by David Hopen
“I don’t feel right about it.”
“Okay, but I do,” I said, frowning. “And I have nothing to lose trying.”
“Nothing to lose?” She gave an aggrieved laugh. “It’s not simply a matter of a math score, Ari. There are reputations at stake. There are students already in the running. There are networks I’ve built—painstakingly, over years and years, before I even arrived at this school. My students don’t apply on personal whims with nothing to lose.”
“Well, why not?”
“Why not? Because . . . because there’s a system!” She balled her right hand into a fist, then quickly relaxed it. “A system much larger and more significant than one student. And not to mention the grim truth that not everyone belongs at an Ivy, Mr. Eden. It’s painful, I know it, but that’s just the way the world works.”
I inhaled, exhaled, calming myself. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“Consult Rabbi Bloom if you feel that way,” she said, playing with her wedding ring instead of making eye contact. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to discuss this with you.”
“What does Rabbi Bloom have to do with this?”
“I certainly won’t be the one submitting an administrative letter of recommendation on your behalf.”
I snatched the forms and, to her surprise, rose from my chair. “I’ll be back, then.”
* * *
“YOU’RE KIDDING?” KAYLA SAID. We had taken our lunch out to the soccer field. I’d done well on my last quiz—I received an A, my highest grade to date from Dr. Porter—and Kayla had insisted that I reward myself by taking a break from tutoring. (“Rest assured,” she said, “I still think hanging with you should count toward community service hours.”)
I was on the grass, observing the noonday sky, cloudless, a sharp shade of blue. “Nope. Totally serious.”
“Ari Eden, a Columbia Lion?” She clapped. “The prodigal son returns to New York!”
“How come everyone’s reaction to this is utter disbelief?”
“Who’s everyone? I thought it was a secret.”
“Ballinger, for one.”
“What? You expected her to dance you down the Columbia aisle?” She unwrapped her lunch, busied herself with drowning her salad in dressing, offered me a bite. I declined. “And what’s with Bloom?”
“I had to go see him and get him involved, after Ballinger shut me down. And he came through for me. He overruled her.”
“Whoa, he actually went against Ballinger? That’s a pretty big deal, Ari,” she said. “Clearly the man’s impressed by you.”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he’s just being nice. Or taking pity.”
“Come on. Obviously you’ve very much piqued his interest.” She picked at her salad. “You seem to have that effect on people.”
“Really? I’d say I tend to have the opposite effect.”
“Always with the immediate self-effacement. Is that like a defensive mechanism or something? Does it get kind of old?”
“Nope.”
“Whatever. All I’m saying is that usually Bloom’s a difficult man to intrigue.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m in the top of the class, and how often do you see me scurrying to his office for ever-so-pressing conversations, ancient books in hand?”
“Ah. I get it. You’re jealous.”
She threw a fistful of grass my way. “Hardly. Go ahead and enjoy your meetings, I don’t care. Just be aware, is all.”
“Aware of what?”
“Bloom’s acted like this with only one other person since I started here.”
“Oh, God. Don’t.”
“Who is Brother Stark, for five hundred dollars?”
“He likes Evan, too, so what?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just a bit—curious.”
“Not really. He thinks we have similar interests is all.”
“You two have similar interests? Similar anything? I don’t see it.”
“With some topics, I guess. I don’t know.”
She plundered some of the pretzels I was eating. I watched her hand dig around in my Ziploc bag. Her nails were unpainted. Sophia’s, nowadays, were white. “Okay, we won’t go there. Anyway, what’s Noah been saying about Columbia?”
“Haven’t told him. Or my father, for that matter.”
“Wow, both your paternal figures don’t know.”
“Shut up.”
“Can I just say I really like the idea of you at Yeshiva University? I still think you should look at it.”
“Right, fair. I know.”
“Wait, what about your mother? She knows?”
“Yeah, she’s ecstatic, actually. Convinced I’m getting in and making up for her mistake.”
