The Long Wait for Tomorrow (26 page)

“Yeah, but not for … real.”

“He means he’s never played for us,” Jenna specified.

“This is as real as it gets, tonight,” Kelly proclaimed, ambling across the room and leaning against the shuffleboard table. “I didn’t travel twenty years into the past just to hear your sorry excuses.”

“That’s right,” Casper said, heading for the back. “He didn’t travel twenty years into the past just to hear your sorry excuses.”

“I’ll even put it together for you,” Kelly offered, shuffling toward the case.

“OK, fine,” Patrick relented, snapping the latches. “Just don’t, Kelly, come near my saxophone. Stay right where you are and have another drink.”

Kelly was happy to do as he was told.

Patrick opened the case and pulled out the strap, hung it around his neck. With his back turned, he went about assembling
his saxophone with the same concentration that an aspiring student might read sheet music. He snapped the instrument onto the strap. Putting his lips to the mouthpiece, Patrick licked the wooden reed a few times, reveling in the familiar taste of tongue depressor.

Folding his bottom lip over his teeth and biting down on the mouthpiece, Patrick blew a few test notes. He winced, at sounds that seemed unwelcome in On The Rail’s empty acoustics. He found himself projecting back to twelve years old, awkwardly cradling a heavy chunk of brass, wondering how the hell he could ever get this thing to actually make music.

By the time he’d turned around, Casper was already back. He’d dragged a chair over to table one, was seated with an electric guitar in his lap. Hooking it up to a small beige amplifier beside him, Casper began to tune up. Plucking at strings, twisting the keys. All kidding aside now, his rambunctious energy converted to solemn concentration.

“Nice horn,” he said offhandedly.

Stringing a few more notes together that bordered on melody, Patrick made his way over to Casper’s side. Casper adjusted a few dials and began playing. With his head tilted to the side, he settled into a bluesy groove.

Patrick stood by, waiting for him to finish warming up.

Looked up and saw Jenna and Kelly, both leaning against the bench.

“Don’t just stand there, man,” Casper prompted him. His head rocked to the rhythm, tending to the business of strings and frets. “Come on, let’s hear it.”

Patrick closed his eyes and slid his lips over the mouthpiece.

He went backward in time, slowly sifting through memories. The past four years cruising along with a disaffected ease. His story thus far, in rewind. Nothing but a collection of events, time spent at football games, dimly lit parties at whoever’s house happened to be suffering from parental neglect on that particular weekend. Those rare dinners with his parents, Kelly’s parents, the repetitive motions of silverware, repetitive topics of discussion about what the day had brought them all. A slew of repetitive days, no discerning difference between what preceded what. The classes, school meetings, band practices, the same hyperactive fight songs at every basketball game. Girls that floated in and out of focus, never close enough to kiss or even date, discomfiting thoughts of having to see them every day, interrupting the effortless poetry of his unchanging life. All that self-sabotage, insisting on maintaining such empty comforts. Patrick alone in his room, hostage to his brother’s books, decorations, dresser drawers still half-filled with the clothes of a seven-year-old.

And these memories picked up speed, each one a yawning smear of nothing. Filled with nothing, just isolated symbols. Punctuated with ghostlike figures that took on temporary forms. His parents, his teachers, even Kelly and Jenna, a void that widened even as he remembered the music that filled it. Growing louder, brass wails sent out to replace all that which should have been there, culminating with the stark figure of his little brother.

Standing outside their school, tossing a football to himself.

Eyelashes batting away clumps of thick black hair, courtesy of his mother.

The last real memory of the days before music.

And without the applause from Kelly, Jenna, and two strangers at the bar, he might have kept on playing, without ever realizing he had already begun.

Raising his lids, Patrick peered through the dark veil before his eyes.

Casper playing along, really swinging his head now. Kelly with the bottle of Knob Creek perched on his thigh, head resting against Jenna’s. Their arms linked, side by side, but that was OK, too. The house lights were off, the clock was keeping to its own rules. Even the indistinct, muted figure of Coach Redwood up on the television screen was just one more piece of a new night on earth.

Nobody bothering to read the choppy, misspelled black-and-white captions beneath his pleased, yet stern face.

WE DON’T KNOW … EVERYONE HAS BEEN WORRIED ABOUT HIM. WE HAVE … SUSPICIONS

JUST WANT TO WAIT AND SEE … CHANCE TO TALKK TO KELLY MCDERMOTT
…

Patrick didn’t think twice about closing his eyes and returning to the music.

is eyes opened, and for a moment, Patrick didn’t know where he was.

A sky-blue mattress floated just above his head, pressing down on thin wire mesh. Turning his head to the side, he got a worm’s-eye view of a dark wooden floor. Beneath him was a green sleeping bag, gutted and spread out. From somewhere nearby, 1970s funk played at low volume.

Saturdays on 90.7 WNCU
, Patrick’s angels prompted.

It all came back to him then.

Patrick slid from under Jenna’s bed, certain he’d fallen asleep next to it.

He stood up, stretched.

