-1-
I respect Professor Barrett, but he is missing out.
The new Bernhard School for Performance Arts may not be old or spiritual, but it feels somehow more miracle-granting than Rischman House. I could barely even get the front doors of Rischman House open; the front doors of Bernhard open for me.
Literally.
They’re automatic.
The shimmering white and glass interior is only interrupted by colossal murals and small exhibitions of student work. Walking past one of auditoriums I can hear the thump of ballet shoes and the sounds of a string quartet playing something from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. There’s even a coffee cart tucked away in the back with clusters of theater students waiting loudly in line.
I take the spiral staircase to the second floor landing and (out of breath, as usual) follow the signs to the practice rooms until I can hear a dreamy, but hesitant love song on piano and Matty’s quiet corrections and pacing. I sit down just outside the door to wait for the session to finish.
I'm kind of glad Corrine cancelled on me on Monday. It gave me more time to procrastinate talking to Matty. I do wish Corrine were here with me now though, that way he would have to be nice to me. But she’d been out of reach these last few days and I hadn’t seen Abigail all day.
“Good,” I hear Matty say.
The music continues until I hear a missed note and a key slammed in frustration.
“It's okay.” Matty says. “C’mon… A…D…FB. Good.”
The music starts again, still hesitant, but it sounds right.
When Matty’s working he’s so quiet and concentrated. I hardly ever see him like that. After another minute the song finally peters to a clunky end.
“I know, I suck. Can’t you play it so I can see it one more time ?,” a female voice practically screams at him.
“ It’s not my test.” He responds. “You’re fine, Professor Barrett knows you are working hard. Just remember, don't rush the end.”
I hear the sound of her packing up, a loud goodbye and after a few seconds a short brunette I recognize from my freshman orientation leaves the practice room. When she turns the corner I knock on the wall and enter the practice room.
My eye instantly goes up. The room’s got a vaulted ceiling, acoustic walls and on the far side is a slightly abstract watercolor of black and white keys. There are two Steinways on each side of the room and cabinet of keyboards.
Matty is in the corner packing up a set of composition books in his messenger bag.
“ Hey, Matty--,
“Shut up, Jonah,” he whines with a smile.
He moves to one of the Steinways and immediately goes into a rendition of a Justin Bieber song.
“Since when do you do top 40 for 12-year-old girls ?,” I tease.
He bangs a sharp key and the pitch makes my ears hum. Matty laughs when I make a frustrated sound but I think it hurts him more than it hurts me.
“I’m playing for the kids at hospital fundraiser, Jonah. The kids like the song. Does it sound right ?”
“Yeah,” I say. Of course it sounds right.
Matty’s a savant.
Satisfied with my answer, he zips up his purple Eastham sweathshirt and pulls his bag over his shoulder. He holds his arm out to me and we walk out of the room together. Matty is pretty popular in this building, we get stopped by students asking him questions or for his office hours at least 10 times before we get to the front doors.
“This new building is amazing.” I say as the automatic doors swing open. “Can’t believe I never came over here before.”
“Told you. It’s sick.” he agrees. “Now, you’re still buying me coffee, right ?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Even though you’re the one with a job--”
“Uh-uh, Jonah. You can’t take back an invite. And you’re driving, it’s cold as hell outside.”
“The Thinking Cup is in walking distance--”
“I want to drive Jonah,” he says. "I’m freezing my ass off.”
“Fine. But if I can’t find a space when I get back I’m blaming you.”
“You have a disabled tag, Jonah, you always have a space.” he smirks.
He's right, but I only use it when Dad is in the car. Not to mention that sometimes someone parks in the disabled spaces illegally and I'm too much of a wimp to ever say anything.
We stop to get my bike and walk where I have the Prius wedged between a van and SUV. While I get the bike into the rack on the trunk, Matty gets in the driver’s seat and honks the horn.
“Jonah! Hurry up ! I have class in 4 hours !,” he shouts at me.
I roll my eyes and open the driver’s door, he climbs over the gear shift to the passenger seat. When I start the car, the new Il Volo CD starts playing, which I think he will approve of, but he just turns it off the minute the heat comes on.
