Читать книгу Strings - Megan Edwards - Страница 12

Chapter 5

I had never been more astonished and deflated at the same moment. When Olivia left me in the walkway, my mouth was gaping open. I don’t remember making my way to my dorm room, but I do know I missed dinner that night. I lay on my bed and consumed an entire box of graham crackers in the gathering gloom.

All my daydreams of attending the dance with Olivia on my arm had been unceremoniously dashed, and she’d left me with no encouragement to try another tack. I was despondent for three days, and I missed four classes. Such absences would have aroused little comment had it not been for my otherwise perfect attendance record. When the school nurse summoned me to her office on the third day of my funk, I realized I was risking parental involvement.

I rallied enough not to miss any more school, but I still wallowed in my woe. Camelot rehearsals would have been particularly horrible, but fortuitously I was excused. Albert van Doren and I flew to New York for my audition at Juilliard that week.

I had never been to Manhattan before, and I know my mother was disappointed that she wasn’t the one who would be showing it to me for the first time. She had worked in New York for a few years after she finished college, and she had planned to take me there as a graduation present.

“You still can,” I said, “because I won’t have time to sightsee on this trip. It’ll be all business.”

My mother laughed, because that was my father’s line. Every time he took off for Hong Kong or Singapore, it was “all business.”

I actually believed what I told my mother, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. My time at the Juilliard School accounted for only a small fraction of the trip, and Mr. Van Doren, a former New Yorker himself, was eager to introduce me to the glories of Manhattan.

The first afternoon we were there, we took a walk in Central Park after we checked into the Warwick Hotel. It was February and bitingly cold, but I barely noticed. I was too entranced by the city I had, up to now, known only in story and song. Suddenly, here it all was, swirling around me like a painting that had magically come to life. Ladies in fur coats were walking little jacketed dogs while steam-breathing men sold chestnuts from pushcarts. Men wearing gloves with the fingers cut off made change for their customers at news kiosks and bookstands. A horse-drawn carriage passed right in front of me. A man and a woman wrapped in a plaid blanket were kissing in the back seat. The man had his hand on the back of the woman’s neck, and I could see her fingers on his cheek. I stared at them, and, as powerfully as if someone had shoved me, an overwhelming resolve slammed through me. Someday, I swore as the carriage moved on, Olivia and I will be under a blanket just like that.

The thought repeated itself over and over as Mr. Van Doren and I dined at a restaurant overlooking the East River. We watched the lights on the Brooklyn Bridge and the city lights sparkling beyond.

“You’ll do fine tomorrow, Ted,” my teacher said as we finished up our steaks. “Just remember to stay in the music. Like it’s a pocket of oxygen in outer space.”

It was advice he had given me a thousand times before, but that night it only reminded me of Olivia. I was in New York at last, on my way to an audition at Juilliard, and all I could think of was getting back to boarding school and finding a way into her bubble.

I lay awake most of the night, telling myself in vain that I should sleep. I kept seeing myself with Olivia, riding in a carriage in Central Park, bundled tightly in a plaid blanket. And then it would be spring, and I would be playing my violin while she sat smiling on a bench. And everyone walking by would smile, too, and there would be daffodils and squirrels, and—I must have dozed off at some point, because I woke up when Mr. Van Doren knocked on my door.

Back then, I thought it was amazing that my audition went well, but now I know that it would have been far more surprising if it had gone badly. Not only was I well prepared, I had chosen a piece I considered my favorite at the time, Paganini’s “Last Caprice in A Minor.” That alone might not have been enough to guarantee a flawless performance, but Olivia was. I was playing for her that morning, and I could almost see her there, the one familiar face among all the strange, critical ones. Just as Mr. Van Doren had advised, I stayed in the music. What he couldn’t have known was that Olivia had become my music. She is still my music. She is my pocket of oxygen in outer space.

Mr. Van Doren wasn’t allowed to sit in on my audition, but a friend of his on the faculty called him before we left New York and said he had “a student to be proud of.”

“It doesn’t mean anything until you get the letter, Ted,” Mr. Van Doren told me, “but David Krinsky didn’t have to call. It’s a very positive sign.”

By the time we headed back to California, I had taken a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art, admired the view from the top of the Empire State Building, and attended a piano recital at Carnegie Hall. Through it all, I kept swearing to myself that somehow I’d get Olivia to talk to me.

When I returned to Haviland, however, I found I was still paralyzed by the thought of rejection and at a loss over what to do next. I was even considering the desperate step of confessing my feelings to Bill and enlisting his help. Then one Tuesday night, everything changed.

I was studying in the library. I had chosen a small table in a little alcove surrounded by bookcases. It was my favorite spot because it provided a little privacy, which meant I could get away with eating as I worked. I had just taken a big bite off a Snickers bar when I felt eyes upon me. Expecting to find the disapproving visage of the night librarian scowling at me, I yanked my contraband under the table and looked up.

Instead of a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, two green eyes met mine. It was Olivia.

“Hi, Ted,” she said, smiling. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

My God. She was actually initiating a conversation with me. My heart took two beats at once, and I sucked in a breath that nearly caused me to choke on my candy bar.

