I hold my breath, thinking that she’s going to start laughing or just crumple the napkin, but instead Vanessa takes the pen out of my hand. When she bows her head toward the bar, her bangs cover one eye.
Did you ever notice how other people’s houses have a smell?I had asked, the first time I went over to Vanessa’s.
Please tell me mine isn’t something awful like bratwurst.
No,I said.It’s clean. Like sunlight on sheets.Then I asked her what my apartment smelled like.
Don’t you know?
No,I’d explained.I can’t tell because I live there. I’m too close to it.
It smells like you,Vanessa had said.Like a place nobody ever wants to leave.
Vanessa bites her lip as she writes down her list. Sometimes, she squints, or looks over at the bartender, or asks me a rhetorical question about the name of a band before she finds the answer herself.
A few weeks ago we were watching a documentary that said people lie on an average of four times a day.That’s 1,460 times a year,Vanessa had pointed out.
I did the math, too.Almost eighty-eight thousand times by the time you’re sixty.
I bet I know what the most common lie is,Vanessa had said:I’m fine.
I had told myself the reason I’d left the school without waiting for Vanessa to return to her office was because she was busy. I was afraid she’d think I was an abysmal music therapist. But the other reason I’d run was because I wanted(wished for?)her to come after me.
“Ta da,” Vanessa says, and she pushes the cocktail napkin back toward me. It lifts, like a butterfly, and then settles on the bar.
Aimee Mann. Ani DiFranco. Damien Rice. Howie Day.
Tori Amos, Charlotte Martin, Garbage, Elvis Costello.
Wilco. The Indigo Girls. Alison Krauss.
Van Morrison, Anna Nalick, Etta James.
I can’t speak for a moment.
“I know, it’s weird, right? Pairing Wilco and Etta James on the same CD is like sitting Jesse Helms and Adam Lambert next to each other at a dinner party . . . but I felt guilty getting rid of one.” Vanessa leans closer, pointing to the list again. “I couldn’t pick individual songs, either. Isn’t that like asking a mom which kid she loves the most?”
Every single artist she has put on her list is one I would have put on my list. And yet I know I’ve never shared that information with her. I couldn’t have, because I’ve never formally made my own CD playlist. I’ve tried but could never finish, not with all the possible songs in this world.
In music, perfect pitch is the ability to reproduce a tone without any reference to an external standard. In other words—there’s no need to label or name notes, you can just start singing a C-sharp, or you can listen to an A and know what it is. You can hear a car horn and know that it is an F.
In life, perfect pitch is the ability to know someone from the inside out, even better maybe than she knows herself.
When Max and I were married, we fought over the car radio all the time. He liked NPR; I liked music. I realize that, in all the months I’ve been friends with Vanessa, in all the car rides we’ve taken—from a quick run to the local bakery to a trip to Franconia Notch, New Hampshire—I have never changed the station. Not once. I’ve never even wanted to fast-forward through a CD she’s picked.
Whatever Vanessa plays, I just want to keep listening to.
Maybe I gasp, and maybe I don’t, but Vanessa turns, and for a moment we are frozen by our own proximity.
“I have to go,” I mutter, tearing myself away. I dig out all the money I have in my pocket and leave it crumpled on the bar, then grab my guitar case and hurry into the parking lot. Even as I unlock my car, with my hands still shaking, I can see Vanessa standing in the doorway. Even when the door is closed and I rev the engine, I know she’s calling my name.
On the night that Lila was shooting up heroin, there was a reason I’d been wandering through Ellie’s house.
I had awakened in the middle of the night to find Ellie staring at me. “What’s the matter?” I asked, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
“Can you hear that?” she whispered.
“Hear what?”
