The Last Dreamer

by Barbara Solomon Josselsohn

  When she had pulled the last bag out, she discovered Dara’s hair ribbons, squished into a corner of the trunk. She looked at her watch. It was twelve thirty, right in the middle of the sixth grade’s lunch period. She knew Dara wouldn’t be allowed to play in her volleyball game that afternoon without her team hair ribbons, so she decided to go inside and deliver them. No doubt Dara didn’t even yet realize that she didn’t have them.

  Making her way through the school hallways and into the cafeteria, she surveyed the round and rectangular tables arranged on the huge floor. All the girls looked practically the same from the back, with their long, straight hair. Then she spotted Dara’s brown sweater, and she walked across the room to where Dara and her friends sat. She heard them talking as she approached the table.

  “My cousin in Chicago met Brandon Ryde! Of that new band Amplify!”

  “Awesome! How?”

  “He was at a mall signing autographs.”

  “Oh my God, when is he coming to New York?”

  “I love him!” Dara said. “I have to go to their concert, and— Mom!” she exclaimed when one of her friends pointed in Iliana’s direction. She climbed off the bench and rushed over, obviously trying to put as much distance between her mother and the girls as possible. “What are you doing here?”

  “I brought your ribbons,” Iliana said. “You left them in the car.”

  “I know! It doesn’t matter. I was going to borrow.”

  “Maybe no one has extras.”

  “There’s always extras.”

  “I thought that maybe—”

  “Mom, I’m going to lose my spot if I don’t sit down. I’ll meet you in the lobby after my game, okay?” Dara snatched the ribbons and went back to the table.

  Iliana turned and dragged herself back to the car. What was wrong with her, thinking that Dara would be happy to see her? Girls in sixth grade didn’t want their mothers at school. It wasn’t like when Dara was eight and would beg Iliana to help out in the lunchroom, serving pizza, or in the school library, checking out books. Iliana realized that when she was in middle school, the one thing that definitely would have made lunch worse would have been if her mother had shown up to give her something. That would have made her even more of an outcast. She was lucky Dara had even gotten up and talked to her at all.

  She drove back home and entered the house just as her cell phone rang. The caller ID showed the school’s number. What now?

  It was Matthew. “Mom, I forgot my violin again. Can you bring it over?”

  Iliana leaned over the kitchen counter, her forehead in her palm, her eyes closed. “Matthew, I can’t. I was just there. I’m not coming back again, you’ll have to borrow.”

  “But Mom—”

  “I can’t, do you get it? You’ve forgotten that thing too many times.”

  “But Mom—”

  “I don’t feel well, Matt. I think I’m sick.”

  “But Mom—”

  “Find a way to borrow one. I’ll see you at the concert tonight.”

  She hung up the phone and walked up to her bedroom. She pulled back the covers and climbed into bed.

  Later that afternoon, she took a shower, made sandwiches for Marc and Dara since there’d be no time for a real dinner, and went to pick up Marc at the train station. She gave him his sandwich, and he wolfed it down as they headed to the school for the concert. It had been a horrible day. She hoped the evening would be better. She liked Matt’s concerts. It was fun seeing the orchestra improve year after year.

  They parked and found Dara in the school lobby, then walked into the auditorium and found seats. Iliana handed Dara her sandwich and then scanned the stage, looking for Matthew. He usually sat on the left side, but tonight he wasn’t there. Had they moved the violins? But no, she saw Jodi’s son, Zach, and the other violin players, right where they always were.

  “Where’s Matt?” she asked Dara. “Do you see him?”

  Dara pointed to the front row of the auditorium, all the way on the left. Matt was sitting by himself, wearing his concert tuxedo and looking straight ahead at the orchestra onstage.

  “Why’s he there?” Marc said, leaning over Iliana. “Why isn’t he playing?”

  “Because Mom wouldn’t bring his violin to school. Mr. Finn said anyone without an instrument couldn’t play in the concert.”

  “What?” Iliana turned to Dara. “How do you know that?”

  “I saw him when our bus got back from the game.”

  “But it can’t be true. When he told me he forgot it, I told him to borrow a school one.”

  “They weren’t tuned.”

  “Mr. Finn was supposed to have them tuned for concert week.”

  “I guess he didn’t. And he’s taking a letter grade off from anyone who wasn’t prepared.”

  “Why didn’t Matt call me back, then?”

  “Maybe he didn’t have a chance.”

  “If you knew all this, why didn’t you call?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, I was with my team. Don’t blame me; it’s not my fault.”

  Iliana pressed her fingertips to her head. She had put Jeff Downs out of her mind, she had decided to commit herself fully to her kids and her husband—but even then, even after deciding to do just that, she was still screwing up. And her kids were still suffering. Because she was their mom. She turned to Marc, her heart racing, her eyes filling. “Oh my God, what did I do? What did I do to him?”

  Marc raised his arms and then dropped them into his lap. “Nothing you can do about it now.”

  “I feel terrible. He wanted to play.”

  “Then why didn’t you drop off the violin?”

  “I didn’t feel well. I had apple juice all over me, and the smell was making me sick. It’s hard for me to be there for all of you all the time. We talk about what I can do to make things easier for you, but we never talk about what you can do for me.”