“I was hoping I’d find you here.” She paused, looked down, and then fixed her eyes on me again. I never stopped staring, and I can remember what she had on as if this all happened two hours ago. She was wearing faded jeans and a navy blue V-neck sweater. A delicate gold chain disappeared in a point between her breasts. Her smooth dark hair was drawn back in a loose ponytail, and she was carrying a spiral notebook and a beat-up copy of The Grapes of Wrath. I’d never seen her in anything except a school uniform before, and she seemed infinitely more beautiful, fascinating, and unattainable than ever.

“I wanted to ask you if you’d like to go to a music festival with me.”

I must have maintained my silence a bit too long, because Olivia continued before I could respond.

“My mother is performing at the folk music festival in Santa Barbara this weekend—near the university. She plays Celtic harp, and—”

I was still dumbfounded.

“Well, if you want to go, we could—”

“I’d love to,” I finally managed to interject. A brief but awkward silence ensued, and I struggled to say something that wouldn’t sound too stupid.

“Your mother plays the harp?”

“Celtic harp,” corrected Olivia. “It’s her Irish roots, I guess, but anyway, she’s really good, and she plays every year at this thing. It’s kind of a Renaissance fair. A lot of people wear costumes.”

Another awkward pause.

“But we wouldn’t have to.”

“This weekend?”

“Yes, both days, but I was thinking we could go on Saturday. Unless—”

“Saturday’s fine.”

Olivia hung around for a couple more minutes while we worked out the logistics. I would have liked her to stay all evening, but as soon as we’d arranged to meet in the gym parking lot at nine o’clock Saturday morning, she picked up her books.

“Bye, Ted,” she said, and she vanished before I could think of anything to delay her.

I stared after her, my mood already rising to euphoria. A three-minute conversation and I was a changed man. Olivia had not only talked to me, she had actually invited me to go somewhere with her. For a whole day. God!

There were three Camelot rehearsals between the night Olivia invited me to the festival and Saturday morning, but my hopes for talking to her further were annihilated at the first one. Olivia was still all business when it came to acting, and she maintained her usual distance, even during breaks. Had she really asked me out? I felt as if I’d imagined our library rendezvous, but the only way I’d find out for sure was to show up Saturday morning at the parking lot next to the gym.

I will never forget the days leading up to my date with Olivia. They were filled with more intense anticipation than any I’ve spent before or since. I was far less nervous before my audition for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. I had fewer jitters before my first performance in Carnegie Hall. I worried about everything: my haircut, my aftershave, a pimple that was burgeoning on the side of my nose.

On Friday night I was fretting about what slacks to wear when Bill Cross caught me in the highly uncharacteristic act of ironing a madras shirt in the dorm laundry room.

“Lancelot’s got a hot date with Guenevere, I see,” he commented with his signature sarcasm, and I couldn’t muster a quick enough rejoinder.

“Oh, my God,” continued Bill when he saw the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on my face. “You really are going out with her?”

I didn’t have to answer. Bill rushed up and grabbed the iron out of my hand.

“Hey, watch out!” I yelled. “It’s on the cotton setting!”

“Shut up and sit down,” Bill said. “You don’t know what you’re doing, anyway. I’ll iron. You talk.”

I gave up and flopped down on a folding chair next to the dryer.

“You’re looking at someone who spent his formative years under the guidance of one of the world’s greatest laundresses,” Bill said. He was referring to his early childhood in Venezuela, where his father was still in the oil business. Bill lived there until he was nine, when his parents split up, and he came to the States with his mother. Both parents had remarried and had more children, which meant that Bill was a half brother to three girls and two boys, all much younger. Bill sometimes referred to himself as “the early mistake,” and I always had the feeling that he hadn’t come up with the term himself.

“Yeah,” he continued, “I got two things from growing up at the knee of Maria del Pilar Mata de Salazar. Accent-free Spanish and a mighty skill with starch.” He turned the collar on my shirt. “This could actually use a little, but you’re already too stiff.” Bill gave me a look, and I knew I had to start talking.

“She invited me,” I said.

“Interesting,” Bill said. “I could have sworn it was you doing all the pining away.”

God, had I been that obvious?

“So where are you going?” Bill asked.

“A folk music festival,” I said.

“Your idea?” Bill said, surprised.

“Hers.”

“Hmm. How’re you getting there?”

“Her mom’s driving,” I said. There it all was, ready for voracious consumption in the dorms. The violin virtuoso was going to a love-in with the cleaning lady and her daughter. There was nothing to stop Bill from spreading the word.

I’ve never admitted to myself until now that I was worried about my reputation there in the laundry room. I had relished the thought of showing up at the Spring Gala with Guenevere on my arm. I would have loved to parade her in front of Elizabeth Dunhill and her snotty society cronies. Olivia would have been my trophy at the Ojai Valley Hunt Club, but a trip to a folk music festival with her—a place where they played things like spoons and kazoos—was something else entirely. It was exactly the sort of event my classical training had taught me to scorn.

“Here’s your shirt,” Bill said. “Say thanks.”

I took the shirt.

“Say thanks,” Bill said again, but I left without a word. I figured it was only a matter of hours before the entire campus would be laughing as I rode off to hear banjo music in a ratty old Chevy station wagon.

But Bill didn’t spread the word about my plans. I’m not sure whether it was because he was my friend or that he considered Olivia’s feelings, but either way, his silence made him a better man than I. As I headed back to my room to decide which pair of slacks to wear, I was nothing more than a chicken-hearted snob who was terrified his classmates might find out that he was about to embark on his first real date.