When the World Tips Over, page 9
“I will remember you. I mean it. I’ll remember you.” Love was falling out of him, not fake sex-love like earlier with Dawn-someone, but real love, like music. “Marry me,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
She didn’t answer, instead asked, “Why do you cry when you play?”
“You were there? You heard me tonight?” Joy went off like a geyser inside him. This girl saw the best performance of his life. It suddenly felt more important than Sylvester the donkey seeing him. Or even his father.
“I’ve never heard anything so extraordinary,” she said. “You were incredible.”
“It was incredible,” he said, then added slowly so she was sure to understand, “I was eye to eye with God.”
She smiled at him, and his heart opened. He smelled flowers. “What’s your name?”
“Cassidy,” she said.
That voice. The timbre. He’d heard it before, he was certain. But when? Where? They stared at each other in the glow of the streetlight. The human-maker must have had a whole lot of extra beauty lying around when it was her turn. The moon broke through clouds lighting them up further. He felt so awake suddenly, like he’d been plugged into his amp.
“Cassidy,” he said under his breath, trying it out. He’d never met anyone named Cassidy, he didn’t think, but as the word stayed in the air, and her scent filled the night with invisible blooms, it hit him. “It’s you.” Adrenaline tore through his body, further sobering him. He thought of that day so long ago, the two of them sitting in the long grass while he tried to play away her sadness with his violin. He’d never known her name. “You came back.”
“For you,” she said.
For him? So many times since their meeting, he’d returned to the meadow dreaming of this. But his dreams never came true.
“No one comes back for me,” he whispered.
“I did.”
Was he hallucinating? He must be. Did he care? No, just as long as it continued.
There was the heat pulsing in the air, on their skin. The moonlight spilling through trees now, splashing onto the road. There was the way she was looking at him like he had the answer or was the answer, even. A part of Wynton that was forever folded, began unfolding. Bitterness and drunkenness and hopelessness drained from him as the night sounds sang out: the creaking trees, the bird calls, the rush of the river. The forest was playing music for them. A ballad, he thought, no, it was a waltz. He opened his arms, and she glided into them, their bodies snapping together as if the puzzle had finally been solved.
The world began to tip as they swayed together under their private sun in the middle of the night standing on a speck of dirt on the tiny spinning blue planet.
He decided this would have to be the one slow dance in the history of humankind that never ended. No matter if asteroids careened down, wars broke out, earthquakes toppled cities, the two of them would still, in a thousand years, be here by this river, in starlight, under the redwood trees, swaying together, more one than two, because he suddenly somehow knew deep in his heart that this girl was the kingdom, and for once in his stupid screwed-up life, he was the one who had the keys.
“I’ve never felt this happy,” she whispered into his ear. “I’ve been thinking about you my whole life.”
He had to look down to confirm they hadn’t floated into the air.
But the eternal dance was shorter than anticipated. Before he could put his hands in her hair, before he could kiss her, before their blood could catch fire, Cassidy disentwined herself. Her face was lit with joy. She took a step, reached out for him, saying, “C’mon, let’s get out of the road.”
Before Wynton could take her hand and never ever let go of it, a car screeched around the bend and the girl he met in the meadow all those years ago, the only girl he’d ever loved, screamed so loud, the stars vanished from the sky and all went black for Wynton Fall.
911 Dispatch Call:
Cassidy: There’s been an accident, it’s bad, Wyn — a boy, a man, he’s nineteen, was hit by a car, a hit and run, please send someone to, oh no, I don’t know where we are … I think he’s — I’m not sure he’s—
Dispatcher: Can you see a street sign? My name is Jean and I’m going to help you.
Cassidy: No, it’s— There’s— I can hear the river, there’s a lot of redwoods. Oh, I remember — it’s Old River Road. Please. I’m scared he’s not moving — he was drunk and maybe on narcotics too.
