Revolution

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “Come on, Jimmy. I can’t take that.”

  Jimmy doesn’t have much. He lives in a home on Hicks Street. He only gets a few dollars’ spending money each week.

  “Take it. I want you to. You’re a kid. You should be sitting at a soda fountain with a sweetheart, not hanging out in the cold like you got nowhere to go, talking to bums like me.”

  “All right. Thanks,” I say, trying to smile. It kills me to take his money, but not taking it would kill him.

  Jimmy smiles back. “Let him give you a kiss. For me.” He holds up a finger. “Just one. On the cheek.”

  “I’ll do that,” I say. I don’t have the heart to tell him I’ve had a dozen fellas. Or that there are no such things as kisses on the cheek anymore. We’re in the twenty-first century now, and it’s hook up or shut up.

  I stretch out my hand to take the quarter. Jimmy lets out a low whistle.

  “What?”

  “Your hand.”

  I look at it. My ripped nail is still bleeding. I wipe the red off on my pants.

  “You should get it taken care of. It looks awful,” he says.

  “I guess it does.”

  “You must be in pain, kid. Does it hurt?”

  I nod. “Yeah, Jimmy. All the time.”

  3

  “Ms. Alpers?”

  Nabbed. I stop, then slowly turn around in the hallway. I know that voice. Everyone at St. Anselm’s does. It’s Adelaide Beezemeyer, the headmistress.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  “Not really, Ms. Beezemeyer. I’m on my way to a music lesson.”

  “I’ll call Mr. Goldfarb to let him know you’ll be late. My office, please.”

  She waves me inside and calls Nathan. I put my guitar case down and sit. The clock on the wall says 3:01. An entire precious minute of my lesson has just slipped away. Sixty seconds of music I’ll never get back. My leg starts jiggling. I press down on my knee to stop it.

  “Chamomile tea?” Beezie asks as she puts the phone down. “I’ve just made a pot.”

  “No thank you.”

  I see a folder on her desk. It has my name on it—Diandra Xenia Alpers. After both grandmothers. I changed it to Andi as soon as I could speak.

  I look away from the folder—it can’t be good—and watch Beezie as she bustles about. She looks like a hobbit—short and shaggy. She wears Birkenstocks no matter what time of year it is, and purple menopause clothes. She turns unexpectedly and sees me watching, so I look around the room. There are vases on the windowsill, hanging planters dangling from the ceiling, bowls on a sideboard—all glazed in various shades of mud.

  “Do you like them?” she asks me, nodding at the mud bowls.

  “They’re really something.”

  “They’re mine. I throw pots.”

  So does my mom. At the walls.

  “They’re my creative outlet,” she adds. “My art.”

  “Wow.” I point at a planter. “That one reminds me of Guernica.”

  Beezie smiles. She beams. “Does it really?”

  “Of course not.”

  The smile slides off her face, hits the floor, and shatters.

  Surely she’ll throw me out of here now. I would. But she doesn’t. She puts a mug of tea on her desk and sits down in her chair. I look at the clock again. 3:04. My leg jiggles harder.

  “Andi, I’ll come right to the point. I’m concerned,” she says, opening my folder. “Winter break begins tomorrow, and you haven’t submitted any college applications. Not one. You haven’t submitted an outline for your senior thesis, either. I see here that you’ve chosen a subject … an eighteenth-century French composer, Amadé Malherbeau … one of the first Classical period composers to write predominantly for guitar.”

  “For the six-string,” I say. “Other composers wrote for lutes, mandolins, vihuelas, and baroques.”

  “Interesting,” Beezie says. “I like the title … ‘Who’s Your Daddy? Tracing the Musical DNA of Amadé Malherbeau to Jonny Greenwood.’ ”

  “Thanks. Vijay came up with it. He said my old title—‘Amadé Malherbeau’s Musical Legacy’—was nowhere near pretentious enough.”

  Beezie ignores that. She puts the folder down and looks at me. “Why no progress?”

  Because I don’t care anymore, Ms. Beezemeyer, I want to say. Not about Amadé Malherbeau, my classes, college, or much of anything. Because the gray world I’ve managed to live in for the past two years has started to turn black around the edges. But I can’t say that. It’ll only get me a ticket back to Dr. Becker’s office for the next tier of mind-numbing meds. I push a piece of hair out of my face, stalling, trying to think of something I can say.

