If You Only Knew
Page 51

“Right. He’d better be normal, Rach, or you’ll pay.”
She grins, and it’s almost sincere. Jimmy is the divorced dad whose kid goes to the same nursery school as the girls. “He’s very normal. And he’s pretty cute, too. Could be the one.”
That’s my sister. Her life is in the shitter, but she still wants me to find a happily ever after.
* * *
Rachel and I pick up the girls, and I spend an hour playing bucking bronco with all three of them (and probably rupturing a few discs). Then I head for home. I don’t want to run into Adam, who’s been coming home early, Rachel says, and I did promise Leo I’d make that ramp. And, of course, there is the date.
I went back to Manhattan the other day for the final fitting on a lovely woman who viewed her wedding dress with the perfect blend of joy and deprecation. I’d had to let out the seams a little bit to accommodate her growing belly—three months along, but already showing. She’s forty-three. She and her fiancé are thrilled about the baby. See? It’s not too late for me, seven years younger.
Anyway, the thing that surprised me was how the city—The City—felt both foreign and familiar. I knew to get off the West Side Highway before Fourteenth Street; I knew where to find a parking space on Greene Street. I knew to stop at Benny’s Burritos to pick up dinner, because lukewarm Benny’s is still better than anything you can get in a hundred-mile radius.
But in less than a month, New York is no longer mine. The city always seemed alive to me, a great, jagged dragon sitting on its jewels—the unexpected alley garden on the Upper West Side, welcoming you to sit and rest; the homeless man on Madison Avenue who offered critiques of your outfits for five bucks; the brownstone on East Eighty-First street where no one lived, but which could be accessed by the garden door, so you could wander the empty rooms as if you owned the place. Central Park at sunrise in June, a golden paradise filled with birdsong against the reassuring sound of fire sirens...reassuring, because New York’s Bravest were on their way.
What I didn’t quite expect was that as soon as I left Manhattan behind, the beneficent, regal creature forgot me. It tolerated me when I was a student of eighteen, it gave me my chance, it celebrated me when I made it, and it forgot me the second I drove over the Henry Hudson Bridge. You’re always just a foster child in the city that never sleeps. The second you go, someone else takes your room.
And though it was hard to picture, I’m glad. It’s an almost shameful confession. I love my hometown more than I thought I would. I love the buildings and the old trees, the little alleys between houses, the tiny backyards. I know where the tree roots buckle the sidewalk, and I know that the middle Ortega girl has a beautiful voice, that the cat who climbs the tree outside my bedroom window belongs to the Capistranos. I know the old guys who sit outside the barbershop downtown playing chess—Miles and Ben—and I know that Luciano’s has better takeout eggplant parm than Firenze, which is three times more expensive.
I know that if impressive music seeps out of Number 11 Magnolia, as it does now, Evander James has a lesson. Leo has some fairly proficient students, and he has some abject beginners, and then he has Evander.
Heavy, ominous notes crash from inside Leo’s apartment. I stand at the gate and watch the boy as his hands fly across the keyboard, his entire body playing, arms, shoulders, body moving with the sounds. His face drawn with intensity and fervor. It’s like watching a force of nature, like watching electrical current move through him.
Even I can see that he’s special.
Leo sits behind him and to one side, his arms folded, watching his pupil’s hands, a slight frown of concentration. He glances up to me, winks, then looks back at Evander.
The music stops, and the boy sits there for a minute, reverent and silent, then turns to Leo, who leans forward and says something, pointing to the music. Then they both get up, and a second later come out into the courtyard.
“Hello, Harriet the Spy,” Leo says.
“Hello, Maestro,” I say to Evander.
“He’s the maestro,” Evander says in a near whisper.
“Is he? He looks like Voldemort to me.” Evander smiles at this. Leo, too, and there’s that delicious tug in my uterus.
“Evander’s gonna hang around for a while,” Leo says, glancing up as a mother and child approach.
“Leo! Hello! So good to see you!” It’s one of the Hungry Moms, as I’ve come to think of them—they who always carry food and look at Leo with voracious eyes. (Hey. At least I’ve never offered him food.) Hungry Mom is dragging along little Sansa or Renfield, a miserable-looking girl of about ten, and carries an expensive-looking picnic basket in one hand. She cuts me a cursory look, then decides I don’t exist. “Listen,” she purrs up at Leo, “don’t say a word, but I made too much for dinner, so I brought some over for you. In fact, Renley here—” that’s it, Renley, not Renfield “—is dying for you to come over for dinner one night! And not to brag, but I have taken quite a few courses from the Culinary Institute!”
Renley looks close to death by boredom.
“Hi, Renley. Did you practice this week?” Leo asks.
“No.” She glares at Evander. “What’s he doing here? He’s poor. He can’t afford lessons.”
Evander looks at the ground.
“He’s my star pupil,” Leo says, his voice hard. “The best student I’ve ever had and probably ever will have.”