“I work nights, mom. Remember? I have a job now. The restaurant?”
“It’s not healthy, a young person like you sleeping in the middle of the day. You’ll be up all hours of the night.”
Aerie sighed. “Mom. For God Sakes, it’s just a nappie nap.”
Static crackled across the land line that her mom insisted she get installed after Aerie made too frequent a habit of leaving off her cell phone. She was surprised her mom didn’t equip her with a baby monitor.
But how did she expect a mother to react to their child’s suicide attempt? It had been hell getting her to let her return to Ithaca, instead of staying with her mom at the condo in Baltimore. Two weeks at home was about all she had been able to handle.
“Have you made an appointment with that doctor Sadie recommended?”
“Not quite yet. I’m kinda still getting settled.”
“Don’t you dare let that prescription run out!”
Aerie sighed. “I still have another refill. I’m not sure I even need them anymore.”
She rubbed the traces of scab and scar circling her neck.
“Aerie, don’t you dare go off your meds. I’ll come up there—”
“I’m not. I take them. I’m just saying; I feel good.”
“Remember what Dr. Billups said. You can’t miss too many in a row. There’s a rebound effect.”
“Mom, I’m taking my pills. Okay?”
“I really wish you hadn’t gone to Ithaca. I don’t know why you couldn’t stay in Baltimore with me. I have a perfectly good condo.”
“Mom, enough. I’m here. I’m happy. That’s all that matters, okay?”
“You’re happy?”
The question threw her. She couldn’t remember what happiness felt like. The pills seemed to narrow her range of possible emotions at both ends of the spectrum.
“Well, I’m not giddy or anything, but yeah, I’m doing well. Better than I’ve been in a long time.”
“Janie Masters was always a nice girl. Wonderful family. Have you seen her around?”
“Mom, I haven’t been friends with Janie since third grade.”
“So? I still keep in touch with some of the friends I had when I was little. You should give her a call.”
“For what? A play date? What could we possibly have in common?”
“Aerie, the point is you need to get some people around you. It’s not good for you to be on your own all the time. I wish you had stayed with me a little longer.”
A vision of her mother’s coffee klatch and her snoopy Maryland aunts came to haunt her. She would rather be kidnapped by Somalian pirates than deal with those ladies.
“I do get out. I’ve got a job. I like my job.”
“But all you do is cut vegetables in a restaurant.”
“Not just any restaurant, Mom. It’s Moosewood. The Moosewood. Yeah, I’m only prepping now, but they’ve got kind of an apprenticeship system here. In time I could be sous-chef without having to go to culinary school.”
“My daughter, the cook.”
“You make it sound like I’m cleaning toilets. Cooking is an art, mom.”
“Let’s just say that cooking is the last thing I ever would have expected of you.”
“Why’s that?”
“Aren’t you the girl who used to burn your mac and cheese?”
“Give me a break! I was fourteen.” Static crackled across the line.
“So. Are you playing any music?”
Aerie glanced over at the bass collecting dust in the corner of the room. “No.” She hadn’t touched the thing since Scotty’s birthday.
“Why don’t you join a choir? At least it would get you out and among people. Go to church. Any church. I don’t care which one. Every parish has a choir and … community.”
Aerie shrugged. “But … I can’t sing.”
“That’s not true. You have a lovely voice.”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“Don’t say that!”
“But it’s true. I don’t. Not anymore.”
Her mother gave a sigh, long and deep.
“You used to play piano so beautifully when you were little.”
“Until you signed me up for lessons.”
“And what was wrong with that? Why is it you always have to do things the hard way? Always fending off anyone who tries to help you.”
“I’m not fending you off—”
“I wasn’t implying.” Her mother expelled a gush of indignant breath. The phone crackled. It was that bad cord that mom never seemed to replace.
“Are you happy, Aerie?”
Again, that question. How could she know if she couldn’t remember? She wasn’t sad. She wasn’t anything, really.
“Aerie. I asked … are you happy?”
“Enough to get by,” she said.
