I shade my eyes from the sun hanging just over the tree line and take in my surroundings. My new home. An SUV with peeling black paint on the hood is parked on the other side of the garage. It looks vaguely familiar, but considering there are dozens of these kinds of cars on the cape, that’s not too surprising.
“Pete’s at some budget meeting in town, but I think Julian’s home,” Mom says, heading toward the main house. She sticks a key in the side door, and the hinges squeak as she nudges it open with her hip. Cool air rushes out to meet me.
“Julian?”
“Pete’s son. He’s a nice boy. I think he’s about your age.”
And with that, she disappears into the house, leaving me open-mouthed in the doorway. This just keeps getting better and better. What’s next? Sharing a room with Pete’s mother? Maybe a lunatic ex-wife is bunking in the lighthouse tower who screams like a banshee at night and has to be chained to her bed. Hell, at this point, I’m waiting for Mom to tell me Pete’s actually a polygamist and she’s been chosen as a sister wife. I comb through the roster of my high school for a Julian, but I’ve got nothing.
I follow Mom into a shabby-chic-styled kitchen with chrome-rimmed white appliances, white cabinets, and navy-blue curtains with red lobsters all over them framing the window above the sink. The living room is a mixture of our old leather recliner and scarred coffee table and a bunch of junk that looks like it just got dragged out of a frat house. There’s a plaid couch sporting a busted spring and duct tape, along with a TV the size of a car mounted over the fireplace. The only redeeming thing about the whole weird scene is the wall of windows revealing the sprawling blue ocean sparkling under the sun.
We head down a narrow hallway. At the end, Mom opens a door next to the bathroom and gestures me inside with a flourish of her hand.
“This is you. Isn’t it nice? So much natural light.”
I enter the room, and it’s like walking into one of those dreams where everything seems familiar and foreign all at once. The space is square and small and white. My twin bed is shoved into the far corner under the wide window that’s also facing the ocean. White furniture, mine since I was four, is arranged smartly around the room. Mom has already spread my plum-colored sateen comforter that she found for half-price over the bed and filled my closet with my hanging clothes. The few books I own are stacked neatly on my little desk, and framed photos are displayed on the dresser. Sheer white curtains sway in the breeze from the open window. My eyes drift to the wall above my bed, taking in the framed print of a beautiful grand piano on the stage at Carnegie Hall, an empty auditorium lit by golden light and waiting to be filled with an audience, a pianist, music. Luca gave it to me for my birthday two years ago. Mom’s actually managed to hang it straight, no cracks in the glass or chips in the black wooden frame or anything.
Aside from the stray things in the garage, Mom has worked on my room. My eyes burn a little, imagining her organizing my space before she even unpacked her own things.
“So, Pete’s and my room is at the other end of the house, and Julian’s just across the hall,” she says. She peers anxiously at me, no doubt searching for signs of an impending explosion.
And, oh, do I feel it brewing. Despite the homey feel, this is still a room I didn’t choose and never planned for. My throat feels tight from holding back all the eff-bombs I want to drop right now. Not that I usually rein them in too much in Mom’s presence, but she looks so damn hopeful. She’s trying really hard to make this a good thing.
“Okay,” I say, as usual.
“It’s going to be so lovely, baby,” she says. “I mean, it’s the lighthouse! I know you love this place and have always wanted to live right on the beach.”
I nod, looking out my window at the rocks dotting the shore, angry waves spitting white foam all over their surfaces. She’s right. I used to love this lighthouse. It always seemed so magical when I was six or seven, but you can only hold your own mother’s hair back while she pukes up vodka so many times before you get a little disenchanted.
“Oh!” Mom says so loudly, I startle. “With the move, I almost forgot.” She grins at me and digs into her back pocket, retrieving a folded rectangle of paper. She opens it up, her smile growing wider as she holds it out to me. “This is for you.”
I take the wrinkled paper, almost scared to look at it. Because what now? As usual, when it comes to my mother, curiosity and hope nearly smother me. My eyes devour the writing.
When the content registers, my head snaps up, gaze locking with Mom’s. “For real?”
