Unstrung

by Laura Spinella

Sasha turns and I look toward the pocket doors. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “I was quiet. I caught the tail end of what Sasha said. I know it took a lot for her to do that. Can’t say I was comfortable knowing what you didn’t, so I didn’t interrupt.” His travel bag lands with a thud on the foyer floor.

  Discomfort rises like a July sun; each ray is tied to the accusations and realizations of recent days. Burning through all of them is my uneasiness. “I, um . . . I’m glad you’re here, Rob.”

  “Are you?” He makes a skeptical face. “Surprising. I thought for sure you’d be at Mass General, doing some hand holding.” I don’t reply. “I assume he’s still with us.”

  “If you’re asking if Sam is still alive—yes.”

  “I meant he didn’t go back to California.”

  I sigh at my ill-fated assumption. “No. He’ll stay here for now. He’s too ill to travel. He, um . . . Sam also doesn’t know his best option for treatment is right here. That’s, uh, in part, why I’m glad you’re home.” I wring my hands vainly, as if this will keep my confession knotted tight inside. “I won’t have to tell this story twice. And let me start by saying you won’t think any more of me when I’m done.” Sasha and Rob exchange curious glances. “More to the point,” I say, ramping up my nerve, “you both deserve to know.” I’ve backed up, standing alongside the secretary. “In some regards this will blow you away. In others . . .” I exhale hard. “It’ll be another go figure Liv moment.” The wringing stops. “Maybe the mother of all Liv moments.”

  “Liv, what is going on?” Rob presses.

  Their frames are both pulled pole straight, folded arms mirroring—body language saying neither have much wiggle room left for Olivia Klein antics. “Sasha wants to know why I skipped out on Braemore.” I pause. I’m about to annihilate what’s left of . . . my family. The one I came within a razor’s edge of destroying this past week. This should finish them off nicely. “I didn’t go because I wasn’t ready to face Theo.”

  “Why?” Sasha shakes her head. “What does Theo McAdams have to do with any of this?”

  “Great question,” Rob says. “But I don’t find Olivia’s statement that odd. Despite the sudden resurrection of Sam Nash, something’s been off, or up, with this kid since she started doing time in Theo’s classroom.”

  I smile at him. “Bravo for knowing your wife better than I would have imagined.” I hold up my hand, holding off Rob’s next sentence. “The truth is I’ve been lying about Theo McAdams since the day I met him, which wasn’t in his classroom at Braemore.”

  “You knew Theo McAdams before that?” Sasha looks curiously at Rob. “Liv, is there more to yours and Theo’s relationship? Like maybe what I asked you at Neptune Oyster?”

  “What did you ask her?” Rob’s fair eyes dart between Sasha and me, as if he’s trying to decode girl talk.

  “I asked if she was sleeping with him.”

  “Excuse me?” Rob says, his neck craning forward.

  “No. I’m not!” I insist. “But . . .” I sigh, reaching for the key to the drawer. I open it and place the Ledger clippings onto the desktop, all of them. Then I back away so Rob and Sasha can peruse the stack.

  “I don’t understand,” Sasha says, flipping through. “I saw the clipping from this year, the one that gave you the Braemore idea.” She turns toward me. “But I don’t get this . . . collection.” Rob picks up a few of the stories. It takes him a moment longer; he doesn’t have Sasha’s head start.

  “Why are you stalking these . . . kids?” He makes his way to the bottom of the pile. “Since 2002.”

  “Not the kids,” I clarify. “Just Theo McAdams.

  “Liv told me she’s been following the stories.” Sasha looks at the yellowed stack, then me. “But I didn’t know about the scrapbook collection. After needing a project to fulfil her community service hours, Liv noted the musical link between Theo and herself. See.” She points to years of Theo updates, the ones mentioning his musical prowess. “That’s how she ended up in his classroom. That’s how it started.”

  “It’s not quite how it started,” I say.

  “Go on.” I hear Sash’s lawyerly tone. I sense Rob’s wary concern, like he’s sitting on a bomb that’s about to explode.

  “You both know about my past with Sam Nash.” They nod. “You also know that I told you I got pregnant—somewhere between a dorm room and a marriage that lasted .08 seconds.”

