Contrary Motion

by Andy Mozina

  A street of motels and gas stations and fast-food joints materializes in the fields. Collinsville, Illinois. Before the audition, to suppress my Audrey guilt, I’d identified this as a plausible place to live if I won in St. Louis. About forty-five minutes to Powell Hall, at least in Saturday traffic. Roughly four and a half hours to Milena’s tri-level bungalow on the Northwest Side. I can time that right now, since I need to pick up Audrey and replace the day I missed yesterday. Then I imagine her voice at the front door: Daddy, what did you get me?

  I haven’t gotten her anything. I’ve completely forgotten my promise.

  I get off at the next exit. If I’m lucky, this Shell Mini-Mart will have something with a riverboat or a St. Louis Arch on it.

  I pump thirty dollars of gas, then, inside, ask the guy behind the register, “Do you have any St. Louis souvenir stuff?”

  He points across the counter to a tower of colored plastic lighters with the St. Louis Arch emblazoned on them.

  “Is that it?” I ask. “Just the lighters?”

  “That’s it,” he says.

  And it serves me right, trying to take the easy way out. I’m almost glad that I need to go all the way back to St. Louis. I must prove that I’m capable of extravagant effort.

  I get back in the Volvo and head south on I-55. One thing that makes the stupefying tedium of going backwards endurable is the knowledge that I have won, I have won, I have won. What isn’t doable, what isn’t endurable, for Audrey, for all of my loved ones, now that I’ve actually won? I’ll live in Collinsville, keep my apartment at T.R.’s, and change my two days with Audrey into back-to-back days to make everything more workable.

  Soon I see the Arch again, and then I’m cruising back over the Mississippi. I barely know the city, but I remember the sheet I got from the woman at the check-in table before the prelim round and the list of local attractions, including a zoo in Forest Park, not far from the motel. Cynthia and Audrey and I were going to go to the zoo. Zoo gift shops always sell stuffed animals. I imagine a bear wearing a “Meet Me in St. Louis” T-shirt.

  I get off at Kingshighway and take a left on Lindell, then make the first turn I see into the park. It seems to be huge, and there are no signs on this curving road, which is flanked by open fields of grass and stands of trees and man-made ponds complete with ducks. Running on a bike path alongside the road is a woman, her black ponytail bouncing, wearing what Milena called a “jog bra.” I could pull up beside her to ask for directions to the zoo, but this would probably creep her out. I find a sweaty old guy hitting golf balls on an open expanse of grass, and he points the way.

  In the gift shop, most of the stuffed animals are zoo creatures—tigers and dolphins and elephants. None of these animals have St. Louis markings, but now it’s clear to me that I’m the only one who would care about that.

  I glance at my watch. I’m probably going to be late. The old impulse to make every effort to be on time with Milena, out of respect, is still there, but I see it from a distance now, like the distance from St. Louis to Chicago. It occurs to me that my commuting idea is somewhat delusional. On a low shelf stands a bright-eyed black-and-white husky. It’s big. It’s perfect. Audrey loves dogs.

  Then I worry that her desire for a real dog may give this gift an edge of cruelty. I pick up a large dolphin. I pick up a husky. I hold them both. I am a dad who does what he can, who comes as close as he can—that’s what the dog would say, that’s what living in Collinsville would say. The stuffed dog would torture her. I put the dog down and step toward the counter with the dolphin. Maybe she has no interest in dolphins. Maybe this dolphin will come to represent to both of us everything I don’t understand about her. I look back at the dog.

  “Finding everything?” a chirpy, shelf-straightening clerk asks me.

  “Yes, thanks,” I say. I carry the dolphin to the register.

  Then I’m cruising out of the park, back the way I came, back onto Kingshighway, back toward downtown St. Louis, and I fling myself over the Mississippi once again, going eighty-five, heading north. I sink into alternative realities: I hold on with Cynthia until after I’ve won the audition, and since I no longer look like such a loser to her, she gladly moves to St. Louis with me, escaping Whitaker in the process. We have the new start we always wanted. I don’t freak in San Diego. I don’t grind too hard in Seattle. I win then, and have everything. Safely in an orchestra, I pay more attention to Milena, to our children—yes, we have more than one. I have everything without choosing.

