Chapter Text
Mum is worried about me. Not because I spend pretty much all my time alone practising my double bass or that the six year anniversary of my little brothers death is fast approaching; no, she’s worried because one of her house plants has spots. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, has believed for much of my seventeen years on this planet that this particular houseplant of the nondescript variety reflects my physical, emotional and spiritual health. I’ve come to believe it too.
Across the kitchen from where I sit, my mum- all six feet and floral frock of her looms over the black spotted leaves of the Lilah plant.
“You don’t think it will get better this time, do you?” My mum queries my dad; painter and resident pothead with a serious handlebar moustache. Together they look like a cartoon couple, drawn together by an artist purely for the absurdity of it all. To any outside observer it might seem strange, both of them standing by the sickly plant, clutching their coffee cups with lines between their brows while they peer at me but not to me, I’ve gotten used to it.
“It’s got a very serious condition.” My dad booms. Everything that comes out of his mouth has weight, pass the salt tends to come out in a thou-shalt-not, Ten Commandments kind of way. Dad is the green thumb in the family and the reason our two story Sydney suburban house looks like the Amazon jungle. Also, I suspect for his perpetually bloodshot eyes and toothy grin that no doubt accompanies his extracurricular activities.
Mum’s knuckles have gone white around her mug as I go back to scribbling a poem into the margin of Alice in Wonderland and shovelling cereal into my mouth. I don’t say anything, I have no use for words; my mouth might as well be used to store paper clips.
“But the plant has always recovered before, like when Lilah broke her wrist.”
“This is different, dear.”
“Or when she and that spiky haired boy broke up last year, you remember she didn’t come out of her room for two days and it got those awful white spots but it got better.”
“Still different.”
“Or when-”
“This time is different Grace.” I look up, with spoon poised midair and take in the two of them. They’re peering at me again, a towering duet of concern and love, as I stand, place my bowl in the dishwasher and grab my bag and double bass.
“Not that this morning hasn’t been fun and, you know, completely normal but alas, I must go to school. Mother?” Her head snaps up to attention and her ice blue eyes come to rest on my moss green ones. “Please stop worrying, everything is fine. See? No broken bones or deadbeat boyfriends in sight.” I give her a twirl for inspection, hoping to make her smile. Instead I receive pursed lips and a low hum as she glances at the Lilah plant despondently. Smiling and shaking my head I turn to my dad.
“Father?” I pause, searching for words of wisdom to impart onto him but instead settle for my usual words of warning. “Please don’t smoke too much.” He grins at me in response and gives his usual thumbs up.
“Remember, I’m practicing piano at the school tonight so I’ll be home late.” I call out to them as the door bangs shut behind me. I race to my car- an old sky blue Mini Cooper with white leather seats fraying around the edges and a gear shift that sticks like glue. I get my enormous cello, Trudy, into the passenger seat in record time and zoom off to stuffy classrooms and musty textbooks.
The halls part like the Red Sea as I lumber myself and Trudy down its narrow expanses, bumping shins and hips on my way to the music room where I’ll stash Trudy until band later on today.
“Ah, who is this vision gracing my presence? Is it an angel sent by god to spread musical brilliance throughout the world?” My eccentric band teacher Mr. Carlson greets me in his sing song voice as I bump my way into the room. I give him a tight smile as I make my way to the back of the tight space where I rest my cello amongst other various instruments.
“Or a devil with hair the colour of flame who will tell me she hasn’t revised our main piece for class this afternoon?” My face tightens into a grimace as I turn to him slowly, my fingers playing nervously with the ends of my red hair.
“Lilah!” His face morphs into a mock scowl as I hold my hands up in surrender.
“I’m sorry Mr. C but I’m just a strung out teenager who’s perpetually late for English.” He throws a stack of music paper at me with a chuckle as I scoot my way out of his class, a huge grin plastered on my face as I race through the halls to English.
The rest of the day blurs by in a mass of assignments and teachers, lecturing and writing until my hand cramps and listening until my ears feel like they’ll bleed. With the end of the day comes Band practice. I skid into the cramped space only five or so minutes late and am greeted by a cacophony of noise as people tune their instruments ready for practice.
I’ve just gotten Trudy from her resting place ready to set up and see that Annie has just exploded into the room.
“Lilahhhhhh!” All five foot six of her is careening towards me at a breakneck pace; today she is dressed like a gothic beach babe complete with scuffed black Doc Martins, heavy black lined eyes and the string of her bikini top poking out of her ripped Alice in Chains band t-shirt. Her blonde hair dyed so black it almost looks blue under the florescent lights as she leaps onto me, almost knocking me down. She may be a good five inches shorter than me but she makes up for it in cynical enthusiasm and a fantastic sense of style. This is her subdued.
