While we waited, Mrs. Ingram began asking me about myself. I don’t like talking about myself so right away I began getting nervous. I was already a little on edge. Thinking about how Kevin would react, seeing me here in his house, speaking to his mother, simply honed that edge. How he’d react when he found me here, I had no idea. I’d overheard Mrs. Ingram on the phone. She hadn’t even spoken to him. She’d spoken to someone named Nancy and asked her if she’d send Kevin home right away. Nancy had evidently said she would.
It was only about five minutes later, five minutes in which I’d been dodging Mrs. Ingram’s question without her realizing I was doing it, I hoped, when the front door opened. I was sitting in the living room with my back toward the door so he couldn’t see me, and I couldn’t see him. I could just imagine what reception I’d get when he saw who was sitting talking to his mother. I just hoped, with his mother in the room, he wouldn’t start screaming at me. I knew he’d be mad. He kept telling me to go away, and I’d gone away all the way over to his house. So I knew he’d be mad. I just didn’t know how mad.
“Yeah, Mom, you wanted me?” He said as he walked in, sounding cheerful. As he spoke, I turned in my seat, and he looked right at me.
I’ve never seen such a jumble of expressions cross anyone’s face so quickly. They were too fast for me to read any one of them. I do know the one he ended up with surprised the hell out of me.
“Matt!” he said, and developed a big smile. “What are you doing here?” Friendly tone of voice, happy smile, easy posture—I was beginning to wonder if Kevin had an evil twin, or more likely, Kevin was the evil twin and this guy was the good one.
“Hi, Kevin,” I replied, my voice sounding a little tentative even to me.
Mrs. Ingram broke into our happy reunion. “Kevin, Matt stopped by to talk to me. He’s told me some things that aren’t what you told me. I thought maybe you could straighten this out. Would you come over here and sit down, please?”
“Sure, Mom.” Kevin looked at me as he passed by, his expression very neutral. I was on one end of the couch, and Mrs. Ingram was right next to me in a chair. Kevin took the other end of the couch. This resulted in both of us looking directly at him. It almost looked like it was going to be two against one, the way we were arranged.
“Kevin, Matt tells me that you didn’t hurt yourself in the hallway, that it happened in gym class. That he accidentally knocked you down while you were playing a game, and that’s when you fell and broke your wrist. Is that what happened?”
I was embarrassed, having to look at Kevin. Without trying to, and with no ill intent at all, I realized I’d basically told his mother he was lying to her, and now I was sitting here happily witnessing him having to defend himself. First I’d hurt him, now I was getting him in trouble with his parents. I hadn’t meant this to happen any more than I’d meant to break his wrist. I’d come here to help him, to get his mother to put some pressure on him to let me help him. I’d come here for his own good! Why was it that everything I did for Kevin blew up in my face?
Of course, he might change the pronoun.
I expected to see him cringe, start flushing, and stammer a bit. Instead, what he did was look at me. I knew he wanted to glare. I knew it. But his mother could see his face every bit as clearly as I could, so all he did was smile a little harder, and then wink at me!
Then he shifted his eyes to his mother. “Mom, I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. Matt didn’t mean to hurt me, and I was a little afraid you’d get all mad, maybe call the principal to get him punished or something, maybe suspended or kicked out of school. I thought that you might not understand and be all upset just because I was hurt. I like Matt. He’s such a great guy, and he didn’t mean to push me, he was running and I was running and he’s faster than I am, being so much bigger and all, and he caught up to me just when I tried to dodge him and I slowed down in order to dodge just as he touched me, and so, since he was suddenly going so much faster than I was, the tag he put on me was harder than he wanted it to be, and I was a little off balance anyway because of the dodging, and bang!—I was on the ground. It was just one of those things that happens. I didn’t want to get him in trouble, or the gym teacher either for having us play such a rough, dangerous game. I didn’t want you to start thinking about suing the gym teacher.”
He looked at me briefly as he said that last bit.
His mother looked like she bought it. But then she went on to indict me again. “Well, you still shouldn’t have lied to me, Kevin. However, it was just to protect your friend, so I understand. But he also says you’re having trouble at school, you’re frustrated, that you seem changed, and you won’t let him help you? Is any of that true?”
Kevin’s face became very confused. “He said that? Matt, you told her that? Why would you say that? That’s crazy. I haven’t . . .” He paused, as if to think, then smiled his amazing smile again. “Oh, I get it! He’s got a great sense of humor, Mom! He was just kidding. He helped he in the cafeteria, carried my tray for me, even was helping push my chair into place. Then in the library when I couldn’t quite manage the books I needed, he was right there for me, just at the right moment to see everything that was going on. You have no idea how that made me feel. Just none at all. I don’t know why he’d tell you I’ve been upset, unless it was just kidding. Isn’t that right, Matt? You were just kidding, weren’t you?”