Dispatcher: I’m tracing this phone. Please tell me your name. Give me a second… Got it. I’ve sent an ambulance to your location. Are you still there?
Cassidy: Yes, don’t think he’s breathing, I’m trying to do CPR … I know how. Cassidy. I’m Cassidy.
Dispatcher: Cassidy, is there a pulse?
Cassidy: I’m not sure. Oh my God. I’m really not sure. If so, it’s faint. His arm is — his hand, oh God, it’s awful. He’s a violinist! I’m doing the compressions! Then the two breaths.
Dispatcher: Okay, very good. Please continue, help is on the way.
Cassidy:
Dispatcher: I’m with you, Cassidy. Assuming you’re doing CPR now.
Cassidy: I’m trying. I can’t tell if it’s working—
Dispatcher: Thirty compressions followed by two rescue breaths. Keep at it.
Cassidy: He can’t die. He can’t. I just got here.
Dispatcher: He won’t. You’re keeping him alive until help arrives. What’s your relationship?
Cassidy: He’s – he’s – so important to me, please, hurry.
Wynton
You know you’re in a hospital. You listen to the buzzing lights, the staccato beeps of the heart monitors, the sorry shuffling feet, back and forth. You listen to the sighing, so much sighing, the discordant breaths.
You’re calling it: Fucked in D Minor.
The doctor said it quietly so you wouldn’t hear, but he has a baritone voice (a familiar one you can’t place) and you heard.
You will never play violin again.
If you could talk while in this coma, you’d ask someone to kindly suffocate you with a pillow.
If you could move, you’d do it yourself.
You vaguely remember someone in your arms. The scent of flowers. A beautiful girl saying she came back for you. A feeling of home. Was it a dream? Must’ve been.
You leave the hospital room with all the people in it and swim through time to find your father. Then you do. It’s the year before he left, and you live on his shoulders as he walks the vineyard north to south, east to west, sunlight cracking through the sky so that you both have to squint. The game is you keep your mouth wide open, and he blindly pops grapes back up at you with his free hand, trying to get one inside your pie-hole. Only happens once and you both are so happy, maybe that’s the happiest you’ve ever been in your whole life. That moment of victory after with him holding you in his arms over his head and twirling you, tart warm grape nectar in your throat, both of you laughing and hooting and hollering, “Score!”
You swim through time, wanting to say sorry to someone (you don’t know who) about something (you don’t know what).
And there’s your dad again. It’s your sixth birthday and you wake to him sitting in the rocking chair across the room, waiting for you to open your eyes. On his head is his black cowboy hat, his occasion one, cocked real low like always and on his lap is a present. He says, “Know I’m supposed to wait until the party later, but I just can’t. Your mom got you something else. This is from me.”
You are a heat-seeking missile as you throw off the covers and launch yourself across the room and into Dad’s lap, where you rip open that box. You’re not sure if your heart has ever beat this fast as you take out the gleaming instrument. Right away you know the bow is a magic wand. He says, “The violin is the instrument of instruments. I wish I could play it, but I can’t, ’cause to really play it, you have to start when you’re your age. Got you lessons too. John from The Fiddleheads is going to come around every other day until you’re as good as he is. Swore to me.”
You stay on your dad’s lap all morning, bowing the thing, making screeching cat sounds while he hums along like you’re Yo-Yo Ma.
On second thought, maybe that’s the happiest moment of your life.
You remember. It’s Miles you need to apologize to. You remember why too.
A day. The day. You and Miles on swings. Your father pushing one son with one hand, the other son with the other hand. You and Miles catch each other’s eyes as you pump higher and higher into the sky. Neither of you can stop laughing. You have never loved anyone as much as your little brother.
But that was before.
Before, before, before.
This day on the swings was the day everything changed.
You see as you swim through time that your whole life has been about your father’s absence, about skin growing over a wound that never heals.
What no one knows, and will probably never know now, is that it was your fault. Yeah, that’s right. Now that you’re half out of the world, just admit it. It’s your fault your father left.
