A Song for the Road

by Kathleen Basi

  Miriam couldn’t breathe. All the information Blaise had shared with her had come from Gus? She’d assumed he was just doing his homework. Yet all that time, Blaise had been talking to his biological father. Without even knowing it. The enormity of it made her head spin.

  “I’ve never been in such ongoing contact with a potential student before, but it just sort of happened. It was as natural as breathing … like, I don’t know … taking a nephew under my wing. But it truly never occurred to me that you had no idea he’d reached out to me at all. I don’t understand why he didn’t talk about it with you.”

  Her body felt like jelly, incapable of holding its own shape. Entitled, arrogant, clueless in his privilege—all these things she’d known of Gus, but this—this she couldn’t fathom. All these years spent agonizing over what she did or didn’t owe him. And now she discovered he’d waltzed in and taken a piece of her son without her consent—without even her knowledge.

  “Anyway”—Gus swallowed and squared his shoulders— “I wanted you to know that before I propose this.”

  “Propose what?”

  “What you’re trying to do is impossible, Miriam. I know what it takes to write a substantial work. Doing it while you’re on the road—it’s just not possible.”

  Miriam straightened, indignant, but Gus—as usual—thought his own words the most important in any conversation. “I’ve been working on it too. The sonata, I mean. From the copy Blaise sent me. I was totally ready to give it up. To let you do it yourself, even if it wouldn’t be as good as I could make it. But if you’re struggling, please let me help. The last week, I’ve been playing with the excerpts in your videos. We could collaborate. You can come to San Francisco. Or … if you’re ready to wash your hands of it—I mean, you’re not a composer, actually—I could do it for you, if you want.”

  And now, at last, he shut up.

  Miriam stared at him, her body on fire with rage. This sonata was Blaise’s gift to her—his last gift. Gus had no place in it. Gus, with his monologues and micro-aggressions, the insults he gave without even realizing it.

  “Over my dead body,” she snapped. The words echoed around the large room; everyone in the Gathering Haus ceased talking and working and turned to stare at them.

  Gus blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  “Haven’t you taken enough from me?” she shouted. “This is not yours! It’s mine. Do you understand? This trip, the sonata. Mine. You can’t have him! Do you understand me?”

  He looked genuinely alarmed. He raised a placating hand. “Miriam—I’m not trying to take your son from you.”

  She snorted. He was like a freight train of self-gratification—so self-absorbed, he had no idea how his actions harmed those he ran over on his way to getting what he wanted.

  For this—the feeling of a knife between her ribs and the sucker punch to her gut—she’d run to Teo, and he’d taken her in. And loved her, even though she was so wounded she could never fully reciprocate.

  No way was Gus touching Blaise’s music. Not in a million years. This music was her love song to her family. Hers. Not his. He hadn’t raised these kids, changed their diapers, ferried them to lessons, and worked past the point of exhaustion to keep them safe and cared for. He had no right to take it away from her. Or from Teo.

  And she owed him nothing. Especially not an explanation of his true role in Blaise’s genius.

  “You know what?” she said. “Screw you, Gus.”

  Miriam took a flying leap off the stage, slinging Blaise’s music satchel over her head and shoulder as she strode across the wooden dance floor.

  32

  Nineteen years earlier

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  IT TOOK MIRIAM FOUR years to get Gus von Rickenbach to notice her. And, once he did, despite her determination to stand out from all those other girls, it took him only three hours to get her into bed.

  It was the magic of a four-star dinner and an invitation to continue chatting in his corner suite overlooking the Boston skyline. It was feeling like she stood on the cusp of the life she’d always dreamed of. And it was the way he touched her, as if he knew she’d been burning for this moment for years, and he didn’t want her to have to wait a second longer.

  It hurt, but she’d expected that, and the pleasure leading up to the pain made up for it. She had to leave in the middle of the night to get back to her hotel, pack up, and catch a late-night Greyhound back to Philly. When she arrived, tired and grimy, at her apartment, Gus waited outside, fresh from his much shorter flight. “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting half an hour,” he said, and crushed her lips against his before she could answer.

  He came knocking after midnight every night for nearly a week. The pain went away; the pleasure didn’t. All day long, her body wound itself up in anticipation of it, even as exhaustion chipped away at the level of her work.

  When Gus didn’t show up on Monday night, Miriam was almost relieved. But it worried her that she didn’t run into him during the day on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. She called him, but leaving a message felt kind of needy. Lizzy Bennet would not be needy.

  She squashed the part of her brain that whispered that Lizzy Bennet wouldn’t have jumped in bed with him in the first place.

  When the knock came that night, Miriam didn’t let herself analyze her relief. She simply threw herself into making sure he knew what he’d missed. The next day, she did see him at school. He was discussing recital accompaniment with Kaye Fleming, a soprano a year older than her. “Hey,” Miriam said, holding her arms out toward him.

  He glanced at her. “Oh, hey, Mira.” He gave her a friendly hug and kept walking.

  Miriam was a realist. Gus had a way of looking at a girl like nothing else in the world mattered. With a focus in those brown eyes that turned bone into bread dough. He approached the piano the same way. Doors slammed, people shouted nearby, and he wouldn’t even twitch. She loved that about him because it happened to her too.

