Revolution (8 page)

In addition to the DNA tests he’s conducting, Dad’s doing the superstar-genius thing while he’s here—giving lectures at the Sorbonne, attending a dinner with the president, and meeting with financiers interested in funding his next project.

“And what will you be doing?” G asks me.

Dad answers for me. “Andi will be working on the outline for her senior thesis,” he says.

“What’s the subject?” G says.

“Amadé Malherbeau,” I tell him, pushing a piece of chicken around on my plate.

“Malherbeau! Why didn’t you say so?” G says, jumping up. He starts rooting in a bookshelf. “I have some books on him. And of course I now can’t find any of them. Ah! Here’s one. You should also go to his house near the Bois de Boulogne. The Conservatory owns it. They use it for chamber concerts. There’s a wonderful portrait of him there. And I believe the Abelard Library has his personal papers, including a collection of original scores.”

He hands me a book and sits down again. I thank him, then continue to not eat my food. Lili tells us she’ll be teaching almost every day. She gives classes at the School of Fine Arts in Bourges starting tomorrow, then at the Paris division at the end of the week. Bourges is a bit of a hike, so she overnights at a friend’s house while she’s teaching there.

“And speaking of guest rooms,” she says, “I’m sure you are ready for yours, Andi.”

Finally. I make a move to clear up the dishes, but she won’t let me.

“Leave them. G will help me with them. It will be the first useful thing he’s done all day,” she says. “Let me show you to your room.”

I pick up my bag and my guitar case and follow her to the far end of the loft. There are two rooms and a bathroom there, partitioned off from the rest of the open space by drywall that’s been taped and spackled but not painted yet. My room has a huge window, a mattress on the floor, and a fruit crate for a night table.

“Not very luxurious, I’m afraid. We still have a lot of work to do on the place,” Lili says. “The bed’s comfortable, though.”

“It’s great, Lili. Really. Thank you,” I say. I’m so tired I could sleep on the floor.

She tells me she’ll leave two sets of keys on the table, one for me and one for Dad, and that I should come and go as I please. I tell her thanks, but she waves my words away. Before she goes, she takes my hands in hers.

“You are a ghost, Andi,” she says. “Almost gone.”

I look at her. I want to say something but I can’t get the words out.

She squeezes my hands. “Come back to us,” she says. And then she’s gone.

I close the door, turn off the light, and lie down on the bed. I look out of the window into the night sky, searching for stars. But there aren’t any. Just a few snowflakes whirling in the air. I should get up. Brush my teeth. Pee. Take my pills. But I don’t. I’m too tired. I close my eyes, hoping for sleep, but pictures float up in my mind—images of that small, sad heart. Of that small, scared face.

Paris. What a great idea.
It might take your mind off things
, Dad said.

I laugh then, until I cry. Then cry until I sleep.

13

I
wake up jangling.

I fell asleep in my clothes, with all my metal on. My earrings are digging into my head. My bracelets are tangled in my hair. My cell phone’s in my back pocket and it’s digging into my butt. My boots are hurting my feet.

I’m jangling inside, too. I forgot to take my pills last night, which was really stupid.

I get up, hit the ladies’, and swallow two Qwells, and then one more, washing them down with tap water cupped in my hands. I check the time—nearly noon—then go searching for coffee.

Dad’s seated at the dining table, talking on G’s house phone. He’s got it on speaker, because that way he can converse, text his assistant, drink his coffee, and read a dissertation all at the same time. I give him a nod. He nods back.

There are keys on the table and a note from Lili telling us she’ll be in Bourges tonight and where the nearest Métro stations are, and the nearest grocer, baker, and cheese shop. None of them is very near at all. It’s a hike to get anywhere from here.

I head to the kitchen and am thrilled to find there’s still coffee in the coffeepot. I pour myself a nice big cup, slurp it down, and sigh as the world goes from black-and-white to Technicolor. As I’m reaching for a croissant, my cell phone rings.

“Hey.”

“Vijay? Where are you? The reception’s amazing.”

“I’m up on my roof. Hiding out.”

“Who from?”

“The Vietmom. Who else? Where are you? I went to your house this morning and no one was there.”

“I’m in Paris.”

“Wow. Cool. Hey, if you still want to kill yourself, there’s no better place to do it. You’ve got Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, all those bridges.…”

“You heard?” I say, cringing.

“The whole class heard. Maybe the whole school. Thanks to Arden.”

“What did she say?”

“That you’re in love with Nick and always have been. That you threw yourself at him. But he’s totally in love with her and he blew you off and you were so upset you tried to jump off his roof.”

“
What?
That’s not how it happened at all.”

“Doesn’t matter. Arden’s an evil genius.”

