“It's all right, Kevin,” Mrs. Tanizaki said. “It takes practice. If you go home and practice, you'll be able to play the piece, I guarantee it.”
He looked at her dark eyes. She was the teacher. He bent his head over the keys.
When he got home his father was not there. His mother looked dazed, and kept moving her hands over her swollen stomach, from top to bottom, over and over.
“I don't think he's coming back this time,” she said. “He packed a bag.”
Kevin set his own backpack down, as if it incriminated him, and put his hands in his pockets.
“The duffel bag,” Rachel said. “He took the duffel bag this time.” She looked at Kevin, his thin arms poking out of his T-shirt. “Sit down at the table,” she said. “He's not coming back, okay? But we're going to be fine. I'm going to make lunch.”
She heated up some soup in the microwave, then brought it to the table and poured him a glass of milk. She sat down opposite him and crossed her arms. “How was your lesson?”
“I'm not going back,” Kevin said.
“What do you mean? You love the piano.”
He shook his head. He picked up his spoon and slurped down some soup. Even though he'd had his eyes closed during Lawrence's performance, he couldn't stop picturing his hands moving quickly, unhesitatingly, over the keys, gathering the notes into perfect strands, as Mrs. Tanizaki watched. The two of them sat together at the piano under the pool of light. It was their world, and he did not belong in it. He saw himself walking slowly toward them, a sheet of paper in his hand, and Mrs. Tanizaki didn't hear him; but Lawrence turned and saw Kevin and he was laughing, his head flung back.
“I hate her.” He couldn't say her name. “I'm not going back.”
“You really don't want to? You don't like the piano anymore?”
“I'm not going there anymore.”
“Come here,” she said. “Stop eating and come here.”
He obeyed, walking around the table and standing next to her. They looked into each other's pale blue eyes. Then his lower lip, still orange with soup, trembled, and tears slipped down his cheeks. Rachel felt her blood pump in her veins — moving through her, waking her up — and she put her hands on the slight, slack muscles of his upper arms.
“I won't let you stop,” she said, and her fingers sent strength into his skin. Her voice was the world's warmest sound. It pulled and pulled him until he found himself leaning close against her, and he pressed his forehead to her neck.
You Are Here
There were three days left of life in the suburbs; afterwards, it would all vanish. From her bedroom window, Iz could already see it starting to disappear, color bleeding from the edges of parks and elementary schools, asphalt thinning in driveways. This was in August, and all the neighborhood came out at dusk to walk their dogs in the park across the street. When Iz was in her room painting she kept the window open and could hear them calling their pets, names echoing in the twilight, like those of lost children. All the dogs ignored their owners. Off leashes, they danced and spun in the center of the park, barking and biting, threatening to bring or, again like children, come to harm.
Iz was leaving. School started Tuesday, and then she would not look back; she would never come back, either, except possibly in the very distant future, when she was either rich or an aristocrat. But until Tuesday she had to wait and, today, had to go shopping with her mother. In order to survive their trip to the mall, she was treating it as a sociological expedition, a journey into the heart of America. Also, she was pretending to be French. She would address silent queries to her mother: Please, could you tell me what ees Orange Julius? Eet ees not in my dictionary. Seen through this lens, American culture was fascinating.
“Izzy, are you ready? Is that what you're wearing to go shopping?” Her mother stood on the landing outside Iz's room, adjusting the straps of her purse and wearing a light blue seersucker dress. She was of a generation that did not choose to leave the house in slacks. She was of a generation that used the word slacks.
“It's hot, Mom. I'm wearing shorts.” Please, what ees the difference between slacks and trousers?
Her mother, who didn't know she was French, who thought Iz was from Newton, Massachusetts, sighed and shook her head. “Well, you're all grown up now, so do whatever you want,” she said, in a tone that meant just the opposite. Iz's wearing shorts to a public place and going off to study art against her father's wishes — he thought she should major in business or computer science or both — were to her equally incomprehensible actions. She always sighed and shook her head. And it drove Iz crazy, this failure to discriminate between tragedies.
Her mother was in her element in the shopping mall; she responded to the filtered light and Muzak like some kind of specialized plant. At home she was mostly quiet and withdrawn, obeying Iz's father's barked, alcoholic commands; she spent a lot of time sitting in armchairs, reading thrillers under isolated pools of light. But once they got inside the mall she drew herself up to her fullest height and took a deep breath. Iz lagged behind, watching packs of teenaged boys pick up teenaged girls. The boys, white kids from Chestnut Hill, were wearing huge, baggy jeans and hundred-dollar sneakers. The girls' hair was sculpted up above their foreheads like a wall of defense.
“Excuse me, but isn't your name Samantha?” one of the boys said, lying in wait outside of the Gap.
“No.”
“Oh. Well, what is your name?”
At the black map of stores, Iz's mother hummed and pointed. She was wearing a shade of nail polish called One Perfect Coral. Iz had no nails to speak of; shards of oil paint were visible beneath what was left.
“Now, let's see,” breathed her mother. “We are … here.” She pointed to the red dot labeled YOU ARE HERE. Vous êtes ici, said Iz to herself.
“And we want to go … here, I think. Is that all right, Izzy?”
“Whatever, Mom. I don't really have an opinion.”
“Oh, don't be ridiculous,” said her mother. “Of course you do.”
By the time she left for school, Iz owned three color-coordinated outfits she would never wear: angora sweaters and corduroy skirts, Shetlands and kilts, clothes her mother must have seen on the front of New England college brochures. At school she wore jeans and a man's button-down shirt every day and slept whenever she could in the studio. Her roommate was a girl from Houston who wanted to be an accountant or else marry one. She was the daughter Iz's parents should've had. She wanted to stay up late and make brownies and talk about life; she wanted them to gain the freshman fifteen together. Her name was Shirelle, like the all-girl group. Excusez-moi, could you tell me please, what ees a Shirelle? Eet sounds like a kind of, how do you say, mushroom. But eet ees not a mushroom, ees eet?
Iz was now Izabel and she was still from France. She had toned down the accent and was telling people that although she was American she'd grown up in Europe, and would ask them to explain simple things. What ees mac-and-cheese, please? What ees gangsta rap? Ah, oui, le rap des gangsters. It had become a game that gave so much protection she couldn't let go of it. She was mightily disappointed to discover that the people she met at school were from backgrounds just like hers, from indistinguishable suburbs all over the country. They sat around talking about TV shows they all remembered from childhood, as if this represented some kind of shockingly universal human condition, and held contests to see who could remember the most theme songs, or even the most lines from The Facts of Life. “You take the good you take the bad you take them both and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life.” Please, who ees Mrs. Garrett?