She got her mom off the phone for the price of a promise to call and thank Aunt Sadie. She lay back on the sofa, staring at the partially unzipped bag revealing her other workaday bass that for five years had been her constant companion, providing her livelihood, defining her identity and felt nothing. Not frustrated, just an absence, as if some superfluous part of her body had been lopped off, more critical than an appendix, but less significant than a toenail.
Much like her, the bass was pretty, but not beautiful. The Juzek’s face had a fine grain, and a pleasing color. The edges were dinged in both the upper and lower bouts, but what bass wasn’t? The upper linings were worn pale and smooth like driftwood where her ribs rubbed it when she played. It was a good bass: sturdy, and sang with enough resonance to let you know it had a top of solid spruce, but nearly as spectacularly as a Prescott.
She had abandoned it in Japan after her visa expired and she had to leave the country. Her mother had gone to great lengths and expense to get it shipped back home, with Koichi’s help. Now it sat, mocking her from its stand beneath a shroud of dust.
At least it was in a lot better shape than the Prescott whose pieces were heaped in a black plastic bag in the corner. Her ‘bag of bones.’ She kept it around the way some people kept the ashes of a favorite pet.
The urges that once tugged Aerie to play bass, that once filled her with an almost sexual longing, were long gone. She still plucked the strings on occasion, tilting it off the stand as she passed through the room, but only out of habit, as a diversion from her chores. She derived no more joy from playing than she did from washing dishes or weeding the garden.
This feeling was new and alien, so markedly different from the musical withdrawal she had felt when she flew to visit her mother in Baltimore, leaving the bass behind in Oakland because it was too big to fly. Two days away from it and she found herself twanging her fingers on the piping on her mom’s love seat, on the stowed cords of the upright vacuum, on the seams of her jeans. By the weekend she found herself walking twelve blocks to a luthier’s shop in Foggy Bottom to get her hands on a real instrument.
That urge had once been as strong as a physical addiction. How could it just vanish like flipping a switch or losing the art of speech after a massive stroke? She wondered if some part of her brain had died during the near asphyxiation that had nearly claimed her life.
Too bad some of the other parts hadn’t withered away as well. The lobes that sent her mood spiraling into deep, dark funks remained as vigorous as ever.
She ran her hand over the strings. Mom was right to worry. Try as she could, Aerie saw no open paths ahead of her in any direction. The line about apprenticing to become a chef was all pipe dream and pretense, spoken to keep her mom at bay. At Moosewood, she was barely one step above a dishwasher.
Without the meds, Aerie couldn’t see how she would last once the long, dark days of winter congealed the sky over Ithaca. The romance of suicide still beguiled her too much to have been a passing phase, pills or no pills.
Yet, fall was coming, her favorite season. She would stick around to see the leaves change, that was for sure. But after that, all bets were off.
Chapter 3: Bassist Wanted
Aerie’s aunt Sadie had gotten her the job at Moosewood, a collective vegetarian restaurant of some repute from a seminal series of bestselling cookbooks by Mollie Katzen, a former member. Sadie, who ran a small organic farm near Skaneateles, supplied them with asparagus and spinach and Brussels sprouts.
There wasn’t much of an interview, a hug and a handshake, a few niceties about Sadie’s farm, which she had yet to visit, and that was that, the job was hers. The vetting and negotiation had all happened behind the scenes. It made her feel like such a child.
Not that she could complain. She was grateful for the job. She was already almost a vegetarian, more by preference than for health or morals, though she would never turn away a good slice of pepperoni pizza or a pulled pork sandwich.
She had showed up on Monday, filled out a time card and was immediately sent to the kitchen. Reggie, the sous-chef, had her peel and slice cucumbers for a salad with dill and sour cream. Afterwards, she had prepped apples for Lucrezia, the pastry chef, coring and slicing, sprinkling the slices with lemon juice, to keep them from browning, she supposed. She had snagged a slice as she chopped. The early Macintoshes were tart even without lemon.
