Strings

by Megan Edwards

  “You’re right, Liv,” he said. “He’s not bad.” He lowered his unruly eyebrows and squinted at me. “Almost good enough to call himself a fiddler.”

  •••

  The day was completely different after that. Everywhere we went, people smiled. I had Olivia at my side and flowers in my hair. Isla Vista Park had metamorphosed into a paradise beyond all imagining.

  In the afternoon, after we’d had lunch with Eleanor, we sat on a lawn near a man playing a hammered dulcimer.

  “New York,” Olivia said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Isn’t that where Juilliard is?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a long way away.”

  “Farther than you think,” I said. “My father won’t let me go, even if I get in.”

  Olivia looked at me. “Why not?”

  “He’s a stupid jerk.”

  Olivia was silent for a moment, then spoke so softly I had to strain to hear. “At least you have him,” she said.

  Oh, God, I thought. How could I have said something so thoughtless?

  “I’m sorry,” I managed to stammer. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay. I never knew him. He died before I was born.”

  Olivia’s hand moved to the gold chain around her neck, and she pulled a little heart-shaped locket from the bodice of her dress. Snapping it open, she held it close, so I could see the two little photographs that faced each other inside. On the left was a smiling, dark-eyed man wearing a Santa Claus hat. On the right was a little girl with her hair in pigtails. Olivia.

  “He died a week after Christmas,” she said. “This was the last picture my mom took of him. He was playing Santa for my cousins.”

  What do you say to a girl whose father died? I stared at her, utterly without words.

  “It was an accident,” Olivia said. She paused, and I struggled to think of something—anything—to say.

  “He died instantly,” she continued. “Or anyway, that’s the story.”

  I must have murmured something along the lines of “I’m so sorry” because Olivia patted my hand.

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

  A long time ago. How the meaning of that phrase shifts and changes as we grow older. Olivia’s father had died only fifteen years before. It’s been more than twice that long since I sat next to her on the grass in Isla Vista Park, but it’s as vivid as yesterday.

  “My dad was originally from Mexico,” Olivia said. “He and my mom met in high school, when he was a senior, and she was a sophomore.”

  She glanced at me as a tinge of pink colored her cheeks. “Just like us,” her look said, and my heart swelled. Just like us.

  Except not really, I learned, as Olivia told me the rest of the story. Eleanor and Javier both dropped out of school to get married. Javier worked two jobs, one delivering newspapers and another cleaning swimming pools. On a rainy New Year’s morning, a Cadillac ran a red light on Olympic Boulevard and collided with his motorbike. Three months later, Olivia was born.

  When Olivia was nine, she and Eleanor moved from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara to live with Eleanor’s mother’s sister. Aunt Emily taught English at a public high school, and she helped Eleanor get a job as a teacher’s aide. Eleanor also worked as a bartender on weekends.

  “That’s how she met Rick,” Olivia said. “Her old boyfriend. The first time I met him was at my tenth birthday party. He brought me a Barbie, and I thought he was nice. I was even happy when he and my mom got engaged—at first, anyway.”

  Olivia stopped talking and gazed at me intently. I could see thoughts swimming behind her eyes, as though she were debating whether to tell me more. Not knowing what else to do, I stayed silent, and at last Olivia spoke again.

  “Rick was a monster.” She paused again, her face serious. “He never hit me, but one night when Aunt Emily wasn’t home, he broke my mom’s wrist. And she still has a scar where she cut her forehead falling against the dining room table.

  “My mom managed to make him leave, but he came back on his Harley after she got back from the emergency room. He drove it right up the steps onto Aunt Emily’s front porch. He broke all the potted plants and smashed the stained glass window in the front door. The police had to come and take him away in handcuffs.”

  Olivia looked at me, then reached up and straightened my wreath.

  “You look good with flowers in your hair,” she said before going on with her story. “Aunt Emily said it would be a waste of time to try to get the police to protect us from Rick. He was only in jail overnight, and she said we should vanish before he could get drunk again.