  But eventually I remember Adam talking about how if you’ve got problems in your life, you’ll still have them after you’ve had your moment onstage. Do I want to choose career success over my child? Has anybody who wasn’t an asshole ever felt good about that choice?

  I can try to keep two custody days a week in Chicago, but I know that distance and other practicalities will pressure those days, and eventually I’ll drop them, I bet I will, holding on to them just long enough to cover a retreat back into my deep well of self-interest. And even if I keep my days, I won’t be around for all the things that come up on non-custody days—the last night of swimming lessons or school events or taking her to the doctor when Steve and Milena are at work. I will fall further out of her life, no matter how hard I try to hold on. Can I knowingly be the selfish bastard who would let that happen? I’ve convinced myself that a lot of the world’s problems happen after personal meltdowns, but doesn’t unusual success also tempt the worst?

  Then a surprising, multifaceted, hard-edged fact crystallizes: I’ve won, but I don’t have to take the job. I don’t have to leave a daughter who, after all, might have attempted suicide, just so I can play in an orchestra. Exactly why have I made playing in an orchestra the most important thing in my life? I’ve proven that my pursuit of the harp was not a huge folly. I’m a good player. Why not try for the gig at NIU and prove to Milena once and for all that I am a family man who is there for his daughter and also has a job like any other man?

  The appeal of self-sacrifice is also there—so close and accessible and fundamentally effortless and yet wildly gratifying. Make doing nothing a virtue, make erasure feel like art. I can’t believe in my mother’s God, but maybe I can pay forward what she and my father did for me and for my many siblings and for all those bearers of broken appliances. I can live more for others and be better and happier. Escape from my wretched, inwardly twisted, insatiable self once and for all. The weightlessness of that. The freaking joy!

  Bottom line: Can I bear to tell Audrey that I’m leaving town after I just told her in the hospital how much I need to know what’s going on with her?

  I get lunch at a Wendy’s drive-thru in Normal, though I’m too excited to eat much. There’s a danger that I will feel bitter down the road, of course. But wouldn’t the pain of Audrey growing up troubled be worse? And, really, I can still have everything: the knowledge that I am good enough to win an audition; a crack at a good, stable job at NIU (though I would have to learn how to teach music theory or at least persuade them that I could—no small matter); a chance with Marcia, the soulful and intriguing hospice director, who might know a thing or two about renunciation herself; and, the kicker, time with Audrey as she stabilizes and grows up happier.

  And so for the second time in eighteen hours, I am utterly astounded: I have won and I’m going to give back the prize.

  —

  I-55 finally meets up with I-94, my mother road, which I take north through just about the whole damn city of Chicago, all the way to Lawrence and the tri-level bungalow, only twenty minutes late. That no cop has dared to pull me over just affirms the righteousness of my reasoning and my resolve. I don’t have the car seat, so we’ll have to take our chances with Audrey riding without it.

  I park on the street, and before I can get out of the Volvo, a dog comes around the side of the house and into the small front yard, chased by Audrey. It looks like a chocolate lab puppy. It gets ahead of her and then turns back and lets Audrey frisk with it
and then it runs off again and comes back to her.

  Steve comes around the corner, and he plays with the dog, too. He’s in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, and bare feet. He notices me, but some form of politeness—or, who knows, disdain—keeps him from waving.

  Audrey, too, must be aware of my car—just by the determined way she avoids looking at it even when the puppy’s movements put me in her line of sight—but she is not coming to me. I know this doesn’t mean as much as it looks like it means. She just doesn’t want her intense puppy pleasure interrupted.

  I toss the stuffed dolphin near the harp in the backseat, suddenly unsure of when to give it to her. I get out of the car. I walk across the sidewalk, put my foot on the first cement step, and rise toward their house.

  I won. And there is no way not to have a profound source of unhappiness in my life because of this amazing fact.

  Audrey finally turns toward me.

  “We got a dog!” she cries.

  She is so happy. Milena and Steve have done a brilliant pure good thing for her. They might have told me, but I’m not in their family. It’s exactly what Audrey needs right now.

