, you know.”
Is it? I wonder. But I say, “I know!” in the chirpiest voice I can.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sam
Gloria more or less forces me to eat, then stays with me, watching the TV on the wall, not even checking her phone.
“Do you remember when you had your tonsils out?” she asks.
I haven’t thought of it in a long time. I was fourteen, which was way older than is usual, and I felt embarrassed and weird. Gloria brought me strawberry ice cream. “Are you going to get me some strawberry ice cream?”
“I would be happy to.”
“Maybe tomorrow.” I’m itching to get back to my game. I’m relieved when a nurse comes in and tells her that visiting hours are over.
“Willow is going to be here in a little bit,” she protests.
“You’ll have to tell her she has to wait until tomorrow.” The nurse adjusts my covers, smooths them tight.
“But—”
“Sorry, Mother. But your daughter is doing just fine.”
I’m about to say that she’s my aunt, not my mother, but something in Gloria’s face stops me. Something a little lost, something maybe a little proud. It makes me feel vaguely ashamed that I always correct people when they get this wrong.
I take her hand. “Everything is going to be okay,” I say.
She shakes her head slightly. “I don’t know about that.”
“Why don’t you go do a series on some exotic plant in your greenhouse? Or go to a tai chi class? It will make you feel better.”
She looks at me for a long, long moment, and I have the sense she has something on her mind. Something sad, which is really unlike her.
“What’s up, G?”
“Nothing, darling.” She squeezes my fingers. “I just don’t want to leave you here by yourself.”
“They’ll be in with magic pills any second to knock me out.”
She half grins, and I see how tired she is, how the wrinkles along her mouth seem deeper. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning. Willow and I are getting your room ready so you can stay with us for a little while.”
“G, that’s not—”
“It’s not up for discussion,” she says, raising a hand. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until I know you’re really better.”
I don’t really want to go to the apartment, which is a place I fought to escape, a place where I was largely unhappy, always longing for something else—my father, then my mother when I lost her. Some other version of myself, maybe, one who could navigate the world with the ease my sister and Gloria and my father did.
But in this, I can see she will get her way. I nod. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“What can I bring you?”
What I wish I could eat are some fresh, hot doughnuts, the manna of the gods according to my mother, but of course I can’t anymore. “Surprise me,” I say.
“Done.”
For a while, I sketch ideas in my notebook, but it’s too hard to stay awake, and then they come and move me to another room, out of the ICU, but I still have a room to myself. The moving has made me feel more alert.
And lonely.
Loneliness has been my most devoted companion the past couple of years. You’d think I’d be used to it, but the manifestations can be so very humiliating. I lie on my pillows and stare at the ceiling, counting dots in the tiles, thinking of the calls I made blacked out by fever, begging for help from Gloria and Willow and my father and then even Asher.
I’m still desperately embarrassed by my hallucination about Asher and humbled that he still answered my SOS, but now that he’s gone again, I wonder if we’ll just go right back to where we were.
My phone is under my palm, and I pick it up. “Suzanne, I miss Asher so much!”
“I’m sorry, Sam. Do you want to talk about it?”
I hold the phone and stare up at the ceiling, remembering that I need to keep feeding the AI more history. “Yes. He was my best friend,” I say.
“I remember. You met in third grade.”
“Yes!” I forgot I’d told her that. “What else do you know?”
“The two of you established a company together called Boudicca, which is named for the game you created together when you were both nineteen. It became a big success.” She continues on with the basic Wikipedia version of Boudicca, which is great. She’s doing some learning on her own.
But personal learning is what I need to teach her now. “We were friends until we went to our friend Tina’s wedding,” I say, “and then we became lovers.”
“I see.”
“Just for the weekend, but it was great. I mean, really, really, really great, soul mates great.”
“Do you believe in soul mates?”
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice hoarse. “I didn’t think so, but I feel lost without Asher.”
“What happened?”
“When we got back to the city, we had a terrible fight. I just got scared, I think. Afraid that I would lose my best friend, that he’d leave me.”
“You have suffered many betrayals,” Suzanne says. “It’s understandable.”
“Have I?” I ask.