  “What, was I supposed to run home from the city to drop off his violin?”

  “Mom, Dad,” Dara murmured. “Stop already, please?”

  Iliana looked at her daughter, who had sunk down in her seat. People must have been looking their way. She had once again embarrassed Dara.

  Marc reached into her lap and took her hand. “Look, it’s no big deal,” he said. “He’s a big kid, he should be responsible for remembering his own violin. He’ll get over it. Don’t feel so bad.”

  “But I do feel bad,” she said, pulling her hand away. “I can’t feel better just because you tell me to.”

  He shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. “I was only trying to help,” he said.

  The lights went down, and the music started, but Iliana didn’t take in any of it. She didn’t hear one note the orchestra played, not one clap of applause from the audience or one whistle of approval at the end of a piece. She didn’t see one bow slide or one finger press, didn’t see one wave of Mr. Finn’s baton. All she saw was Matt, his face visible from the stage lights bouncing off the instruments, as he sat straight up in his seat, watching his friends play.

  In the lobby of the auditorium, Matt assured her that she didn’t have to be sorry. “I don’t care that much about playing,” he said. “And Mr. Finn said he won’t take away the letter grade since I stayed and watched the whole thing.” But Iliana didn’t think she’d ever stop feeling guilty. While her family went to get some cookies, she headed outside. The last thing she saw before she left the building was a team of PTA moms serving refreshments, grimacing from how sticky the juice bottles were. They must have gotten wet when she carried them after the first bottles had broken and splashed juice all over her. Another mess she made.

  That night, after Marc and the kids had put the evening behind them and were fast asleep, Iliana tiptoed downstairs. She turned on her computer and began composing a note to the PTA pre
sident:

  Dear Mrs. Berwich,

  This evening, my eighth-grade son, Matthew, was supposed to perform in the orchestra concert, but he didn’t have his violin. I had hoped to drop it off at school, but I wasn’t feeling well and was unable to do so. My understanding was that Mr. Finn has school violins that the children could borrow, so you can imagine how upset I was when I came to the auditorium and discovered that Matthew had been forbidden to play . . .

  Sighing, she stopped typing and sat back in her chair. What was she doing? The concert was finished, there was nothing that could be changed now, and Matt had gotten over the whole incident hours earlier. Still, the memory of him in his tuxedo, sitting in the audience when he should have been performing, haunted her, and she was sure it would continue to haunt her for days. Rubbing her forehead, she closed the email, and her computer screen returned to the school’s website, where she had found the PTA president’s email address. On the home page was a picture of kids in a science lab watching a heated beaker, presumably of water. A lid was on the beaker, and the steam was frantically trying to escape.

  Going back to her browser, Iliana searched for Jeff Downs and Guitar Dreams and clicked on a link to a YouTube video. Seeing him on TV used to make her feel better; maybe watching now would have the same effect. She waited for the video to load and leaned her chin on her hands to watch. It was an interview the Dreamers did with Jerry Lewis the one time they appeared on the muscular dystrophy telethon:

  Jerry: So, what does the future hold? What are you guys gonna do when you’re no longer the biggest stars on TV?

  Terry: Sleep!

  Peter: Probably go back to my family’s farm. Bruce, here, he’ll be in Hawaii.

  Bruce: Right on! Or Fiji. Australia. Anywhere there’s surfing. Chasing the biggest wave of my life.

  Jerry: And you, Mr. Quiet? You’re the deep one, that’s what they say. What will you do?

  Jeff: I think I’ll be a doctor. Really, you guys, don’t laugh. My mom always thought I’d be a doctor. Maybe I’ll do it for her.

  The video ended, and Iliana stared at the screen, feeling tears start to run down her face. She cried for the dreams people had and the way they so often let those dreams die. She cried for parents like her father and Jeff’s mother, who expect their kids to soar, and for parents like her and Marc, who believed that school concerts and volleyball games mattered, when their kids would likely grow up as frustrated and disillusioned as they were. She cried because if Jeff really wanted to be a doctor, then he should have been one, instead of just talking about it. She cried for Jeff, who looked so young and earnest and happy in this video, not realizing that a pretty face was only going to take him so far.

  And that was when she realized that she had to go to California. It had nothing to do with getting or not getting the Times assignment. She had to give herself a chance to make something amazing happen—a book, Jeff’s comeback, something. Just like Catherine when she went out to California, she had to go. There was still a lot of life ahead of her, and it had to begin now. If she didn’t go, she was resigning herself to an existence without surprises, without adventure, without dreams. And she’d continue to be miserable, which would make her family miserable, too. Hadn’t she urged Dara to be confident and try out for the volleyball team? Wasn’t she going to encourage Matt to audition for all-county orchestra in ninth grade, despite his absence from this latest concert? How could she expect them to try for new things if she wasn’t willing to? And okay, there’d be a couple of days of inconvenience with her gone, but Marc could make a few sacrifices, and Jodi would help out. She would ask them to make it work, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Because writing this book had become her dream—and she absolutely intended to do whatever she needed to chase it down.

