The Color of Home: A Novel (7 page)

He opened up his laptop and researched his questions. He scanned websites for a business plan template. Working for twelve hours straight, by the next morning he had a first-pass business plan for studiomusicians-dot-com. Temporarily, he lost sight of his sadness.

In the spring of his senior year, he launched studiomusicians-dot-com with $75,000 dollars. He had risked asking one of his uncles, his father’s brother, for the money. After a reasonable amount of coaxing and reminiscing, his uncle agreed to loan it to him. Twenty-five thousand on the website. Twenty-five thousand to buy equipment. The rest for rent of the top floor in an old Brooklyn warehouse.

He’d found love.

After storming out on Sassa, Nick spent the day in his music studio trying to map his heart, trying to map a way forward, trying to hold on to her love. When he’d built the studio, he’d added a large utility room to store his gear when not in use. He made his way to that room right after entering the studio and locked the door behind him. Curling up in a ball on the floor, he surveyed the equipment he’d accumulated over the years: old amplifiers, his first bass guitar, black box synthesizers, endless cables, a case of guitar polish. . . .

Did everyone leave? He started to sob. The ultimatum. If she left him, they were done. He was moving on and was going to find someone who actually wanted to be with him, who understood how much he had to offer. Too much pride. Didn’t seem right. The path of reason. He knew she was scared. He was scared too. But they loved each other and belonged together. They could figure things out if they just tried to do it together. Would she commit to trying? Maybe. Higher ground. He loved her. He was strong enough to handle the truth. Death was the only immutable. If she needed space, he would give it to her. But he needed some way to check in with her every so often to see if she was still in the same place. Last resort.

Back on his feet, he switched the light off. In the dark, the smell of guitar polish reminded him of how much he loved music.

When Nick stepped into the apartment later that night, Sassa met him at the door wearing only his
Yellow Submarine
T-shirt. Like many nights over the past year, dozens of lit candles had turned the living room into a grotto. Sage scented the air.

She extended her hand palm up. Her eyes were puffy. “How are you doing?”

He took her hand. “Can we let things settle for a few days and see if splitting up still makes sense? This is such a big decision. Maybe we’re scared and there’s a chance we can work things out.”

She wrapped both arms around him, and pulled him close. Resting her head on his shoulder, she clung for a bit, then gently, silently, guided him to their bedroom.

On the way, he grazed his finger along the wall to fill the place with love, as he’d done many times before. He’d stored so much during the year. Was this the last time? Or was there hope?

In the bedroom, she whispered, “Leave the lights on.”

At the foot of the bed, she undressed him slowly, expertly. Pulled his shirt off. Unbuckled his belt. Unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans until they dropped softly to the ground. Expanded the elastic on his boxers until they ballooned over his hips and fell.

A moment later, he was naked on the unmade bed watching her undress. She was so beautiful. It almost made him forget.

On top of him, with her hair draped over her breasts, she let him enter her. Eyes open and penetrating, at first she moved slowly, as if she wanted to make sure he understood, as if anything she could say wouldn’t be enough, as if only their joined bodies could understand. Once she’d cycled through, she sped up; let repetition, intensity, reinforce the truth.

He had to look away. She had so much compassion. Love. Strength of purpose. The alarm clock on the nightstand read exactly 9:49. At 9:51, he abandoned any hope of persuading her to stay. She needed to leave. He had to let go. Somehow on the way toward good-bye, he managed to keep the sadness out of the room, thankful for one last time when he could lose himself.

Afterward, he flicked the lights off. The outside street lamp barely illuminated the room. The underlight had morphed him into a shadow. He glanced over at Sassa, who had fallen into a deep sleep almost immediately, as if a giant weight had been lifted, as if she were free-dreaming. Still naked, he covered himself with a sheet, and folded his hands behind his head. What makes someone a soul mate? Effortlessness. They had that. Trust. They had that. Honesty. That, too. Lust. Yep. Nothing about being whole first. Not a single thing. He’d found his soul mate; he’d found home, but she hadn’t. Was there a way forward together? His heart offered one answer, his head another, and in the end, old patterns won out.

A thought took shape. He turned on his side and tangled his finger in a strand of her hair. She’d entered his life as an “almost” and was destined to leave the same way.

On the morning Sassa moved out, Nick met her one last time at Joe’s. Unlike the previous year, spring in Manhattan was unusually cold and damp. That morning, a freak flash storm hit the Village. From their seats, they watched the streets take on water.

Nick had to seek higher ground. There, a profound, sweet sadness surfaced, old and familiar, threatening to push him back down into a darkness where reality only played out on movie screens.