Gulp! What was I supposed to say now? The whole reason for coming was to get him to take my help. If I backed down now, there was no way he’d ever let me help, and I wouldn’t be able to talk to his mother about it again, that was for sure. And if I didn’t back down, if I denied what he’d said, I’d be making him out to be a liar again, and I’d be responsible for getting him in even deeper water. Who knows what the results of that would be? Maybe he’d get grounded. Again, because of me.
And what a devious little shit he was! How in the world did he come up with all that? Right on the spot like that? And all those double-entendres! I hadn’t had any idea he was that clever. He was really quick at thinking what to say, even with his mother questioning him. When my mother interrogated me, I just fell apart. I couldn’t lie for shit; any and everyone could see it, and I’d blush, and, well, I couldn’t lie for shit.
But back to his question to me. In the back of my mind, I knew he was challenging me. He knew he was putting me on the spot. His smile was back. He was eating this up. The goddamn bastard was enjoying himself! Or was he? I couldn’t tell if the smile was real or pretend. He certainly was pretending when he smiled on seeing me sitting here in his house. I couldn’t read the little shit at all!
They were both looking at me. I had to say something.
I started to speak, and it suddenly occurred to me, two people could play this game. If he was going to challenge me in front of her, I could do the same thing! He wouldn’t be able wriggle out of things any better than I could with her sitting there.
What I wanted was for him to let me help him. That was all. That was why I was here. Now that he didn’t seem in such a funk, maybe I wasn’t in such an all-fired hurry to do that. It was seeing him helpless and vulnerable and miserable that made me so committed to helping him. But he didn’t seem so vulnerable, sitting here, trying to make me uncomfortable, challenging me. I was more interested now in figuring out how to use his own momentum against him.
And I could see a way to do that. I smiled at him, returning his smile, and then at her. “Well, I wasn’t really kidding, Kev, but I guess I could have misinterpreted a couple things I saw. The truth is, I want to do even more than you’ve let me do, because I feel so badly about you tripping over your own feet and falling down like you did when I was chasing you after you’d tagged me. So I thought your mother and I could talk about it. What I was thinking, actually, was that I could call her every day after school with a progress report. Tell her what I’d done for you that day, how you allowed me to do that, how you were getting along, whether you were still frustrated or not, whether you were angry about anything or not, you know, that sort of thing.”
He couldn’t glare at me. He simply couldn’t. And I, from where I was sitting, could turn slightly so his mother couldn’t really see my face. I did that now, and my smile became a little more than victorious, and may have strayed into the area of being insufferable.
He was whipped. He couldn’t do anything but say, “Ah, that’s really nice, but you don’t need to do that.”
And I could reply, “But I want to, and I think I should. It’ll let your mother know how well you’re doing, and I’ll tell her if you need any further help with anything that you might be embarrassed to talk to her about yourself. I mean, just think, if you have a bad day, are grouchy or something, and don’t let me really help you, I can tell her about it, because neither of us wants to see you out of sorts. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Ingram?”
“Oh, yes, and I’d like that a lot, a report on how Kevin’s doing every day. Would you really do that, Matt?”
“I’d be happy to. I do feel badly that Kevin’s hurt and not able to do things for himself as well as he’d like.” I shot a quick glance at Kevin when I said that, hoping he’d see I meant that, and how serious about it I was, then continued. “It’ll be helping me as much as him, soothing my conscience. I’m glad we can all agree on this.” Then, I couldn’t help myself and finished with, “We all do, don’t we?”
◊ ◊
Band practice that night was a run-through of all the music we’d be performing that Friday night at the football game. I walked into the band room carrying my glockenspiel. I lugged it up to the top of the risers where the percussion section was located and set it in its stand. Then I rubbed both my shoulders and shook my arms to loosen the muscles. I was sixteen and longed for my birthday to come so I could get my license. When I was finally able to drive instead of walking, that’s when everyone would know I was a man. It seemed I was the only one who knew it now. And driving to rehearsal with a glockenspiel in the back seat would be a whole lot better than carrying the damn thing.
I began chatting with the bass drum player, a guy named Ross that I knew slightly. He was friendly and sociable. It was strange, but the guys playing drums all seemed to have a sort of percussionist’s personality, a personality which was markedly different from what I was accustomed to with the clarinetists. Come to think of it, I’d noticed that there were certain specific personality traits that seemed to go with certain instruments. It didn’t make any sense to me why that would be true, but it really was. Drummers on the whole were generally outgoing and friendly guys. Trumpet players were exceptionally cocky, and could also be aggressive. They were the guys who’d play practical jokes on other band members, and often there seemed to be a mean undertone to them. They didn’t care if someone got hurt or upset by one of their tricks. They seemed to be trying to show their superiority, or dominance. Trombone players, on the other hand were usually laid back, easy-going guys who didn’t let much bother them.