  “We left town in my mom’s station wagon, because it was still pretty new and we were afraid Rick would wreck it if we left it behind. We drove to Mr. Steiner’s house—you know Mr. Steiner?”

  “The old guy who coaches the debate team?” I asked.

  “Yeah. He used to teach at Aunt Emily’s school in Santa Barbara. He moved to Ojai when he retired.”

  When he heard about Eleanor’s predicament, Mr. Steiner suggested that she apply for the position of live-in housekeeper at Haviland.

  “My mom didn’t really want to be a cleaning lady, but we needed a new place to live, and she liked the idea that I could go to Haviland for high school if she worked there. She wants me to go to college.”

  Olivia paused and looked at me. “She says my dad wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t gotten married so young. If he’d finished high school, he never would have been out delivering newspapers in the dark. But who knows?” She shook her head as if to rid herself of the thought, then reached down and plucked a dandelion from the grass in front of her. She twirled it in her fingers, then turned to look me square in the eyes.

  “You were really great today, Ted.”

  “What?”

  “On the violin. You were perfect.”

  Even now, all these years later, I can almost hear her saying the words, almost catch the scent of her hair. “You were perfect.”

  But she had it all wrong. I wasn’t perfect, as my story will too soon reveal. Perfection belongs instead to Olivia and her gift to me that day. Although I couldn’t have known it then, she gave me my violin career. I might well have gone on to become an adequate musician, but Olivia deserves credit for everything I ever achieved beyond that.

  We wandered the festival until the sun began to set. Before we went back to school, Eleanor took us to dinner at Carmen’s, a tiny Mexican restaurant with brick floors, whitewashed adobe walls, and a resident parrot that said, “I like your chiquita, man,” whenever you so much as looked at it.

  When we got back to Haviland, I stood with Olivia at her front door while Eleanor parked the station wagon.

  “Were you home when Rick drove his motorcycle onto your aunt’s porch?” I asked. I hadn’t been able to get the image of a freaked-out Hell’s Angel out of my head since she told me about him.

  “Yeah, I was,” Olivia said, her eyes widening at the memory. “I’ll never forget it. It was something like three in the morning, but I hadn’t been asleep all that long because we spent so much time at the emergency room. This huge crash woke me up. Then there was an even huger crash, and breaking glass. I rushed out onto the balcony over the front door, but it was freezing, so I ran back inside and grabbed this old purple knit afghan off my bed. I wrapped myself up, went back outside, and watched.”

  She paused, then smiled. “It was like a movie. The whole neighborhood was out on the street, and three police cars. I was so happy when they took Rick away. I hated him for what he did to my mom.”

  I didn’t kiss Olivia that night. I shook her hand. I thanked her mother and headed across campus to my dorm.

  Lying on my bed, I relived the whole day, from our ride through the orange groves to the parrot at Carmen’s. In my dreams, I w
as Lancelot again, but everything was mixed up. My steed was no longer a horse. I was a crazy nutcase on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and Guenevere smiled down upon me from a balcony, wrapped in a purple afghan.

  Chapter 8

  Three days later, Olivia and I were in the light booth in Goddard Hall, a few minutes before rehearsal was supposed to begin. Bill Cross had just stepped out to find a screwdriver, and his two freshmen hadn’t arrived yet.

  “I’ve never been in here before,” Olivia said, scanning the collection of ramshackle furniture and assorted junk Bill had managed to cram into the small space. “It’s like a secret clubhouse or something.”

  She plopped down on a beanbag chair stuffed into one corner. “I like this,” she said. “And hey, it’s big enough for two.”

  Even as dense as I was, I recognized an invitation when I heard one. I tripped on an extension cord as I rushed to join her and fell against her as I sat down. We were face to face. Her cheeks were flushed, and I sucked in a breath.

  “Olivia—”

  And I kissed her. It was only a peck, really, and sort of lopsided. But God! It was real!

