“You ride in front!” she called, leaning out of the window. “Your legs are longer than mine!”
I slid onto the peeling vinyl and pulled the door shut. The car smelled of incense, and a string of glass beads swung from the rearview mirror.
“Hello, Mrs. de la Vega,” I said. “Thank you for inviting me to come along today.”
“You can call me Eleanor unless it makes you feel uncomfortable, Ted,” she replied. “And you’re welcome, but you really have to thank Olivia. It was all her idea.”
I twisted my head around. “Thank you, Olivia,” I said. Olivia smiled her response from the back seat.
Both Eleanor and Olivia were wearing long dresses. Eleanor’s was a Shakespearean-style gown with a tight bodice that pushed her breasts up and gave her eye-catching cleavage. I tried not to stare at her as she drove but, until that morning, I had never seen her in anything except a brown housekeeper’s uniform that made her look at least two decades older than she was. I hadn’t been able to picture her as a performer, but now, with her hair attractively styled and her face made up with professional skill, I could no longer imagine her mopping floors. Like her daughter, she was beautiful. She had the same delicate fingers, I noted as I watched her navigate the curving road down the hill. Her hair was lighter, and she had freckles, but her green eyes were the same shade as Olivia’s. And they laughed the same, a bubbly giggle that made me laugh, too.
Olivia’s dress wasn’t a costume. It was made of something white and gauzy, and the bodice was much more modest than Eleanor’s. Olivia was wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair, and the whole effect was delightfully Botticellian. The two of them made me feel terminally un-hip. My plaid madras shirt and khaki slacks might have been considered “cool” at my parents’ tennis club, but in the current context I felt like a charter member of the Young Republicans. If you don’t remember the sixties, that was a designation far worse than “nerd.” At least I didn’t sport a crew cut, and I had, at the last minute, decided to wear sandals.
I couldn’t worry about my wardrobe for long. Eleanor and Olivia were too busy laughing and making plans for me to feel self-conscious.
“I’ll be playing all day, Ted,” said Eleanor. “You and Olivia will be on your own until six or so. How long did you sign out for?”
Haviland required that all boarding students “sign out” when they left campus, which was only allowed on weekends and, if you were a senior with decent grades, a couple of evenings during the week. Students weren’t allowed to keep cars on campus, which, given the isolated location of the school, seriously limited your travel options unless you had local friends.
“I said I’d be back around nine.”
“Oh, good! That’ll give us time for dinner! Can we go to Carmen’s, Mom?” Olivia’s obvious enthusiasm for making the day last as long as possible lifted my spirits.
“We’ll see, Livie,” replied Eleanor. “We’ll just play things by ear.”
After four days of planning and worrying, I liked the idea of just letting things unfold. I liked Eleanor, too, and the psychedelic peace symbol stuck to her dashboard. I liked riding through the orange groves along Highway 150, and I liked that Olivia was humming as we drove. Our sweet and happy journey brought us at last to Isla Vista Park, where a jolly crowd was gathering and music was already rising over the lawns that sloped down to the sea.
Chapter 7
As soon as she stepped off the parking lot curb onto the grass, Eleanor and her harp case were engulfed by a throng of costumed musicians who shouted their glad greetings and swept her off to a white tent.
“Come back around noon,” she called before she disappeared. “I’ve got free lunch tickets!”
And there we were, standing on the edge of the burgeoning revelry. A group of caftan-clad flower children glided by us leaving the lingering aroma of burning hemp in their wake. Children and dogs frolicked on the lawn, and I could hear bongo drums in the distance.
It was the moment I’d been dreaming about for weeks. Despite the crowd, I was alone with Olivia, and a whole unfettered day stretched ahead of us. A feeling of terror mixed with exhilaration swept through me, a sensation I can still conjure just by closing my eyes and thinking back. No moment is more keenly intense than the one in which desire meets manifestation.
What was strange was that I had kissed Olivia already, at least two dozen times. I’d sung to her, held her in my arms, professed my undying love. How could it be that our lips had touched, and yet this moment of no contact—a moment in which all I was doing was standing next to her in a public place—was so thrillingly intimate?
It felt like that brief juncture of space and time when a conductor raises his baton in front of a ready orchestra. No sound exists within that instant, but somehow it contains all the music that ever was and ever will be. Olivia turned to look at me. As our eyes met, we both felt the bond form between us. Years later, we talked about it, how it was like the string on Ben Franklin’s kite, just before the lightning struck.
“Thanks for inviting me,” I said when I couldn’t stand the tension any longer.
“Thanks for inviting me to the Gala,” Olivia replied. She looked at me, then quickly looked away. “I’m sorry I—”
“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“No,” Olivia said firmly. “I really am sorry. I kept wishing you’d ask me again, so I could say yes. But I knew you wouldn’t, so—”
“You actually want to go?” I asked incredulously.
Olivia looked at me again, and I noticed that her cheeks were a little pinker.
“When you asked me, I thought it was a trick.” She paused and took a breath before continuing. “I thought you were one of them.”
I gazed at her in astonishment. How could she have thought such a thing when I had tried so hard to defend her? But the answer was simple. She didn’t know.
