"I don"t sing," I tell him.
"I bet you could. Sheryl Crow wasn"t a great singer when she started. She was just hot."
"She was young."
"You"re not much older than that."
It occurs to me that he doesn"t know how old I am.
I put my slice of pizza down and lean back into the couch.
"How old do you think I am?"
He shrugs. "That doesn"t matter to me."
"Pick a number," I say.
He thinks. It"s a struggle for him. Clive is not a thinking man.
He says, "Thirty-four."
I laugh.
His smile fades. "What? Am I high or low?"
I am not an idiot. I won"t give him a number.
His smile fades further. "How far off am I?"
"What difference does it make? Age is just a number," I say.
"You"re right," he admits.
I kiss him, and the evening progresses, and sometime in the middle of the night, while we"re lying too close together on my foldout couch, he says next to my ear, "Just give me a ballpark."
"Jesus, you aren"t going to let this go."
"It won"t make a difference," he says.
"Of course it will."
"I promise," he says, and his voice sounds quivery, like a teenager"s.
Now I spend a few seconds thinking. Do I tell him? And what would be the problem in telling him? He might leave. I always knew he might leave, and I have made a halfhearted promise to myself that I won"t care. What"s more, I have a high-minded ideal that I want to be honest, want a man to accept me for who I am, warts and lines and acc.u.mulated wisdom and all. If I can"t tell him how old I am, it diminishes our relationship in some important way.
It is in that moment that I realize I have grown attached to him. I never saw that coming.
I turn over to look at him. It"s dark, but I can see the outline of his facial features. They are perfect in the way that all facial features are perfect before the judgment of time. His nose is a little crooked, but not too much, and his eyes sit where they should in the sockets- not sunken in yet, nor obscured by dark circles or puffy imbalances of fat. There are no lines, no creases. His goatee is as soft as a baby"s hair. The rest of his beard is peeking through, but it is soft also, not stiff and grizzled the way a man"s beard eventually gets. His eyebrows are smooth and obedient, not unruly and sprouting off in all directions. He is not old. He is not even mature. He is in the prime of his life, and looking at him in this moment I realize that I might be a little bit selfish, using up his best years in this way, when he believes I"m thirty-four.
The next thought that comes to me actually steals my breath. I think I might be a tiny bit in love with him. Not because he is young-youth has never really seduced me. I look at my young students with a degree of contempt, feeling that they aren"t actually people yet because they have experienced nothing of any importance. Even Hallie, with all her hardships, struck me as someone who knew nothing about the roller coaster of life. I loved her in spite of her age, not because of it.
No, I am in love (if I am) with Clive because his laughter sounds like a fountain trickling, and because he delights in small victories (such as when the pizza arrives on time and hot), and because he cares to a ridiculous degree about the rhythm section (he goes into a fugue state when I put on a Little Feat record), and because he tells funny stories and laughs at my jokes, and because he knows how to fix his own car, and because he watches the news with a serious expression on his face, as if it is all true and it all matters, and because he remembers that I like to be kissed on the back of my neck, and because he puts the toilet seat down, and because he"s very quiet in the morning when he leaves, so he won"t wake me. Clive is a lovable person, not just a good lover, and I have secretly fallen under the spell of him, and now I am in a horrible place, the place I never like to find myself, wherein I have something to lose.
The moment that I realize I am invested in him, and in his opinion of me, I also realize that I am not playing games. I have lost my original intention, to show Patrick or Franklin or Mark something, and now I am engaged in a relationship, if you interpret the concept, and I do, as a situation in which two people are dependent upon each other for certain needs.
"Forty," I say.
His face stalls. Everything about him stalls. He says, "Forty what?"
I laugh. "Forty years. I"m forty years old."
"Get out!" he says.
"You can leave now," I tell him. He might as well. It"s a trial, the two of us attempting sleep in these close quarters, in this thing that doesn"t even qualify as a bed. I am going to miss him.
