Dirty Wings (24 page)

“When they were recording? How'd that go?”

“I couldn't do it. They played the same song over and over again and I couldn't do it. I couldn't even play a fucking chord.”

“You've never tried playing with other people before,” Cass says. “Don't be so hard on yourself.”

“There was this other guy there. The producer. He made me feel better about it, I guess. I ran out of the studio, Cass. It was really bad. But he came outside and—”
And touched me,
Maia thinks.
He touched me, and I can't stop thinking about it, and I might be going crazy.
“He had these eyes. Like, all the way black. You know what's weird? I think I dreamed about him.”

Cass freezes under her hand. “What do you mean, you dreamed about him?”

“Before. When I used to play that Ravel piece, the one I played for you? I fell asleep one night at the piano when I was practicing and dreamed about this guy who told me he'd been listening to me. And then today, in the studio, I felt this…” Maia trails off.

“You felt what?”

“I don't know,” Maia says. “Is he someone you know?”

“No.”

“Are you not telling me something?”

“No,” Cass says again. “No, it's nothing. It's nothing.”

Maia is silent for a while. “I haven't gotten my period since I met Jason.”

“Oh, baby. That's not good.”

“No,” Maia says.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I don't know.”

“You're probably just late.”

“Probably.”

“If you're not,” Cass says. “Whatever you need. I'll go to the doctor with you.”

“Have you ever—you know. Done that?”

“Sure,” Cass says. “It's not that bad. It's over really fast. The doctor was kind of a jerk. But the nurse held my hand.”

“It might be kind of cool, to have a kid,” Maia says. “I could have a girl.”

Cass laughs. “I don't think you get to pick.”

“I know. But if it was a girl, we could raise her together. We'd make her so cool. You could tell her what music to listen to and I could teach her to play the piano. She would be so brave. She'd do whatever she wanted with her life.”

“Maia. Or you could just do that yourself. With your
own
life. You're seventeen.”

“Almost eighteen.”

“You don't need to live your dreams through someone else.”

“I know,” Maia says.

“Do you?”

“Sure,” Maia says, looking down at her lap. “But it's Jason's. If it's a baby. It's his baby.”

“It's not a baby,” Cass says, “and if it were, it's yours.”

Maia pushes one finger against the floorboards. Cass wants desperately to brush her hair out of her eyes, kiss the place where the line of her neck meets her shoulder. She looks away instead. “Jason's not like other boys,” Maia says. “He's fragile.” Cass shakes her head. “You're strong,” Maia says. “He's not strong. I think having something to take care of—I think it would change him. Be good for him.”

“That's a terrible reason to have a kid.”

“Better than whatever reason my parents had me,” Maia says. “Since it turned out they didn't want me.”

“You don't know that that's true, Maia. You don't know anything about them or why they gave you up. If you have a baby now, it'll change everything.”

“Maybe that's what I need.”

“You're already strong.”

“Not like you,” Maia says quietly.

Cass sighs. “Come on,” she says, standing up. “I feel like getting drunker. Let's go back to Jason's.”

“Cass? I love you.”

“I love you too, princess.” Cass pulls Maia to her feet and pushes her toward the door, avoiding her eyes. “Come on.”

THEN

What Maia does tell her father, in the end, is only slightly less than the truth: that she aced her audition, which she did. He's so pleased he hums in the taxi on the way to dinner. This time, they eat at an Italian restaurant with real tablecloths and cloth napkins, and no one tries to talk to her in a language she does not know. She pokes at her linguine with her fork, takes sips of the glass of wine her father ordered for her. Something her mother never would have done. She wonders what else would happen, if she spent more time with her father alone. The last couple days have suggested there's a whole person hiding somewhere inside him, a stranger who blossoms when he's on his own soil. He is chattering to her about where she will live in New York, how he will come visit her, how her whole life is about to begin. She's coming down off the speed and the crash is dulling her senses, leaving her leaden and depressed, but her father doesn't notice. She excuses herself to go to the bathroom and locks herself in the low-lit marble-tiled room. It's tasteful, a wicker basket of real towels next to the sink. She splashes her face with water and stares at herself in the mirror for a long time. When she gets back to the table her father is regaling the waiter with tales of his genius daughter, the pianist. The waiter is doing his best to appear interested.

“Dad, stop,” she says, sitting down, and the waiter, seeing his chance, murmurs something and flees. She lets her father talk for the rest of the dinner, in the taxi back to the hotel, in the elevator up to their rooms, and when at last she shuts the door on him that night he is still talking, still telling a story that has nothing to do with her. That night she dreams she is walking with Cass along an oily black river that winds through a forest of white-barked and leafless trees, both of them looking for something that is just out of reach. But what it is they seek, she cannot say.

 

 

Back home, she goes through the motions of her life as if nothing has changed, but something irrevocable has shifted inside her. A month passes, and then another. She practices, goes to Oscar's, reads her geometry textbooks in her room. Her roots grow in. She wears the grey shirt she stole in front of her mother, and her mother says nothing. She starts wearing the New Order shirt, the torn jeans. More clothes she gets with Cass. Tattered cutoffs with black tights. A sweatshirt with holes where her thumbs poke through. Still her mother says nothing, her silence a war of attrition that Maia, too, can keep fighting. Her house is becoming more unbearable by the day.

“June,” Cass says one afternoon. Maia took her father's car without asking again—being treated as though she's invisible does have some advantages—and they drove to Gas Works Park, where they're watching a spittle-streaked, shrieking toddler lunge after some geese with a handful of bread. Cass leans back in the grass.

“Watch out for goose shit,” Maia says.

“Already checked. Summer makes me stir-crazy.”

“Me, too.”

“You ever even been anywhere?”

“Europe.”