“You’re half right.”

“You can’t do it now.”

“Do what?”

“Kill yourself. If you do, Arden Tode’s going to get the credit.”

“Wow. Didn’t think of that. You’re right.”

I hear a voice in the background. “Vijay? Viiiijay!”

“Oh, no,” Vijay says.

“Vijay? Vijay Gupta, are you up there?”

“Gotta go. It’s the Momsoon. And hey, speaking of … where’s yours? She go with you? How’d you get her out of the house?”

“No, she’s not here,” I tell him. “She’s … she’s in a hospital, V.”

“A hospital? What happened? Is she okay?”

“No. It’s a psych ward. Dad took her there.”

“And he took you to Paris,” he says.

“Yeah. Because we get along so well, you know? We just love each other’s company. It’s so great being together in Paris. In the dead of winter. A few more days of all this greatness and I’ll be in a psych ward myself.”

“Viiiijay!”

“I’ll call you back later, Andi, but, hey …”

“What?”

“I was only joking, you know. About the Eiffel Tower and all.”

“I know.”

There’s a silence. I can’t speak. I guess he can’t, either. I’ve been close before. To checking out. I’m getting close again. I know that. And so does he.

“Don’t,” he finally says. “Just don’t.”

I close my eyes and squeeze the phone hard. “I’m trying, V. Really hard,” I tell him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously, you okay?”

“I’m okay. Now go call Kazakhstan.”

I hang up. I’m not okay. Not by a long shot. My hands are shaking. My whole body’s shaking. The heart got to me. I saw it in my dreams all night long. I saw Max, too. He was pacing and stamping and flailing his arms. “Maximilien R. Peters!” he was yelling. “Incorruptible, ineluctable, and indestructible!” Truman was there. Trying to walk by him.

If I could only go back. To Henry Street. On a gray December morning. All I’d need is a minute. Not major time. Not the kind of time it takes to compose a symphony. Build a palace. Fight a war. Just a few crappy seconds. The kind of time it takes to tie a shoe. Peel a banana. Blow your nose. But I haven’t got it. And I never will.

Dad finishes his phone call, too. “G left you some more books on Malherbeau,” he tells me. “On the coffee table.”

I walk across the room to check them out, grateful for a distraction, and find that one of the books contains scores—including a Concerto in B Minor that I’ve never seen before. My croissant’s forgotten. So’s everything else. I put the book down and take the old guitar—the one G let me play last night—out of its case. I start reading the score, fingering the chord progression as I go, trying to see how the notes lie on the strings. Which is hard. Malherbeau must’ve had fingers like a chimp—a chimp on speed—to hit these chords so fast. They’re all over the place. I start to play what I’m seeing, feeling totally blown away by how amazing this eighteenth-century tune sounds on this eighteenth-century instrument.

And then, before I’m even halfway through the first page, Dad says, “Can you stop, please? I’m trying to work.”

“So am I,” I say testily.

He turns around. “You need to start on your thesis, not play your guitar.”

“This is my thesis.” Or more accurately, it
would
be my thesis, if I was still planning on doing one.

He looks skeptical. “Really? What’s your premise?” he says.

“That if there was no Amadé Malherbeau, there would be no Radiohead,” I say, hoping that ends it. But no.

“Why Malherbeau? What was so special about him?” He looks like he’s actually interested in what I’m saying. Which is unusual.

“He broke a lot of rules,” I say. “He refused to write pretty harmonies. Got way into the minor chords. And dissonance. He started playing around with the Diabolus in Musica, and—”

“The what?”

“The Diabolus in Musica. The devil in the music.”

“What the hell is that?”

“So funny, Dad.”

He smiles at his lame joke, then says, “No, really. I’m serious.”

“It’s another name for an augmented fourth,” I say.

“And an augmented fourth is?”

I hesitate before I answer. Because I’m suspicious. This is too weird, this sudden interest in music. He’s up to something.

“It’s a tritone—an interval that stretches across three tones,” I finally say. “It’s used to create dissonance in harmonies.” He looks blank. I think for a minute, then add, “You know when Tony sings ‘Maria’ in
West Side Story?
That’s a tritone. Tritones are in the opening bars of ‘Purple Haze,’ too. And in the theme song to
The Simpsons.
”

“But why is it called the devil in the music?”

“Well, one answer is that tritones can sound off-kilter, a bit sinister. But it’s really more about the tritone creating harmonic tensions in a piece of music—and then leaving that tension unresolved. Kind of like asking a question that can’t be answered.”

“And that makes it devilish?”

“The tritone got that name during the Middle Ages because church authorities didn’t like questions. People who asked too many questions tended to find themselves tied to a stake and set on fire. The church didn’t allow the guys who composed sacred music—which was like, the best gig a musician could get back then—to use tritones.”