She came to admire Lucrezia for the magic she wrought with her copper bowls and egg whites; the way she knew exactly how much handling a wad of dough needed to preserve the flakiest possible pie crust. But Reggie, wouldn’t let her go anywhere near the baking. There were always too many potatoes to peel and onions to dice.
She liked the work well enough. Her coworkers seemed nice, though they acted awful quiet around her, too busy or incurious to pry into her past. Perhaps Aunt Sadie had forewarned them or maybe they were just preoccupied with themselves.
One waitress, Linda, was legendary among the wait staff for her ability to remain unruffled by the busiest of nights or jerkiest of clientele. Aerie figured this talent had to be chemically induced. It was the only way Aerie could stay calm and cheerful.
Her typical day had two flurries of frantic activity with a lull after lunch. On nice days she spent her break on the Commons—a pedestrian mall formed by the permanent diversion of what used to be the main road through town. She studied the faces of shoppers and strollers as she walked through the Commons, hoping to spot a face she might remember from middle school, but all were strangers. Ithaca had changed a lot since she was a kid. It felt like walking through a Broadway revival of her childhood, with a revamped set and a brand new cast.
After the hint of fall, summer had seeped back into the valley. The air was so thick; walking through town was like walking under the sea. The Commons was hopping with students returning back to school, with parents in tow. Aerie took her peach Snapple and moseyed back to Moosewood for the afternoon prep.
“It’s gonna be a hot night,” said Reggie, hustling over to Aerie's bench top, as she got all washed and aproned. “I'm betting the bruschettas and veggie antipastos will fly. We'll need a bunch of tomatoes prepped for salsa, as well. Cilantro, basil. Make sure you take out the stems. That buffalo mozz? Quarter inch slices. Cover ‘em with a slice of heirloom. Drizzle them with the extra virgin. Top them with basil. Some salt and pepper. Mix ‘em up. Cherokee Purple, Caspian Pink. Save the Brandywines for the bruschetta.”
“Really? I've been using San Marzanos,” said Aerie.
“Nope, Brandywines,” said Reggie. “They’re creamier and tastier. The San Marzanos are better for sauces.”
Acid tomato juice burned the scrapes in her knuckles. She rinsed under the tap and rubbed some olive oil over it, which didn’t help much. She puzzled over the flaps of skin peeling off the tips of her index and middle picking fingers. Her calluses had been so integral to her identity; she didn’t think she could lose them, at least not so explicitly, peeling off in big flaps like broken blisters. If she ever did pick up her playing again it was going to mean bloody fingers again, like the old days.
Shift completed, Aerie shuffled down the echoing corridor of Dewitt Mall, a former high school converted into a funky collection of retail shops. She stopped by the Guitar Works for a gander. Not much new. A puke green G&L five string. Some Peavey crap. Nothing worth plugging in. On the way out the door she passed the bulletin board. The usual stuff, rock and roller wannabes with juvenile delusions of grandeur. General business bands looking for sight readers with tuxes. Over the hill rockers looking to salve mid-life crises. But among them, a most peculiar solicitation on a note card caught her eye, neatly lettered in what seemed to be written with a quill pen.
Acoustic bassist wanted for sonic adventures. Abandon all tonality ye who enter here. Think dissonant New Age free jazz grunge. Pays well. Call Aaron @ 607-566-6828
This one intrigued her. Normally, the “New Age” thing would have turned her away, but the dissonance and the grunge part told her that this was no vegan crystal fondler. She tore a corner from another ad and wrote down the number.
She walked home. Her car was acting funky these days. Engine lights blinked on and blinked off without rhyme or reason. She should probably change her oil, or at least check it, but for now it was easier simply not to drive.
She had snacked at Moosewood all day, so she didn’t need much dinner. A salad and some bread sufficed. Maybe later, she would go out for ice cream.
She sat out on her narrow porch and nibbled at romaine, avocado and heirloom tomato drizzled with some vinaigrette, playing Angry Birds on her phone. There was something funny happening to the light. Things looked too yellow and gray for this hour of the evening. The wind was kicking up as well. She looked to the West to see if a storm was coming, but the triple-deckers across the street blocked her view.
