Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

by Deb Caletti

  “You’re not even listening.”

  “I’m listening, I’m listening. You’re just making me feel like I’m in some Parent Trap movie. You’re not going to put frogs in Dino’s shoes or something, are you?”

  Mom’s unwillingness to get involved may have also had to do with her own experience of her parent’s divorce. Thirty-two years after the end of their marriage, she still can’t tell one of her parents that she’s visiting the other, or she’ll be punished with coldness, hurt, and upset. Thirty-two years later, and her mother still refers to her father’s wife as That Tramp.

  “I thought you’d like to know. Jesus, Mom.”

  “Good. Thanks for telling me. You’re not the Parent Trap type anyway. What was the name of that actress? Started with an H. Heather. Hayley! Mills. God, how’d I remember that? You, girl, are not Hayley Mills. I’d like to see them put you in a remake. Disney’d ditch the hemp bracelet. Don’t you think? Too edgy.”

  “I hope squirrels dig up your tulip bulbs,” I said.

  She socked my arm. “You know how much I respect you. I like your hemp bracelet.”

  Respect—that was what was lacking in the other member of our household. Dino didn’t respect me, or my mother, either, for that matter. Or anyone who wasn’t his own perfect self. See, Dino hadn’t always acted crazy. For a while, he was just plain arrogant. Dino was fluent in criticism, as generous in spirit as those people who keep their porch lights off all Halloween. If my mom was dressed up to go out and looking beautiful, he’d point out her pimple. If you opened the wrong end of the milk carton, he’d make you feel you were incapable to the point of needing to be institutionalized. After I’d bought this jacket with fur around the collar and cuffs at Old Stuff, Dino had pointedly told me that people who tried to make some statement of individuality were still only conventional among those of their group.

  “I’m not trying to make a statement,” I said. I was trying to keep the sharpness out of my voice, but it was like trying to hold water in your hands—my tone was seeping through every crack and opening possible.

  “I didn’t say you were. Did I say you were? It was a commentary on dress and group behavior,” he said in his Italian accent. He chewed a bite of chicken. He was a loud, messy eater. You could hear the chicken in there smacking around against his tongue. His words were offhand, casually bragging that they meant more to me than they did to him. “By avoiding conventions, one falls into other conventions.” He plucked a bit of his shirt to indicate someone’s clothing choice. I felt the ugly curl of anger starting in my stomach.

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t want to be one of those See My Thong girls who bat their eyelashes at boys, rah rah rah, wearing a demoralizing short skirt and bending over so a crowd sees their butt,” I said. “That’s convention.” Anger made my face get hot.

  “Be who you like. I was simply making an observation. You don’t need to bite me with your feminist teeth.”

  Honestly, I don’t know how my mother didn’t poison his coffee. Certainly I wondered what the hell she was thinking by loving him. If this is what could happen to a supposedly charming, romantic guy, then no, thank you. And this was before everything happened, even. Before Dino’s craziness became like a roller coaster car, rising to unbelievable heights, careening down with frightening speed; before he started teaching Ian Waters; before he began composing again and preparing for his comeback after a three-year dry spell. But in spite of what must have been perfect attendance in asshole classes, Dino was one of those people who got under your skin because you cared what they thought when you wished you didn’t. So after that conversation I did the only thing I could. I wore the coat the next day, too. The truth was, I wasn’t sure I liked it either. It was vaguely Wilma Flintstone and Saber Tooth Tiger. Little hairs fell into my Lucky Charms.

  Because I wanted his approval and hated that fact, I did what I could to make sure I didn’t get it at all. One of those things you should be in therapy for. Before I met Ian Waters, for example, I had no interest in music, which was an act of will living in a house where my mother was a cellist and my stepfather a prominent violinist and composer. But Ian Waters changed that about me, and everything else, too. Before I met Ian the music I liked best was something that sounded, if Dino was right, like your mother hunting for the meat thermometer in the drawer of kitchen utensils. My interest was in astronomy—science, something that was mine and that was definite and exact. I felt that the science of astronomy existed within certain boundaries that were firm and logical. If you think about how vast the universe is, this gives you some idea of how huge and wild I thought the arts were.

  After three years of living with Dino Cavalli, I had had enough of people of passion. Passion seemed dangerous. I’d seen the tapes of his performances, the way he had his chin to his violin as if he were about to consume it, the way his black hair would fly out as he played, reaching crescendo, eyes closed. It made you feel like you needed to hold on to something. I’d never felt that kind of letting go before. It all seemed one step away from some ancient tribal possession. And that crescent scar on his neck. That brown gash that had burned into him from hours and hours and hours of the violin held against his skin. He had played until the instrument had made a permanent mark, had become part of his own body. If Chuck and Bunny are right, and everyone should hunger for life and its banquet, I would rather have the appetite of my neighbor Courtney and her two brothers, over Dino’s. All Courtney and her brothers hungered for in life was a box of Junior Mints and MTV, fed straight through the veins. Dino, he could inhale an emotional supermarket and still be ravenous.

  Right then, the only thing I was hungry for was to have Dino Cavalli, this flaming, dying star, out of my universe. It was the only thing I would dare be passionate about. That is, until Ian Waters veered into our driveway on his bike, his tires scrunching in the gravel, scaring Otis, the neighbors’ cat, who ran across the grass like his tail was on fire. Otis was running for his life. In a way, that was when I began finally running to mine.

  1 Dawson Cook, “Cavalli Strikes a Perfect Note” Strad Magazine (April 1996): 12-15.

  2 Alice Lambert, “The Season’s Best” Strad Magazine (May 1989): 20-22.

  3 Dino Cavalli—The Early Years: An Oral History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.

  4 Dino Cavalli—The Early Years: An Oral History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.