Chapter Twenty-four
The great part about being an artist is it gives you license to be eccentric. You can pull off spectacularly selfish acts like leaving a recording studio mid-day that’s been booked for you for the next several weeks. You can not return calls to your label or your producer brother or your boyfriend, who call two, three, and four times respectively.
Sorry, I mean former boyfriend.
Matthew tries to “explain” on his messages. I delete every single one of them. And Jeremy’s and Owen’s too, just for good measure. I turn off the e-mail on my phone. I don’t trust myself not to cave if Matthew sends me one of his patented e-mails. Those swoonworthy e-mails that hooked me in the first place. Nope. I’m not going to fall for another one of his perfectly worded explanations.
Damn writer. The man knew how to use words to his advantage and he worked me over with them.
That night, Ethan and I sequester ourselves in the apartment, ordering a pineapple-and-cheese pizza for dinner. He insists on doing a Lego Star Wars demonstration for me, showing me how he can make Yoda with Han Solo’s head and a storm trooper’s body to fend off bounty hunters in the canteen. Or something like that. Bedtime comes next and I convince him, at least for one night, to try a new book. So I read him Roald Dahl’s The Giraffe and The Pelly and Me.
“That’s a good story, too. Will you read it again tomorrow on the plane?”
“Of course, sweetheart. Good night,” I say, and tuck him in, grateful as always for the one true thing in my life.
My son.
Now, he’s sound asleep and I’ve resorted to my Flint playlist. Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By” is blasting in my earbuds as I pack for Maine. Let me grieve, indeed. After a few songs, I turn the volume down and call my mom.
“Hi, Mom,” I say in a barren voice when she answers.
“What’s wrong? You don’t sound like yourself.”
Nothing gets past my mom. She has pinpoint radar for her daughter’s moods and emotions. “Oh, just a long day,” I tell her.
“Are you sure?”
“I promise.”
“We can’t wait to see you both tomorrow. I’ll have your room ready for you, but I should let you know the Duran Duran posters are gone.”
An image of that night in the studio singing to Matthew flashes past me.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m so over Duran Duran.”
Then I say good-bye and finish packing. I pull a black skirt out of my closet, dropping it into my suitcase. Even though I believe jeans are suitable for nearly every occasion—dress them up, dress them down—I know my mom will appreciate the skirt. I add a few T-shirts for Ethan, a Star Wars sweatshirt, and a long-sleeve button-down for him to wear to the show. He hates button-downs, but he respects sartorial rules about special occasions.
I leave the nearly full suitcase on the floor of my bedroom. I’ll finish it tomorrow morning when I can add toiletries. I head into the kitchen, grab the empty pizza box, and bag up the trash. Then I head down the hall to toss them both in the trash can before I go.
Quon is walking toward me, carrying a paper bag, presumably full of food.
“Hey,” I call out, and narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t tell me you’re seeing other people in my building.”
“4E called in an order, but no one is there. Go figure. Now I have two cartons of noodles without a home.” Then he spies my pizza box. “But you’ve been seeing the pizza man. That makes me very sad,” he says, and rubs his eyes, pretending to cry.
Then my eyes start to water, and I don’t have to pretend to cry. I do it for real.
“Are you okay?” he asks gently.
I shake my head.
“You are sad again. Like you were before,” he says, and I nod. Because, odd as it may seem, Quon was there for me to talk to during many of my lonely nights after Aidan. “We need to have some noodles then. Noodles always cheered you up. Here.” He thrusts the paper bag at me. “Give me the trash.”
I hand him the trash bag and the pizza box, and he takes them to the garbage chute at the end of the hall, then returns to me. We head back inside my apartment and out to the deck.
He takes two white-and-red cartons from the bag and hands me chopsticks. “Have some noodles and tell me everything.”
I sigh and tell him the story. The whole story, chapter and verse.
Quon nods at the end of the story, his brow crinkled, the momentary furrows signaling some sort of deep thought. He expertly maneuvers his chopsticks around the noodles, slurping them up in one seamless movement. Then, with the wooden eating implements poised in midair, he declares, “You are looking for inspiration in the wrong place.”
He reels in another helping of noodles, a pro fisherman he could be.
I roll my eyes. “Quon, that sounds like a fortune cookie. And a bad one at that. What does that even mean?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s an ancient Chinese secret,” he teases.
“Very funny. But maybe you could tell me where to look rather than just tell me where not to look.”
I attempt to stare him down. But he’ll have none of it. He dips a hand into the brown paper bag and plucks out two fortune cookies. He hands one to me and takes the other for himself.
“I will be blessed with luck in business and love,” he reads off. “My lucky number is seven. Oh, that is a good lucky number.”
“That’s not fair,” I whine. I want luck in business and love. “Maybe that was really mine.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “You always get the fortune you need.”
I crack mine open and unfurl the little slip of paper. I frown at Quon. “You did this on purpose.”
He shakes his head adamantly. “I never mess with the fortune cookies. It wasn’t even your order, you crazy woman!”
“Mine says: You will find answers when you stop looking.”
He nods sagely, as if the ancient wisdom of his elders is indeed being passed on, generation to generation, person to person, through the vehicle of sugared, baked dough.
Then I flip it over. My lucky number? “Thirteen.”
I want to shake my fists at the Gods of Music, cry out that this is unfair, rail against their little game of roulette. But really, what can I do?