“Why don’t we get together once a year to check in?” he asked.

“Do you think that will help?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure where I’ll be.”

He wasn’t able to read her body language. When was the last time that happened? Maybe that was part of letting go, of leaving the inner sanctum. “That’s okay. We can meet in New York or I’ll come to you.”

“I guess I’d like to get back to the city once a year,” she said.

“Good. How about talking through what happened the year before at each reunion? No masks, no fear, complete truth for one day.”

“Are you sure you want to share everything?”

Did he really want to hear she was happy? That she’d started a new life without him? Did he want that much truth? He did. He always would. “How about a few guiding questions?”

“Good idea.”

After a little more back and forth, they arrived at their three questions. In their last act as a couple, they alternated reciting them.

“What did you learn this past year?”

“Do you feel whole?”

“Do you know where you belong?”

Early April, After Nick Year One, New York City: Sassa packed her dilapidated 2001 Volkswagen Beetle and headed toward Cambridge. She drove in silence for over an hour until she pulled into the first service stop in Connecticut to fill up. There, an old habit surfaced: she purchased an iced tea and some spearmint gum for the road, as she’d often done as a newly licensed teenager. Before slipping back into her car, she progressed through two quick yoga positions: standing head-to-knee pose and standing bow-pulling pose. She had to stretch. A man, filling up his car across from hers, tried to strike up a conversation about yoga. Brushing him off gently, she slipped back into her car. As she accelerated onto I-95, she said, “What am I doing? I have no plan.” For the next hour or so, she aspired to welcome uncertainty, intermingling hope and long stretches of doubt. It didn’t work.

To break a stretch of doubt, she balanced her iPod against the steering wheel and navigated to find the mix called “Sassa Soars”. A rush of warmth spread across her face. There were so many familiar songs. Nick had made her the playlist the day before to help pass the time on the road, to extend the good-bye. Her grip on the steering wheel tightened. Was she ready? She pushed play. Her shoulders tensed and her breath went irregular. Ani DiFranco’s “Overlap” played. They certainly did. About midway through, the tension released and her breathing steadied. Nick’s favorite love song followed, the Beatles’ “Something.” She took a long, deep breath. He really needed to knock her down a few notches. In the lull between songs, she sipped her tea and dialed down the temperature control. During the third song, “Destiny” by Zero7, magically, unexpectedly, bliss pierced through.

Slowing down, she moved into the right lane, sandwiched between two large trucks. They scared her. They always would. For a time, the two trucks and her bug caravanned up the highway as Sassa took in the playlist. Sara McLachlan sang “Answer.” Did anyone have that much commitment? Nick did. Damien Rice’s “Volcano.” If only she could sing, that would be their duet. Like in the song, she wasn’t real yet; she wasn’t ready to choose. Marc Cohn’s “One Safe Place.” That would always be true no matter what. “The Dress Looks Nice on You” by Sufj an Stevens. He loved her red summer dress. “Paper Bag” by Fiona Apple. He got the pain part right.

Finally, with her eyes wet, she broke the caravan, pulled over onto the shoulder, and cracked open her window. Cars whizzed past, shaking her bug to a regular cadence. Exhaust fumes invaded the air. Chewing on two fresh sticks of spearmint gum, she took another sip of her iced tea and composed a text. “I loved the songs. Thank you. Love, Sassa.” The title phrase from “I Will Follow You into the Dark,” by Death Cab for Cutie, filled the car, briefly tempting her to return to New York. Instead, she deleted the text message before sending it and returned to Phil Schmidt’s.

A Vikander tradition, Sassa’s family vacationed at Mackinac Island every summer. Her dad packed his car with the family’s luggage on a warm August Friday night in 1994, then locked the car in the garage of their South Bend, Indiana, home, so they’d be ready to leave bright and early the next morning. On the night before vacation, for as long as she could remember, her family loaded into her mom’s car and drove downtown for lake perch and frog legs at the local family restaurant, Phil Schmidt’s. That year was even more special. Sassa had just turned thirteen.

After a better-than-usual dinner, they headed for home. On the way, her dad buttoned down the windows. Wind raced in and diluted the smell of leftover fish with pine and freshly paved asphalt. The car slowed to a stop at a country road red light. The radio played a song she didn’t recognize. No other cars shared the road with them, even though the Notre Dame church clock had just struck nine.

Her mom’s favorite song, “Nothing Compares 2 U,' started on the radio. Her dad glanced over at her mom. It was a look that Sassa had seen a few times in the past: his lips parted and a slow smile built. He turned up the radio until the bass vibrated the side doors. Springing out of the car, he whirled around to the passenger side, opened her mother’s door, and gently tugged her out. Sassa eyed her sister. They both giggled as her dad slow-danced her mom around the car. Later, her dad signaled to join them, and the four of them danced until she lost track of time and her surroundings.