The blinds were drawn, gray light emanating from the edges of its vinyl borders.

Patrick got his bearings, eyes going from the empty bed to his coat draped over the stereo. He picked it up, slipped his arms into the sleeves. Realized that, sooner or later, he was going to have to replace the components of his new suit with something a bit less wrinkled. He walked over to Jenna’s night table, took a close look at the clock.

One p.m.

He opened the door, thought he heard voices.

With uneven steps, Patrick headed down the truncated hallway, through the small living room, and into the kitchen.

Kelly McDermott was at the sink, washing dishes.

Face calm as a domestic servant with no name or birthday.

Jenna was pouring a cup of coffee, and upon seeing Patrick, her eyes lit up. Barely able to contain herself, she set down the mug and thrust an open envelope under his nose. Patrick took it from her hands, glanced down at the insignia in the top left corner. He looked up.

Jenna stood with her hands behind her back, a child awaiting the final assessment of the glitter-soaked drawing she’d made in art class.

Patrick removed the letter, several pages in length, and unfolded it.

There wasn’t a high school student alive who ever needed to look past the first three words.

Patrick grinned. “You’re off the wait list.”

“They let me into Ohio State!” Jenna cried, leaping into Patrick’s unprepared arms.

Well, swing her around a little, dummy
, his angels insisted, and Patrick did so, wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting. She held on tightly, laughing. Uneven breaths escaping along the back of his neck.

“That’s my girl” came the proud voice of Jenna’s father.

Patrick hadn’t even noticed him sitting at the small table crammed into the corner between the counter and the entrance to the kitchen.

“Good morning, Mr. Garamen,” Patrick said, setting Jenna down.

“Good afternoon to you, too, Patrick….” He lifted his coffee to thin lips, hawkish nose dipping into the mug as he drank. His fine sandpaper hair was in full weekend mode, thistles sprouting at all ends. “Forgive my appearance,” he added, tugging at his sweatpants and black Rolling Stones T-shirt. “And please, you can call me Al. Like the Paul Simon song. I know you don’t come around that often, but it’s going to have to stick one of these days.”

“Right, sorry.” Patrick reached out to shake his hand, as though meeting him for the first time. “Congratulations, Al.”

“Oh fiddlesticks,” he said with a humble turn of the cheek. “All I did was write the essay for her and slip the dean a couple hundred bucks.”

“Dad.”
Jenna laughed, going back to her cup of coffee. She set it next to Kelly, who paused to take a sip then continued to wash with a dreamy smile. “Bribing the
dean.
What
will
the neighbors say?”

“They’ll say please stop walking around the yard in your underwear, Al.”

From the sink, Kelly let out a low chuckle. Placed a glass on the rack to dry.

“So have we got a trifecta yet?” Al asked, rubbing a light snowfall of stubble. He kicked at the chair opposite him, bringing it out from under the table. “Patrick, you heard anything yet?”

“Yeah, I got in,” Patrick said casually, sitting down. “Got the letter back in January.”

“Patrick!” Jenna held out her hands in a silent
What the hell, guy?

“I take it you’re revealing state secrets,” Al said, sipping his coffee.

“But you got a letter saying …” Jenna glanced over to Kelly, then remembered he didn’t remember he didn’t remember. Turned back to Patrick. “You got a letter saying you were waitlisted.”

“Faked it,” Patrick admitted. “Easy as pie, once you know the magic of Photoshop.”

“But why?”

“Just trying to postpone tomorrow for as long as I could.” Patrick shrugged. Remarkably at ease with his accumulated disasters. “I also might have gotten into Juilliard, but my parents are holding the letter hostage.”

“Patrick!”
Jenna threw an oven mitt at Patrick’s head. “I have to hear this from my dad?”

“You just heard it from me….”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, you’re hearing it now,” Patrick said. “Juilliard is actually the only place I didn’t get accepted to immediately. I’ve been hunting for that letter, too, but we all know the story with that now.”

“They don’t want you to go,” Al concluded with a disappointed frown.

“Ohio State or bust,” Patrick sighed. Hunched over, elbows on his knees.

“You know, I was called out by them, once.” Al leaned back, put his arms behind his back. “Your parents. Had a problem with a leak up over the kitchen. Turned out to be a problem with the pipe coming from the upstairs sink. Gave ’em a good deal, on account of you being friends with Jenna and all. Never got a call back, though …”

The conversation dead-ended for a while. Pleasant and unassuming silence accompanied by the sound of running water and the soft rattle of knives and spoons.

“So are you going, then?” Jenna asked, hips flat against the counter. Eyes on Patrick’s socks. “Are you going to Juilliard?”

Patrick scanned the pictures on the refrigerator. “I don’t know.”

“I mean, if you got in, which I’m sure you did.”

“I don’t know….” Unable to stop himself, Patrick looked up at Jenna.

She lifted her face up from the floor. Slowly, as though raising a drawbridge. Her eyes met his, still new to the practice, but nonetheless able to understand what remained unspoken. She quietly set aside her acceptance letter and crossed her arms, slowly rubbing her shoulders.