The Color of Home: A Novel (6 page)

Nick and Sassa sat transfixed on their sofa, Nick with his arm around her, Sassa with her leg over his, a bowl of butterless, heavily salted popcorn on his lap. They were watching
Cinema Paradiso
, a movie about Salvatore, a closed-off man incapable of a committed relationship. When Nick was much younger, he had gone to the first showing of the movie at the Film Forum. About halfway through, he had started to sob and didn’t stop until the credits ended.

As a young boy, Salvatore lost his father to World War II. He worked with and became close with the fatherly projectionist, Alfredo, at the cinema in his small home town. As was common at that time, all of the romantic clips were censored, literally cut out of the film reel and thrown on the floor of the projector room. For many years Salvatore worked with Alfredo, eventually replacing him as the cinema’s projectionist. During this time, they grew as close as any father and son. Finally, at Alfredo’s urging, Salvatore moved on and left his home town to pursue his destiny as a director in the big city. He never looked back. Years later, Alfredo died. Salvatore returned for the funeral and discovered that Alfredo, who had followed Salvatore’s career and life with pride, had left him a special gift: a reel of all of the censored romantic movie clips spliced together.

“What did you think?”

“Good. Right up your alley.”

“I was a wreck after I saw it the first time. Not so much tonight.”

“Good.”

With Sassa, he’d added clips to their reel every day, and the supply seemed endless. A wave of strength passed through. Was he finally ready to tell her about “Hold You”? To ask her about home? He took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

“What’s going on with you?” he asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You’ve been a little distant these past couple of months.”

She lifted her head off his shoulder, took her feet down off the coffee table, and reached for the remote control to turn off the television. Settling back into the sofa a couple of feet away from him, she placed her feet back on the coffee table. “I have? You’re the one walking out of restaurants, yelling at me, trying to fix problems I can solve on my own. I should be the one asking what’s going on.”

“I don’t feel like you’re trying anymore.”

“What? So I should know what you need? I’m sorry, I’m not a mind reader.” She pushed the DVD case for
Cinema Paradiso
off the coffee table with her foot.

“Hey, that’s important.”

“Why are you judging me? I’ve done nothing wrong and, lately, I feel exactly the opposite when I’m around you. And, to be clear . . .” Her voice broke. “I feel like you’re the one holding something back. What are you hiding?”

“Can we start over again?”

“We can if you tell me.”

Closing his eyes, he found her scent. Nothing like her smell. Honeysuckle and amaranth wood. Or at least that was what the salesperson told him when he bought her a replacement bottle of perfume. An itch from a bead of sweat on his forehead. He scratched it. She was right; he had been hiding a big one. It was time. He had to tell her.

“Do you remember that night when I stayed late because of a reggae client?”

“Yes.”

“I lied.”

“You what?”

“There was no client.”

“Fuck you.” Her entire body tensed up. Her face swelled. She stood up, marched over to the window, and stared out. “Who is she?”

“No. No. I lied because of this.” With both hands, he pushed off the sofa, and hurried over to his guitar. He lifted it off of the stand, and strapped it on. Without tuning it, he started playing “Hold You.” An empty feeling in the pit of his stomach convinced him he was going to pass out before he finished.

After the first verse was over, Sassa turned around, leaned against the windowsill, and crossed her arms. She forced a smile, as if her feelings had not caught up with her thoughts. Every now and then she tapped her foot in rhythm.

Staring down, he hit the last chord and let it ring out. After a long pause, he said, “I was afraid to play the song for you.”

“Why?”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful, but not enough to justify—”

“I was afraid it wasn’t true for you.”

“Oh.” She glanced down at her arms, still crossed. Dropping them down to her sides, she tapped her finger on the windowsill.

“I was afraid you didn’t feel like you were home with me.”

“Oh. Do you feel home?”

“Without a doubt, though I’m still learning. That’s part of why I was afraid. I feel like I’m way out in front of you.”