  “I know you said that not being pregnant was for the best,” Rob notes. “That because of it, Sam went on with his baseball career and you went—”

  “To New Zealand. I went to Phillip’s, where I spent the next year.” I let the rest break like a dam—or as my water did all those years ago.

  “Liv, what, exactly, are you confessing?” Rob says.

  “I lied to Sam and to my parents about the miscarriage. While I was there, in New Zealand, I had a baby. A boy . . . on New Year’s Eve. Eleven fifty-nine p.m., December thirty-first—a date and time that would be easier to navigate if it were April third or October twelfth. Those dates, they slip by without extra fanfare. But New Year’s Eve, one minute to midnight . . .” I smile and swipe at a tear. “The world is waiting and ready, every year, complete with horns, confetti, and an annual poke at the most implausible moment of my life. The thing I got most wrong.” I point to the news stories. “Or ridiculously right . . . Since reading those stories, since knowing Theo . . . My perception has gone from living with what happened all those years ago to being amazed at what I’ve missed out on.”

  I blink furiously. I have never cried openly in front of Sasha, and Rob ever so sparingly—the night my father died being the single scene in my head. I have never cried for Theo. “I gave him away when he was a day old—to people who could love him like I couldn’t, because that’s not who I am. It’s not what I do, right, Rob?” I want him to agree. I want him to say, “Yes, Liv, you would have made the world’s worst mother. We decided as much together.” But all I can really recall him saying on the subject is, “I don’t know that fatherhood is on my to-do list. I’d probably be better off with a dog—so would a kid.”

  Tears drip from my chin; I run my hand across my snotty nose. “Of course I was sneaky about the adoption because that is classic Olivia Klein. I purposely chose parents from the States. And not ones from Ohio or Texas but around the corner. In my twenty-one-year-old head, it somehow made it an easier thing to do. I mean, a kid. What in the world would I do with a kid? I’d already proven I couldn’t get anything right—please my parents or keep a marriage together. Sam’s last words on the pregnancy were to end it. Once he thought the baby was gone . . . After the accident, it wasn’t such a leap, from being pregnant to not being pregnant—”

  “Whoa! So Sam Nash . . .” Rob says. “He doesn’t know about Theo?”

  “Nobody knows, except Phillip . . . and Scott. Of course Theo knows he’s adopted, but he has no idea . . .”

  An odd expression fills Sasha’s face. This must be her reaction when a client she’s judged as innocent and misunderstood suddenly confesses to bludgeoning the body. Her wide eyes move between the news stories and me. She looks at Rob and takes a step back from this particular disaster.

  I keep talking. “From the time Theo was a baby, I’ve known that his parents lived within a short drive of the Wellesley house. And for years, it was enough. Unbeknownst to him, we coexisted under those rules. Then September 11th happened. Theo’s adoptive father, David McAdams, died that day. Because Theo was mine . . .” My gaze moves around the music room: the Guarneri, the other things that qualify as mine. I try to match the feelings. They have nothing in common. Possessions, whether it’s a coveted musical instrument or the gift to play it, neither compares to the disavowed feelings for an infant, or the ones I’ve been made aware of now. “That’s how it felt . . . even if I did give him away. And what happened to David McAdams, I’d managed to fuck up Theo’s fate, just like I did everything else. If I’d chosen a family in N
ew Zealand or one in Texas . . . Theo wouldn’t have had to grow up without a father.”

  “Yes,” Sasha says, “but it’s not like you could have predicted—” I hold up a hand. I refuse counsel.

  “When Shep Stewart started writing those stories, I couldn’t believe it. Tragedy gave me a window; an annual report on a life I’d produced but couldn’t be part of.”

  “Oh, Liv . . .” Sasha takes another turn around the tiny room. I want to ask if she’d prefer to step into the living room, it’s much larger. “Liv, I . . .” She stares; it’s gaping and appalled. “How could you keep something like this from me . . . from us? You let me arrange your community service hours and you said nothing, you never even hinted . . .”

  Irony is a strange mistress. My confession would have leverage if Sasha and Rob were having an affair. “I . . . By the time I met you both, it was years later . . . decades. I was comfortable with the truth my parents knew; I was more comfortable with you both not knowing.” The news clippings seem to glare at me; Rob and Sasha look as if they are doing the same. “It never felt like a secret. Not until I turned it into one by suggesting I serve time in Theo’s classroom.” I move my hands in a vague gesture. “Well,” I say more softly, “not until we all ended up here.”