“I would never hurt you.” I said.
We fell silent again, our eyes still locked. Again the tension mounted.
“So do you want to go to the Gala?” I asked, realizing after the words escaped that I could have phrased my question a little more politely.
“I guess so, if you do,” Olivia said, “but actually, I don’t really like that kind of thing. Too fake. Too much hairspray.”
“I don’t like formal dances, either,” I said. “I just wanted to be with you.”
As Olivia looked at me, I thought I saw doubt in her eyes. If I did, it quickly vanished, and she smiled.
“So here you are,” she said. “Stuck with me for a whole day. What do you want to do first?”
Hold you and kiss you for real, I wanted to yell, but instead I said, “I don’t know. I’ve never been to one of these things before.”
“Well, then, let’s start with the limberjack man. He’s my favorite.”
I thought she said “lumberjack” and wondered what Paul Bunyan would be doing at a music festival as she led me through the crowd. We passed a puppet show, and a man in a harlequin costume playing a marimba.
As the happy music washed over me, I kept thinking how ridiculously sheltered my life had been. I knew all about expensive restaurants and sitting in the Founders Circle at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Polo games, yacht races, celebrity golf tournaments—all old hat. But until my trip to New York with Mr. Van Doren, I had never experienced a big city on foot or ridden on a public bus. Until today, I suddenly realized, I had never mingled with the masses. The closest I’d come was summer camp, and my mother had been as selective as possible in that department, too. God, Bill was right all those times he’d called me Little Lord Fauntleroy. As I tagged after Olivia, it dawned on me that she might not want a prince from Mulholland Drive. I watched her greet a juggler and hug a woman in a fringed leather dress holding a Native American drum, and I couldn’t help worrying that I might not be
good enough for her.
Now, as I look at this fabulous violin, it’s all so clear. Olivia didn’t need a fake Lancelot to rescue her. I needed her to save me.
“There he is,” Olivia said, pointing toward a small stage. A boy about my age was playing a banjo, and a man with a craggy face and bushy white hair was sitting on a stool. A flat slat of wood was sticking out to one side from under him, and a long stick rested on his thigh. Attached to the end of the stick was a jointed wooden doll, and as the man moved the stick, it clattered its legs in time to the music like a little Irish dancer. The limberjack!
A crowd of children was pressed up against the edge of the stage, completely enthralled. We drew closer, and I found the performance entrancing, too. When the banjo player finished “Oh! Susanna,” I applauded with the rest of the crowd. As the boy bowed and jumped off the stage, Olivia looked at me and laughed.
“You’ve never seen a limberjack before, have you?”
“Never.”
“Come on.”
As we moved closer to the stage through the scattering children, the white-haired man caught sight of Olivia.
“Livie!” he shouted.
“Uncle Chase!” she called back.
The man hopped down off the stage and wrapped Olivia in a bear hug. Then he pulled back. He was about my height, but much thinner. He was wearing a vest with lots of pockets, faded jeans, and Mexican sandals.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked.
“This is Ted,” Olivia said. “He’s a violin player.”
Uncle Chase eyed me.
“A fiddler, eh?” he said.
“A violinist,” I corrected, and the instant I did, I regretted it. Uncle Chase’s eyes narrowed under his bushy eyebrows, and a sly grin spread across his face.
“Well, excuse me,” Uncle Chase said. “A violinist. Is he any good, Livie?”
“He’s very good,” Olivia said seriously. “He’s going to the Juilliard School next year.”
I stared at Olivia, horrified. I hadn’t told her about Juilliard, but obviously, word had spread.
“Well,” I began, blushing again, “actually, I still don’t know for sure—”
But Uncle Chase had already disappeared into a little tent behind the stage.
“He owns a folk music store in Goleta,” Olivia said. “He’s a friend of my mom’s. I’ve known him since I was nine.”
Just then Uncle Chase popped back out of the tent with a violin in each hand.
“Try this on for size,” he said, and before I could stretch out a hand, he tossed one toward me.
I caught it by the neck, and stared at Uncle Chase. What kind of nut throws a violin?
“Tune up,” he commanded, handing me a bow. Still shocked, I turned to Olivia for help. I had no intention of playing a strange instrument even if it belonged to someone she called “Uncle.”
But Olivia was smiling at me, and I couldn’t bear the thought of wiping that look off her face. I turned to Uncle Chase again. He was tuning the other violin. Damn. There was no way out.
My next surprise was that the “fiddle” Uncle Chase had thrown at me looked like a decent violin, and the bow seemed perfectly serviceable, too. I had no idea what was going to happen next, but it was a huge relief to know that the instrument I was holding wasn’t something cobbled together out of a cigar box and a yardstick.
As soon as we finished tuning, Uncle Chase hopped back up on the stage. Very slowly, he played a sweet, simple tune. Later, Olivia told me it was a folk song called “Star of the County Down,” but I had never heard it before. An audience began to gather as he played, but when he finished, no one clapped. Why not? I wondered, but when all eyes turned on me, I suddenly knew. It was my turn.