“Mistake?”
“Leaving Barnard.”
She stretched beside me, twisting to her side. Her hair had been straightened into neat, red lines. She wore sunglasses and an asymmetrical smile. “So you’ve told your mother, Ballinger and Bloom. And somehow you’ve also elected to tell me. To what do I owe the honor?”
“Tutor-student confidentiality.”
“Right. Well, it’s an interesting group. You sure no one else knows?”
A plane passed overhead. I watched it evaporate into faraway blue. “No.”
“No what?”
“No one else knows.”
“Not Sophia, you’re telling me?”
I stiffened, rubbed my eyes. “Uh, actually, she’s been helping a bit.” I knew, right away, what Kayla was thinking, and I didn’t disagree. Sophia’s excitement at my decision to apply to Columbia wasn’t selfless. Turning me into a Platonic, Ivy League version of myself would obviously render me an infinitely superior romantic partner. Still, I didn’t care if Sophia had ulterior motives. I’d spent so long convinced that I’d been ruined by Torah Temimah, barred from the sort of life accessible to my friends, that I was eager for an opportunity to reshape myself. As it was, my every performance—on dates, in class, with friends, alone at night—was designed, rightly or not, to impress Sophia, to prove that I was, in fact, worthy. That I was someone who made her smile. That I was the kind of person with whom she could trade literary repartee. That I could offer dependability and sufficiently ambitious aspirations. I wanted her to see that I was the one she should choose.
Our gazes were now both directed heavenward.
“Why’d you lie about Sophia helping you?”
“I . . . I didn’t mean it maliciously. I just didn’t really think it was important.”
She sat up, moving farther from me. “It’s really none of my business. Whatever’s happening between you two—”
“—nothing,” I protested, my voice whiny, horrible. I fought off the urge to just admit what Kayla already knew. “Really, we’re just friends.”
She sat cross-legged, swaying slightly. “I just hope you’re sure about what you’re doing.”
“Why don’t you like her?”
Kayla glanced away. “I don’t actively dislike her. I mean, I’ve known her since kindergarten, but I hardly actually know her.”
“So then what’s the issue?”
“Maybe she once did something that I don’t, you know, happen to love.”
I pulled up dewy grass. “What was it?”
She looked back toward me. “Nothing, it’s extremely stupid, not even worth getting into.”
“No,” I said, feeling strangely defensive. “I—actually, I’d really like to know.”
“In seventh grade,” Kayla said, “my parents forced me to have this big bat mitzvah party, which of course was basically the last thing on earth I wanted to subject myself to. And yet, they pushed for it, they insisted it was an important part of growing up, something cute but misguided like that. Anyway, over time I come to accept it, I’m actually excited about it, believe it or not, there’s pizza, there are drinks, there’s the lamest DJ you ever did see stationed in the corner of the room. And, agonizingly enough, ha
rdly anyone shows.”
I cringed, opening my mouth to interject with something comforting, but Kayla waved me off. “It’s fine,” she said, “I expected that to happen anyway. But my poor parents made some calls to figure out how it was that they steered their daughter into such, you know, abject public humiliation, and what they uncover is that Sophia had some local, astonishingly unimportant piano recital that same evening and actually campaigned—no joke, campaigned!—for most of our grade to attend. As in, she literally messaged people making certain they wouldn’t be caught dead, God forbid, at my bat mitzvah and that they’d instead come see her Royal Highness perform, because already at that young age her ego required devoted fans.”
“That’s—horrible,” I said, blushing on behalf of both Kayla and Sophia. “I’m sorry that happened to you, really. But, I mean, it was so long ago and—”
“It was a long time ago, Ari, and it’s highly probable that she’s changed extensively and even feels remorse for having done that to me. I, for one, have certainly moved on from that stupidity. But if you’re asking me if a character flaw signifies anything? Well, then I can at least tell you privately, friend to friend, that perhaps I just don’t buy it.”