  Yet the “we” feels bad. I wish she had at least said, “Daddy, we got a dog,” as if I were somehow included.

  I am up the steps and I stop there, right on the little section of walk before the last few steps to the front door. With each of the dog’s excited movements and every degree of Audrey’s delight, my grip on renunciation loosens.

  “That’s great,” I say. “What’s the dog’s name?”

  “Ralph!”

  “Hey, Ralph,” I say. At the sound of his name, Ralph comes over to sniff me. He puts paws on my jean legs. I am not comfortable with dogs, but I bend down to pet Ralph before he bounds away.

  “Hey, how did it go?” Steve asks, hands on hips, friendly, confident.

  Milena comes out the front door. She sweeps her hair back over her head, clearing it from her eyes for a second. She is in another short T-shirt and yoga pants. I can’t look at her—she can’t help herself.

  “Steve’s idea,” she says, referring to the dog. The breadwinner strikes again. “So how’d it go?” she adds, smiling like the happy person she wants to be. She watches me closely.

  “Well, I actually won,” I say evenly, looking straight into her misaligned eyes. She has to know I won, even if I give it all up.

  She delicately parts her bangs with her middle finger.

  “You did?” she asks with a peculiar mix of skepticism, dismay, and even some abortive mockery.

  “What’s wrong with you two?” Steve exclaims. “That’s fantastic! Congratulations, Matt!”

  It’s his hand reaching to shake mine that finally breaks the look between Milena and me.

  26

  “So, I see you’re letting your hair grow out,” I say. I’ve been noticing this for weeks and can’t resist saying something about it today.

  “I’m not going to be a tomboy anymore,” Audrey says. “Just a regular girl.”

  “Not just,” I say. But she doesn’t seem to hear this. She’s going to turn seven in a few weeks.

  She holds the waning crescent of her burger upright in one hand and looks across the way to the penguin tank, where there are families at the railing. The long-awaited trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo is finally happening, but of course Cynthia isn’t with us. More families surround us, sitting at white plastic tables or strolling by in loose formations. The wind gusts, and with her free hand Audrey claws at the hair blown across her face, drawing it clear of her cheek, her eye.

  “And now you’ve got the rest of the summer to practice for second grade,” I add. “That’s going to be intense.”

  “I don’t have to practice for second grade, Dad!” She laughs.

  “Am I the only one who did? I have to practice for everything, it seems like.”

  There are more divorced-dad questions I could ask. How’s Ralph? Have you picked out your flower girl dress? I could fish for revelations about how things are between Milena and Steve, though I wouldn’t be as tempted to do that if this were just another custody day.

  Instead, I run right at the pain: “T.R.’s going to let us stay up in the top of his house when I come back. It’s kind of like an indoor tree house, except there’s a bathroom up there and a new wall, so you can have a room and I can have a room.”

  T.R. is letting us crash there for a ridiculously low rent on my days back in Chicago, probably until some needier case comes along. For now, I still qualify as a wayward boy. My inquiries at NIU were inconclusive: the ability to teach theory is not primary but it matters somewhat; they encouraged me to apply. I would be auditioning all over again and for something I had never thought to want before. I have accepted the position in St. Louis.

  Audrey dips her fries in her ketchup, but she is looking toward the penguin tank.

  “How does that sound?” I ask.

  “Like a sleepover,” she says, chewing.

  “Yeah, I guess. I guess it is kind of weird, having a sleepover at your dad’s.”

  She shrugs. “That’s what we used to do anyways.”

  “Sure, we did. Listen, Audrey, I love you so much, as much as I can love, my most love—” I stop, gather myself. “Okay, I know that, especially with everything that’s happened, me going to St. Louis might feel bad, like I’m running away or something.”

  “Mama said it was very important to you.”

  I look down at my own half-eaten and cold burger. I’ve been back and forth to St. Louis and my Collinsville apartment half a dozen times since the audition, and even without missing any custody days I already feel the effects of living on different streets, under a different sky. I’ve hung one of my father’s computer chip paintings on the wall in my new living room, in view of my harps but not next to them. Tomorrow I move for good.