“And the tension these past couple of months?”

“Fear about home.”

“I do love you, Nick.” She turned and looked back out the window. “Quiet tonight.”

“Late.”

“Not even a taxi.”

He unstrapped his guitar, placed it back on the stand, and returned to the sofa.

A moment later, she joined him there, picking up an almost empty glass of water from the end table on the way. She took a sip. “I’m not sure if this is home. It may be. It may not be. Sometimes I’m afraid you’re going to swallow me up. I still have a lot to learn on my own.”

His arms and legs prickled. A numbing. He couldn’t lose her. The song wasn’t good. He couldn’t go through such a loss again. He would do anything. They should never have watched
Cinema Paradiso
. Dad? His hands trembled. Trying to steady his hands, he tapped his foot quickly on the floor. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. This is hard. Let’s go to bed.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” She stood up, reached down for Nick’s hand, and pulled him up.

In bed, he tried to forget. At first he was tentative and stiff, until she carried him away from thought, as she’d done many times in the past. He opened for a short time, touched a soft spot, pure, like heaven. But something snapped him back. Why was this happening now? What would happen next? Not knowing was hell. Loss was hell. Afterwards, still inside her, he circled back to his earlier question.

“What do you want to do?”

“Let’s just ride things out. We’ll be fine.”

When Nick woke up on their one-year anniversary, Sassa had already left the apartment. Bikram. He went through his normal morning routine— shower, shave,
Morning Joe
,
SportsCenter
—and dressed in his favorite jeans and his
Abbey Road
T-shirt. As he readied to leave for the studio, she rushed into the apartment with two cappuccinos and pulled up just short of him.

“I went to Joe’s. I want to talk.”

“Okay.” He edged up to her, kissed her lightly, and lifted one cappuccino from her hand.

“You’re drinking coffee today?”

“Change of pace.” A trace of nervousness colored her words. She made her way to the kitchen table and slid into place. Tapping twice on the table, she pointed toward the chair next to her.

He joined her. What was going on?

“This past year rates as one of the best of my life. I’m in love with you. You’re kind, compassionate, and smart,” she said.

“Good start.”

“The thing is, I don’t believe I know how to sustain love.”

“A day at a time.”

She removed the top of her coffee and took a sip. A slight grimace later, she said, “Maybe. I know couples who began like we did this past year— young, in love, connected on so many levels—but who somehow lost their bond down the road.”

“We won’t.”

“I’m not so sure. Maybe work or children get in the way. Or maybe old patterns. There are few people who’ve figured out how to nourish love, or more important, who’ve figured out how to build their love. I can’t name a single couple. Can you?”

“Slow down for a second. Where’s all this coming from?”

“I don’t know.”

The past couple of months had been harder. But ups and downs were normal in any relationship. And they had worked through the downs and ended up in a better place. At least he had thought so. What did she mean about old patterns? “We’ll be okay. I have faith that we’ll figure things out. It has something to do with being completely honest with each other, no matter what the topic or how much the truth hurts. We’ve been doing that, haven’t we?” he asked.

“Mostly, but lasting fifty years is more complicated.” She stood up, walked over to the kitchen drawer, pulled out a pair of scissors, and returned to the table. Cutting the plastic placemat in front of her, she zigzagged along its width until it was cut in two. “I’ve got this idea about the two halves of a relationship. There’s the old cliché about how one person completes the other; two halves make a whole. I guess it’s popular because it contains some truth. We seemed whole this past year. I do feel like we fit together, which isn’t something I’ve experienced before.” She pushed the placemat back together.

“Nice prop. We are whole.”

“Or maybe we’re keeping each other company in a place we don’t belong.”

Before Sassa, he often thought he was stuck in a place he didn’t belong. But that all changed with her. At least he thought it had. Was it possible that in the euphoria of finally getting unstuck, he hadn’t seen that she still was? “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“When people are young, few know who they are. The people you’re drawn to in your twenties are probably not the same people you’d be drawn to at, say, forty-five, once you’ve figured stuff out. In the first case, our case, two halves create a whole. But in the second case, two wholes come together.”