“Calm down Annie, you saw me yesterday. When you were a gothic cowboy, remember?” I tell her with a laugh as she releases me and plops down onto the floor gracefully.
“Yeah, but I was a different person then.” She grins at me as I begin setting up my cello. “Okay so news.” She sits in the chair next to me .First chair cello, the seat I should be sitting in.
“Hit me with it.”
“The guy I was telling you about the other day, Toby-”
“The one with the lip ring who looks like a lion cub?” I interject, positioning Trudy between my knees and plucking out a few notes with my fingers.
“Yeah, that one. He knows who Sylvia Plath is, and not like ‘oh stick your head in an oven Sylvia Plath’ but, like, actually read Ariel and A Bell Jar! Can you believe that?” Her eyes are bright as she talks and gesticulates wildly before she falls back in the chair with a happy sigh. Annie and I share a love of classic literature but her tastes lean more towards darker, tragic stories like Wuthering Heights and Dante’s inferno while I prefer Pride and Prejudice and Jayne Eyre; where things end in a brilliant love story.
I’m about to reply when the opening cords to ‘Approaching shark’ from Jaws rings out from the horn section and I look over to the door to see Amanda Forbes gliding towards us. She shoots a sarcastic laugh at the horn section, who are responsible for her theme music, before sashaying over to Annie and myself.
“Excuse you, you’re in my seat.” She sneers at Annie who rolls her eyes at me before making a show of relinquishing the chair. She pretends to strangle Amanda from behind as she makes her way to the horn section. I give her a wink and a grin as she passes.
“Okay, everyone please finish tuning, we are already late and I’d like to get started.” Mr. Carlson’s voice barely makes it above the noise as we settle in.
“How’s second chair feeling today, Lilah? Not too uncomfortable I hope.” Amanda says sweetly, batting her ridiculously enormous doe eyes at me and flicking bone straight, Rapunzel length hair over her shoulders. All of which hides the fact that she is indeed the Anti-Christ. I resist the urge to light her hair on fire.
The second the final bell goes I’m running out the door, eager to get to ‘the school’ and play my soul out on the thin ivories that rest in a grand piano there. I struggle getting Trudy into the car this time, my fingers are itching to make music with the cold, smooth keys waiting for me. I speed out of the student parking lot, barely missing Amanda’s brand new baby pink Nissan and secretly wish I could go back and scratch the ridiculous paint job as retribution for her bitchy comment earlier.
I pull into the parking lot of ‘the school’ and decide to leave Trudy in the car as I make my way through the double doors into the massive entranceway. ‘The school’ is formally known as the Bradford School of Performing Arts which offers everything from acting workshops to drums lessons and, if you know the right people, they even let seventeen year olds with crazy hair and itchy fingers commandeer a grand piano now and then. I’ve been coming here since I was ten, taking advantage of people’s sympathy after my brother died, practicing piano and cello until my fingers were stiff and covered in blisters.
“Lilah?” A voice calls me back as I make my way through the halls to the room at the end with the most light and a regal, shinning black grand piano stood centre stage. I backtrack and poke my head into one of the offices to see Mark, his greying beard down to his chest and honey brown eyes smiling at me.
“Back again today, Lilah?” I grin at him and give him a ‘what can you do’ shrug.
“Well I’m glad I caught you. We have a band coming in later today to rehearse and they need the big room.” His face looked pained as he spoke, afraid that I would be mad or upset probably.
“Oh, that’s fine. What time are they getting here?” I give him a reassuring smile and he relaxes a bit.
“Four thirty, five-ish.”
“No worries, I’ll be out of here by then anyway.” I throw behind my shoulder as I run down the corridor. I fly into the room, throwing my bag to the floor and taking my seat on the bench in front of the gleaming instrument. I pause briefly; taking a deep breath and stretching out my fingers before I let them dance over the ivories making them sing their own type of song.
I play some Chopin; playful and light hearted one minute, dramatic and intense the next. Next I play Brahms, by far my favourite composer. His pieces change emotion and pace so suddenly it’s difficult to keep up sometimes. Brahms seems to fit my personality, trying to cram so many emotions into one vessel at one time, they all end up overlapping and contrasting one another, it becomes a cacophony of sounds that shouldn’t work, but does.