Maybe it was because there were a lot of us clarinetists, but there seemed to be more varied personality types in my section, although I guess most of us were a little high strung, a little insecure. Perhaps all the competition we had within the section, always worrying whether someone was going to move ahead of us, or whether we were good enough to move up ourselves, had something to do with that, along with the difficulty of playing the instrument itself and the difficulty of the music we generally had to play. If there was one section in the band that had a streak of paranoia running through it, it was the clarinets.
When Mr. Tollini walked out of the office, I noticed him looking around the room. Eventually, he made eye contact with me, smiled, and waved me down to talk to him.
“Hey, Matt. How’s it going with the glockenspiel? You getting the hang of it at all?” He had to speak over the noise of a bunch of kids warming up their instruments and others just talking to each other.
“Yes, sir. I’ve been working on it every day. You were right; it doesn’t take all that much to learn how to play it, at least the music we’re playing, which is pretty easy. If I were having to play eighth- or sixteenth-note runs and trills and stuff it might be worse, but the music doesn’t have that.”
“No, they make it that way for marching band. And really, there are just a few notes, the ones at the beginnings of measures and the ends of phrases, that we really need. As long as you play those, I’ll be happy.”
“I’ve got all the music pretty well learned, so I’ll play more than that. It’s actually better than the clarinet, for the football field.”
“Great, Matt! I just wanted to be sure you were okay with it.”
While we’d been talking, I’d been looking over his shoulder at the board. The three words written on it tonight were DIATONIC, CHROMATIC, and METRONOMIC. All words ending in “-ic.” I decided he was being cute.
When I didn’t respond immediately to Mr. Tollini’s last remark because I was reading the board, he glanced over his shoulder to see what I was looking at, then grinned. “Like today’s words? Do you know them? I’ll bet I don’t put many up there you don’t know, do I?”
“I’ve had to look up some of them, Mr. Tollini. You’ve never said anything about them, you know. You just write them up there. I’m not even sure why you do it.”
He looked at the board, at the words for a moment, before turning back to me. “I guess it’s the teacher in me, taking the opportunity to present new information to you guys without force feeding you. Your minds are like sponges right now, Matt. Teachers throw information at you and you soak it up. In a few years, it won’t be so easy to absorb all the new stuff you’ll encounter. Right now, it is. So I’m throwing a lot of musical terms at you, and hopefully all you guys are doing simply that, absorbing them. I know some of you will just see them and ignore them. Some of you will be curious enough to look up the ones that are new to you. I always liked the teachers I had who challenged me, but didn’t hit me over the head with stuff. I did better for those teachers.”
I thought I’d ask him a question I’d been wondering about, as long as we were chatting about this. “But are all these words ever going to be useful? I mean, I personally know a lot of them because I’ve been taking private lessons for years and my teacher uses some of them, and I’ve read some on the music and been curious. But a lot of the words you put up, they’re not something I’ve heard. I’ve had to look up several of them. And that’s made me wonder, how many of these are words that I’ll encounter some day, and how many are really unusual, words that no one ever uses?”
“None of these are obscure terms, Matt. People in the industry use them, and some of those people will expect you to know them. You’re a remarkable clarinetist for your age, Matt. Someday, if you go on with your music and continue to improve, you might want to audition for a major orchestra. Those are good jobs, and there’s a lot of really tough competition to land one. They can pay well over $100,000 a year. So let’s say you go to an audition, and an orchestra is interested in you and another player for a position, and they want you both to come play a couple concerts with them, telling you that after you both play with them, they’ll decide at that point whom to make a full-time offer to. So you’re sitting in a rehearsal, and the conductor announces, ‘Clarinets, I want it more dolce at letter F, and you’re overdoing the sfortzando before that; a little less fortissimo there, please. Now, orchestra, let’s start on the anacrusis right after the fermata four measures after C.’ Then he pauses for a couple seconds, and raises his baton. Now at that point you don’t have time to pull out your musical terms dictionary and look this stuff up. You have to know what he’s talking about. If he starts conducting, then looks back at you and you’re desperately looking at the music, trying to decide where everyone is, I don’t think you’ll get that job. And your seven kids won’t get any dinner that night and you wife will have to take that job cleaning the rest rooms at the bus station.” He grinned at me, and I laughed.
“They really talk like that?”
“Some of them do. Some will say “upbeat” instead of “anacrusis,” some will say “hold” instead of “fermata,” but some will use those words. It helps to know them. And if you’re a professional, you have to know them.”