“Buy what?”
She snorted. “I don’t like that you’re repugnantly spellbound. I don’t like that you think she’s some mythological sketch of human excellence. Number one in the class. Spectacularly popular. Musical prodigy—”
“She doesn’t like that word,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Prodigy. She doesn’t prefer it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sophia glances your way, you think it’s real, suddenly you overlook all else.”
“Overlook what? What am I overlooking?”
“It’s not for me to say, Ari.”
“No, really, tell me.”
“Ever wonder why she’s descended on you like this? Ever wonder whether she just needs someone there for her at the moment? Why she’s pushing you toward a certain school? Why—”
Hearing someone else vocalize all this made me nauseous. “You say it with such, I don’t know, disdain,” I said quietly. “As if I’m some embarrassment.”
“You’re no embarrassment, Ari Eden. That’s the point. You just have the emotional intelligence of, I don’t know, a walnut.”
“Right. So in essence you think she’s using me to get back at—”
“At what?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Forget it.”
“Don’t you find it agonizing to be with someone you know wants someone else?”
I didn’t answer. She laughed softly, picked herself up from the grass. “Just be careful, Hamlet,” she said, slinging her backpack over her shoulders. She dusted her skirt and headed back into school.
* * *
WEEKS PASSED TORTUROUSLY. AMIR WAS a wreck, sullen, irritable, prone to snapping at any mention of applications. Evan decided on Stanford but boasted that he cared little about what admission officers thought of him and that he was applying mostly because it was as far away as he could flee. (Not once did he mention, as Amir pointed out to me, that he wanted to attend Stanford because his mother had done so.) Noah was characteristically even-tempered; we took his lack of nerves as a sign he had received some form of confirmation from the coach at Northwestern, though he never admitted this.
I felt guilty keeping Columbia a secret. I didn’t know how to tell Noah without sounding pathetic or directly addressing Sophia’s involvement. (“Columbia?” I imagined him responding, face wracked with sympathetic disbelief, “the fuck?”) Still, I thought incessantly about my swarm of dreams / Of inaccessible Utopia—Gothic bells, long shadows cast from austere buildings, pillars and pillars of musty books. I longed for this in class, in prayer, in bed, visualizing a fictive life of world-class professors and Italian suits and secret parties and Anglican roommates.
The close of the semester, meanwhile, crept upon us, midterms looming ominously, teachers piling on work with regained enthusiasm. It was a difficult stretch: I avoided going out much, did poorly on a string of math tests, wrote an unremarkable paper questioning Don Quixote’s religious extremism. (“Well crafted,” Mrs. Hartman wrote in her luxurious green ink, “but lifeless. Come see me.”) Even the discussions in Rabbi Bloom’s class had soured somewhat, partly due to the unspoken feeling of application competition, partly because Evan appeared to be in a progressively worse mood, speaking up less, keeping his head in his notebook.
Sophia and I saw little of each other outside of school. Occasionally we went for quick dinners or walks in the park, but mostly we fell into a stretch of awkward texting. One Saturday night, after we saw a particularly horrid movie about a wayward youth’s escape from California, I decided to address our stagnancy.
“Soph,” I said, parking in her driveway.
“Yes?”
I turned off my car. “Is something wrong? You can be honest.”
A soft stare. She had on a diaphanous, beige blouse and a clover necklace. She looked thin and pale. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know.” A car drove by with its high beams on, blinding us with light. “You seem distant.”
“I feel distant,” she said. “But I think it’s just the season. The uncertainty of things.”
“What do you mean? The uncertainty of college?”
“Yeah, among other things, I guess.”
“I see.” She pressed herself against me. I put my arm around her shoulder without quite knowing why. “Want to talk about it?”
“Actually, do you mind if I cry?” She did so before I could respond, but it was brief: quiet, restrained. She stopped to wipe her eyes, and it was as if she hadn’t cried at all.
“Are you—you’re sure you’re okay?” I asked.