Halfway through practicing mournful a piece I wrote last week I hear the double doors to the room squeak open, I glance over and freeze. The abrupt absence of sound leaves me and the stranger staring at each other in increasingly awkward silence. He’s blond, a teenager- around my age- he’s treetops tall with bright blue eyes and a light smattering of acne on his cheeks, right now his features are pinched and nervous; like he’s trying to decide if he should run or not. We are still staring at one another, I feel exposed under the ocean blue of his eyes, broken open as he takes in the bewildered expression on my face, the unruly red curls hanging down past well past my shoulders and my fingers, poised above the ivory keys, ready to continue their mournful song. Breaking eye contact my pupils travel down his soaring frame and rest on the guitar case he’s clutching.
“Sorry, I-I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He talks hurriedly and barely above a whisper. He makes a move to shut the door and I find my voice.
“Wait!” My voice wobbles as I come out of the trance caused by the song and our strange meeting. He pauses and turns back as I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans. “Are you part of the band?”
He nods his head quickly and looks down, the strange air between us shifting to embarrassed rather than electric. I gently lower the fall over the keys and gather my song book and bag.
“Then you’re in the right place.” I say softly making my way to the door. As I get closer I see the gradient tones of blond in his perfectly dishevelled hair, the inkling of dimples in his cheeks and the white blond tips of his spider leg long eyelashes as he bats at the ground. He draws a plump, pink lip between his teeth and glances up at my face warily. Our eyes meet for another brief moment as I reach the door and I notice the darker blue border surrounding the outer edge of his irises before my eyes slide to the ground as I squeeze past his slender frame; my cheeks flaming as my boobs brush against his chest. Letting out a deep breath I hurry down the long corridor, glancing back as I exit the building to find him in the exact same place, watching me go with a little smile playing on his lips.
After a dinner of seasoned pork cutlets, asparagus and artichoke covered in homemade hollandaise sauce-mum’s a chef- I’m huddled into the corner of the living room couch, trying desperately to finish the song for my brother I was practicing earlier. Once I finish it I’ll make a copy and take it to his grave, dirt will be embedded under my fingernails as I dig a spot into the earth for it to sit and cover it over, giving my little brother a small piece of myself.
“You’ve been quiet tonight, Lilah, my dear.” My bear of a father plops onto the couch beside me and lifts my curled legs onto his lap as he starts gently kneading my feet; a habit left over from my adolescent years once he found out it made me want to talk. I stop writing as I struggle to snuggle into his side at the awkward angle we’ve found ourselves at. I watch his green paint splattered hands as they work at the knots in my feet and breathe deep the familiar scent of my old man; pot, paint and garden soil.
“So, what’s going on in that head of yours?” He prompts me, squeezing my toes.
“Just contemplating life, love and the universe. No big deal.” He peers down at me sceptically and I can’t hold back my grin. “I was just thinking about Tommy actually. About how he used to spend all day outside lying in the grass in the front yard, surrounded by the blooming Angels trumpets and Roses and how mum had to literally drag him inside to go to bed.” I look up at my dad again as a smile envelops his features, only I see the hint of sadness hidden in between the lines on his face and the curve of his mouth. Only because I was looking for it. “I never told you guys but after you went to sleep I always heard him creep back outside, dragging his blanket and pillow to sleep among the lilacs. Especially after we found out.” His eyes shine with unshed tears as he wraps a giant arm around my shoulders and crushes me against him.
“Well what’s going on here then?” Mum’s chipper voice breaks the moment as she slumps into the cushions beside dad and he wraps an arm around her too, pulling her in close. I wipe a sneaky tear off my cheek and glance up at dad who winks and presses a kiss to my forehead.
“I’m just sitting here appreciating my girls.” On cue mum and I both roll our eyes and she giggles quietly.
“Hey, something weird happened to me today.” I exclaim as I move to cross my legs and face my parents. “I sort of met this guy at Bradford and it was all very strange.” Mum’s eyebrows knit instantly as her and dad share a very parental look. “Not like that! He was in some band and he came in while I was playing and just, the whole exchange afterwards was very weird.”
“He’s in a band? What does he play?” Mum’s eyebrows are raised now; I swear she could have a whole conversation with those things.
“He had a guitar case.”
“Got to be careful of musicians Lilah, especially guitarists, they’re usually much too wild and passionate. Too much for any daughter of mine anyway.” Mum tuts in my general direction as dad shakes his head in disagreement.
“Andy!” She whacks his arm. “Don’t be giving her mixed signals, we don’t need any musicians of the male variety in this house, thank you very much.”
“Now Grace, you know my musical talents were what landed me you.” Both his arms are now wound around her waist.
“Dad, you play the ukulele. Badly.” I say but they are too wrapped up in each other to hear me, I make a gagging sound as I disentangle myself from the couch but find myself smiling on my way to my room; secretly glad my parents love each other enough to still behave like love sick teenagers. There was a time, around the time when Tommy died, when I thought I’d have to split up the holidays and that never seemed particularly appealing to me.