She pulled out the slip of paper with the phone number. Second thoughts plagued her. Apart from work, she had had almost no human contact since she had come to Ithaca. She was used to being alone, reaching an equilibrium that being around people again would surely disrupt. The scars on her neck embarrassed her, not to mention the slow wittedness induced by her medications. She crumpled up the piece of paper with the number and tossed it in the trash.
She picked up the tedious freak show of a novel she had picked up from some used bin. A tremor in her lip told her that her meds were wearing off. The protective aura peeled back, exposing some of the void that had taunted and beckoned her in Tokyo. She still couldn’t remember exactly what had triggered her suicide attempt, but she felt some of the futility and emptiness that might have led her down that path.
She went back to the trash can and fished out the little wad of paper she had thrown away and smoothed it out into a wrinkled triangle. She glanced at the clock. Nine-fifteen. Not so late. She called.
“Aaron here,” answered a guy, in a long, sleepy drawl.
“Um. I saw your ad at—”
“Bass player?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind you play?”
“Upright.”
“Fully carved? Laminate?”
“Carved. It’s a Juzek, if that means anything to you.”
“Oh sure. Decent maker. Czech, as I recall.”
“How do know so much about basses? Do you play—?”
“Fiddle. Had a lot of basses come through my house lately, though. Must have auditioned every bassist within a hundred miles of Ithaca. You might have noticed I’m still looking.”
“Wow. You must be picky.”
He gave a long breathy sigh. “Don’t let that discourage you. I’m looking for a certain … aesthetic, you might say. I don’t want sight reading, I want instincts. I don’t even care about intonation that much. It’s more about control over your instrument.”
“Okay.”
“So how does that bass of yours sound? Is she loud?”
“I’ve been kicked out of apartments … even with a mute.”
“Well, that’s promising. Can you make her growl?”
“Like a beast. And she can howl, too. I love playing arco.”
“Well, we
ll. I have to say, I’m looking forward to meeting her. Can you bring her by on Friday? Four-ish?”
“Um …” Aerie was scheduled to work lunch, but the cleanup would be done by three. Maybe Reggie could let her off early.
“Sure,” said Aerie. “I’ll make it happen.”
“I live at 839 Summerton Hill, off Route 13 West. It’s way out in the boonies. Give me your e-mail. I can send you directions.”
“That’s okay. I can just Google it,” said Aerie.
“Alrighty, then. See you on Friday.”
He severed the connection and the line hummed. The call sent Aerie’s heart thumping in its wake.
A flash lit the sky. Thunder rattled the house. The weather was about to change.
Chapter 4: Blackberry
Nigel’s tower of Legos clattered against the hardwood, prompting a shriek worthy of a fruit bat. John wheeled his chair around, knocking a sheath of unfinished job applications to the floor. Baby Jason’s bottom hit the floor with a thud. As Nigel screamed in his face, Jason just watched his elder sibling, more bemused than upset at the reaction he had provoked.“Did you just shove your little brother?” said John, sorting through the applications he had dropped.
“Jason busted my castle!”
“Give him a break,” said John. “He’s learning how to walk. He’s still a bit clumsy.”
“He busted my castle!”
“Pretend he’s a dragon, roaming the kingdom, and all your little Lego people are trying to hide from him.”
“Dragons gotta be slayed,” said Nigel.
“Nuh-uh-uh. You can’t slay your little brother. His scales are much too tough. How about all your little people run away and hide in the toy box?”
Nigel pouted. “I don’t like this game.”
The haunted strains of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ erupted within John’s shirt pocket.
“Mama!” chirped Jason.
John pulled out a bloated clam shell phone years overdue for replacement. When he first got it, during his early days working for Niagara Mohawk, it had seemed sleek. Now that he was a full-time house husband, he had neither the income nor need to replace it.
“Hi hon,” he said.
“Hey,” said Cindy. “So what are you guys up to?” She mumbled, distracted, as if the call were an afterthought.