  “My God, Andi. Your hand,” she says. “What happened?”

  “Bach.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s all about the pain, isn’t it? The truancy, the bad grades, and now you’ve even found a way to use your beautiful music to inflict pain on yourself. It’s like you’re doing eternal penance. You need to stop this, Andi. You need to find forgiveness for what happened. Forgiveness for yourself.”

  The anger starts up inside me again, red and deadly. Like it did when the Slater kid touched the key. I look away, trying to wrestle it down, wishing Beezie would just jump out the window and take her ugly pots with her. Wishing I was hearing notes and chords, not her voice. Wishing I was hearing Bach’s Suite no. 1. Written for cello and transcribed for guitar. I’m supposed to be playing it with Nathan. Right now.

  “How’s my crazy diamond, ja?” he always says when I come into his classroom. His favorite musicians are Bach, Mozart, and the guys from Pink Floyd.

  Nathan is old. He’s seventy-five. When he was little, he lost his family at Auschwitz. His mother and sister were gassed the day they arrived because they weren’t strong enough to work. Nathan survived because he was a prodigy, an eight-year-old boy who could play the violin like an angel. He played in the officers’ mess every night. The officers liked his music, so they let him eat their leftovers. He would go back to his barracks late at night and throw up his food so his father could eat it. He tried to do it quietly, but one night the guards caught him. They beat him bloody and took his father away.

  I knew what Nathan would say about my hand. He’d say that bleeding for Bach was no big deal. He’d say that people like Beethoven and Billie Holiday and Syd Barrett gave everything they had to their music, so what was a fingernail? He wouldn’t make a tragedy of it. He knew better. He knew tragedy. He knew loss. And he knew there was no such thing as forgiveness.

  “Andi? Andi, are you hearing anything I’m saying?”

  Beezie is still at it.

  “Yes, I am, Ms. Beezemeyer,” I say solemnly, hoping if I look contrite I might get out of here before midnight.

  “I’ve sent letters home. About your failure to hand in an outline for your thesis. You probably know about them. I sent one to your mother and one to your father.”

  I knew about the one to my mother. The mailman dropped it through the slot. It lay on the floor in our front hall for a week until I kicked it out of the way. I didn’t know Beezie sent one to my dad but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t open his mail. Mail is for lesser mortals.

  “Do you have anything to say about all this, Andi? Anything at all?”

  “Well, I guess … I mean, I just don’t see it happening, Ms. Beezemeyer, you know? The senior thesis. Not really. Can’t I just get my diploma in June and go?”

  “Completing the senior thesis to at least a satisfactory level is a condition of earning your diploma. You know that. I can’t let you graduate without it. It would be unfair to your classmates.”

  I nod. Not caring. Not at all. Desperate to get to my lesson.

  “And what about your college applications? To Juilliard? Jacobs? The Eastman School?” Beezie asks. “Have you written the essays yet? Scheduled any auditions?”

  I shake my head, cutting her off. Both legs are jiggling now. I’m sweating. Trembling. I need my classroom.
My teacher. I need my music. Badly. Very badly. Now.

  Beezie sighs deeply. “You need to find closure, Andi,” she says. “I know it’s still difficult. I know how you’re feeling. About Truman. About what happened. But this isn’t about Truman. This is about you. About your remarkable talent. Your future.”

  “No. No, it isn’t, Ms. Beezemeyer.”

  I want to stop the words, but I can’t. Beezie means well. She’s good in her way. She cares. I know she does. But I can’t stop. She shouldn’t have talked about Truman. Shouldn’t have said his name. The rage is there again, rising higher, and I can’t stop it.

  “It’s not about me. It’s about you,” I tell her. “It’s about the numbers. If two seniors got into Princeton last year, you want four in this year. That’s how it is here and we all know it. Nobody’s paying tuition that equals the median annual salary in the state of New Hampshire so their kid can go to a crap school. Parents want Harvard, MIT, Brown. Juilliard looks good for you. For you, Ms. Beezemeyer, not me. That’s what this is about.”