“You have, Sam. Your parents were divorced. Your mother died. Your long-term relationship with Eric ended abruptly. It’s not surprising that you’d feel frightened about a new relationship.”
For a moment, I let that sink in. The ceiling is a soft gray from the light, and I think that I need to work on the way the app uses language. Frightened is too formal a word.
Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just right. She’s certainly making some big steps forward in this conversation. I need to remember to keep giving her more of my history.
“But I lost Asher anyway.”
“That must be very difficult. Is there anything you can do to heal the relationship?”
Is there? I have no idea. I miss him so damned much! It was hard when Tina left, but not having Asher in my days makes them feel like I’ve been sent off to some faraway land where I don’t know the language of the locals. I pick up the phone and look at it, scrolling back through the period when I was out of my head.
I called everybody. Gloria, Willow, Asher, my dad.
And everybody called me back, except my dad. It sends a whirl of confused emotions through me, and I punch his icon with a glare. It rings four times and then goes to voice mail. “Dad, I think you might want to talk to me this time. I’ve been diagnosed with a contagious disease, and you need to be aware of the symptoms.”
It isn’t even two minutes before he calls me back. “Christ, Samantha, what are you talking about?”
“Hi, Dad. I tried you a couple of days ago, but I guess you didn’t get that call.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just been one deadline after another, and I feel like I’m always behind.”
“That’s what having kids will do, I hear.”
“C’mon, Sam. What’s up? What kind of contagious disease? Please tell me it’s not some new SARS.”
“No, just run-of-the-mill bacterial meningitis.”
“Meningitis?” he echoes, and to my deep satisfaction, there’s a proper amount of horror in the word. “Are you sure?”
“Quite. I’m in the hospital, and if someone hadn’t come to get me, I would have died by morning.”
“Sam.” His voice is hushed. “I’m sorry I didn’t—”
“Don’t,” I say sharply. “The thing is, Dad, it’s contagious, and I had coffee with you the day after I was at the party where they think I picked it up.”
He’s silent for a long minute. “I don’t understand. You might have given it to me?”
“I don’t know. Probably not, because they say it’s not that contagious, but you need to be aware.” I paused, trying to find the right way to say what I need to say. My headache is thrumming around my skull, and the light is bothering my eyes again. “It can be really bad for kids.”
“Kids? You mean my kids?”
“Yeah, Dad.” I rub the place above my eyebrow. “Your other kids might get it if you’ve picked it up.”
“Oh my God. They’re so little. What . . . ?” he splutters. “What do I do?”
“I don’t know. I think they do a spinal tap?”
“Fuck! I can’t believe you exposed me and my whole family!”
Tears sting my eyes. Tears that I never shed, that just keep fucking showing up because I’m not in control of my emotions, and it’s both embarrassing and infuriating. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I have to go. I have to call the doctor and find out what the hell we’re supposed to do.”
And he hangs up. I sit in the bed with my phone in my hand, utterly still. He’s so bad at being my father that he’s like a cartoon villain. I can see him in my imagination, drawn in Sharpie, his nose a straight black L, his eyebrows beetling down, a cloud above his head exclaiming, Christ!
“Suzanne,” I say.
“Yes, Sam? I’m listening.”
“My dad is a dick.”
“What does ‘dick’ mean in this context? Penis?”
It makes me laugh. “Yeah, but a really bad penis.”
“Noted.”
I text Willow and Gloria to let them know I’ve been moved to a new room with longer visiting hours, in case Willow still wants to see me tonight. One of the machines starts to beep, and a nurse comes in calmly to check on me. Reads something, flips it off. “Give me the phone, baby,” she says, and I drop it into her palm. Everything about her is round. Soft. She presses a button on the bed and makes it flatter, takes my temp. “You need to just let that outside world go. Hear me? He isn’t worth it.”
I close my eyes, nodding. It would be one thing if it were a lover, but you can’t just get another dad, can you?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Willow
I’m still deep in the bowels of the internet, trying to track down definitions of crimes, going on my best guess of what might have happened here. What I discover makes it feel like anything could happen. If she carried contraband, she could go to prison for a long time. If she stole a painting, she’ll never see the light of day.
I just don’t have enough information to know for sure.