Sometime later, applause. Much to her surprise, a half-dozen or so cars had gathered at the intersection, the folks in them apparently stopping to watch her family promenade around the car. Her dad, always one to seize the moment, instructed the four of them to line up. They held hands and jointly bowed, laughing and waving to their fans on the upswing. They lingered like that, connected, content, for a few minutes before getting back into the car for the remainder of the ride home.

As Sassa fell asleep that night, the sense of contentment stayed with her. Dad was the most handsome man in the world. Would she inherit some of Mom’s beauty? When did beauty bloom?

Sassa bounced down the steps of her new Cambridge apartment and headed west on Brattle toward Longfellow House. The beautiful morning sun warmed her face. Each day since arriving in the city a few weeks earlier, she’d wandered through the backstreets around Harvard Square, often for hours at a time. The Cambridge neighborhoods, with their abundance of nineteenth-century homes, rendered the picture-perfect backdrop for her stints on the sidewalks.

Turning onto Willard Street, she wandered past a mother and child hurrying off to school. “Some day,' she whispered. Rounding the corner onto Foster Street, she increased her pace, and passed a three-story, chocolate brown, Dutch colonial home where an elderly couple relaxed on a large front porch. She smiled.

Why did she leave Nick after a year like all the others? How was he filling his days? Was he writing? Her old lovers had faded quickly after she’d left them. With little explanation, she ran, never looked back, and willingly gravitated toward something new. Why wasn’t that true with Nick? As she walked, he lifted her, left her weightless, groundless. Now and then she stared down, re-focused on the concrete, and, somehow tethered, took comfort.

After a couple of hours, she circled back onto Brattle Street toward home.

A few weeks later, sheets of rain struck the roof of the studio apartment. Would she walk today? Sassa deliberated over tea. Eventually, she layered on more clothing than usual, grabbed her oversized umbrella, and ventured out. As she drifted past homes and people, the driving rain reminded her of her sister.

She and her then seven-year-old sister had built a cardboard playhouse in their backyard underneath a large oak tree. They’d just secured the roof when a large thunderstorm passed through, accompanied by a heavy downpour. They rushed into the playhouse and took shelter. Proud of themselves for building something that protected them, they huddled together, mostly laughing, occasionally screaming at the thunder and lightning. In unison they extended their tongues out into the rain and tasted the storm.

Sassa crossed over the Charles River toward Harvard Stadium and collected rain on her tongue. Slipping through a gap in a chained stadium gate, she made her way out onto the field. For a bit, she balanced her open umbrella on the palm of her hand. Springing it high in the air, she watched as it dove into a puddle at the ten-yard line. The dive was beautiful, in a way. Glancing down the field at the far goal, she imagined frisbeeing a giant quarter the full distance of the field and landing it on the goal post, perfectly balanced. Why not? Anything was possible. She turned to the near stands, and sprinted up to the top of the stadium. Leaning against the retaining wall, she caught her breath and savored the rain.

“Hello— Hello!” She missed her sister. Her laugh. Her smell. Her strength. She missed breaking rules with her. “Remember when we stole twenty dollars from Dad’s wallet so we could sneak out to the mall together?” The stadium echoed “together.” “We wanted to know how it felt to steal, to get away with something, to spend money that didn’t belong to us.”

She honed in on the football field below. What if . . . the Vikander girls had been the most popular sisters in high school. Homecoming queens. Completely drenched, she sat down and imagined entering the stadium in her homecoming dress, a long, black, fluid, sleeveless stretch-satin gown with a silver orchid embroidered into the back of the waistline. From a catalog she had recently thumbed through. Her father, incredibly handsome, waited for her at the fifty-yard line with a diamond tiara, and her first love, Tommy, by his side. Tommy, his hair slicked back, had cleaned up well. Both of them were dressed in black tuxes. “I’m frickin’ Charlize Theron!” she shouted. Or Liv Ullmann. She stood up and snapped fingers as she paced back and forth. “Inseparable. The same college.” Snap. Snap. “Married and raising our families in the same town.” Snap. Snap. “Our extended families together every Sunday for dinner. Just like Mom.” Snap. Snap.

A man entered the stadium. “Are you alright? Miss, you can’t be out here alone,” he shouted up from the field.

“Fine. Just messing around. I’m leaving.” She whispered, “This is too much.”