He raises himself up on an elbow. He looks like Adonis, I promise you, in the pale light that is spilling in through my one window. His chest is smooth and broad and muscled. He smells good, like some kind of soap, and I can"t resist the urge to run my fingers through his soft hair, one last time.
He says, "Why would I leave?"
"Because. I"m forty."
He leans forward and kisses me hard on the mouth, in a way that actually scares me some. It"s a determined kiss, almost an angry kiss, and I wonder if he"s going to hit me. I wonder if he"s going to say something like, You b.i.t.c.h, you led me on.
Instead, he pulls me on top of him. He is strong. I am caught off guard. I say, "What are you doing?"
"What do you mean?" he asks. "We"re awake, aren"t we?"
"But I"m forty."
"That just makes it better," he says.
I bury my face against the soft skin on his neck.
16.
I HAVE A NEW STUDENT. His name is Lance. He is eleven years old and can play the violin like someone who was born to do it. He is shorter than he should be, and his hair is platinum blond and he has pale blue eyes and dimples. He is not angry or frustrated, and his parents are extremely middle-cla.s.s. His mother is a nurse; his father is a car mechanic. They can afford his lessons, though just barely, and the only thing his mother ever says to me when she drops him off for lessons is, "Tell us how we can help him develop his talent. We want this for him."
It is almost too good to be true, and it takes the place of the hole that Hallie left in my life. Lance does not have the fire that she did. Nor does he have the heartbreaking backstory. But he is good, he likes to work, and he listens to everything I tell him. I can see how it will unfold. I will keep on teaching him until his late teens. Then he and his parents will decide he needs to pursue this further, and they will take him away from me. There is nothing much to hook into. He is simply going to be my charge for a few years, and then he will move on.
I don"t mind this for the same reason that I don"t mind anything. Because I am with Clive. Because just about every evening, I can go home and fall into the arms of a young man who thinks it is fabulous that I"m forty. Our relationship is progressing. He wants me to meet his parents. Fortunately, they live in Arizona now and don"t come out much. But Clive is preparing for the day. He wants to get us out in the open. He wants to make us official.
I like that, but some days I am confused by it. I can"t really have a future with him, yet I am thoroughly unwilling to give him up. He is getting me through this life. He is making the ugliness of my existence go away. Surely we are going to hit a roadblock. Surely, any day now, the exact number of my age will register with him and he will realize how impossible it is.
For example, Clive wants to have children, and he brings it up now and then. I say, "I"m too old for that."
He tells me how he"s read articles in Newsweek that a.s.sure him a woman can have a baby into her fifties if she"s motivated. I don"t tell him that it takes a certain willingness on the part of the woman. Sometimes he tries to talk me into abandoning birth control. When he does that, I say, "Clive, I have no desire to be pregnant."
He says, "My friends with babies tell me life doesn"t even start till you have them."
I say, "My friends with babies tell me that life ends when you have them."
"Oh, you"re just being weird," he says.
The discrepancy is moving in on me. He wants; I don"t want. He expects; I have given up on expectations. I accept, and he just desires, late into the night, scanning the ceiling with his young and hopeful eyes.
When I start teaching Lance, I start staying at the store later and later. I have started teaching him two nights a week, more often than I usually teach students. He has soccer practice three times a week, so I have to make allowances. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I stay until seven o"clock, teaching him. That means I don"t get home until eight. Sometimes I find Clive pacing in front of my trailer, smoking, irritated, anxious.
He doesn"t reprimand me, and I always joke him out of his bad mood or lift his spirits by bringing home pizza or Chinese food. He is so young he can actually be won over by such things. Young people have short attention spans, and I have learned how to use this in my favor. We don"t fight much because I can deflect his anger or frustration without much effort, and in the rare instances when he clings to something, I can always coax him away from it with s.e.x.
It"s so easy, I think sometimes, daydreaming as I drive to work. It"s almost too easy. There can"t be any future in it because I have too much of the upper hand.