  “So why now?” she asks. “In the middle of the current dust you’ve kicked up. Why confess Theo now?”

  Rob’s expression shifts from surprise to realization. “Because Theo McAdams is, somehow, Sam Nash’s last chance.” He looks to Sasha. “In between accusing us of having an affair, Liv’s ex—excuse me,” he says, “current father of her son, indicated a bone marrow transplant was his only hope.” Sasha listens to the last of the puzzle pieces. “Although the little I know about bone marrow donors, I don’t think offspring is the go-to source for a match.”

  “They’re not,” I say. “But there is a treatment option. It’s called a haplo, or half match. In some cases, where there isn’t a sibling or random donor match, a child can be the donor. From what I’ve learned, it’s a simple blood test to see if Theo’s a match.”

  “You’re right . . .” Rob says dully, “the mother of all Liv moments. On one hand, I can’t believe what you’ve just told us. Or more to the point, that you never told me. On the other . . .” He scrapes a hand around the back of his neck. “You and I . . . we . . . we share a few secrets, Liv. I don’t understand how this isn’t one of them.”

  Rob is right; we do share many secrets, our anonymous support of music education, and a much deeper secret connected to music and my father. “I’m sorry. Like I said, it didn’t feel like it was a secret. Not until I turned it into one. Not telling you about Theo, I saw it as . . . my choice. If I’d ended the pregnancy all those years ago, I might not have told you that either,” I say speaking to both of them. “Although I doubt that late-breaking news would hit you like this. Maybe it feels bigger because . . .”

  Sasha finishes my thought. “Because there’s a live, grown human being attached to it?”

  “A person who is suddenly at the center of your life.” Rob blinks wide. “Or should I say lives?”

  I have no answer. The pained look on Rob’s face is striking. It takes a lot to get under his skin—the “Teflon man” Sasha advertised years ago. Clearly, I have found a way. “So now what, Liv?”

  “I . . . Well, I suppose I tell Theo. But I wanted to tell the two of you first.”

  “Why?” Rob says, shaking his head. “Did you need a practice round?”

  “Because not telling the two of you before Theo and Sam seemed like yet one more bad decision.” But words about doing the right thing, they sound weak given the moment.

  “And then what?” Rob asks. “Maybe Sasha and I offer to go with you, back you up when you tell the kid exactly what he doesn’t know about the woman in his classroom. The one he cares enough about to nearly tell me to go to hell when you left the gala. I saw it, Liv. He trusts you. He admires you.” Rob rubs his fingertips hard across his forehead. “Holy shit. I’ll go as far as to say he’s bonded with you—and he doesn’t have the first clue why.”

  “You’re right.” I focus on the herringbone hardwoods. “I don’t think Theo’s going to be too keen on me when he hears the truth.” I look back up. “But what else can I do? Sam’s life may depend on Theo’s.”

  “Another great point,” Rob says. “Sam Nash. Good to know he’ll be one up on me when you tell him.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He’ll already be lying down.” Rob turns toward the living room and heads straight for the Macallan bottle.

  Sasha opens her mouth and then closes it. It’s as if she’s not rehearsed this cross-examination. “If this wasn’t so totally screwed up, Liv, it might be commendable. But as it is . . .” She flaps her arm in a hopeless gesture. “My gosh, even for you, this is . . .” She stops, her small frame sucking in a huge breath. “You have a son. Jesus . . .”

  If nothing else, I suppose I’ve proven her affair with Nick Zowzer is no more than pedestrian gossip.

  Her tone shifts, more incredulous. “A grown son that you used me and the Massachusetts court system to ingratiate yourself to for . . . Why? It’s not like he’s eight or ten—I’m sure he was curious to know. Why didn’t you just show up at his door, introduce yourself? Why such secrecy at this late date?”