Once again, I looked at Olivia, hoping against hope she’d get me out of this. But she was still smiling so happily that there was nothing I could do but climb up on that silly little stage. I raised my bow and played the tune Uncle Chase had just finished. When I was done, the small crowd in front of the stage clapped. I blushed, embarrassed that I was getting applause for a piece a five-year-old could have played. I was about to step off the stage when Uncle Chase launched into another tune.
This one I recognized. It was “Simple Gifts,” a hymn I’d learned at summer camp when I first began to play. Uncle Chase embellished it a little, and he winked at me as he played. The moment he finished, he pointed his bow at me, and once again, the audience, all eyes on me, remained silent. With a jolt, I understood. This was no mere performance. This was a duel.
I was relieved to realize that Uncle Chase was challenging me. I wasn’t ready for a practical joke, but competition was something I understood well. I stepped forward, raised my bow, and played “Simple Gifts” slightly faster than Uncle Chase had, and with a few more flourishes. I didn’t quite have the nerve to point my bow at him when I was done, but I did bow my head slightly to the audience’s enthusiastic applause.
I was still looking down when the first strains of Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins fell on my ears. I yanked my head up and gaped at Uncle Chase. This guy was no “fiddler,” at least not by my snobby schoolboy definition. He was playing a piece only a virtuoso could handle. Thank God Mr. Van Doren had insisted I master it just a few months before. By the time it was my turn to play, I had collected myself well enough to enter right on time.
I couldn’t believe what was happening. Here I was, playing a strange violin outdoors on a rickety riser with a guy in huaraches for a bunch of people wearing headbands and paisley bedspreads. What is even more incredible is that we actually sounded good. The crowd around the little stage grew. When we finished, the applause was long and loud. Piercing whistles rose above it, along with shouts of “Encore!”
Uncle Chase took a bow, but I just stood there, hoping desperately that if he launched into another duet, it would be one I knew. He was trying to humble me, after all, and now I had no doubt he could do it.
Uncle Chase straightened up and beckoned me to the center of the stage. Taking his cue, I bowed with him to another prolonged round of applause.
When I raised my head, I was alone.
Uncle Chase had jumped off the stage. He was standing next to the banjo player, smiling expectantly. The audience seemed enormous now, a sea of faces, all waiting. But for what? I hadn’t signed up for this! My first impulse was to hurl my violin at Uncle Chase, grab Olivia, and flee.
Then I looked at her. She was right in front of me, and sunlight outlined her body through the white gauze of her dress. A breeze, ever so slight, caught the ribbons on the wreath of flowers in her hair. My eyes met hers, and I can still remember her face. She wasn’t smiling. She was gazing at me, studying me. Suddenly I knew that it wasn’t Uncle Chase’s opinion that mattered, or anyone else’s in that endless audience. My eyes still on hers, I raised my bow.
I launched into Paganini’s “Last Caprice in A Minor,” the same piece I’d chosen for my audition. But there the similarity to my Juilliard performance ended. In New York, my cocky confidence, carefully honed over nine years of top-notch mentoring, was enough to carry me through with perfect precision. There, in front of an audience of professional critics, I’d had no doubt I was “good enough.” But here, on an uneven platform in a public park in California, I had no such self-assurance.
For the first time in my life, I was worried about my audience. Until now, I had always thought Mr. Van Doren’s advice about “staying in the music” really meant “ignore all ears that happen to be lurking nearby.” An audience was just a necessary evil, and the secret to a good performance lay in pretending it didn’t exist. Even in New York, when I imagined Olivia was listening, I was still playing in solitude.
But now she was six feet away from me in the flesh, terrifyingly present, and no amount of denial could banish her from my awareness.
A few bars into my piece,
I admitted that Olivia was inside my private universe, and tagging right along behind her were Uncle Chase, the banjo player, and four million hippies. My carefully constructed fortress had been thoroughly breached. How could I possibly “stay in the music” with a horde of barbarians inside my gates? God only knows how I kept on playing.
And then it happened. The solitary citadel I had taken such pains to build and defend exploded in an eruption so exhilarating I felt like I’d swallowed fireworks. Suddenly I realized that music doesn’t need the protection of a moat, and neither did I. The idea was as silly as trying to trap sunlight in a closed box.
Until that day, I’d always thought of music as an unruly horse. My job was to break it, harness it, and ride it with the unflinching discipline of a master of dressage. If it weren’t for that unexpected performance in Isla Vista Park, I would still be taking tightly controlled steps on a safe and well-worn path. If it weren’t for Olivia, I would never have realized that a lifetime of taut reins and clenched thighs is nothing compared to one second bareback on an unbridled Pegasus.
I finished my piece, and for an oddly long moment, the audience was silent. A dog barked, and I could hear the marimba in the distance. Then, like a rogue wave, the applause rolled in, gaining in volume and intensity until I was engulfed. Uncle Chase leapt back up on the stage and held my arm up as though I had just won a boxing match, and a woman rushed forward with a flower wreath. She placed it on my head and straightened the ribbons down my back. Through it all, the applause continued. At last, Uncle Chase led me off the stage, and the audience began to disperse.
After he took the violin from me, Uncle Chase shook my hand and put his arm around Olivia.
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