She nods. “For your audition. We can drive there pretty cheap and stay at that hostel, tour the Big Apple during the day, eat off the street carts. We need to plan ahead if we want show tickets. I’ve picked up a few shifts at Reinhardt’s Deli, and with some help from Pete, I’m saving a little. You need to do more than audition when you go, baby. You need to see where you’ll be living next year, and I want to be part of that. I’m so proud of you.”
I stare back down at the paper, which tells me there are two beds at a New York City hostel reserved under Mom’s name for July thirtieth through August second. Underneath that is Mom’s chicken-scratch handwriting, listing all the things we’ve always talked about doing in the city. It’s got the usual stuff, like visiting the Empire State Building and Times Square, Central Park and Ellis Island. But it’s also got the Grace stuff—?auditioning and touring Manhattan School of Music. Seeing Hedwig on Broadway. Finding a way to get a backstage tour of Carnegie Hall and standing on the stage, maybe even sliding my fingers over one of their piano’s keys.
“Thank you,” I manage to whisper. Part of me knows she timed telling me about this trip to perfectly coincide with this move to the lighthouse, a little peace offering. The bigger part of me doesn’t care.
“Of course, baby. It’ll be the perfect weekend. Just wait.” She pulls me into her arms, crushing the already-crinkled paper between us, and presses a kiss to my forehead.
“Well, I know you’re tired from your bus ride,” she says, releasing me. “Get settled in. You can meet Julian later and . . .” Mom must see all the roiling emotions mirrored on my face, because she pats my shoulder and is out the door without finishing her sentence.
I drop my stuff and sink onto the bed, finally overwhelmed. To clear my head, I close my eyes and mentally go through the beginning of Schumann’s Fantasie in C major, Opus 17. The piece plagued me at the piano workshop I just completed in Boston, the complicated, rapid fingering and the ethereal, dreamlike quality of a first movement a pleasing sort of torture. The music is pretty kickass, all chaotic and angsty. And it kicked my ass, which I have to appreciate.
Now I play it on my bed. I imagine myself on an auditorium stage or in a practice room at some college. Manhattan School of Music. Indiana University. Belmont in Nashville. Though Manhattan is my white whale, my dream, and the thought of going far away and staying in dorms that I can actually live in for longer than three months makes me giddy, it also freaks me the hell out. I can’t imagine actually moving away. Leaving Mom alone to flit from one house to the next, one guy to the next, one skipped meal to the next bottle of beer.
My fingers fly over the wrinkled comforter, the music alive and real in my mind. Nerves coil in my stomach—?but whether from auditioning and laying my whole future on the piano keys in front of a few judges or leaving Mom, I’m not sure. Either way, I keep pressing into the soft cotton until my left hand collides with a box. My eyes flick open and absorb the room again.
My room.
I unzip my duffle and dump its contents onto the bed, sorting through dirty clothes and the ones clean enough to wear again, even though they smell like the inside of my bag. I rearrange a few things around the room, moving my composition paper from my desk to my nightstand—?when I can’t sleep, I make up dumb little songs in bed—?and find a picture of Luca and me that Mom had tossed on a shelf in the closet and place it on my dresser. Luca looks predictably happy, grinning through his curly mop of hair with his arm slung around my shoulder at the beach last summer.
Halfheartedly, I order my little universe. No matter how many times I tell myself it doesn’t matter—?that I’ll have to pack it all up in a matter of months anyway—?I can’t resist trying to make a place my own. This lighthouse that I used to love and now suddenly hate is no exception.
I grab my toiletry bag and venture into the hallway to check out the bathroom. It’s clean; a clawfooted tub with one of those wrap-around shower curtains sits against the wall under a frosted-paned window. The tiled sink is cobalt blue, and an antique-looking light fixture sends an amber glow through the room. It smells like wet towel mixed in with some crisp, boyish scent. Aftershave, maybe. A navy-blue toothbrush sits in a holder by the sink. I throw mine into an empty drawer. Call me unreasonable, but sharing toothbrush space with a guy I’ve never met just seems weird.
