Lee Vance - The Garden of Betrayal

We made love on a blanket on the hardwood floor. After, we sat up against the wall in the dark, the blanket wrapped around us like a cloak. The entire western wall of the studio was glass, and we could see out over the highway and the abandoned piers to the Hudson River beyond. The lights of Hoboken glinted on the turbulent water, and the passing tugs and barges looked like toys. We shared small secrets, whispering for the pleasure of feeling conspiratorial.

“Not so much,” I said, when she asked if I’d been lonely as a boy. We were both only children. “I invented a baseball game that I used to play with dice, my team against historical teams or whoever was in town to play the Yankees. I kept box scores and statistics, and was always tinkering with the rules to try to make the probabilities work out like the real game.”

“It sounds like you were lonely.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “What about you?”

“Pretty much the same. I was always daydreaming. My big fantasy when I was twelve was that I was married to a famous cellist and that we had a child who was a prodigy on the violin. We toured Europe as a family trio, and everywhere we went, people applauded and threw flowers. I had a whole schedule of performances worked out, that I took from a library book about Jenny Lind.”

Her recollection crystallized the apprehension that had been weighing on me since I’d opened the studio door-that she’d be happy only with someone who shared her passion and ability. I was afraid to ask what she daydreamed about now.

“Jenny Lind,” I repeated, to fill the uncomfortable pause in the conversation. An indistinct memory came back to me. “The Swedish Canary?”

“The Swedish Nightingale.” She dug an elbow into my ribs. “One of the greatest sopranos ever. Philistine.”

“Sorry,” I said, feeling her breast warm against my arm as I warded her off. My desire was rising again. “And what about the kid? Boy prodigy or girl prodigy?”

“I could never decide. If it was a girl, I was afraid she’d be prettier than me. But if it was a boy, I wouldn’t have anyone to go to the bathroom with, and the idea of going by myself in a foreign country scared me.”

I managed a laugh, screwing up my courage as I nuzzled her neck.

“No one could be prettier than you. But you have a bigger problem now.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re dating a guy who’s never played anything except a kazoo.”

I held my breath as I waited for her reply. She kissed my face, hands roaming gently.

“Maybe a boy and a girl, then,” she sighed. “Both on the violin, so they can practice together. And a husband to applaud and throw flowers.”

“And teach them about baseball?” I asked, elated.

She nodded.

“I can do that,” I said, pulling her closer. “Nobody throws flowers like me.”

An uncomfortable tightness in my chest was just dissipating when the concerto finished. Claire struck a bittersweet Picardy third and then held the major chord with the right pedal as Kate and the boy drew their bows downward in unison, echoing her. I waited for the reverberations to die, took a measured breath, and then stood and clapped enthusiastically. Claire smiled discreetly in my direction before starting to tidy her music, but Kate tucked her violin beneath one arm and bowed low, sweeping her free hand up and out with an operatic flourish. Straightening with a grin, she tapped the boy on his shirtfront with her bow.

“This is Phil,” she said. “He goes to NYU.” She pointed the bow toward me. “And this is my dad.”

Phil winced and rubbed his chest before extending a hand to me, grimacing at Kate in mock reproach. She rolled her eyes and gave him a sidelong smirk that instantly tripped my father alarm. I hadn’t really had to deal with boys much yet-Kate wasn’t particularly social. I’d quietly been rooting for her to meet someone she liked, concerned that she might be keeping close to home because she thought Claire and I needed her, or because she was afraid of exposing herself to another loss. Shaking Phil’s hand, though, I realized I wasn’t entirely ready for the reality of a guy in my living room-particularly someone older than her.

“NYU’s a great school,” I said. “What year are you in?”

“Sophomore,” he answered. “Kind of.”

“Phil took a year off to travel,” Kate explained, “but he’ll be a junior next semester because he’s been taking a heavy course load and he had a bunch of AP credit.”

Which made him nineteen or twenty, two or three years Kate’s senior. I let the thought roll around in my head, trying to decide how I felt about it. He seemed like a nice enough kid-no visible tattoos or piercings, a decent violinist, and a hospital volunteer. I was wondering what his father did for a living when it occurred to me that I was getting ahead of myself.

“We’re done, right?” Kate asked, addressing her mother.

“Yes,” Claire answered. “The only thing you need to work on are the arpeggios in the first ritornello. The transitions could be a little crisper. Otherwise, bravissimo.”

“Bella signora,” Phil said, kissing his fingers. “Grazie molto.”

Kate flashed him another smile and then settled her violin in its case.

“I’m going out for a few minutes,” she said casually. “I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

“Going out where?” Claire asked, looking up from her music with a troubled expression.

“Java Joe. Phil’s laptop is acting kind of wonky, so I’m going to take a look at it for him. I think his registry’s messed up-maybe a bad cluster on the hard drive or something.”

Kate was a self-taught computer whiz who kept herself in pocket money by tending to our neighbors’ networks and hardware. And Java Joe was where all the neighborhood teens hung out. Still, there was a breathy undercurrent to her voice as she said Phil’s name that made the feeling I had before come back stronger.

“It’s a school night,” Claire said. “What do you think, Mark?”

Kate flushed, her expression stormy, but she almost never answered her mother back. She looked at me instead. I made a show of checking my watch, frowning to indicate that I shared Claire’s concern. One of the first rules of parenting was never to undermine your spouse. But it was a bridge I’d had to cross before. Kate was seventeen. No matter how difficult for Claire, or for me, we had to let her grow up.

“It’s six-thirty. I don’t think it’ll be a problem as long as you’re home in time to set the table. Say an hour from now?”

“Mom?” Kate asked.

Claire bit her lip and nodded.

“Take your phone.”

“I’ll be right back.”

The front door banged thirty seconds later, and Claire and I were alone. Walking around the piano, I began folding the music stands.

“You think she likes him?” I asked, when I couldn’t bear the silence any longer.

Claire shrugged, eyes fixed on her keyboard.

I tucked the music stands behind a curtain drape and gazed out across the treetops toward the Hudson. A tug was nosing a barge upstream, fighting against the current. Claire’s silences frightened me. Half the time I didn’t know what touched them off, and I never knew how long they’d last. She’d brighten suddenly, as if emerging from behind a cloud, and we’d have a couple of good days, days that reminded me of what things used to be like. But inevitably the cloud would return.

A movement on the street below caught my attention, and I saw Phil and Kate on the corner. They were standing beneath a streetlamp, in a puddle of light. He touched her arm and said something that made her laugh. She tipped up her face, and he kissed her.

“I’m scared, too,” I said, turning to look at Claire. “Every time she leaves the apartment. But Kate’s going to be in college next year. It’s normal for her to want to be more independent, and to start having relationships.”