“Now, Jonah what do you want from me ?,” Matty asks suspiciously.
“You’re my friend, Matty. Can’t we--,”
“Stop calling me that,” he says pinching my arm.
The only reason I call him Matty is because I know it pisses him off.
It’s about the only thing.
Matty’s actual name is Matthew Saylor, and no one had ever called him Matty in his entire life.
Well, not until he was in Dad’s international best selling second book, How My Light Is Spent.
He’d been one of the 7 stories my Dad wrote about people living with blindness and arguably Matty was the the most interesting. Matthew was born blind-deaf, and when he was 3 his family realized he had absolute pitch and an eidetic memory for music.
It was a great story on it's own, but the editors of Dad’s book took a few liberties with him. They changed his name to Matty to make him sound more precocious and it kind of stuck during all press.
When Dad wrote about Matthew he was eight and just playing shows for his little village in England and getting occasional write ups in the paper. When Dad got the Pulitzer Prize, Matthew got more attention and started playing all over Europe.
Matty’s got kind of a difficult personality and his parents and music teachers pushed him more than they probably should have. After passing out from exhaustion at some shows he quit performing at 18 and decided he wanted to teach music and get away. His family kept in touch with Dad and five years ago Matty left England for Eastham to go to school.
Matty only does charity shows now and cobbles together a living by TAing for the School of Music and as adviser for the Eastham College’s “premiere newspaper”, The Eastham Record.
The latter is the only reason I’m talking to him right now.
It’s not that we aren’t friends. Matty is like another older brother to me--we’d kind of grown up together through small visits over the years. Whenever Dad did a European tour we’d spend a day at his family’s house and he and Ethan would play hide and seek with me but where neither of them bothered to look for me. He’d spent all the American holidays with us since he came here..
But we’d always had a kind of antagonistic relationship that I’m not sure he’s even aware of. It’s just Matty’s an amazing person and when he moved here, it had been hard to ignore. Especially since he did my thing--music. Nothing I ever did could be as amazing as what Matty had accomplished and that used to piss me off. Sometimes it still does.
“So, you know the Eastham Record ?,” I ask
“Unfortunately,” he smirks. He unrolls the window and sticks his hand out in the chilly air.
I press the button on my side to close the window and he quickly moves his fingers.
“I need to find all of last year’s copies. Why aren’t they online ? I need to search for something.”
He unrolls the window again.
“You’re letting the heat out.” I tell him and roll it back up.
He tries to unroll it, but I put the child safety lock on.
“It’s hot in here,” he says. “Oh, but hey you should have gotten heated seats or like leather-”
“The Eastham Record.” I repeat. “Why aren’t the old ones online ?”
“Server space.” He says. “The school doesn’t want to pay for it and none of these poor kids can seem to sell ad space unless I can convince the Morrow family to buy another ad. Why ? What are you up to, Jonah ?”
“Well, is there an archive?,” I evade the question.
“Yeah. In the library, but it’s behind glass. Also, I think my neighbor has been using old copies for her gerbil cage if you--,”
“I’m serious,” I say. And I am. There might be something about Abigail in them.
“Well, there is an unofficial archive in the English department basement. But… you have to tell me what you are doing if you want the key.”
“You wouldn’t care--”
“Tell me. Is it embarrassing ?”
“No-”
“Then tell me or I won’t help. If it were nothing you’d tell me--,”
“Not really,”
“Do you have a secret ?”
“We’re here,” I say, thankful to pull into the front of the Thinking Cup
-2-
Easily distracted and desperate for caffeine Matty takes out his cane, which designates him as The Other Blind Guy on campus and walks towards The Thinking Cup without me. He’s been there a few times, but I’m silent as I watch him struggle to push a pull door for a full 30 seconds.
