Julie Murphy - Side Effects May Vary

Mom flipped the radio over to some easy rock station and leaned back into the passenger seat, closing her eyes. Not normal behavior for a mother while her fifteen-year-old son sat behind the wheel of the family car.

Every night after we closed down the studio, I would say, “Hey, Mom, I’ll drive home tonight.”

“Ha-ha, Harvey. Get in,” she would reply.

But one night when I was fourteen years old and about halfway through eighth grade, she tossed me the keys and said, “Back roads only. Don’t forget, gas is right; brake is left.”

This became our nightly ritual four days a week. Before then, my mom had let me skid around parking lots, but this was the first time I was ever allowed to drive on real streets.

Every night after that, her body seemed to melt into the passenger seat. Once I had a solid handle on the drive to and from the studio, she got in the habit of tilting her head up and closing her eyes the whole way home. Sometimes she was sleeping, other times just relaxing. I think my mom had been waiting a long time for me to be old enough to drive because by driving us home every night, I was fulfilling one of her needs. It wasn’t the first time I had felt like that. We’d had this partnership. It was hard not to share responsibilities when it was only the two of us. She didn’t talk much about her life before me. It’s weird to think that your parents had this whole world and you had nothing to do with it.

When I was four years old, my mom decided it was time for me to learn her craft. This was fine with me, it was. I wasn’t like most boys. I had grown up with ballet and even my four-year-old self knew that both boys and girls could be dancers. The problem being: I was horrible at ballet.

Sure, every four-year-old is horrible at ballet, but I was exceptionally tragic. I begged my mom to let me quit. I never took an issue with ballet; it was the me-being-horrible-at-it part that made it unbearable.

A few weeks after my fifth birthday, my mother took me to Mrs. Ferguson’s house for my first piano lesson. It wasn’t love at first sight, but it wasn’t as gruesome as ballet had been. By the time I was eight years old, I was playing piano for a few of the intermediate classes; and most of my after-school time on Tuesdays and Thursdays was spent at Mrs. Ferguson’s house. At the age of twelve, my lessons were limited to Sunday mornings, and I spent Monday through Thursday playing the piano for most of my mother’s classes. She had always loathed the bulky black stereos usually found in the corners of dance studios, but hiring a pianist would slice right through her budget. My playing the piano for her was sort of like that night when I was fourteen years old and she tossed me the keys. She was waiting for me to be ready.

With just the two of us, we had no other option except to be resourceful, but sometimes I wondered what it would be like to go home after school and watch TV or play video games with Dennis.

“Can I talk to you, Mom?” I asked as we rolled out of the parking lot and toward home. With my driving test coming up in one month at the end of October, I was careful to use my blinkers and look both ways.

“Harvey, you don’t have to ask me if we can talk.” She paused. “Of course we can.”

“I’m thinking that maybe when I turn sixteen, I’m going to get an after-school job. I could pay for my car insurance and gas, you know?” I tried my best to sound casual, like it didn’t matter either way. But it did matter. Big-time.

“Harvey, you don’t really have time for that. I appreciate you wanting to help out, but it’s not necessary. We’re doing okay. What about piano?” The minute the question left her mouth, she seemed to have answered it herself. “Oh.”

We drove in silence for several minutes before either of us uttered a word.

“I don’t really enjoy it, Mom.” I idled at a stoplight, waiting for it to turn green.

“And you’ve always felt this way?”

“I don’t know. I guess I want a break.” The older I got, the more aware I became of time and how I was wasting mine. I didn’t want to fill my time with a new hobby—at least not right away. I wanted to fill my time with something that fifteen-year-old Harvey chose to do, not something five-year-old Harvey did because his mother told him to.

I was a pretty decent pianist. I had these long, slender fingers, perfect for playing, and it came naturally to me, but I wasn’t a prodigy or anything. If you’re going to dedicate your life to something like music, it had to be an all-consuming thing. It had to be the reason your body got out of bed every morning. Maybe it would have been different if I had stumbled upon piano on my own, I didn’t know.

I knew this would be hard for her to accept. Mom had always known she would be a ballerina. I wondered if this whole thing would be easier for her if I said I was quitting piano in favor of theater or art or something like that. Maybe she just wanted a talented son, but my talent for the arts was mediocre. Maybe I wanted the chance to find the thing I loved, like she had with ballet. And, yeah, I didn’t want to be that guy in high school who hung out at the ballet studio every day after school.

My mom thought for a moment, then said, “You’ll get a job when you turn sixteen and have passed the state driving exam. Until then you’ll continue playing the piano for classes. I’ll cancel your lessons with Mrs. Ferguson.”

I was a little shocked that she had agreed to this so easily. “Thanks, Mom.”

“I’m not your captor, Harvey. We’re not a traveling circus. If you’re not happy with the piano, then there’s no point in you doing it.” I pulled into the parking lot of our apartment complex and she added quietly, “But it would really mean a lot if you continued to help out at recitals.”

I placed my hand on her knee. “Yeah, Mom. I can do that. No problem.”

She was sad, I could tell.

Piano had always tied me to her, almost in the same way ballet tied my mom to Alice. When Alice quit ballet the summer before freshman year, my mom was heartbroken. Dancers had this secret language that you couldn’t understand unless you were a dancer too. But playing the piano for my mom and Alice let me in on their secret, if only for a moment. The two of them were alike in so many ways. When I played piano for them it felt like I was in on it. Like, for a few minutes, I could be a part of this world that was outside of mine. In that world, though, where I was only a guest, I was their accompaniment. And I was tired of being everyone’s damn accessory.

It tied me to my dad too. I couldn’t picture what he looked like, but I could picture his fingers—close-trimmed nails, with knobby knuckles, dry with use—and I thought if all I got out of piano was having it in common with my dad, then it was worth it. But he’d left us, so I shouldn’t have to stay for him.

Iwatched Alice from across the cafeteria as she walked to the trash line to dump her leftovers. It’d been a few days since telling my mom I wanted to quit piano. I wondered what Alice would have to say about that, if anything at all. It didn’t matter, though, because we never really talked much anymore, not since starting high school. I saw her every once in a while when my mom dragged me over to Bernie and Martin’s. The three of them would sit around the table drinking wine while Alice and I would sat on the couch watching TV in silence—and not the comfortable kind. There was none of the easy laughter we’d grown up on. Lately, though, I’d started making excuses. Homework, plans with Dennis, job interviews—all reasons why I couldn’t go.

Noise bounced off the linoleum floors, traveling, as the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. I’d heard about her and Luke breaking up. It took a few days for the news to trickle down the social totem pole to Dennis and me. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but I did know that Celeste now occupied Alice’s seat next to Luke with Mindi at her other side. Mindi had always taken dance classes at my mom’s studio, but she’d never been very serious about it. She was there for Celeste and because she needed a talent for all the pageants her mom entered her in.