Admit it.
Admit everything already.
You’re fourteen, skinny and rangy and trouble. You know now the world is not made for people like you but for people like your perfect little brother Miles, whom you despise.
All you think about is the Viper, the love child of Jimi Hendrix’s Flying V electric guitar and a violin. The sound it makes is a haunted house, a head-banging sledge-hammering metal show, a high tea, the saddest love story never told, a bluegrass festival, all of everything all in one. You need its amplification, its sixth string, the High E, which is the transcendent one. Oh, the Viper can do anything. It’s all you think about.
You get kicked out of school and sent to juvie for dealing, dealing so you could buy the Viper—
Wait. You smell flowers.
Her. Maybe you didn’t dream up the girl, that moment under both sun and moon. Is she here? In the hospital room with you? If only you could open your eyes. Then you hear her unmistakable voice say your name. She is here! You remember now. She’s the girl from the meadow! Dizzy’s angel. Cassidy, she said. Her name is Cassidy. And she came back for you, just like Samantha Brook – what the hell was her last name in that romance book?
You’re so glad no one suffocated you with a pillow.
She’s telling you that you can’t die because she has to tell you something. “No,” she says. “I have to tell you everything, Wynton.”
If you weren’t already in a coma you’d faint from happiness. You want to know everything. You don’t even know why she was crying in the meadow that day so long ago.
She must’ve waited to come into your room until the others left because it’s so quiet now. You suspect it’s the middle of the night. Or that time stopped. If only you could see her. Hold her. Dance with her again into the air. You guess, because the door didn’t squeak like it does when everyone else comes and goes, that she either just materialized (is she actually an angel?) or climbed in through the window.
Oh, who cares how she got here, she’s here, she’s come back, she’s found you again.
And now she’s saying someone named Felix, who drove with her down to Paradise Springs, had called her Scheherazade, the Persian queen in A Thousand and One Nights who saved her own life by telling stories. She says she plans on keeping you alive in the same way – by telling you her story. You hope that means her story is a long one and she’ll stay by your side forever.
You also hope this Felix person is not her boyfriend.
“In the end, we’ll all become stories.” This is her favorite quote by an author, she tells you, and that it’s tattooed on her hip.
You want to see her hip.
Then the world becomes only her voice saying: When you don’t have a house, a bike, a sibling, a mailbox, a phone, a friend, a father, an address, neighbors, grandparents, a front stoop, a back porch, a bedroom, a street that you live on…
Cassidy
When you don’t have a house, a bike, a sibling, a mailbox, a phone, a friend, a father, an address, neighbors, grandparents, a front stoop, a back porch, a bedroom, a street that you live on. When you don’t go to school or ballet or soccer or the mall. When you’ve never had a sleepover, a classroom, a school locker, a playdate. When you’ve never logged onto anything. Or streamed anything. Or called anyone. When you’ve never watched a TV show. When you’ve never had a last name.
You hold on to what you do have, and Wynton, I had a mother named Marigold.
Had.
I’ll start here:
Mom’s twenty-six and I’m eight and we live in a canary-yellow mini-RV named Sadie Mae, parked now on a bluff over the ocean at the furthest edge of Northern California. We haven’t talked to anyone but each other in weeks.
Sadie Mae has huge flower decals all over her. She looks like the Summer of Love exploded into a recreational vehicle and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix are alive and living inside it, not us. Not some turbulent young mother looking for a town she saw in a dream (yup) and her weird bug-collecting daughter. Especially not me, the weird bug collector. But Sadie’s one of us and we love her and buy her funky beaded necklaces that we hang around the rearview mirror like we do our own necks.
Mom says we’re on The Great Adventure and that California is our religion. She calls us modern pioneers mostly but sometimes road scholars or nature mystics or dream chasers and our mission, according to her, is enlightenment. She says The Divine Force is going to gobble us up like two tacos. I tell her I most certainly don’t want to be gobbled up like a taco, which makes her laugh and chase me around Sadie trying to gobble me up like a taco.