I’m into it now. Really blabbering away. Because there’s nothing I love more than a good, freaky tritone. In fact, I’m so into it that I forget my suspicions. Forget my doubts. Forget that I know better.

“So Malherbeau was the first to use them?” he asks.

“No, Dad. Changes in harmony—in the accepted ideas of what harmony should be—began
waaaay
before Malherbeau. Composers started to break away from the old rules during the Renaissance. By the Baroque era, Bach was using tritones—sparingly, yeah, but he was using them. Same with Haydn and later Mozart. Then Beethoven came along and turned the dial up on dissonance. And Malherbeau, who was influenced by Beethoven, turned it up even higher.”

“But Beethoven didn’t play guitar. He played piano.”

“Yeah … so?”

“So how did he influence a guitar player?”

I want to slap my own forehead. “Um, Dad? Guitarists don’t just listen to guitars. They listen to
music
. You can hear Malherbeau’s guitar in Liszt’s piano. You can hear it again, much later, in Debussy and Satie. And then in Messiaen, a nutty French composer who went way off into left field and did all this crazy sh—stuff, like inventing his own instruments and listening to birdsong. You can hear Malherbeau in America, too. In a lot of blues and jazz stylings. John Lee Hooker drew from him. So did Ellington and Miles Davis. A lot of alt bands like Joy Division and the Smiths show his influence.”

“So how would you actually demonstrate the comparisons?” he asks, interrupting me.

“With examples,” I tell him, impatiently. “And then there’s Jonny Greenwood, who’s
totally
Malherbeau’s musical heir. A guitarist who’s pushing boundaries again, just like Malherbeau did, creating something new and gorgeous, and—”

“Hold on. What examples?” Dad asks.

“Bits of music. Phrases from the pieces I’d be referencing. As part of a PowerPoint presentation. Why?”

He crosses his arms over his chest and frowns. “I don’t know, Andi. I think it sounds risky. Tough to pull off. I think at this stage it would be wiser just to do a paper on Malherbeau alone. Discuss his life and work, and then include a bit about his legacy at the end. You need a decent grade on this.”

I feel sucker punched. So that’s what this is all about. He doesn’t give a damn about music or why it matters to me. This is about grades. Everything’s about grades with him.

I know that. I know him. So why did I get my hopes up? Why did I think it would be different this time?

“What are the other kids doing? What format is Vijay using?”

“He’s writing a paper.”

“Look, I really think that—”

“Forget it,” I say, shutting up. And shutting down.

“Forget it? Forget what? Your thesis?” he says, his voice rising. “I’m not going to forget it, Andi. And neither are you. Do you have any idea how important this is? If you don’t complete your thesis, you can’t graduate. If you do complete it, and it’s any good, it might—I stress the word
might
—help offset the classes you failed this semester.”

He talks on, but I’m not listening anymore. I’m wishing. Wishing he could hear music. Wishing he could hear me. Wishing that for just a minute or two, he would close his eyes and listen to Malherbeau’s gorgeous Concerto in A Minor, the
Fireworks
Concerto, and feel what I feel. Feel the sound echoing in the hollows of his bones. Feel his heart find its rhythm in quarters and eighths.

I’m wishing he could hear that bleak metallic sample in Radiohead’s “Idioteque” and recognize the Tristan chord, the one Wagner used at the beginning of
Tristan and Isolde
. He might know that that particular sample came from a Paul Lansky piece, composed for computer, called “mild und leise,” or he might not, but he’d surely recognize that four-note bad-news chord. He’d know that even though the chord’s named for Wagner, Wagner didn’t invent it. He heard it in Malherbeau’s
Fireworks
Concerto and he took it and stretched it out and made it resolve to A instead of D. Then he passed it down to Debussy, who used it in his opera,
Pelléas et Mélisande
. And Debussy passed it down to Berg, who retooled it for his
Lyric Suite
, and Lansky took it from Berg. And Radiohead took it from Lansky and held it out to me.

I’m wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it’s stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.

“Andi? Are you listening? If you can turn it around next semester, get an A on your thesis, and get out of St. Anselm’s with a solid B average, you can get into a decent prep school. Spend a year there pulling up your grades and then maybe I can get you seen at Stanford. The dean of admissions is a good friend of mine.”

“I didn’t know Stanford has a music program,” I say.

He gives me a long, hard look, then says, “St. Anselm’s tested you—”

“Yep. I know all about it.”

“—in kindergarten. And fifth grade. And ninth. You scored in the high one-fifties every time. Genius level. Like Einstein.”

“Or Mozart.”

“You can do anything with your life. Anything you want.”