He patted me on the back, I thanked him, and went back up to the top of the risers. Practice lasted an hour. I played pretty well, very well considering I’d only had the instrument less than a week. It was a lot different from playing the clarinet. Every note I played rang out clearly over everything else. I didn’t have to worry about balancing with others in my section, or intonation, or tone quality, three constant worries when playing clarinet. It was different, too, being able to be heard like that. If I’d been timid, I’d have hated that. Playing solo clarinet, however, I was used to it, so it didn’t bother me, but it kept me on my toes, kept pressure on me not to play any wrong notes.
It was fun being in the percussion section. My entire view of the band was different from up there. It sounded different and felt different. I was still playing a melodic instrument, but just by standing in the percussion section I had a sense that I was part of keeping the underlying beat of the pieces steady. It was much different from playing clarinet, and I enjoyed it.
◊ ◊
I got home in time to get some homework finished before bedtime. When it was time to turn in, I took a shower, then crawled into bed. It frequently took me a while to fall asleep, lying there reviewing my day and worrying about things. I did too much of that, but it was part of me to worry. I’d been doing it as long as I could remember, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.
While I lay there, I did have a chance to think about my meeting with Kevin and his mother. It was funny, or weird. I couldn’t figure him out. It seemed like every time, before I’d see him, I’d get to thinking about him in my head, and get to feeling a certain way because of those thoughts, and then when I’d meet him, whatever I’d decided or figured out always seemed to be screwed up because he was never the same in person as I was expecting. Today was a good example. I was expecting him to be annoyed or angry when he saw me at his house, and I’d thought I’d just have to live with that, but I’d get what I wanted out of the meeting. Instead of being angry, though, he’d acted like he was happy to see me, which wasn’t only surprising, it was disconcerting. Thinking about it, I realized he was either very smart or very creative, being able to come up with what he did today off the cuff with no time at all to prepare for it. And he was a great actor. I was very impressed with that. I didn’t think I could have done that. I’d have been pissed, and I’d never have been able to hide it. I think I wear my feelings on my sleeve for all the world to see. He only let his emotions be seen when he wanted to, or when he didn’t care if people saw them.
I thought about how we’d sort of played with each other in front of his mother, both trying to make points, both challenging the other. By the time we were done, I realized how much fun that had been. I smiled, thinking of it, but then, out of the blue, I had this terrible thought. I’d enjoyed it. It was fun for me. But was it for Kevin? I’d forced him into that situation, and what we’d done, maybe it hadn’t been fun for him. Maybe he was scrambling like hell, trying to protect himself.
But, I wondered, if that were so, why had he played the game? He’d started it with the lies to his mother, the fake smile when he saw me, and then continued on. Well, maybe the answer was, he was doing that out of desperation, rather than fun, the sort of fun I was having, meeting his made up story with my own, parrying with him. It had been fun for me, once I’d started, but he’d been on the hot seat, not me.
It was then that I realized I’d done it again. Every time I had anything to do with him, it seemed I was forcing his hand and doing stuff that hurt him or embarrassed him or disturbed him. Stuff he didn’t want me to do. I kept putting him on the defensive. And it was all unintentional on my part. He seemed to challenge me, and I fought back, and he was coming up short all the time. I didn’t want that to happen, but it just did. He kept telling me to leave him alone. To go away. And I never paid attention. I so wanted to help him, I never paid attention. Maybe that’s why he hated me. I really did think he might hate me, because I’d seen nothing to make me think that wasn’t true. I thought he probably did hate me. And that’s what really bothered me. I didn’t want him to hate me. I wanted him to like me.
Now wait a minute. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t care if he liked me, I just didn’t want him to hate me.
No, that wasn’t right either. Thinking about it, it was more than that. Because when I thought about wanting him to like me, that felt right. That felt like what I really meant. I did want him to like me.
Where did that come from? He was a pest in gym, which was the only place I knew him. I never had thought about him liking me, or me wanting him to, when we’d been in gym. So where had that thought come from?
I tried to think about that some more and also tried to figure out what I was going to say to him tomorrow. I’d probably see him in the cafeteria at the very least. Would he just tell me to leave him alone again? Would he be angry? I thought he’d probably be angry. I hoped he wouldn’t make a scene. If he began shouting at me in the cafeteria in front of all the kids there, what would I do? That would be embarrassing, him yelling at me, him being a squirt and wearing a sling and me being an adult. I couldn’t hit him, or push him away, or dump him in the garbage can like I saw one senior do to a freshman once. Even if I just turned around and walked away, me walking away and him shouting at me would make me look awfully bad. Upper classmen like me shouldn’t have dumb shit freshmen making fools of them. I was just starting to worry about this even more and wondering what I should do when I fell asleep.