After I check that my bike is secured to its rack and car doors are locked I go inside to see him leaning against the counter talking rapidly to the barista with his hands gliding over the braille menu
The barista’s not Corrine, it’s another girl who started around the same time she did. She’s got a huge ballerina bun on top of her head and these amazing gray-green eyes, but mostly I remember her thick accent. It sounds throaty and Arabic. She’d come to Dad’s reading at the beginning of the year and came up after and actually asked questions.
I don’t know her well, but she seems to know me because she makes direct eye contact with me when I walk in. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing.
“—That’s so fucking weird.” I catch Matty saying then he turns to me. “Jonah, did you know almonds have milk ? I’m going to try that, I want a large pumpkin latte, that seems appropriate for the season. Okay, I’m getting a table.”
He turns and bumps into a display of Organic Chia bars, before going to a table in the corner. It seats four, and his swings his legs on one of the chairs.
“So, large almond milk pumpkin latte and large Revolution Blend ?,” The Barista says.
“Um, actually just make that a normal pumpkin latte,” I say.
“I get it.” She laughs, “I always thought an extra 2.00 for some almond juice was insane.”
After I pay she calls over Morris, whose been one of Dad’s grad students, to work the register and she meets me at the hand off.
“So, did you hear ?” she whispers to me leaning over the counter.
“What ?”
“Corrine broke up with her boyfriend. I know you two were hanging out and I wasn’t sure if you knew--,\”
I didn’t know. I should have though, the last thing Corrine had texted me was she had to go bail him out of jail. I'm surprised Corrinne would even date a guy who'd get arfested. I assumed with the cross she wore she'd probably date the clean cut, promise ring, scripture quoting guys.
“We aren’t that close,” I say truthfully.
“I only met him maybe three times," She continues over me. "But it sounds like he was an asshole when he broke up with her. She was going around the dorm packing everything he gave her--”
“Sev." It finally clicks. “You’re her roommate.”
She looks at me like I should have known this.
I should have known this.
“ So, is she okay ?,” I quickly recover.
“I don’t know. Fine she says. I guess it’s hard because she doesn’t really have many—well, I mean, you know it’s just hard, I guess. She needs all the friends she can get...and, um I kind of have this nonrefundable train ticket to New York this weekend, so I can’t be with her and I was thinking maybe you could call her or something when I’m gone ?”
This feels too personal. Corrine and I only spent a few hours together and we were talking to a dead girl. It doesn't make us best friends, but Sev's request doesn't sound like something I can say no to.
“Yeah, I can--”
Before I finish, I’m interrupted by the sound of Katy Perry on the piano. I turn to see Matty playing an app that turns his tablet into a piano. The sound is projecting across the coffee shop.
“I am so sorry about him,” I apologize, grabbing the drinks and sprinting over to the table. I quickly click off his tablet.
“Jonah!,” Matty chastises me and turns it back on.
“Matthew, there are other people here,” I remind him through gritted teeth.
“I want you to do the melody,” he says playing again and pointing at me. “Sing the melody, Jonah. I wish you had your--”
“Stop it.”
“Hey, sing, Jonah. I know you know the words-”
“Matt-,”
“Come on.”
“I’m serious.”
“Me too, Jonah”
I sense we are being watched and turn around to not only see Sev staring at us from behind the bar with a grin on her face, but also Abigail. She’s a few feet from the table and looking from me to Matty with a questioning look.
This was the first time I'd seen her today. She'd showed up a few times this week and we just walked around campus seeing if anything jogged her memory. At the end of the day we ended up in the library where she sifted through the stacks and read.
Abigail points to me, as if to ask if she can talk to me and I nod. Shen then quickly walks through the couple standing in front of her and to the seat farthest from Matty. It's weird, she is wearing heels, but they don't make a sound on the hardwood as she moves.
The moment Abigail sits down Matty stops playing and yanks his headphones and hearing aids out.
“Ahh, fuck !,” he yells. “Sorry.”
Abigail’s eyes get big and we share a collective what the hell look. She scrambles up to leave, but Matty just puts his earbuds back in and slams his head on the table, inches from my coffee.
“Matt, what happened ? Are you okay ?,” I ask.
