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I shake my head. “No conflict. None at all. Once when he performed at Carnegie, my family and I went to see him. And my grandmother pulled a few strings to get us backstage. We spoke with him after the concert, and there was a wall of instruments in his green room. I complimented one of his violins, and he told me to try it out.”
This was when I was still in high school. When I was playing hours every day. And that violin was spectacular. Glorious. Now that I’m out of that musical universe, I can see what a big deal it was for him to simply invite me to pull a priceless instrument off the wall and play it. For him. But at the time, I guess I almost expected things like that to happen to me.
Is that arrogant? I hope not. It was just one step above my usual experience. I didn’t take it for granted—at least I don’t think I did. I appreciated the opportunity.
I take a sip of tea and tell Wanda the rest. “I played for a few minutes, and he told me there would always be a place for me at his concerts.”
Why is my throat going dry?
I swallow more tea, which I can no longer taste, but at least it’s wet.
She isn’t saying anything, so I guess I’m not done. “But I have a job. And I love it here. So if he’s offering, I’d say no.”
By the time I get to “no,” I can barely hear my own voice, it comes out so quiet.
Now Wanda’s hands come across the table. She slides my mug and saucer away so she can hold on to me with nothing between us. Her fingers, complete with her signature perfect manicure, wrap around mine and she smiles as she looks into my eyes.
She nods, and I hope it means she understands. “You decided not to play music professionally. You chose a different path.”
I exhale what might be mistaken for a laugh, but I don’t feel amused. “Or I chose to run far away from any path, which is how my dad sees it.”
Wanda’s grip tightens on my hands. “All your life you’ve been surrounded by people who know exactly what they want and are on track to get it. Your family. This school. A specialty university. You thought you were one of those people.”
I nod. “I was.”
“And then you listened to your heart, and it led you elsewhere.”
I know she’s being generous. It’s only someone with a serious ability to see good intentions who can look at my educational journey as anything but running away. “Elsewhere” suggests I made a lane change and chased down a new goal. But anyone can see I’m only treading water over here, assisting a librarian who doesn’t need my assistance, hiding from my parents’ disappointment, avoiding anything I might fail at, unable to feel any thrill of delight.
“You’re being very kind,” I say, and try to laugh, but it comes out with a gasp, and before I can stop myself, I’m crying.
At a table in the Caf, holding Wanda Chamberlain’s hands, crying into my lukewarm tea.
She releases one of my hands and takes the other in both of hers, holding on to me while at the same time allowing me to mop up my face as I have a small breakdown.
I would love to pull it all together in an instant with a delicate sniff and a touch of tissue to my eye, looking only vaguely troubled and classy, but of course, that’s not how I roll.
I cry and cry, shoulders heaving, breath shuddering, tears and all kind of less lovely things running down my face. I weep. I sob. I go through several napkins. And all the time, Wanda pats my hand with her soft, powdery fingers.
There’s no mirror in front of me, but I know the damage this must be doing to my face. Blotches. Angry-looking ones, where random sections of my face and neck blaze red and others, deprived of their melanin or at least their blood, revert to palest white. Nobody would mistake this for an attractive cry.
It’s not like I checked the time when I lost my mind, but I cry for a good, long while before I manage to pull myself together and stop all the emotion leaking (pouring) out of me. When I can speak, I look at Wanda and say, “I’m so sorry. I never do this. I feel so silly.”
“You never do what?” she asks. “Cry in public?”
“Not if I can help it. And not about something as dumb as this.”
“What’s dumb?”
I try to laugh, but my voice wobbles. I’m holding it together only by the most tenuous definitions of both “holding” and “together.”
With a sniff, I say, “I can’t tell if I’m crying about what I left behind or because you’re being so nice about it.”
She nods as if those words make some kind of sense.
“It’s so hard when we discover we were wrong about ourselves,” she says, looking somewhere over my left shoulder. “There’s grief in losing a dream, even if you’re the one making changes and discovering a new life.”
“Sometimes I miss it,” I say, and I don’t know if she hears me. But it doesn’t matter, because that was for me. I need to be able to admit it. I don’t regret my decisions, but there’s a hole in my life where my big purpose used to be.
