The Sound of Letting Go (2 page)

At three fifteen, I haul my feet

to the parking lot, drag

my bags along the ground, not caring

if the rip, tug, pull,

the bump-scratch of trumpet case

grazing asphalt

slows me down.

It is hard to go home.

Sometimes I think I’d join any band, rehearse any song,

for the chance to be away from that place an extra hour.

If I called Mom, asked,

she’d probably let me go to The Movie House tonight.

But I can’t do that to her.

“I’m back!” I announce not too loudly,

slipping the house key back into my jeans pocket.

“Mom?”

I get no reply, but head to the kitchen anyway.

As I pass the table, Steven catches my arm

in a grip that’s gotten tighter,

rougher, since he turned thirteen.

His feet keep growing.

His face is getting pimply.

He is starting to look like a man.

“Hi, Daisy.”

Mom is wearing her “Kiss the Cook” apron

over a blue-and-white yoga ensemble.

“Is that new?” I ask

as I pull my arm from its vice-hold,

already glad I didn’t disappoint her

by asking to escape tonight.

It’s still two hours until yoga

and she’s already dressed to go.

“We made chocolate chip cookies.” Mom unties her apron.

“Would you mind if I left a little early?

A few other yoga-moms are meeting for tea before class.”

“Go ahead,” I say,

sitting down at the kitchen table across from my brother.

Mom puts a cookie on my paper plate,

places another in Steven’s hand.

I do not like warm cookies.

I prefer to wait until the chocolate chips

have gotten cool, firm, and the cookie a little crispy.

But I take a bite.

Steven taps his cookie against his lips,

the bottom of his nose,

then he pushes it into his mouth,

crumbs dropping onto the table.

The cookie finished, he settles into a familiar pose—

head cocked to the left,

gazing vaguely upward as if the ceiling reveals secrets

only he can see.

I watch the energy transfer to Steven’s plump fingers:

Elbows drawn tight against his belly,

he moves his forearms slowly,

not the agile, winglike flapping that stereotypes autistics

on television

but a cruel series of arduous passes—

palm over back of hand . . . palm over back of hand . . .

His knuckles are calloused, reddish from wear.

Mom bustles around the kitchen.

“The casserole should come out at five thirty.

Dad’s working late again,

but he’ll be home to put Steven to bed.

I’ll give him his meds before I go.”

“Want to go watch TV, Steven?” I ask.

Nothing.

I stand up. “TV in the family room, Steven?”

Beat . . . Beat . . .

“No-ahhh.” His flat, tuneless half-word/half-moan

instantly stops Mom’s sweeping.

“How about Blokus?”

She pulls the box from the kitchen island,

slides it before Steven.

Plastic pieces tumble onto the table.

I have “played” Blokus with Steven many times;

our game rule is simply that I watch him

align the square chips

in single-colored rows until the board is full.

Sometimes we do it three times or more,

Steven’s hands wringing

as he contemplates the colors, almost never acknowledging

that I am sitting across from him

or that he feels any satisfaction in completing a row.

“There.” Mom nods her head

as Steven begins to focus on the game.

“You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.”

I calculate the breadth of Steven’s shoulders,

now wider than mine;

count the hours

between now and Dad coming home to take over;

and I am only a little afraid

of the night.

In the morning,

the wails are my alarm clock.

Steven does not like to take a shower, brush his teeth.

Most of all, he hates to put on deodorant.

I wait under the quilt

as the sun teases through the slats in the window blinds,

until thudding footsteps on the stairs report

the second floor has been emptied of everyone but me.

Then I haul myself out of bed, tired, as always,

from a late night of homework and trumpet practice

that can only begin

after one of my parents has come home to take over Steven.

I rub my eyes, trying to remember

a morning when I woke up feeling rested,

a day that wasn’t a constant strain of worries,

a time when I didn’t care

about time.

Breakfast is another terse routine of favorite foods,

Mom’s constant monologue of calming words,

restating the day’s plan,

asking Dad random questions about the news, the weather,

as if we lived in an ordinary house,

could take pleasure in morning conversation.

I ghost my way through the kitchen,

pour cereal from the nearest box to hand

into a clean bowl, slosh in milk,

eat at the kitchen island, while Mom, Dad, and Steven

circle the table with their family farce.

“Today at school, we’re not going to hit anyone,

right, Steven?

We are going to sit nicely in our seat and not hit, right?”

Mom tries to keep her voice steady.

Dad lets out a long breath from behind his paper.

We are living on the verge of Steven’s dismissal

from his current special-needs public school program,

where he has begun to smack the teachers almost daily,

grab at the wrists of his female classmates

if they pass too closely by his desk.

Our growing fear of life with him intensifies

with every evening phone call

from the special ed program director,

with every e-mail documenting “discrepancies”

between his “individualized education plan”

(IEP, to those in our world)

and what they now believe he can accomplish

in their classroom.

In the window of hours while Steven is away “learning,” Mom keeps our house

a showpiece of calm colors,

creates scrapbooks full of deceptively happy memories,

and scours the Internet

for a doctor, a diet, a drug that can help retrieve

her once adorable, odd little boy

from inside the puffed overlay of oily, angry man-child,

or at least keep him safe,

keep us all safe.

“Gotta go. Early practice this morning.”

I am out the door before Dad blames Mom

for Steven’s untied shoes

and announces his usual plan to be home late from work.

Before Mom coaxes Steven into his jacket, Dad’s car.

Mom has long since given up

on getting real affection from Steven,

but there’s this look on her face

every time she stands in front of Dad

as he picks up his briefcase, buckles his watch,

grabs his keys,

but doesn’t kiss her good-bye.

I always try to be gone before that.

I pull my car into the school lot, look for Dave’s Fiesta.

It is mostly black, with a red hood and one red rear door

salvaged, I guess, from another ancient Ford.

It has not yet arrived at its usual parking spot

near the row of maple trees on the far side of the asphalt.

I’m not sure if it’s disappointment

or the moist fall chill that makes me shiver,

but I zip my fleece jacket

before I grab my backpack and trumpet case,

squint up at the hazy sky,

head for the front doors of Evergreen High.

Jazz Ensemble,

7:15 to 8:10 a.m.,

Tuesday through Friday:

best 220 minutes of my week.

Nine boys, four girls:

trumpets, saxophones, clarinets,

a trombone, a bass, drums;

melodies, rhythms, riffs, and improvs;

occasional bad notes, squawks, laughter.

No wailing.

There are more guys than girls in the jazz world,

next to no lady trumpeters (oh, there are a few).

But it doesn’t matter because, for me,

jazz trumpet is all about one guy:

Miles Davis.

He made this famous album in 1959

called
Kind of Blue
,

which is kind of, always,

how I feel.

That album gets into your bones,

goes and goes;

starts, hesitates, reaches out, feels

for the music, the sound, the thing you want to change.

Always grasping for the unattainable makes you

kind of excited,

kind of sorry.