Sophia bit her lip, moved a strand of hair behind her ears. “I’ve been kind of afraid to play lately.”
“Play piano?”
She nodded.
For a moment, the silence between words took on a sort of pulsating quality, filling the interior of my car with imaginary vibrations. “Why would you be afraid?” I asked her.
“It’s just—my music right now is wrong.”
“Wrong?” I watched the way she breathed. “What, so like writer’s block?”
“Not really, no.”
“Maybe you’re just overdoing it,” I said. “You probably need a break for a bit. You know, to recalibrate.”
“No, it’s not that.” She looked directly into my eyes, blurring all components of my field of vision external to her face. “I’m not like exhausted or tapped out. It’s more that everything’s . . . darker. I can’t get back my, I don’t know, my weightlessness, if that makes sense.”
I thought about what she had asked me that night on the beach, behind Elation. What’s wrong with me? “What does darker look like?”
“It’s hard to explain,” she said.
“What about what you played at Oliver’s? The, uh, the Passion.”
Against her will, she broke into a smile. “The Appassionata, Hamlet.”
“Right, sorry, that,” I said. “Was that dark? Because that definitely worked for you, didn’t it? And what about the school recital? It was—I don’t want to say dark, per se, mostly because I know I’m clearly out of my element here and don’t understand exactly what I’m talking about, but it was regal. Breathtaking, actually, Soph, that’s the word. It was breathtaking.”
She withdrew from me, leaning back into her own seat. “That’s kind of the problem.”
“Sounds like a good problem to have.”
“My music’s changing,” she said. “And I think the darker sound is superior.”
I removed my key, unnerved by how much Sophia sounded like someone else I knew. “My parents are away,” she said, stepping out of the car. “Come inside and I’ll show you.”
* * *
SHE PLAYED THE APPASSIONATA FOR me in her room, the lights off, a single candle lit. I watched from h
er bed, heart in my throat. In the shadows cast by the candle she resembled a Caravaggio painting: a body swallowed by darkness but invaded by violent bursts of light that illuminated fragments of her face. When she finished, she gave a slight shiver but remained at the piano, facing the wall, head against the frame. “You see?” she asked, finally, in a small voice.
“Honestly? It’s a bit intense but I think it’s incredible. I really wouldn’t—”
A sudden movement in the dark: her fist against the fallboard. A framed picture—Sophia as a seven-year-old, at her first recital—crashed to the floor. The glass fractured. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.” Her voice was hoarse. I wanted to reach out, grab her, but I was rooted to her bed. She retrieved the picture, inserting the shards back in place, her face fissured into hemispheres. “I need something else for my Juilliard interview. Something original.”
“And this isn’t?”
“I want it to be traditional,” she said. “The way I used to play. Something untainted, something that doesn’t frighten.”
Pools of spiky shadows. Thin rain against the windowpanes. She had her back to me. “When did it start changing?” I asked.
“Before you met me.”
“What happened?”
She moved to the bed, sitting beside me, clasping her ankles with her hands. Sitting on her bed, our bodies touching, I felt feverish longing. I wanted to be possessed by her. I wanted her to relieve me of thought and memory and complexity. I wanted her to wound me. “Tell me what that piece made you think of.”
“Actually,” I said, “I thought of something kind of random.”
“Good. Be completely honest.”
“It was a line from The Wild Duck.”
“Lovely. My art reminds you of schoolwork.”
“Remember that moment toward the end, when Werle’s eyesight is going and Hjalmar and Gina are talking about Fate? How it can be pretty ugly?”
“Mostly. What about it?”
“Hjalmar says something there”—I paused to get it right. “‘It is profitable, now and then, to plunge deep into the night side of existence.’ That’s what I thought of—how sometimes we have to walk through the slope of darkness to get back into the light.”
She folded her arms, put her blanket to her face, breathed steadily. “When you say stuff like that, you sound like another person.”
