Page 43 of With Stars in Her Eyes
Music had saved me over and over again. Thatmagicthat Thea found in photography… that’s what music was for me.
I spent years excavating my true self from being buried and fossilized by a religion that had sunk into every deep crevice of who I was. In childhood I worried my heart-deep passion for music was a sinister, lurking idol looking to draw me away from “the faith” if I wasn’t careful. But music was how I fit the fractured pieces of my soul back together when I realized that what I thought was a bedrock of wisdom was actually nothing more than dusty lies.
No matter how afraid I was or how uncertain my future wasafter wrecking my career, I could still refuse to lose the one thing that had always been my tether.
Music.
Because no matter what role I was playing, I could do this. I could play.
Even if it’s just for me. Even if I never walk onto another stage. Even if I never record again.
Thisis mine.
My fingers shook with nerves.
But I convinced them to keep hold of my bow. The familiar motions of tuning turned into the first song I had ever played on the cello. My audition song for Yale. I played through every song on the Violet Trikes setlist, and every song on my album.
I don’t know how long I played, but when I stopped, my fingers were aching with a satisfying kind of pain.
A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts.
I pulled the curtain and found Sam on the small back deck holding her grandma’s ancient Pyrex casserole lugger. She looked almost frozen, but her smile was so broad it nearly hurt me to look at it.
I yanked open the sliding door. “How long have you been out there?”
“Not that long.”
“Your lips are practically blue.”
“My coat is toasty.” Sam’s chattering teeth weren’t helping her case.
“Your coat is about five minutes away from sprouting icicles. Come in.”
“Can I come in too?” said a voice from the other end of the small porch.
“Nic?”
I turned to find my cousin leaning on the column, with tears in his bright-green eyes to match the ones in Sam’s.
I yanked him into my arms and then pulled away to look at his face. In the stark porchlight, it struck me we had both aged alot in the over a decade since I wrote “Astrolabe.” My brain stubbornly insisted on thinking about Nic as if he were a kid because he was a couple years younger than me. But in reality, we were both in our thirties now. His cheeks had chiseled, and his eyes were lined after years spent in a long succession of kitchens. He even had premature silver mixed into the stubble on his cheeks and chin. With a pang of anxiety, I noticed he was paler than usual, but maybe it was just because he had been driving all day.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming in early?”
He shrugged and sniffed once. “I’m not sorry I didn’t.”
Sam was blowing her nose just inside the door and then threw the box of tissues at Nic. Nic took one and then he held it out behind the small brick retaining wall. I shivered as I walked across the deck to look down. Jeannie was sitting on the stairs. She let her tears fall without shame, then she gathered me up in a crushing hug.
When she pulled back, she used the clean tissue in her hands to wipe my face instead. I hadn’t realized I was crying too.
Jeannie sniffed to hide what might have been a sob. “Well, if we stay out here any longer, we’re either going to freeze our asses or our faces off, and neither prospect seems attractive to me at the moment.” She shoved Nic inside ahead of her and then pulled me and Sam behind.
Sam unzipped the casserole lugger, releasing a divine smell into the kitchen. “I bet you’re hungry after that. I feel like we need champagne or something.”
Nic twitched his head toward the front door. “I got a bottle of that fancy zero-proof champagne from a potential vendor today. I’ll grab it from the truck.”
I bent to pick a small piece of browned, cheesy potato out of the dish. “I take a couple months off playing and you three are acting like I—”
Sam swatted my hand away. “Shush,and let us be happy for you.”