  “It is,” I say, “and you’re super important to me, and we’re going to try to make this work, and see how it goes, all right? We’ll be together almost as regularly as we used to, and maybe even more, sometimes, when my job in St. Louis is off-season. And you can come down there and stay with me for longer when you don’t have school.”

  I don’t tell her that I’ve got my eye on Chicagoland academic jobs at Roosevelt and Northwestern, where the harpists could retire within five years and theory seems not to be an issue. I don’t want to mess with her hopes. Dr. Oliver has assured me that Audrey is catching on, doing better, but sometimes assurance still passes through me like a sieve.

  “And I’ll record songs for you,” I add, “and send you CDs. Any songs you want. Like ‘The Muppet Show Theme.’ Or the Powerpuff Girls song.”

  “You can play that on your harp?”

  “I can play anything, sweetie.”

  She considers this. “That’s a good idea,” she says.

  I watch her as fully as I can, with the sort of intense look that freaked out Cynthia.

  Audrey doesn’t seem to notice. Her chest rises and falls—it seems she is about to hiccup. She swallows. Her eyes are dry. She looks at me. “I’ll miss you,” she says.

  “And I’ll miss you when I’m not with you, but I’ll always be seeing you. I’ll always be on my way to seeing you at some time coming up. All the time.”

  She keeps looking at my face.

  “Okay?” I ask.

  She nods and pushes away what’s left of her food.

  The pain in my chest feels like a piece of shrapnel too delicately placed to be removed yet not fatal if it stays where it is.

  We stand up, and I remember that old urge to fold Audrey into my body, like a violin into its case, to take her with me, to protect her. Instead, I rest my hand on my daughter’s head. She reaches up and pats my hand, alternating with each of her hands—pat, pat—and when she looks up to see my reaction, she’s smiling. I smile, too.

  I carry our tray to a trash barrel and slide everything through the orange door. I stack our tray on the other trays. Then we head for the pe
nguin tank, to take our place along the railing.

  For Lorri and Madeleine

  Acknowledgments

  A SPECIAL THANK-YOU TO my parents, Alfred and Elaine, for their constant love and support and also for the specific ways in which they enabled this book. My mother, a longtime nurse and hospice volunteer, sent me the image that inspired the novel: a newspaper clipping showing a harpist playing at a dying person’s bedside. My father, an avid reader and book collector, gave me a library to learn from and an encouraging appreciation of the value of writing.

  This novel grew up under the wise tutelage of Bonnie Jo Campbell, Lisa Lenzo, Mark Wisniewski, and Glenn Deutsch. This book also benefited from the feedback of Mike Stefaniak, Deborah Gang, Bruce Mills, Susanna Campbell, Josie Kearns, Sejal Sutaria, John Fraser, and Anne Marie Fadorsen. Representing my siblings, all of whom make me happy to be alive, two of my sisters, Elizabeth Senn and Catherine Bobbe, gave the book careful and useful readings. In Chicago, James Schatz, Michael Gillis, Barry Hamill, Mary Davidson Stanton, Stuart Ross, and publicist extraordinaire Sheryl Johnston helped and inspired. Endless gratitude to all of you.

  A number of harpists, harp makers and technicians, and orchestra people generously shared their experiences and expertise with me. Many thanks to David Ice, Lynn Williams, Barb Semmann, Saul Davis, A. W., Elizabeth Volpe-Bligh, Walt Krasicki, Pat Dougal, and Rip Prétat. Sarah Bullen’s Principal Harp: A Guidebook for the Orchestral Harpist was a very valuable resource.

  On the medical front, I’m grateful to my sister-in-law Amy Mozina, RN; my sister Margaret Hein, RN; Laura Latiolais, director of development at the Rose Arbor Hospice in Kalamazoo; Theresa Lynn, executive director, and Char Mohr, volunteer coordinator, at Wings of Hope Hospice in Allegan, MI. The CD quoted in chapter two is Guided Mindfulness Meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

  Thank you, Ryan Harbage and Christopher Hermelin, for your faith, sage advice, and miracle-working. Thank you, Laura Van der Veer, for understanding just what to question and for always making the book better.