  Beezie looks like she’s been slapped. “My God, Andi,” she says. “You couldn’t have been more hurtful if you tried.”

  “I did try.”

  She’s silent for a few seconds. Her eyes grow watery. She clears her throat and says, “Senior thesis outlines are due when school resumes—January the fifth. I truly hope yours is among them. If it’s not, I’m afraid you will be expelled.”

  I barely hear her now. I’m coming apart. There’s music in my head and in my hands, and I feel like I’ll explode if I can’t let it out.

  I snatch the guitar case. 3:21, the clock says. Only thirty-nine minutes left. Luckily the hallways are nearly empty. I break into a mad run. I’m paying no attention, running flat out, when suddenly my foot catches on something and I’m airborne. I hit the floor hard, feel my knees slam down, my chest, my chin. The guitar case hits the floor, too, and skids away.

  My right knee is singing. I can taste blood in my mouth, but I don’t care. All I care about is the guitar. It’s a Hauser from the 1940s. It’s Nathan’s. He let me borrow it. I crawl to the case. It takes me a few tries to open the clasps because my hands are shaking so badly. When I finally get the lid up, I see that everything’s fine. Nothing’s broken. I close the case again, weak with relief.

  “Oopsy-daisy.”

  I look up. It’s Cooper. He’s walking backward down the hall, smirking. Arden Tode is with him. I get it. He tripped me. Payback for this morning.

  “Be careful, Andi. You could break your neck that way,” he says.

  I shake my head. “No, I can’t,” I say. “Not that way. I’ve tried. Thank you for trying, though, Coop. I appreciate the effort.” Blood drips from my mouth as I speak.

  Cooper stops dead. His smirk slips. He looks confused, then afraid.

  “Freak,” Arden hisses. She tugs on his arm.

  I get up and limp off. Down the hall. Around a corner. And then I’m there. Finally there. I yank open the door.

  Nathan looks up from a sheet of music. He smiles. “How’s my crazy diamond, ja?”

  “Crazy,” I say, my voice cracking.

  His bushy white brows shoot up. His eyes, huge behind his thick glasses, travel from my bloody mouth to my bloody hand. He crosses the room and lifts a guitar from its stand.

  “We play now, ja?” he says.

  I wipe my mouth on my sleeve. “Ja, Nathan,” I say. “We play now. Please. We play.”

  4

  I always take the long way home.

  Up Willow from Pierrepont. Through the streets of old Brooklyn. What’s left of it. Then I turn right on my street, Cranberry. But tonight I’m hunched up against the cold, head down, fingering chords in the air, so lost in Suite no. 1 that I walk up Henry instead.

  Nathan and I played for hours. Before we started, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I fell.”

  He gave me a look over the top of his glasses—his truth-serum look.

  “Ms. Beezemeyer talked about Truman. And closure. It all went wrong from there,” I said.

  Nathan nodded, then he said, “This word closure … it is a stupid word, ja? Bach did not believe in closure. Handel did not. Beethoven did not. Only Americans believe in closure because Americans are like little children—easily swindled. Bach believed in making music, ja?”

  He kept looking at me, waiting for a reply.

  “Ja,” I said softly.

  We played then. He cut me no slack for my injuries and swore like a pirate when I bungled a trill or rushed a phrase. It was eight o’clock by the time I left.

  The winter streets are cold and dark as I walk down them now. Lights blink all around me for the gods of the holidays. Green and red for Santa. Blue for Judah Maccabee. White for Martha Stewart. The cold air on my face feels good. I am drained. I am calm. And I am not paying attention.

  Because suddenly, there it is, right in front of me—the Templeton.

  It’s an apartment building, built from what used to be the old Hotel St. Charles. It’s eighty stories high, two blocks square, and it throws its ugly shadow over everything, even at night. The stores on the ground floor are always lit up, even when they’re closed. They sell basil sorbet and quince paste and lots of other things nobody wants. The upper floors are condos. They start at half a million.

  It’s been nearly two years since I’ve come this close to it. I stand still, staring at it but not seeing it. I see the Charles instead. Jimmy Shoes told me it was swanky once. Back in the thirties. He said it had a saltwater pool on its roof, and spotlights, too. The Dodgers ate there, gangsters strolled in with chorus girls on their arms, and swing bands played until dawn.

