Nathan Hill - The Nix

Samuel stared at him. “Why would you do that?”

“I asked him if he liked my ass and wanted to touch it.”

“I don’t understand why you would do that.”

“He got pretty weird then.”

“Yeah.”

“He stared at me for a long time and then told me to put my clothes back on. Then he took me back to class. That was it. Easy!”

“How did you even think to do that?”

“Anyway,” Bishop said. “Thanks for your help tonight.” He climbed through the window. Samuel followed and padded through the dark house, returning to the guest bedroom, getting into bed, then getting out again and finding a bathroom and washing his hands three, four, five times. He could not decide if the burning sensation in his fingers was from the poison or if it was in his mind.

THE INVITATION APPEARED in the mailbox, in a square envelope of heavy, cream-colored paper. Samuel’s name was written on the front in very precise girl handwriting.

“What’s this?” Faye said. “Birthday invite?”

He looked at the envelope and then at his mother.

“Pizza party?” she said. “At the roller rink?”

“Stop it.”

“Who’s it from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should open it.”

Inside was an invitation printed on expensive card stock. It shimmered, as if flecks of silver had been added to the pulp. The writing looked like it was pressed in gold leaf, a swirling, swooping cursive that said:

Please join us at the Blessed Heart Academy Cathedral

as Bethany Fall performs

the Bruch Violin Concerto no. 1

Samuel had never been invited to anything in this manner: lavishly. At school, the invitations to birthday parties were generic, slipshod affairs, cheap thin cards with animals on them, or balloons. This invitation felt actually physically heavy. He handed it to his mother.

“Can we go?” he said.

She studied the invitation and frowned. “Who’s this Bethany?”

“A friend.”

“From school?”

“Sort of.”

“And you know her well enough to get invited to this?”

“Can we go? Please?”

“Do you even like classical music?”

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

“Since I don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Mom.”

“The Bruch Violin Concerto? Do you even know what that is?”

“Mom.”

“I’m just saying. Are you sure you can appreciate it?”

“It’s a very difficult piece and she’s been practicing for months.”

“And you know this how?”

Samuel then made an angry, abstract sound meant to convey his frustration and unwillingness to further discuss the matter of the girl, which came out something like “Gaarrgh!”

“Fine,” she said with a satisfied little grin. “We’ll go.”

The night of the concert she told him to dress nice. “Imagine it’s Easter,” she said. So he put on the fanciest things in his closet: a stiff and itchy white shirt; a black necktie bound noose-tight; black slacks that popped with static electricity when he moved; a shiny pair of dress shoes that he shoehorned himself into, so granite-hard they removed a layer of skin on his heel. He wondered why adults felt they needed to be at their most uncomfortable for their most cherished events.

The Blessed Heart Academy Cathedral was already buzzing when they arrived, people in suits and flowery dresses filing into the large arched doorway, the sounds of musicians practicing audible even from the parking lot. The cathedral was built to mimic the great churches of Europe, at about one-third scale.

Inside, a wide central aisle was flanked on both sides by pews made of heavy and thick and ornately carved wood, polished and shining wetly. Beyond the pews were stone columns with torches attached about fifteen feet above the crowd, each lit with glowing fires. Parents chatted with other parents, the men giving soft platonic kisses to the cheeks of women. Samuel watched them, these small pecks, and realized the men weren’t really kissing the women but instead miming a kissing action into the area around their necks. Samuel wondered if the women were disappointed about this — they’d been expecting a kiss and all they got was air.

They took their seats, studied the program. Bethany would not go on until the second half. The first half was all smaller works — minor chamber pieces and quick solos. It was clear Bethany’s piece was the showstopper. The big finale. Samuel’s feet bounced nervously on the soft, carpeted floor.

The lights dimmed and the musicians stopped their chaotic warm-ups and everyone took their seats and after a lengthy pause there came a sturdy note out of the woodwinds, then everyone else following it, tuning to that note, anchoring themselves to that spot, and something seemed to catch in his mother’s throat. She inhaled sharply, then put her hand on her chest.

“I used to do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“The tuning note. I was the oboe. That used to be me.”

“You played music? When?”

“Shh.”

And there it was, another secret his mother had kept. Her life was a fog to him; whatever happened before he came along was all mysterious, locked behind ambiguous shrugs and half answers and vague abstractions and aphorisms—“You’re too young,” she’d say. Or “You wouldn’t understand.” Or the particularly infuriating “I’ll tell you someday, when you’re older.” But occasionally some secret would crack free. So his mother was once a musician. He added it to the mental inventory: Things that Mom is. She’s a musician. What else? What other things didn’t he know about her? She had acres of secrets, it was obvious. He always felt there was something she wasn’t saying, something behind her bland partial attention. She often had that disassociated quality, like she was focusing on you with maybe one-third of herself, the rest devoted to whatever things she kept locked inside her head.

The biggest secret had slipped years earlier, when Samuel was young enough to be asking his parents ridiculous questions. (Have you ever been in a volcano? Have you ever seen an angel?) Or asking because he was still naïve enough to believe in stupendous things. (Can you breathe underwater? Can all reindeer fly?) Or asking because he was fishing for attention and praise. (How much do you love me? Am I the best child in the world?) Or asking because he wanted to be reassured of his place in the world. (Will you be my mom forever? Have you been married to anyone besides Dad?) Except when he asked this last question his mother straightened up and looked at him all tall and solemn and serious and said: “Actually…”

She never finished that sentence. He waited for her, but she stopped and thought about it and got that distant, bleak look on her face. “Actually what ?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”

“You’ve been married before?”

“No.”

“Then what were you going to say?”

“Nothing.”

So Samuel asked his father: “Was Mom ever married to anyone else?”

“What?”

“I think she might have been married to someone else.”

“No, she wasn’t. Jesus. What are you talking about?”

Something had happened to her, Samuel was sure of it. Some profound thing that even now, years later, occupied her attention. It washed over her sometimes and she’d disengage from the world.

Meanwhile, there was a concert happening. High-school boys and girls playing important senior-year recitals, five- to ten-minute pieces that were right in the strike zone of each student’s ability. Loud clapping after every performance. Pleasant, easy, tonal music, mostly Mozart.