  If he could dismiss her this easily, he was already headed for the exit.

  But Miriam had no intention of giving up. They were the same, down where it counted: in their commitment to the music. He might not realize it yet, but she’d show him. She had passion to spare; burn hot enough and he was sure to catch fire.

  When he came back, she intended to be ready. Miriam went looking for ways to make the sex hotter and the anticipation greater. And it worked. He came back three nights in a row for more. She watched him carefully, looking for signs of change, yet every night, when the climax passed, he got dressed, and she watched his brain returning to Beethoven or Chopin or Liszt.

  And in the end, the only thing that changed was her.

  Twenty-three days after that night in Boston, Miriam entered the venerable arched doorway of the Curtis Institute with no way of knowing it would be the last time. Gus hadn’t knocked on her door in three days. Nor could she find him in any of the places she usually saw him during the day. The gnawing in her stomach told her he was avoiding her.

  But she had to talk to him. The double line on the pregnancy test saw to that. She’d seen his name on the recital hall schedule tonight, so she dressed carefully, forced a few crackers down her throat to quell the nausea, and went to find him.

  But the hall lay quiet. The door stood ajar; she peeked inside. Gus’s music bag rested against the leg of the grand piano, but the room seemed to be deserted.

  Until she heard the sounds from the alcove to the right of the stage.

  Miriam froze. Then, like a mosquito to a bug zapper, she found herself floating into the room, her body curiously immune to the sensation of walking. In the shadows just outside the light, she saw the figures pressed against the wall of the balcony stairwell. Kaye Fleming, her red hair disheveled, her shirt pulled up. And Gus’s bare ass sticking out of his jeans.

  The moment seemed frozen in time. The pillars of dust circling lazily in the glow of the stage lights. The smell of old building, spicy enough to evoke a s
neeze. The way those long, fluid fingers, which had played her body as artfully as they played the piano, dug into the wall in passion for someone else.

  You stupid, stupid twit. You knew better than this. You knew better! And you let him do it anyway!

  She’d never felt so humiliated. The meager contents of her stomach crouched on their mark, poised for an all-out spring to exit her body.

  She barely made it to the restroom in time.

  * * *

  Miriam didn’t really sleep that night. When morning came, mocking her with the beauty of spring, she got dressed and started walking in circles around downtown Philadelphia. She watched the buses of tourists queued up at Independence Hall, the pair of women feeding snacks to toddlers on a picnic blanket at Washington Square. She didn’t know what to do. She had no one, and she didn’t see any way out. Not for a good Catholic girl, anyway.

  She wandered aimlessly, but maybe she knew where safety lay, even if her brain was too tangled in knots to see it. Because when she finally came back to the present, she found herself standing in front of a building she’d only seen from a distance. The building where Teo Tedesco worked as a bean counter for some firm with half a dozen names.

  For the past nine months, since coming to Curtis, church music had been her “me” time, her refuge from the pressures of living up to her free tuition and housing scholarship. She’d rigorously kept her two lives separate; until this moment, she hadn’t realized Teo was the person she trusted most in the world.

  The directory inside the lobby pointed her to the fourth floor, where an administrative assistant waved her to a row in the center of a hive of cubicles. “Teo,” she said, and when he swiveled in his chair, she knew by the look on his face she didn’t have to face this alone after all.

  He found a crisis pregnancy center where she could get checked over, and he didn’t bat an eye when the staff assumed he was the father.

  When they said “twins,” Miriam’s whole life passed before her eyes. She’d always thought that phrase melodramatic, but now she understood. It was like viewing it all from a great height: every moment she’d spent sitting at the piano, every yard she’d mowed to pay for lessons, every Mass she’d played, and all the nights she’d lain awake with the music churning in her brain. Somewhere in her subconscious, she’d cherished a fantasy of a well-behaved baby sleeping peacefully in a bassinet beside the piano while her real life chugged merrily alongside.

  She couldn’t possibly do it with twins.

  Teo didn’t speak as they walked out of the clinic and into the noise of squealing brakes and roaring engines. He had his hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket. The May afternoon had grown too warm for it, but he didn’t seem to notice the sweat popping out on his forehead.

  They walked around Washington Square in silence. The heavenly scent of spring struggled against the stink of diesel. “What am I going to tell my parents?” Miriam said.

  He had a strange look on his face, one she couldn’t interpret. “Not sure that’s the part I’d be worried about.”

  He had a point. She wasn’t yet twenty, and she could only remember fifteen of those years. How could she envision being a mother?

  She understood now the temptation of termination. Just erase it all. Hide your screw-ups from the jerks who participated in the process and then revealed their true selves—selves you’d never want around your children.

  Children.

  She clenched her fists, but she could still feel them shaking. “I can’t do this, Teo.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “What can I do?”

  “Help me find a place to give them away.”

  He took her hand. His skin warmed the shaky chill of her own. “Of course,” he said.

  Yes, that was it. Give the babies to someone who could give them a better life, away from her, and go on with her own. She just had to get through the next nine months.