  It wasn’t swanky two years ago. It was crumbling. Part of it had burned. What was left housed welfare cases and winos. Drug dealers hung out in the front. Muggers prowled the hallways. Its doors were always open, like a leering mouth, and I could smell its rank breath whenever I walked by—a mixture of mildew, cat piss, and sadness. I heard it, too. I heard angry music blaring from boom boxes, heard Mrs. Ortega screaming at her kids, heard the Yankees game on Mrs. Flynn’s ancient radio, and Max. I hear him still. He’s in my head and I can’t get him out.

  “Maximilien R. Peters! Incorruptible, ineluctable, and indestructible!” he’d yell. “It’s time to start the revolution, baby!”

  I stop dead and stare at the sidewalk. I don’t want to but I can’t help it. It was there, right there, about five yards in front of me, by that long, jagged crack, where Max stepped into the street. And took Truman with him.

  Rain washed away the blood long ago but I still see it. Unfurling beneath my brother’s small, broken body like the red petals of a rose. And suddenly the pain that’s always inside me, tightly coiled, swells into something so big and so fierce it feels like it will burst my heart, split my skull, tear me apart.

  “Make it stop,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut.

  When I open them again, I see my brother. He’s not dead. He’s standing in the street, watching me. It can’t be. But it is. My God, it is! I run into the street.

  “Truman! I’m sorry, Tru! I’m so sorry!” I sob, reaching for him.

  I want him to tell me that it’s okay, it was all just a dumb mistake and he’s fine. But instead of his voice, I hear tires screeching. I turn and see a car bearing down on me.

  Everything inside me is screaming at me to run, but I don’t move. Because I want this. I want an end to the pain. The car swerves violently and screeches to a stop. I smell burned rubber. People are shouting.

  The driver’s on me in an instant. She’s crying and trembling. She grabs the front of my jacket and shakes me. “You crazy bitch!” she screams. “I could have killed you!”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Sorry?” she shouts. “You don’t look sorry. You—”

  “Sorry you missed,” I say.

  She lets go of me then. Ta
kes a step back.

  There are cars stopped behind us. Somebody starts honking. I look for Truman, but he’s gone. Of course he is. He wasn’t real. It’s the pills playing tricks. Dr. Becker said I might start seeing things if I took too many.

  I try to get moving, to get out of the street, but my legs are shaking so badly I can’t walk right. There’s a man on the sidewalk, gawking at me. I give him the finger and stumble home.

  5

  “Mom?” I shout as I open the door to my house. There’s no answer. That’s not good.

  I kick my way through the heap of mail on the floor. Bills. More bills. Letters from realtors who want to sell our house for us. Postcards from art galleries. A copy of Immolation, St. Anselm’s student lit rag. Letters for my father from people who still haven’t heard that he moved to Boston over a year ago to chair the genetics department at Harvard. My father’s a genetics expert. World-famous. My mother’s out of her mind.

  “Mom? Mom!” I shout.

  Still no answer. Alarm bells go off in my head. I run into the parlor. She’s there. Not standing in the backyard in her bare feet, clutching handfuls of snow. Not breaking every dish in the house. Not curled up catatonic in Truman’s bed. Just sitting at her easel, painting. I kiss the top of her head, relieved.

  “You okay?” I ask her.

  She nods and smiles, presses her hand to my cheek, and never takes her eyes off her canvas.

  I want her to ask me if I’m okay. I want to tell her what I almost did. Minutes ago on Henry Street. I want her to tell me never to do it again. To bitch me out. To put her arms around me and hold me. But she doesn’t.

  She’s working on another picture of Truman. There are so many already. Hanging on the walls. Leaning against chairs. Propped up on the piano. Stacked in the doorway. He’s everywhere I look.

  There are tools on the floor. Sawdust. Screws and nails. Scraps of canvas. She likes to build her own stretchers. There are crumpled rags and crushed silver tubes strewn about, splats of color on the floor. I can smell the oil paint. It’s my favorite smell in the whole world. For just a second, I stand there inhaling, and it’s like before. Before Truman died.