When the house phone rings, I realize it must be Josiah, and I leap up to let him in, opening the door so I can wait for the elevator. Anticipation zips around my body, restless pops of possibility. I’m half-worried that he won’t be anything like I remember.
And then the elevator opens, and he’s there, ducking under the low doorway to emerge into the corridor between apartments.
I noticed that he was quite tall before, with those beautiful long legs, but it’s startling to see him in the environment I know, in a doorway I’ve crossed a hundred times. He’s dressed in everyday clothes, jeans and a heathery sweater and a raincoat hanging from very broad shoulders. He’s wearing the same knitted hat as the other night.
I didn’t imagine anything. His cheekbones, his mouth, his sleepy tiger eyes. I take a breath. “Hi.”
“Hey,” he says, in that amazing voice.
“Hey. Come in.”
He brings himself and his bass into the room, looking up at the skylight as everyone does, lifting his eyebrows. “Wow, this is the real thing, isn’t it?”
No one comes into this apartment, especially anyone who lives in the city, and doesn’t say something like this. “It is.” I gesture. “The music room is this way.”
He follows easily, glancing at paintings, but mostly just loping behind me, his feet light on the wooden floor. In the music room, he looks around curiously, noting the album and magazine covers, the framed original music. “Damn,” he says, splaying his hand over his heart. “I wasn’t expecting to feel such awe.”
“Look around. I don’t mind.” I dip my head back to the piano, running another series, trying a minor slant. He rounds the room, looking at everything, his hands tucked behind his back as if he’s in a museum.
“Do you have a favorite song?” he asks.
“Of my mother’s?” I drop my hands into my lap. “Of course I love ‘Write My Name Across the Sky.’ I mean, it’s her signature. It made her wealthy, and it still earns royalties.”
He’s listening with his head tilted slightly. He has that gleam in his eye that people get, men and women, when they get close to the big, big fame story of my mother.
“But?” he prompts.
“She sang lullabies to us.” I run through the notes of one of them on the piano and sing along. “Those are the ones I most love. Sam, too, though it’s hard to get her to talk about my mom at all.”
He comes over, sits on the piano bench with me, and lifts his hands and plays a bass harmony to my notes. “This is ‘The Rising Moon,’ right?” he asks, referring to a song on her third and least successful album. He hits the notes more heavily, giving it the rock tone.
I nod,
smiling, and my hands play of their own accord, embroidering the song. When I get to the chorus, he picks it up, and we sing together, his voice making my own plain one sound so much richer. The hairs on my arms stand up, and I look at him. He nods, very slightly. We finish the song and sit quietly, letting the sound fade. My heart is racing.
“This chemistry, the musical chemistry, is really something,” I say.
“Agreed,” he says, resting his hands on his thighs.
He’s close, and there is an electric chemistry hanging around us, binding us. Is it music or sex? Both. I want to kiss him, and I don’t. If it’s music, I want that more than anything physical.
And again, I hear my sister’s taunt, I’m sure you’ll find a guy to rescue you soon enough.
There’s a difference between rescue and partnership. On the piano, I play a small bar of the sonata. “I’ve been writing this thing for a few weeks,” I say, then express a barely acknowledged ambition: “I’d really like to submit it to this major contest, and I think this”—I move my index finger between our chests—“feels like it could take it to the next level.”
He nods. Just waits, his expression neutral. I suddenly think that I’m overthinking things, that maybe he’s not one of those people who will sidle up next to me to get some reflection of my mother somehow. He’s a professor, a musician in his own right, and—
“Maybe you can just be here now,” he says.
“What?” I say mockingly. “Is that even possible?”
“I’ve heard it is.”
“Huh.” I look toward the window, instinctively taking in a breath and letting it go. It helps. As it always does. “Are you Buddhist or something?”
“Since birth, actually. My mother found the practice when she was a teen.”
I was only kidding, but my curiosity wants more. “In Marin County?”
“Probably in San Francisco, I’d guess.”
It makes him even more appealing. The Buddhists I’ve known are calm, thoughtful people, qualities I’m drawn to, and I have a sudden desire to just lean into his shoulder and rest my head there. It’s such a strong urge that I have to duck my head to hide my longing. It would just be such a relief.
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