“What ? Yeah ? Just some feedback. But, God, Jonah I am so exhausted…never get a job, Jonah…never go to graduate school. Especially the graduate school part. So tired. Always.”
Abigail settles back into her seat cautiously.
“You should have gotten coffee, it has more caffeine” I say and his head pops up. He reaches his hand around and dragging my cup to his mouth he takes a small sip before spitting it into a napkin.
“This is bitter,” he says.
“I don’t get why you don’t dropout, it’s not like you need grad school.” I tell him for the 500th time.
“Giving up isn’t really my thing.” he says. “Speaking of which, Colin told me you dropped hisclass. Why did you do that--”
"Colin ?," I repeat. I hate when grad students act like the professor is their drinking buddy or something.
"Yeah, he asked me to call him that. So, why did you drop the class ?"
“It didn’t fit my schedule--”
“Bullshit, Jonah. You should have stayed, then next year I would have been your TA--”
The thought makes me extra grateful I dropped.
He picks up a Sweet N Low and holds it inches from his eyes, he squints at it and then holds it out to me.
“Sweet N Low ?,” he asks, forcing his pupils to concentrate.
“Yeah,” I answer. “So, anyway back to the archive of school newspapers in the English department basement thing--”
“Equal ?,” He asks holding a blue packet inches from his face.
“Yes. So if I--”
“Stevia ?,”
“No. So, who has a key to this English department basement arch--,”
“You’re lying,” he accuses putting the sugar packet closer to his face
“No,” I say. It’s a white packet with ‘sugar’ in green writing, so it looks like the green Stevia packets to him, but I don’t feel like playing his games.
He rips it open and puts some on his tongue and looks at the package again.
“I see now,” he lies and starts playing the Train song that just went off the speakers on his piano app.
He can’t see though and I’m really annoyed. He puts the sugar into my coffee and takes a long gulp. I’m going straight to the bargaining.
“Okay, Matthew.” I sigh. “If you give me a key to this archive, no questions asked...I will drive you to class for a week.”
Before he can answer, Sev is back and she has a bright pink postcard sized flyer with her. It’s a mosaic of clip art and explanation points. When she sets it down in front of us my stomach clenches; it’s for an Open Mic night.
“Hey, sorry to interrupt.” Sev says. “But, um, we’re having an open mic showcase thing this semester and I think you should sign up to play,” she says to Matty.
“Since when does The Thinking Cup have open mic nights ?,” I ask.
“It was my idea,” she says offended. “I mean I figure Eastham is a liberal arts college, how has Thinking Cup not had one ? Anyway. No pressure… if you want you should come too.”
The last part is directed at me.
“Put Jonah and I down,” Matty says and starts digging in his pockets
“Shut up, Matty,” I say to him. “No offense Sev, you can have him but I--,”
Matty pulls out a keychain with Shakespearean insults on it and dangles it approximately where he thinks my face is. When I reach for it he pulls it back. I think I hear Abigail giggle.
"If you want this key, you have to do a duet with me," Matty smiles.
I could punch his arrogant face.
"No Sonny and Cher."
"No promises," he compromises because he knows I have no choice.
“Fine.” I conceit and Sev looks ecstatic.
“And she thought no one would show.” I hear Sev mutter as she walks away.
“I’m sticking my middle finger at you,” I tell him.
“And ?,” he says.
I’d make a backward peace sign, but is somehow doesn’t feel as good.
***
-3-
-3-
I want to start looking through the papers the minute Matty gives me the key, but I don’t get the chance. By the time I take him home and then back to campus I have to go to my own class and then Dad wants to go home. I could make an excuse to go out once we get back, but he already made dinner reservations for us.
I’m a bad son at dinner, because I’m not listening to what he’s talking about. Something about allowing yourself to experience new things and rekindling spirits and finding inspiration. Maybe it was prophetic advice, but Dad is always saying stuff like that, so it’s easy to ignore.
The next morning Matty obnoxiously texts my cellphone 14 times before 7 AM to remind me to come and take him to his charity concert at the Children’s Hospital at 11AM. He’s doing a full show in the chapel for donors and then a small concert for the kids afterwards.