  But—nine months! Maternity clothes! “Everyone will know.” She sat down on the edge of the fountain, the single plume jetting upward behind her. Teo put an arm around her shoulders. “Everyone. Even Gus.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead. “I can’t go back to school. I don’t know what to do, Teo. I can’t face him again.”

  Teo’s arm tensed, but his voice remained quiet, measured. “You’re sure you don’t want to …” He hesitated, swallowed, went on. “To give this … Gus? … a chance to do the right thing?”

  Miriam paused a long moment. Pining for Gus, living for the crumbs of notice he’d bestowed on her over the past few years, had been a roller coaster: the anticipation, the swoop in the stomach as the car crested the hill and began the drop, the thrill of being out of control. But nothing cleared a girl’s head like good old-fashioned humiliation. “He hates kids,” she said. “You should hear the names he calls them. ‘Snot monster,’ ‘shriekling’—words I’ve never even heard. ‘Spermlette.’ And his family is rich. They’ll think I did it on purpose. He’ll think I did it on purpose. They might try to force me to … get rid of them.” She rested her head on Teo’s shoulder.

  Teo’s grip tightened briefly. She could feel his pulse against her ear; oddly, it seemed to be pounding. This had to be as awkward for him as it was excruciating for her.

  “I can’t believe I was so stupid,” she whispered.

  He swallowed three times in quick succession. “Mira,” he said, “are you sure, when the time comes, you’re going to be able to give them up?”

  Her shoulders hunched. She stared at the ground. “What choice do I have? I can’t raise two kids on my own.”

  Teo rubbed his fingers across his mouth and chin. “What if …” He cleared his throat. “Maybe there’s another way.” He swallowed again, as if his next words would change everything.

  And they did.

  “We could get married,” he said.

  She lifted her head, certain she’d heard wrong. Not because he wasn’t the marrying type; she was certain he was. But because he would never say such a thing flippantly. “What?” Miriam said, hoping a couple more seconds might help her decipher the tiny spark that had suddenly materialized in the murky despair within her soul.

  He took his arm from around her shoulder and turned to face her on the bench, clasping her hands in his. And then he said again:

  “Marry me.”

  33

  MIRIAM MADE IT TWO blocks from the Gathering Haus before she heard someone calling her name. She picked up the pace. She was still furious, but now that the shock was past, the pounding of her heart had more to do with the fear that Gus might figure out her secret. After his revelation, she’d carry that secret to her grave without a twinge of remorse.

  She’d hoped his overinflated opinion of his own dignity would prevent him following her, but the multiple repetitions of her name indicated otherwise.

  “Miriam!”

  At the touch on her shoulder, she wheeled, swinging her arm back in preparation for the second punch she’d ever thrown in her life, only to realize it wasn’t Gus. “Oh,” she said. “Hadley. I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “It was your friend. I mean”—Hadley shook his head between gasps—“not your friend, I guess?”

  Miriam rubbed her fingers across her forehead. “It’s complicated.”

  “Clearly.” He held up a hand, leaning down and bracing himself on his thigh while he caught his breath. “Man. I wouldn’t normally be this winded, but I had to make sure that guy didn’t follow you before I could come after you. John’s gonna have my hide if he finds out I sicced some asshole on you when I was supposed to be protecting you.”

  “I don’t need protection.”

  “Again: clearly.” Even out of breath, he had a pleasant twinkle to his eye. He stood up straight. “I’m really sorry, Miriam. I didn’t think anything of tagging you in that post. Never occurred to me something like that might happen. When he showed up, I just assumed you invited him.”

  She wanted to be angry with him, but
mostly she just wanted to be angry, and it wasn’t fair. She might just as easily have done the same. “Apology accepted,” she said, and started on her way.

  Hadley gripped her elbow. “Wait a minute!” He ran a hand through his hair, laughing. “Do you always make everything this hard? I’m trying to ask you to dinner.”

  “Hadley, you don’t have to take care of me, no matter what Becky said.”

  “This has nothing to do with Becky. I don’t even know Becky! I’m just asking you to dinner. Because I’ve been listening to you play for the last two hours, and … you’re amazing, Miriam. That’s all. I’d like to invite you to dinner with the rest of the band, and I’d love for you to come back to spend the evening at the Gathering Haus. Maybe we can even find a use for you on the piano.”

  “Oh.” Miriam had to take a beat to reorganize her thoughts around a totally new thought process. The warmth in his eyes disarmed her anger. It made her feel, for the first time in so long she couldn’t even remember, like a woman rather than a mother or widow. “What do you guys play?” Stalling for time. Nice.

  “Traditional music … bluegrass. A little honky-tonk. Stuff to square-dance to.”

  “Not much use for a piano in that mix.”

  He shrugged. “I’m sure we could figure something out.”

  She bit her lip. “Well, I—I’ve got—my, uh—my friend, I need to check on her.” She wasn’t accustomed to being tongue-tied.

  “Okay?” There was that gleam in his eye again—amusement? Something about the way his obvious sincerity mixed with that mischievous quirk at the corner of his mouth made her want to say yes. If for no other reason than to wash away the bad taste of her interaction with Gus.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let me check in with my friend. And I don’t want to go back there before dinner.”