  “Teddy.”

  She touched my cheek, and I stared into her eyes. Teddy! No one ever called me that except my mother, and I made her stop when I was seven. “It sounds like a stupid stuffed toy,” I’d explained.

  But now, damn! I wanted nothing more than to be Teddy. I was about to kiss Olivia again when we both heard voices outside the door.

  I leapt to my feet, crashing into an orange crate and knocking over a lava lamp. When Bill opened the door, I had just saved it from smashing on the linoleum.

  “What the hell are you doing, Spencer?” he yelled as Russell and Katsu, the two freshmen, peeked curiously around him. “I’m going to have to suspend your light booth privileges if you aren’t careful.” He looked from me to Olivia and back. “You should both know that this room has only two functions. Lights—”

  He flipped on the overhead and moved to a turntable. Lowering the arm onto a record, he twisted the volume knob.

  Baby, baby, that thing you give to me …

  Bill held out his arms. “And love.” He stretched the word out into three syllables, and the two freshmen giggled.

  “Thanks, Bill,” I said, and I meant it. “And thanks for sharing. I’ll work at being less of a klutz.”

  Haviland had rules against public displays of affection, and the teachers did their best to keep interactions between boys and girls as platonic as possible. But even the strictest rules were no match for Olivia and me. She sneaked brownies into the library at night, and we ate them in my favorite nook. I memorized her schedule and met her in the short breaks between classes. Best of all were the minutes we stole before play rehearsals in the light booth. Bill instructed Russell and Katsu to keep watch in the hallway when he wasn’t around to do it himself. All of them became very proficient at coughing loudly whenever Mr. Harper’s footsteps approached.

  No doubt Mr. Harper knew what was going on. As rehearsals went on, I noticed that he found more and more reasons to be in the light booth before we got started. His suspicions, however, probably greatly exceeded anything that actually happened in Bill’s lair. Mostly Olivia and I just sat on the beanbag chair, held hands, and talked.

  When we did, it seemed we were no longer sitting in the light booth in Goddard Hall. We were no longer schoolchildren. All names and labels fell away, and we traveled the cosmos together.

  I know we spoke about our lives and our futures, but what lingers with me most from those ecstatic hours is the fundamental connection we shared. On the surface, Olivia and I were as different in background as any two students at Haviland could be. But on a deeper level, we were the same. We spoke the same language, dreamed the same dreams. We shared a current in some ethereal stream. We bared our souls and swam together there. We were one. We were free.

  When I think back on it now, over decades of experience, a cold desolation sweeps over me, and tears jump to my eyes. I know now that the connection I shared with Olivia was as rare as moon rocks. I know now that I should have done everything in my power to hold her close, to never let her go. How did I not know it then, when I was wrapped in that indescribable joy? How did I let her slip away from me? Why did I fail to do everything in my power to pursue her? I have no answer. Despairing, my heart beats the familiar refrain that has murmured there all these years: If only. If only. If only.

  On the second of April, I was in the mailroom, which was really just an alcove off the dining hall with pigeonholes lining one wall. The room was crowded, as it always was when word spread that mail was “up.”

  Without warning, Amanda Woodmancy let out a piercing shriek.

  “Oh, my God!” she shouted, pulling an envelope from her box. “Stanford! And it’s fat! Oh, my God!”

  She ripped open the envelope and emitted another shriek.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Amanda leapt up and whacked the wrought iron chandelier hanging above us, sending it swinging dangerously near the ceiling. Usually only guys did that, but Amanda was a basketball player and a bit of a tomboy.

  I pulled my mail out of my box, and a letter similar to Amanda’s slipped onto the floor. She was quick to scoop it up.

  “Oh, my God, Spencer! You got a fat one, too—from Yale!”

  I grabbed it from her, and she held out her hand. There was nothing I could do but paste on a smile and shake it.