Plus, in the process of achieving enlightenment, she says, we’re going to find The Town from her dream where we’ll settle down. Apparently, we were really happy there in her dream.
At this point, we’ve crossed 141 California towns that aren’t The Town off our map.
There’s 341 to go.
Tell me about The Town, I ask her before going to bed, on waking up, on endless beach walks, during hot desert drives. And tell me she does, until it begins to feel like it was me and not she who dreamed of The Town in the first place.
Can you guess where The Town is, Wynton? I bet you can.
Here’s a photograph of us around this time. No idea who took it. You can see Sadie Mae in the background. And the granite peaks of pine-covered mountains, so we’re probably way north. We’re usually in the northern part of the state because that’s where Mom thinks The Town is.
Please take note of our clothes. We’d just played our thrift store game where we’d see who could make the most clashing outfit. The winner got to buy it in its entirety. We declared a tie that day, so both of us are in our winning looks, though I think my mom is hard to beat in the purple paisley jumpsuit with bell bottoms and red and green polka dot jacket. Agree? Also take note of our bare feet, ankle bracelets, toe rings. The dirt streaks on our skin. The lady and her son to our left looking at us like we’re off our rockers as we perform a parking lot runway show, me mimicking Mom, who’s doing an exaggerated model walk, both of us mid-strut, hands on hips, a psychedelic mother and daughter gone runway, gone rogue.
Mom says, because of savings, if we live frugally, we can live like this forever.
Finally, note the look on our faces, bliss somehow, right? Often that was what being around my mother was like. People would catch it like an illness.
After Sadie Mae came another mini-RV we called Purple Rain. The Purple Rain years are harder to talk about, but I’ll get there. Like I said, Wynton, I need to tell you everything.
Some important things to know about my mother when I’m eight:
She’s in pieces to me. There’s: Happy Mom, Teacher Mom, Story Mom, Mean Mom, Sad Mom, Silent Mom, Gone Mom.
She gets enormous. Like: When we go on our science walks, her head keeps bumping the sky, so she has to keep her neck bent. That enormous. Unlike me. I get surprised when I look in the mirror and see that I’m there, that I’m actually a me and not a part of her. What part? A freckle maybe.
She’s always forgetting me, driving away from rest stops, gas stations, roadside diners, thinking I’m in Sadie with her and then doubling back when she realizes I’m not. This is because I don’t make enough noise. She’s always telling me to speak up. “I can’t hear you, Cassidy!” To walk heavier. “Stop sneaking up on me!” She’s always looking for me when I’m right in front of her. “Oh, there you are!” Always telling me to look up instead of at the ground where most of the cool bugs are. “Will you just look at this view, Cassidy!”
Last thing about her when I’m eight. She looks exactly like a rosy maple moth. Promise me you’ll google this bug when you wake up, Wynton. She doesn’t think this is a compliment because there’s something wrong with her and she hates insects, even fuzzy flying pink-and-yellow ones.
Okay, I’m going to tell you my story in three betrayals.
There is a fourth betrayal as well. That is the one that involves you, Wynton. Yes, you. We’ll get there.
The day of the first betrayal, I wake to sunlight and seagulls cawing. I pop my head out of my bunk to see Mom already sitting like a triangle on her meditation mat below me. I watch her. I’m always watching her, even when all she’s doing is nothing. It’s not just me. Everyone does it, especially the men at RV camps and supermarkets and gas stations and everywhere, all looking at her like they want to drop a net on her. Yes, she’s pretty. As I said, she looks like a rosy maple moth, the most beautiful insect on earth. She has long blond beachy chaos hair, sea eyes, and pink legs as long as me.
Finally, I tear my eyes from her, roll over, and quietly greet my bug family.
