A basic truth had escaped by accident. Girls hovered on the surface of every situation. I noticed them in school, ogled them in church, played to them at every concert performance. As if they jumped from the shadows, girls arrived, and nothing was ever the same. I fell in love ten times a day: an older woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties in a gray coat on a gray street corner; the raven-haired librarian who came every Tuesday morning to buy a dozen eggs. Ponytailed girls jumping rope. Girls with charming accents. Girls in bobby socks and poodle skirts. In the sixth grade, Tess Wodehouse trying to hide her braces behind her smiles. Blondie in the funny pages; Cyd Charisse; Paulette Goddard; Marilyn Monroe. Anyone curved. Allure goes beyond appearances to the way they grace the world. Some women propel themselves by means of an internal gyroscope. Others glide through life as if on ice skates. Some women convey their tortured lives through their eyes; others encircle you in the music of their laughter. The way they become their clothes. Redheads, blondes, brunettes. I loved them all. Women who flirt with you: where’d you get such long eyelashes? From the milkman. Girls too shy to say a word.
The best girls, however, were those who liked music. At virtually every performance, I could pick out from the crowd those who were listening, as opposed to the terminally bored or merely disinterested. The girls who stared back unnerved me, but at least they were listening, as were the ones with their eyes closed, chins cocked, intent on my playing. Others in the audience would be cleaning their teeth with their nails, digging in their ears with their pinkies, cracking their knuckles, yawning without covering their mouths, checking out the other girls (or boys), or checking their watches. After the performances, many in the audience invariably came up to have a few words, shake my hand, or stand near me. These post-performance encounters were most rewarding and I was delighted to receive compliments and answer questions for as long as I could while unmasking the enthusiasms of the women and girls.
Unfortunately, the concerts and recitals were few and far between, and the public demand for my performances of classical music at parties and shows diminished as I neared puberty. Many aficionados had been interested in a ten-year-old prodigy, but the novelty died when I was all elbows and acne as a teenager. And to be honest, I was sick of the Hanon and Czerny exercises and the same insipid Chopin étude that my teacher fussed over year after year. Changing yet again, I found my old powers ebbed as my hormones raged. As if overnight, I had gone from wanting to be just a boy to wanting to be a grown man. Midway through my freshman year in high school, following months of soul-searching and sullen fighting with my mother, it hit me that there was a way to combine my passion for music and my interest in girls: I would form my own band.
? CHAPTER 8 ?
I have something for you.”
The last bitter days of winter imprisoned the whole band. A snowstorm and freezing temperatures made travel outside of camp impossible. Most of us spent night and day under cover in a drowse caused by the combination of cold and hunger. Speck stood above me, smiling, a surprise hidden behind her back. A breeze blew her long black hair across her face, and with an impatient hand, she brushed it aside like a curtain.
“Wake up, sleepyhead, and see what I found.”
Keeping the deerskin wrapped tight against the cold, I stood. She thrust out a single envelope, its whiteness in relief against her chapped hands. I took it from her and opened the envelope, sliding out a greeting card with a picture of a big red heart on its front. Absentmindedly, I let the envelope slip to the ground, and she quickly bent to pick it up.
“Look, Aniday,” she said, her stiff fingers working along the seams to carefully tear the seal. “If you would think to open it up, you could have two sides of paper—nothing but a stamp and address on the front, and on the back, you have a blank sheet.” She took the card from me. “See, you can draw on the front and back of this, and inside, too, go around this writing here.” Speck bounced on her toes in the snow, perhaps as much out of joy as to ward off the chill. I was speechless. She was usually hard as a stone, as if unable to bear interaction with the rest of us.
“You’re welcome. You could be more grateful. I trudged through the snow to bring that back while you and all these lummoxes were nice and cozy, sleeping the winter away.”
“How can I thank you?”
“Warm me up.” She came to my side, and I opened the deerskin rug for her to snuggle in, and she wrapped herself around me, waking me alert with her icy hands and limbs. We slid in near the slumber party under the heap of blankets and fell into a deep sleep. I awoke the next morning with my head pressed against her chest. Speck had one arm around me, and in her other hand she clutched the card. When she woke up, she blinked open her emerald eyes to welcome morning. Her first request was that I read the message inside the card:
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 30
There was no other signature, no addressee, and whatever names had been inked on the envelope had been smudged into oblivion by the wet snow.
“What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Who is Shakespeare?” The name seemed vaguely familiar.
“His friend makes all his troubles end, if he but thinks about him . . . or her.”
The sun rose above the treetops, warming our peaceful camp. The aural signs of melting began: snow sloughing off firs, ice crystals breaking apart, the thaw and drip of icicles. I wanted to be alone with the card, and my pencil burned like an ember in my pocket.
“What are you going to write?”
“I want to make a calendar, but I do not know how. Do you know what day is today?”
“One day is like another.”