“Europe, of course,” Cass says in a fake posh accent. Maia hits her on the shoulder. “But I mean, like,
traveling.
”

“I've traveled lots.”

“You've gotten on a plane and come back. It's not the same thing if you go just to go.”

“Go where?”

Cass shrugs. “Anywhere. Hop rails, hitch. Just put some stuff in a bag and say goodbye to your life for a while. When I've been back here for too long, I get restless. I go traveling every summer.”

Maia thinks of Cass leaving her and is overwhelmed by an unexpected sense of panic. Cass is her only friend, and now her best friend; the thought of losing her is as awful as cutting off one of her limbs.

“I'd miss you,” she says. “A lot.”

“I'd miss you, too,” Cass says, taking her hand.

“What if I went with you?”

Cass looks up, surprised. “Why would you want to do that? You have a whole life here.”

“So do you.”

“But you have to practice every day. Get ready for your future. All that stuff.”

“I'm sick of my future.”

“Don't say that.”

“I am,” Maia says. “I'm sick of it. I've never done anything I wanted, anything for myself, until I met you. I'm going crazy from it. That show you took me to—I know that was no big deal, for you. You do that stuff all the time. But all those people—”

“Todd,” Cass interrupts, smirking.

“Todd,” Maia agrees, her cheeks red. “But all of them. All your friends. You just do whatever you want.”

“You only see the good side, Maia,” Cass says. “You don't see the hard parts. You don't see us in winter, sleeping in two sweaters and a coat and four pairs of socks, because there's no heat in the house.”

“It sounds like camping.”

“It's not like camping when it's every day of your life.”

“I want to try it,” Maia says. “I want to try something. Anything. I want to go out in the world and forget who I'm supposed to be for a while.”

Cass props herself up on her elbows. “Todd has a car,” she says.

“
I
have a car.”

“Your dad has a car.”

“He won't miss it.”

Cass looks at her. “Are you serious?”

“I'm totally serious.”

“What about the piano?”

“It's not like we'd leave forever. Just a couple of weeks.”

“We could drive to California and back. I know a lot of people on the way down. We could sleep on the beach.”

“Let's do it.”

“You
are
serious.”

“I'm always serious.”

“That,” Cass says, “is definitely not true.”

“I have some money,” Maia says. “A thousand dollars.”

Cass whistles. “Even better,” she says. “With that kind of money, we could flee the country.”

“When should we leave?”

“Monday,” Cass says. “Road trips should always start on a Monday.” They grin at each other, elated.

“That's in three days.”

“Yes.”

“What do I need to bring?”

“Yourself,” Cass says. “A sleeping bag.”

“That stuff you gave me. For New York. Can you bring more of that?”

Cass laughs. “Baby girl, I'll bring you a fucking pharmacy, you ask with those big eyes like that.”

“Just the two of us.”

“Just the two of us,” Cass agrees.

 

 

For the next three days her secret burns in her like a coal, until she is sure her parents will feel its heat radiating out from her skin. The promise of the open road, Cass at her side, gives her the fortitude to weather the bleak silence of her house. She buys a military rucksack at a thrift store and fills it with the clothes she's bought with Cass, her new-old shirts, her worn-through jeans, her cutoffs. These clothes are like soft skin against her own skin, not stiff and unyielding like the clothes her mother dresses her in. These clothes have their own histories already, their stories tangling with hers when she puts them on. In these clothes, she feels at home. On Sunday night she kisses her father in his study: haze of bourbon, his pipe in its ashtray, the pile of dog-eared manuscript pages. The sight of her father's book makes her sad. “You're a good girl,” he says, patting her shoulder.
Keep thinking that, Dad,
she could say, but she doesn't.

“Good night.”

“Good night, sweetheart.”

Her mother is in the kitchen, wiping the spotless counters one last time. Her golden hair hangs down her back in soft waves. “Goodnight, Mom,” Maia says, and her mother turns, surprised. For a moment, the wall comes down.

“You haven't said goodnight to me since you were a little girl.”

“Feeling sentimental, I guess. Have a good class tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“Things have been weird,” Maia says. Her mother stiffens.

“That's one word for what you've done.”

“It's not about you.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“You would.” Maia bites back the rest of what she's almost said. There's no point in it. Her mother is what she is, will never be another thing, more giving or less harsh. Her mother is not her mother at all, not body or bone or blood. In the world she was first born into these people would have been strangers thousands of miles away, and she would be growing up in a country far from here.
Mother
is just a word like any other, ordinary until you make it mean something. She knows she is being unfair; this woman has done, to her credit, the best she knows how to do.

“Sorry,” she says. “Goodnight. Mom.”

“Goodnight.” She leaves her mother in the kitchen, sponge moving in smooth circles across the counter's gleaming surface.

 

 

The morning is so easy it's as though she was born to start running. Her mother leaves for the college; her father shuts himself away. The car keys are in the drawer in the kitchen. She writes them a note.
Please don't worry about me. I need to think about some things. I promise I'm safe. Sorry I took your car, Dad.
She checks everything one last time. Toothbrush, Ravel sheet music, underwear, socks. Sleeping bag. When she gets down to it there's little she wants to bring. She writes a postcard to Oscar—
I'll come home. Don't be mad. I love you
—stamps it, tucks it in the pocket of her bag to mail later.

“Goodbye,” she says to the lifeless house. She won't miss it, she realizes, looking around her. She won't miss anything save the piano, and that she can always come back to. The front door shuts behind her, and she is free.

NOW: SEATTLE

Maia puts the Ravel in her bag and goes to see Oscar a week after Jason records his album. She does not tell him she's coming; instead, she shows up at his front door, at the same time as her lesson used to be, knocks as she always did. When he opens the door he does not seem surprised to see her.