  “Congratulations, Amanda,” I said, and, stuffing my letter into my jacket unopened, I pushed through the crowd back into the dining hall. I had ten minutes before my chemistry lab, but I decided to head on over to the science building anyway. If I was lucky, I’d catch sight of Olivia on the way, at least from a distance. Her PE class was supposed to be playing field hockey today.

  The path to the science building ran behind the top row of bleachers, and a group of sophomore girls had gathered on the field below, “suited up” in their pleated blue tunics. But where was Olivia? I paused, wrapping my arms around myself.

  I felt the fat envelope inside my jacket, the envelope I had dreaded. I hadn’t even opened it. It only heralded the unavoidable truth: The end of the school year would separate us. Olivia was only in tenth grade. She’d spend two more years at Haviland. No matter what, I would be banished to somewhere else. Even a fat letter from Juilliard was beginning to seem like unwelcome news. New York, as Olivia had pointed out at the music festival, was a long way away.

  Where was she, anyway? I wondered. The girls had started their game, but Olivia wasn’t among them. Sighing, I trudged on to my chemistry class. Olivia, I learned later, had gone to Santa Barbara with her mother. Aunt Emily was in the hospital with pneumonia.

  Chapter 9

  Easter vacation began on Friday, and my mother drove up to Haviland in her Mercedes convertible to collect me. The first thing she said after she kissed me and ruffled my hair was, “Your father and I are so thrilled about Yale.” I must have replied civilly, because I didn’t start a fight. My mother chattered happily all the way to Los Angeles, detailing my schedule for the coming week, the coming months, and the rest of my life. I just watched the ocean go by and tuned her out as best I could.

  I wished Olivia could have come home with me. Hoping it might be possible, I didn’t invite Bill Cross as I had done every other year. He loved spending vacations with me because my parents were nicer to him than his own were.

  “They’d be happy if I just disappeared,” he used to say about his mother and father. “Maybe one of these days I just will.”

  I know Bill was disappointed, but he didn’t let on.

  “Mr. Gillespie wants me to stay with him,” he said, “and I think it’ll be fun. His hobby is rockets and blowing stuff up, and his wife makes chocolate chip cookies by the gross.”

  I felt terrible that my best friend was suffering the
ignominy of spending a vacation on campus with the science teacher, and I felt even worse when it turned out that Olivia couldn’t come home with me after all. Even though Aunt Emily was home from the hospital, Eleanor made it clear that both of them would be spending the week in Santa Barbara to look after her while she recuperated. But maybe it was just as well. All week long, my parents kept making plans for my future, and I was glad Olivia wasn’t around to hear them.

  The only break I got was when the Halls came over for dinner. They were longtime friends, and their daughter was almost exactly my age. Both families had home movies of Karen and me playing naked in a backyard wading pool, and it was a standing joke that they’d be screened at our wedding reception.

  Karen was pixie-like, with straight, white-blonde hair. When she was younger, she rode horses and took ballet lessons. Now a senior at a girls’ school in Holmby Hills, she’d switched from tutus and jodhpurs to Carnaby Street fashions and British rock music. Tonight she was wearing an orange knit top and a lime green miniskirt. It wasn’t a style I warmed to, but she did have the body for it.

  “Why don’t you take Karen to a movie?” my father suggested when it was time for the grownups to have their coffee and cognac. Karen liked the idea, probably for the same reason I did: It was an easy escape.

  After weathering a serious barrage of nudges and winks, we pulled out of the driveway in my mother’s Mercedes. That was a privilege. Usually, I was only allowed to drive a vehicle my father called “The Beater.” “The Beater” was actually a meticulously maintained Jeep station wagon my father took on fishing trips, but I was still happy to get the chance to cruise Sunset Boulevard in a red convertible. The only thing keeping it from being a perfect evening was that Karen would be riding shotgun instead of Olivia.

  “What do you want to see?” I asked, realizing a little late that we should have checked the newspaper before leaving.

  “We don’t have to go to a movie, Ted,” she said, batting her extended eyelashes at me. “I just got a good new fake ID—”