Except say good-bye to Quon and get to work on my next breakup album.
…
Ethan and I walk past security and find my mom and dad waiting for us.
“Grandpa!” Ethan shouts. He runs to my father, flinging himself at him. My dad lifts Ethan high and gives him a huge hug.
“You’re a big boy. How’d you get so tall?”
“I don’t know, Grandpa. What’s your Patronus?” he asks, referring to a charm the wizards in the Harry Potter series cast when being pursued by Dementors.
My dad strokes his chin thoughtfully, then holds a finger in the air. “A raccoon.”
“A raccoon!” Ethan shrieks. “I’ve never heard of a raccoon for a Patronus!”
We head down to baggage claim, grab our shared suitcase, then cover the short distance to my parents’ car, right outside the terminal. I love small airports.
I slide into the back seat of their car, ready to return to the home I love—the house where I lived when I discovered the joys of melody, rhythm, and harmony. This won’t be such a joyous homecoming musically, but at least I finally have fodder.
The Bastard Who Used Me.
I better write that down. That’s going to be the single we release first on iTunes. How fitting.
…
“Your brother told me what happened.”
My mom is in her study packing her brown leather shoulder bag the next day, stuffing the sheet music for Tommy in it. We’re about to head to the Maine Musical Theater. I’m going to watch the final prep before tonight’s performance. My dad and Ethan are spending the afternoon in the boat on the lake with the dogs. They’ll meet us at the theater at curtain.
“Why are you bringing the music with you?” I point to the papers she just deposited in her bag. “Don’t they know the songs by heart by now?”
“Your brother told me what happened,” she repeats. My mother is phenomenally good at staying on message. But I don’t want to talk about what happened. Though, that might be another good title for a song.
“Do you think I could play the Acid Queen, maybe just for one performance?” I run my hands over the framed posters for all the shows she’s directed—Grand Hotel, 42nd Street, South Pacific, and so on. Each one comes complete with autographs from all her actors and actresses.
“Your brother told me what happened,” she says one more time, as she loops her shoulder bag onto her arm and gestures that it’s time to go. She’s not going to back down, so I meet her gaze as we leave the house.
“Which part?”
“All of it,” she says, as we slip into their car.
Owen called me again yesterday too: “I know you’re there with Mom and Dad and I just want you to know that Matthew is a really—”
I had hit skip, then skip again over Matthew’s message, and then Jeremy’s voice started next. “Jane, I’m really sorry for pressuring you, both on the album and the story. This is all my fault. It wasn’t fair to put you under that kind of pressure. I want you to know I will happily take your next album whenever you feel like doing it. Whenever,” he added once more for emphasis. His was the only message I listened to all the way through.
“News travels fast in this family.”
“We’ve always been a chatty crew,” she says, then gently places a hand on my chin so I’m facing her as she drives. “You can sit there looking pissy or you can reach into my bag and grab some of my special dark chocolate from Paris to eat as you listen to me. It has little orange bits in it.”
“Mom! You are such a dork. I can’t believe you have chocolate in your bag,” I say as I dip my hand in to reach for the bar.
“Of course I have chocolate in my bag,” she says, as if traveling sans chocolate is simply insane. “Now, Jane, I won’t pretend to have all the details, but you should know that Matthew has already introduced Owen to the literary agent. Owen was so excited at the prospect of getting his book in front of an agent that he went home Monday night and stayed up all night and finished the manuscript. He even asked Matthew if he wanted to see it first before he made the intro. Matthew said no, that he trusted him and knew it would be good.”
I break off a chunk of the chocolate bar and take a bite, savoring the dark of the chocolate, the spice of the fruit. It tastes like I imagine Paris would be. I’ve never been, but it tastes like I’m looking at the Eiffel Tower with a lover, like I’m strolling through the Musée d’Orsay, like I’m absentmindedly running my hands across the spines of the books at Shakespeare & Co., my eyes on the six foot two dark-haired man next to me, enrapt in a book of his own.
A book of his own.
About me. Without my permission. Unauthorized. I snap out of my Paris reverie, remembering that Matthew was using me as fodder for a book.
“I am telling you that because it’s something you should know.” We pull into the parking lot. “And if he’d make that effort for your brother, maybe you should hear him out.”
We get out of the car and walk into the theater. “Are you sure you don’t want me to be the Acid Queen?” I ask once more.
My mom looks at me and lays a hand on my shoulder. “If you were the Acid Queen, you’d have a scene with Haley Mauvais. He sings “Eyesight to the Blind,” the song that leads into the Acid Queen scene.”
“Haley Mauvais! I haven’t seen him in ages.”
Haley Mauvais. The guru, the teacher, the master. The authority on the Gods of Music.
We walk down the aisle in the theater that’s practically a second home to my mom. I trail my fingers along the red upholstered seats. She looks at her watch. “He’s going to close up his shop at six today so he can be at the theater at in time.”
“Mom, do you mind if I use your car to visit Haley at Play Without Ceasing?”
She reaches into her bag and hands me her keys. “Here you go.” Then she leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek. “And maybe you want to make a phone call on your way over, too.”
But I don’t have to make a phone call on my way over. Because as soon as I push open the doors, stepping out of the dark inside of the theater and into the bright afternoon sun, I see Matthew.