  The thing was, she had to go, because while taking care of her family—to the exclusion of all else—had been fine when her children were young, it was no longer enough. By traveling to California to write Jeff’s story, she was writing the next chapter of her own story, too. And it needed to be a good one.

  Chapter 14

  And so it was set. She called Rose the next morning to say that she’d accepted Jeff’s invitation to join him in California, and to get his itinerary. Rose read it to her, and she and realized that the Connors workshop would be no problem. She could fly out to California on Tuesday and stay through Wednesday, then take the red-eye home Wednesday night and make it to the estate in New Jersey for the workshop Thursday morning in plenty of time. And because Jodi would not start her job for another couple of weeks, she’d be available to drive Matt and Dara to school and their activities. Iliana was sure Jodi would be willing, since this was probably the last time she could help Iliana out during the day. All she needed was an explanation, a work-related scenario that both Marc and Jodi could understand and accept.

  But what could it be? She thought briefly about saying she had an actual assignment that required her to go to California, but that would be a difficult story for her to pull off, since she hadn’t mentioned any upcoming assignments to either one of them lately. But then she realized it would make more sense to them if she said she was hoping to get an assignment. She could say she was developing an article, or a series of articles, about blankets—no, broader—home furnishings to pitch to some business magazines or maybe some local publications, and she needed to do some West Coast research. It was almost the truth—just minus a few details, which she could fill in later, if things worked out as she and Jeff hoped.

  Sitting down at the kitchen table with a hot cup of coffee, she thought the situation through. Jodi, she knew, would be easy to talk to; the hard part would be discussing the trip with Marc. She decided it was best to call him at the office, since she didn’t want to spend the whole day worrying about his reaction. And more important, she knew that he’d be too distracted by problems and colleagues to come up with objections. By the time he came home and was ready to protest, she could say she’d already booked her flight and the trip was a done deal.

  Picking up the phone, she silently rehearsed some possibilities. She could do annoyed—You’re not going to believe it, I can’t even get a magazine assignment until I do all the research—in the hope that Marc would try to console her: It’s worth a shot, you want to put your best foot forward. Or she could be ho-hum—Hey, goin’ out to California to do some research, lined up Jodi—but scheduling a business trip for the first time in nearly fifteen years when she didn’t even have a job wasn’t a ho-hum event, and Marc would definitely be confused. The best approach, she decided, was to be excited—no, thrilled—at the prospect of business traveling, and relieved to be coming home in time for the Connors workshop. If she were strong enough in her conviction to carry out these plans, maybe he wouldn’t see the point in objecting.

  “Guess what?” she said when he came to the phone, concentrating on keeping her pitch high and her breathing shallow. “I’ve made a decision, and I hope you’ll think it’s as exciting as I do. I’ve decided I really want to get a magazine assignment from a local magazine about home furnishings. So I’m going to California to do some research. My pitch will really stand out, don’t you think?”

  “What are you talking about?” Marc said flatly, as though he had been inoculated against enthusiasm. She could picture him at his desk, his glasses on and his hands still at work on the keyboard.

  “I want to write for a magazine, remember? I said that when I told you a few weeks ago about contacting Stuart at my old job. But it’s harder than I thought. I’m never going to get an assignment unless I show some initiative.”

  “Okay.”

  “And that means going to California.”

  “How do you figure—what are you talking about?”

  “Are you even listening, or are you working while I’m here on the phone?”

  “I’m listening. It’s an absurd conversation, but I’m listening.”


  “Look, if I go to California to check out some stores, I can write a story about home furnishings trends on the West Coast, which I bet some local magazines would buy.”

  “Can’t you find trends on the Internet?”

  “Anyone can read stuff online. If I want to stand out, I have to do things firsthand.”

  “Who do you want to stand out for?”

  “Editors. Westchester Magazine, Journal News, Hudson Valley Home.” She grimaced. The lies were just pouring out of her mouth, and they were making her feel horrible. This was her husband, after all. She had to stop and take a different tack. “Marc, I really want to get my career off the ground. Jodi’s got a job, and I can get one, too—and this could be a start for me.”

  “And who would pay for this trip?”

  “I would . . . I mean, we would have to pay up front. But if my career gets back on track, I would start making money again.”

  “It’s going to cost a thousand dollars.”

  “It won’t be that much. I can take a red-eye back, they’re cheaper.”

  “And when does this epic journey take place?”

  “Very funny. It’s next Tuesday, and I’ll be back on Thursday morning in time to get to Jena Connors’s house.”

  “That’s the same week? You’ll never be able to function.”

  “I’ll be fine. I used to take night flights sometimes when I was working. And Jodi will do all the driving for the kids. All you have to do is come home at a reasonable time so you can have dinner with them. This barely affects you.”

  He paused. “Hang on a minute,” he said, and she heard him put the phone down. She made out the sound of a door closing. “Look, Iliana,” he said stiffly when he returned. “I know things haven’t been so great between us lately, but I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know if you’re testing me, I don’t know if you’re mocking me, I don’t know if you’re trying to get me angry, but whatever it is, stop, because you sound like a lunatic.”