“Do you want another placemat?”

“Use your imagination.”

“For you, fifty years is about being whole before you commit to another person?”

“Yes.”

“We’d all be alone for a long time if you’re right.”

“I guess.”

“Can’t we help each other get there? Isn’t ninety percent of the solution knowing that we need to get whole first?” What was bringing all of this on? Was she leaving him? He thrummed his fingers on his thighs. He had an empty feeling in his stomach and tried to fill it with multiple sips of coffee.

“Maybe that’s a way forward, but together probably hurts too much. What will happen to us if you decide you need to explore another romantic relationship? What if I do?”

“I won’t.”

“I’m not sure either of us could witness that and handle the fallout.”

“I couldn’t.” His heart started to race. He folded his arms across his chest. Deep breath. Deep breath. She was leaving.

“What will happen if we need to explore careers in different parts of the world? How can you know what you like, or need, or love until you’ve crossed over a few lines and had to take a few steps backwards? The best way to figure out who you are is to experiment, and emotional experiments are best done alone.” Her eyes went wet.

With change? With loss? He stood up, hulked over to the window, and peered out. On the street, men in suits and women in killer dresses and sneakers moved silently away from their homes. A garbage truck worked down the street, efficiently removing the trash. “So you want me to let go of the single best relationship I’ve ever had and trust that we’ll get back together someday? Did I get that right?”

“Yes.”

“Is there someone else?”

“No.”

A wave of relief, but only for a second. His chest swelled to that place right before the spin out, right before it was out of his hands. He tried to push it back down, but had no weight. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. But in a year or two, unless I figure my stuff out, there may be. I’ll get restless. Or you will. This way, it’s more honest.”

He spun around. “I’m sorry, this is all bullshit! Can’t we commit to doing this together? Or is this some elaborate way to break up with me? What did I do wrong?” Pacing back and forth in front of the windows, he couldn’t hold back tears any longer.

“This isn’t an elaborate scheme. I meant everything I said. I love you, and it’s deeper than any love I’ve experienced before. It’s just that I need to search, experiment. I want a life that has fifty more years of what we had most of this past year, a life of bliss, but I’m not ready to be anyone’s longterm partner. I need to get a lot more exposure and experience. We need to be brave and honest enough to let each other unfold. Then we’ll know the right thing to do. I’ve gone as far as I can right now.”

“I’m out of here.” He raced to the front door, grabbed his keys, and stormed out of the apartment toward his studio.

One day, early in Nick’s senior year at Columbia, he had flipped through an article in
Beautiful Noise for Youngsters
about the future of the recording studio. The piece projected two major emerging trends. The first, not surprisingly, espoused the virtues of the home recording studio. With price drops on high-quality recording equipment, setting up a good-enough home recording studio to serve singer-songwriters was easy. On the other hand, with bandwidth on the rise and cheaper, larger storage devices doubling in capacity each year, the article predicted the emergence of online recording studios that would allow for collaboration over the Internet.

The possibilities were endless. A singer-songwriter in Montreal, Seattle, Stockholm, or anyplace in the world with an Internet connection could hire a back-up band in New York City to play on his or her album and the result would be completely seamless to the audience.
Beautiful Noise for Youngsters
concluded that no clear leaders existed in the space at that time, and the author believed online recording, with its high-growth potential, was disrupting traditional recording studios.

Nick threw
Beautiful Noise for Youngsters
on the top of a pile of music magazines. Was it possible to combine his business training with music? Should he start an online recording company? How would he incorporate? What should he name the company? Where would he get physical space for the large amount of gear required? How much up-front money would he need? Where would he find the studio musicians? How would he advertise? How much should he charge per song? What kind of services should he provide? Who could help him with the website?