I am looking for reasons to destroy this. Because it feels too much like happiness. I"m no stranger to it, of course. I was happy with Mark. I don"t want to go there again.
WHAT"S THE HIGHER CALLING- art or music?
This is the discussion I wander into right before Lance comes in for his Wednesday session. Josie has taken the side of art, just to annoy the others, I a.s.sume, and I opt to side with her for the same reason. But for a long time, I just listen.
"How can you say that?" Franklin asks, taking the bait. "Art is just slopping paint on a canvas. Music is really creative. It serves an actual purpose."
"Purpose my a.s.s," Josie says. "It"s all bulls.h.i.t."
"Did it ever occur to you," Franklin says, his eyes turning beady with rage, "that music is the only thing that makes any sense and the rest of the world is bulls.h.i.t?"
"I used to think that, too," she says. "But I"m the one who"s actually had some success as a musician, and I"m telling you, it"s ultimately bulls.h.i.t."
"Oh, I haven"t had any success?" Franklin spits back at her. "I"m in a band."
Ernest rescues him from that flimsy defense by saying, "What would the world be without Stevie Ray Vaughan or Lynyrd Skynyrd? Sure, life would go on, but would you want it to?"
"I wouldn"t give a flying f.u.c.k," Josie says.
"Well, you"re just p.i.s.sed off," Ernest counters, as if it were a medical condition.
"I think what Josie means is that music is a kind of luxury," I say. "An accoutrement. It doesn"t solve problems or advance evolution or contribute to world peace."
"Oh, and art has helped us evolve?" Franklin asks.
"Well, you know, the cave paintings are pretty important. They helped record history."
"Music stopped the Vietnam War," Franklin says.
I have to laugh. "Okay, come on. Some good music came out of that era, but it didn"t stop anything. The Defense Department stopped that war because it wasn"t politically or financially expedient."
"Whose side are you on?" Franklin asks.
"I"m not on anybody"s side. I just see her point. She"s saying we elevate music to a level that it cannot support. That"s why we"re all so miserable. We can"t put it in perspective."
Josie nods at me, as if I"m the only person on earth who understands. She doesn"t realize I"m only supporting her to keep the argument alive, because I am a person who enjoys fireworks.
"Art," Patrick suddenly says from across the room.
We all turn to look at him. He"s leaning casually against the wall, his arms crossed, smiling at us with that anemic expression of his, from that superior middle ground.
"That"s just bulls.h.i.t," Ernest says in his tw.a.n.g. "You can"t even talk about this because you aren"t even a musician."
Patrick ignores that and looks deliberately at me. "Explain it, Pearl," he says.
"Me?"
"You know how it goes. Sound waves vibrate at a lower frequency than colors. Art requires light. And what"s the speed of sound compared to the speed of light?"
"I don"t know the exact numbers, though I"m sure you do."
"They aren"t in the same ballpark. Sound is r.e.t.a.r.ded compared to light."
"But who says faster is better?" I ask.
"I don"t think we"re talking about faster. We"re talking about higher. What"s the higher calling? Colors vibrate on a higher frequency."
Franklin looks dumbfounded. He says, "You two are just babbling now."
"Music is math," Patrick says. "Art is vision. You tell me which is a higher calling. Music requires instruction. Art cannot be taught."
"Sure it can," Franklin says. "You"ve never heard of art school?"
"No great artist ever went to art school," Patrick says. "Every great musician went to music school."
"Hendrix didn"t," Franklin says. "He couldn"t read a note of music."
"Well, that opens up the debate as to whether or not he was great."
"It"s all bulls.h.i.t," Josie says, wanting back into the argument, though she is lost.
"What about playing by ear?" I ask Patrick. "What about the people who don"t need the math?"
"I don"t believe those people exist," he says. "I think they are lying."
"But you claim to be one of those people," I counter.
"I never did."