The rain intensified. She glanced at her upside-down umbrella on the field, taking on water, losing the battle to hold its ground against the wind. Sis. Dad. Mom. How could she build a new family if she couldn’t let go? A husband and children. A small group of friends who somehow found each other, who stayed loyal for a lifetime. Would she ever connect enough to let anyone in that way? Would she ever trust enough to call them friend, sister, brother? Would she ever go big and bold, and scream out loud that she was whole, that she’d found her true love, that she was strong enough to be with him?

So far, no. So far, she kept edging away.

She jogged down the stadium rows. Lifting her umbrella, she shook off the excess water and closed it. Exiting the stadium, she skipped toward Harvard Square, tapping the tip of her umbrella like she was sending out Morse code, careful to avoid cracks on the sidewalk. As she rounded back onto Brattle Street, she thanked the rain for raising her sister, her father, her mother.

How much she loved her mother.

On a swinging love seat suspended from the ceiling of their front porch, Sassa had rocked back and forth with her mother, holding hands, barefoot, her feet occasionally grazing the porch floor. Her mother glowed that spring day in 1994, the sunlight reflecting off her long blonde hair. Sassa sipped a tall glass of her mom’s famous citrusade, made ceremoniously every summer with the perfect amount of sugar to balance the tart. Yum. Her mom wrapped her arm around her, leaned over, and kissed her on the forehead. Yum.

“The world is waiting for you to make your mark, honey. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

She curled her toes a few times, admiring her recently applied red toenail polish. She sipped her citrusade. “Why do you want to talk about this now, Mom? I’m not even a teenager.”

Her mom crossed her legs. She twirled her hair with two fingers as if she was trying to twist the strands into an as-yet-to-be-defined balloon figure. “I want you to know how special you are.”

A tingling swept up the back of her neck and across her face. “Mom.”

“You are special. Promise me you won’t take the path of least resistance. Promise me.”

“What?” she asked.

“You’re going to get plenty of offers in your life, but many of them won’t contain love. They’ll be too easy for you and more about what someone else wants than what you love.”

“That’s the path of least resistance?”

“Yes. Do you understand?”

“Not really.”

“Offers will come in all shapes and forms, from lovers, friends, partners, and even from strangers. You’re beautiful, talented, intelligent, and hard working, you know.”

“Lovers?” She giggled.

Her mom nodded. “You’ll have many of those.”

“How do you know?”

“Do you see the buds on the rhododendron over there?”

“Yes.”

“You’re like a bud now. When you bloom in a couple of years, the whole world will notice.”

Sassa smiled. “Oh.”

“Just wait.”

“How can I tell good offers from bad ones, Mom?”

“It takes time, honey. You’re still young. Listen to your heart each day. What you truly love will guide you through.”

Sassa lifted her feet, straightened her legs, and drew circles in the air. “Let’s talk about other stuff, Mom.”

After racing up several flights of stairs, Sassa entered her Cambridge apartment winded. She slipped out of her drenched coat, pants, and shoes, and plopped down on the sofa. Straightening her legs, she painted circles in one direction, then the other, until she caught her breath.

Weeks later, Sassa stepped out into the morning air and dashed toward Inman Square. Stopping in at Darwin’s for a bagel and lox sandwich to go, she scarfed down the sandwich as she meandered toward MIT. Deep in thought about questions that had taken shape during the week, a feeling, faint but constant, pulled her toward the campus. As she passed through Kendall Square, she asked a few of her questions out loud to rehearse. “What makes a good life? How do I serve? How do I not become overwhelmed? How do I love?”

A handsome man approached during her recital, frowned, then smiled I’m interested as he moved closer.

She wasn’t. Staring down at the pavement, she sped away. “What do I know? How do I do it all with heart? How do I do it with laughter?” She wanted concrete steps, a blueprint to follow to help build her life. She lacked tools. She lacked role models. Most of her stuff—school, restaurants, guys— had simply happened to her. Had she been lulled to sleep? Had leaving Nick sent her where she needed to go, down the path of most resistance? Her Mom was right.

As she set foot on campus, she smoothed over her blouse. MIT students must be thinking about similar stuff. They must have better answers, more analytical answers, than she’d come up with so far. If not, Harvard waited down the street.

She asked a few people about Professor Chomsky’s building, received clear directions, and made her way to his office. Fragments from one of his YouTube lectures reeled in her mind. Wars. Global warming. Not enough water. Not enough food. Power concentrated at the top. No real democracy. Was everyone paralyzed? If he turned out to be even half right, the world was in real trouble. What could any one person do? She knocked on the door. No answer. Squatting on the floor, she bided her time. Sometime later, discouraged, she departed his office and the campus without a single answer. Why bother? There weren’t any.