I decide to get an early start to the morning and get dressed after the 10th text. When I go down the hall, I see Dad asleep on top of the bed covers, still in his clothes from last night. I’d gone to bed right after dinner and I wonder if he went anywhere.
“Dad ?” I say sitting on the bed, gently shaking his shoulder. “Dad.”
He takes a deep breath and mumbles “Dammnit not now, son.” Before turning back to sleep.
There’s a small edge in his voice so I just whisper in his ear.
“ I’m going to take Matthew to his show--,”
I’m interrupted by a series of raps on the house door. We don’t usually get visitors this early and I rush over to the door so Dad doesn’t wake up pissed off again.
Abigail is standing on the other side of the door, smiling bashfully.
“Sorry, I'm sorry, was that loud ?,” she asks wringing her curly ponytail in her hand. “I didn’t know if it would make a noise. Sorry.”
“Well, I heard it.” I tell her leaning back into the house and grabbing my coat from the rack. “How did you know I was up ?”
We head to the car. I open the passenger door for her and I leave a quick text for Dad about where I am in case he doesn’t remember our conversation earlier and then head towards the freeway.
“I was sitting outside waiting for the lights come on.” She says. “ I wanted to catch you before you went to, um Matthew’s concert.”
“Why ?,” I ask, but I know why. “Wait, you don’t want to go, do you ?”
She shrugs.
“I did read the book. He’s pretty impressive…guess I want to see it in action,” she says defensively..
“He’s not all that impressive,” I tell her. “ I mean he’s only legally blind and he has hearing aids. Plus he’s always putting on a show for attention, I mean you saw how he was just playing whatever he felt like in the middle of a crowded coffee shop, right ?”
I know it makes me sound like a jerk but it’s true. For some reason I don’t mind telling her, she just looks out the window.
“Well, you were playing on the bridge when I first saw you. How is that different ?”
It is very different, but I can’t think of the words for how or--
"STOP!" Abigail shouts
There is nothing on the road, but her tone makes me slam on the brake, my forehead bounces off the steering wheel, I think one of my fake teeth is going to pop out. Abigail is looking behind her and holding on to the door handle for life. We just stare at each other, assesing the others condition.
"What ?," I finally ask.
"I thought I saw something, I..." she starts and trails off.
"What ? Did you see something ?," I ask, trying to take the edge of my voice.
"It's nothing, I just thought I saw something move across the street. It's nothing weird."
I don't believe her, but I can't exactly force out an answer.
I drive a few miles to the narrow streets of rowhouses that make up the South End of Waverly. By the time we get to Matty’s apartment the weirdness from earlier has worn off. Matty lives on on the bottom floor of a lilac house, his curtains are open and I can see him standing over his stove eating ramen noodles.
I honk the horn.
“I wasn't planning on staying for the concert,” I tell Abigail as she crawls into the backseat. “I’m going to get started at the English department. But you can stay.”
“Why don’t you want to stay ?” she asks
“Don’t you want to figure out who you are ?,” I reply. “ You could be a few hours from figuring out who you are.”
I catch a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror, she crosses her arms and looks contemplative.
“No. You’re right,” she says.
I feel terrible. The truth is I don’t want to see people fawning over Matthew I don’t want to see him do what he does so well, with never having to work at it.
“But I think we should get Corinne too.” Abigail adds.
“I can text her, but I think she’s ignoring me. I mean you heard about her boyfriend-”
“I saw,” she adds and looks down. “Jonah…I’m worried about her. Maybe we should go see her and take her with us? I hate to leave her out, let's get her.,”
Before I can answer Matthew hops in the car, with a thermos of noodles. He's dressed in his show outfit--plaid button up. dark chinos.
“Sure.” I say.
“What, Jonah ?,” Matthew asks
“Nothing.”
“Ready to take me to the hospital ?,” he asks as I start the engine.
“Yeah, but don’t be concerned if I leave you in the mental ward.”
-----
a/n
Woo, this took a while to post