The rejection from Banff wasn’t unusual and, in any case, it was for a piece that was still under consideration by several other festivals, but it had found me in a state of such intense grief that it shattered me. All of my insecurities seeped out at once. I hadn’t trained at a conservatory, hadn’t apprenticed with a renowned soloist, hadn’t attracted the attention of a good mentor, hadn’t played gigs at the Fillmore or the Blue Note. In the jazz bands or chamber orchestras I’d performed with over the years, I was often the only woman, the odd one out. And I liked to write in different traditions, jazz and classical, which meant that my place in the music world was not quite settled. Perhaps it would never be.
That evening, alone in the cabin, I opened Sibelius on my laptop, and it was as if I were looking at someone else’s notations. I couldn’t get the judges’ words out of my head. My work was too cerebral. Too out there. Too something or other. I don’t know how long I sat on that old sofa, an hour or two or three, but the composition stopped exciting me or inspiring me or even making any sense to me. Maybe I needed to get rid of it. Erase it and start over. My cursor was poised over the Delete button when I heard a car pull up the driveway. A moment later, there was a knock at the door.
The sun was setting, and in its orange glow Jeremy’s eyes looked green rather than blue. He was in hiking pants and boots, and he jingled his keys nervously. “I was on my way to Hidden Valley,” he said, “and I wondered if you wanted to come.”
“Now? It’s past seven.”
“The heat’s finally breaking. And there’s a full moon tonight.”
The sky was the color of a ripe apricot. Soon it would be night, the cabin would be cast in even deeper silence, and I would be alone again, facing my score. Above the swamp cooler the turtledove cooed. We both turned to look. “She’s got eggs in there,” I said.
“Or he does.”
“How can you tell it’s a male?”
“I can’t, I just know they take turns incubating.”
So that was why the nest was never empty. I had begun to wonder how the poor dove fed itself if it was sitting in there all the time. Now it tilted its head sideways and stared at us with curiosity. “Come inside while I get my shoes,” I said.
The cabin was barely furnished. The sofa, the chair, the coffee table—these were solid and comfortable, but they held no history and revealed nothing about me. There were no mementoes on the shelves, no family pictures on the wall. I closed Sibelius before Jeremy could ask about my music. “My mom made that,” I said when I saw him looking at the ridiculous arrangement of dried flowers above the fireplace. I finished tying my shoelaces and stood up. “I don’t know if I have a water bottle,” I said, walking to the kitchenette and opening and closing cabinets at random.
“I have one in the car.”
“Flashlight?”
“I have that, too.”
In the car, I lowered my window and let the wind whip through, its hum a stand-in for conversation. The town lights sparkled in the desert, but once we drove into the national park, darkness wrapped itself around us. In the distance were giant boulders and, everywhere on the plain beneath them, Joshua trees. I had always loved the oaks and pines and redwoods of the Bay Area, with their long and leafy limbs, but I had missed the desert trees: stout, prickly, wild-armed, and yet utterly fragile. It was only after I had left my hometown that I had really taken the full measure of how rare they were.
When we got to Hidden Valley, we found the metal gate locked. A sign said that the trail was closed after sunset. But Jeremy parked the car on the side of the road, got out, and hopped easily over the gate. “You coming?” he called. We started walking. Though the moon was still low in the sky, it was bright enough that there was no need for a flashlight. An owl flew overhead, its wings so quiet that we didn’t see the bird until it was ten feet past us.
“It’s nice that the park is so quiet,” I said.
“That’s why I prefer summers here. No tourists, just locals.”
“Like me?” I asked with a chuckle.
“Like you.”
For a while, we walked in silence, the only sound the crunching of the dirt underneath our shoes. The rhythm of it was calming, and I took a deep breath. The air smelled faintly of sage.
Half a mile down the trail, Jeremy pointed to a boulder formation. “There’s a good view from up there.”
“Let’s see it, then.”
He went first, calling out any slippery spots when he came to them, but I matched his pace easily. Somehow my body had retained the memory of scaling these rocks dozens of times as a child. At the top we sat down, our legs stretched before us, and watched the valley beneath. The moonlight silvered the landscape, softening its features in places and in others casting them in harsh angles. It was peaceful, but beneath the silence, I knew, life still pulsed in all its beauty and violence. Bats fed, owls hunted, lizards crawled out of their holes. I wondered whether there would ever be a time when I would be at peace, when my heart would not feel as though lead had been cast inside it. In the past, I had found in music a refuge from my sorrows and disappointments, but now I wasn’t sure it could be, not when it could be reduced by a panel of judges to a few dismissive words. “Do you still play music?” I asked.
“No, not since high school. I don’t even know where my guitar is. Probably somewhere in my dad’s garage.”
“Remember when we went on a field trip to see the L.A. Phil?”
“Of course. Senior year.”
“It was the first time I’d seen a Frank Gehry building. First time I’d been in a concert hall, even. I sat next to a woman in a satin gown and gloves who kept pointing out to her husband all the people she knew in the audience. She said she was excited to hear Massenet. That the Philharmonic played him too rarely. But afterward she said she didn’t like the performance because the conducting had been rebarbative. Rebarbative! It was a word I’d only ever seen in books. I’d never heard anyone say it. I thought everyone in big cities talked like that. I couldn’t wait to go to college.”
“I remember that day,” he said softly. “We ate lunch together.”
“We did?” From the way he looked at me, it seemed the moment held some significance, but I couldn’t tell what it was. How strange the work of memory, I thought. What some people remembered and others forgot.
After a moment, he asked, “Was Stanford like you thought it would be?”
“Yes and no,” I said. Only the buildings were exactly as advertised in the brochure; everything else about the place was different, beginning with the people. I was the only Arab in my high school, but now there were people from many different backgrounds in my dorm, and that made me feel less alone. Still, whenever I opened my mouth, I singled myself out as a country bumpkin. Once, in freshman comp, I answered a question about architectural design by talking about the “bow arts.” Beaux Arts, my professor corrected with an amused laugh, the x is pronounced z, and the t and the s are silent. It seemed to me I would never wash off the trace of the countryside from my speech, my clothes, myself. But eventually I adjusted, and even learned to enjoy everything the city had to offer. “I’d dreamed about it for so long,” I said, “that it was bound not to be the way I imagined it.”
From a cluster of shrubs in the distance came the rat-a-tat of a cactus wren. I glanced over Jeremy’s shoulder in the direction of the sound and when it stopped I saw that his eyes were fixed on me. A flicker of desire in them. Without knowing why, I wanted to blow it out. Snuff it before it had a chance to start kindling. “Have you ever heard of Max Bloemhof?”
“No. Who’s he?”
“He wrote a great book about apartheid in South Africa, called Before Night Comes. Some people think of it as a modern classic. He also wrote We Ourselves, about Northern Ireland. Not as good, but it was a huge bestseller.”
“Wait, I think I know who you’re talking about. I saw him on The Daily Show once.”
“That’s him. I met him at an artists’ colony in upstate New York. I didn’t know anyone there, but he sat next to me one night and talked to me and made me feel at ease. He asked what I was working on, and then when he heard the chamber piece I’d just finished, he said I was the most talented musician he’d ever heard at the residency. I guess I was flattered by his attention. And later, he said I was the love of his life, that he couldn’t live without me.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and rested my chin on them. My throat felt dry.