  It’s such a complicated answer. I don’t know that having lived the last ten years with me gives Sasha enough insight. You need the lifetime. It was something Phillip understood. I think back to the morning after jail, when my mother showed up right before Sasha. How the sole purpose of her visit was to, once again, highlight my low points. How my existence as a Klein isn’t about what I got right, but only the wrongs. Even at twenty-six, I did not want Theo to be subject to that scrutiny. Rob returns with his drink in hand.

  I attempt the explanation Sasha wants. “When the idea occurred to me, serving my hours in Theo’s classroom . . . In that moment, I only wanted to prove to myself I’d done something good. Something right. I didn’t mean for it to be any more than that. I never intended to tell Theo. Nobody was ever supposed to know.”

  “And manipulating me seemed like the best way to achieve that?” Sasha shakes her head “Not good enough, Liv. Not even close. You told me you wanted to do something positive with your gift—maybe even use Braemore to make you a better person.”

  “No, Sasha,” I say quietly. “You said that. I believe Jeremy suggested it. I only said serving time at Braemore might be a good use of my gift. And while it’s no more than a footnote here, that much is true. I’ve been of service, some value,” I say, not necessarily thinking of my hands-on effort, but the boon of instruments now in Braemore’s possession.

  Sasha stares; she’s not buying it. Her attitude remains icy—the client she does not like. She snatches her coat from the sofa. “If I can offer basic courtroom tactics, when you tell Theo, start there. When launching a defense for an obvious offender, it helps to paint the perp in the best light possible.” She grabs up her gloves and hobo bag. “I, um . . . I can’t do this anymore, not now. I can’t do you.” She brushes past Rob and leaves.

  “Sasha!” But the music room’s coffered ceiling rattles as she slams the front door.

  I wrap my arms around the sleeves of my sweater. Even the rush of November air can’t compete with the coolness in the room.

  Rob’s humorless face meets mine. He sips from his already half-empty glass. “Congrats, Liv. I’ve never seen Sasha so distraught—not even sitting in our kitchen, confessing her own transgressions.”

  “And you?” I ask boldly. “Us?”

  He takes a gulp of his drink and frowns. “Seems like we’ve finally arrived at our knockout round.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Olivia

  With Theo on my mind, I make one more early-morning visit to Mass General. There’s no sense in telling Sam right now, getting his hopes up, not yet. That and maybe I want to savor a last moment with someone who is
glad to see me. Sam and I talk about good times from our past and the electric times of his glory days. It grows quiet when he admits they’re of little comfort now. My comments are less emotional, prattling on about the upcoming symphony schedule and how busy the holiday season is. He says it’s okay if I don’t have time to visit again. He’s heard an excuse. I hear the things I will tell myself when Sam no longer wants me here.

  Once again he tries to get me to accept a check for the Wellesley house. “Come on, Livy, I might as well leave it all to you. No one else has mattered that much.” He squeezes my hand. “Or still does.” I smile at the trusting sentiment. “Course it would be like Tate to turn up after the fact. I’d hate to think the elusive son of a bitch ends up with my money.”

  While I want to urge him to leave his estate to a worthy charity, I’m too on edge to pursue the topic. As I sit with Sam, my mind races. I try to craft thoughts that will persuade Theo while keeping his hands from gripping my throat. Sam’s moved on, talking about Charlene. He says something that draws my attention.

  “I should call her. Thank her. If she hadn’t pointed it out, I might have never done the right thing and come to see you. Charlene is persuasive—even after it’d been over between us for ages.”

  A short time later, I leave Sam looking and sounding like a fortune-teller’s ghost. Someone who can persuade Theo, that’s what I need. Who would Theo be most inclined to hear? I suspect the woman he’s in love with. I drive away from Mass General and head straight for the Cross Sound Ferry. A few hours later, the GPS guides me to middle-class suburbia and announces the conclusion of my trip. The canned computer voice is fitting. It almost says: “I haven’t the slightest clue if here is where you should be, but nevertheless, you’ve arrived . . .”

  I’m parked outside a boxy blue house with dark shutters and cement steps where a lone pumpkin sits—the kind you might buy even though your children are grown. I glance once in the rearview mirror; the bruise on my face has faded enough to vanish behind a layer of cover-up. I’m also wearing a long dark coat, the one I wear on symphony performance nights. It works with orchestra garb and offers the illusion of invisibility. Just like the symphony, I suppose I want to be heard and not seen.