My dad was a violinist. He was born into a musical family, and went to Julliard for college. After that, he was the first violin for the Cleveland Orchestra. He met my mother soon after he joined the orchestra, and his good looks and charm wooed my her. They got married, and two years later, I entered this world.
His dream was to play a solo at Carnegie Hall. When I was little, he would tell me about how we were going to go see someone play there one day.
Never happened. My father died from pancreatic cancer when I was ten.
He taught me how to play the violin, but I haven’t played it since he died. Honestly, I don’t even want to think about my old violin, stored in the attic in some dusty boxes. Too hard. Too painful.
* * * * * * * * * * *
My nightmarish day dream arouses me from my stream of thoughts. I consciously look back at mom, who is picking out onions, lettuce, and tomatoes in her salad. She looks tired, the gray bags under her eyes clearly apparent. I always wonder why she never bothers to date? She’s not ugly, in fact, she’s prettier than most of the forty year olds I see around town.
When I bring up dad, she just blinks, and her mouth twitches a little. I’ve never seen my mother cry about anything. As a little girl, I thought of her as some indestructible robot that wouldn’t let anything get to her. She could penetrate sadness off her just like that. She wasn’t a real person to me until I was about eight. That’s when I saw my parents having a fight.
They rarely fought. My father was in bed, a bucket next to his side. He had called in sick to the concert he was supposed to perform at, and was watching The Tonight Show.
My mother was pacing around the room, a manila envelope and white forms in her head.
“This is crazy, Will. How can the insurance company not pay for the radiation treatments?”
“You know as much about insurance companies as I do. They want to get the bang out of their buck. That’s why they want us to pay for most of…”
Mom interrupts. “They know we can’t afford this. How can they expect us to pay twenty-five thousand dollars a week? Aren’t these companies supposed to know all about our financial needs.”
“Well if I wasn’t sick, we wouldn’t have to worry about all this crap, would we? But no, Marcia. These treatments happen to be the only things keeping me alive right now.”
My mother stops her pacing. She is perfectly still for a second, her feet firmly planted into the carpet.
I remember watching right behind my parents’ bathroom door. I was utterly surprised by the emotion that passed over mom’s face at that moment. Was she afraid? Couldn’t be. She would never be able to feel that.
Then as soon as that happened, Mom moves her head and looks at my father. She then goes into the bathroom connected to their bedroom and shuts the door. The lock clicks.
That was when my eight year old self knew it wasn’t good to watch anymore.
* * * * * * * * * * *
My mother has separated the onions, lettuce, and tomatoes from her croutons, peppers, and chickpeas in her salad bowl. Sometimes I think she counts how many of each she has in these little groups. That’s my mother for you, always trying to be logical.
I have eaten more of my soup than the salad, but I haven’t made a dent in either. I don’t usually eat all my food; I have a tendency to not finish things. My food usually ends up in little piles on my plate. Mom doesn’t care, she ends up throwing all the leftovers in the garbage anyway.
I pick out a couple pieces of lettuce and crush them in my mouth.
Crunch………..crunch……….crunch.
My fork is now covered in Italian dressing. I examine it, like any professional scientist working in a lab would do. The gooey mixture covers the first two prongs, while the other prongs remain unaffected.
As if I just teleported into another world, I’m suddenly a Nobel Prize winning chemist. With safety glasses perched on the tip of my nose, I lean down to examine a cross section of the fork that had been placed under a microscope. My lab coated assistants surround me, hoping to look at my new discovery.
I look at the tiny, little Italian dressing cells. Each one floats around on the slide, so it’s hard to fully concentrate on one particular cell. I have the lenses on low power.
Nothing seems peculiar so far.
I fiddle with the microscope’s knobs, and change the lenses to high power. I turn the fine adjustment knob even more until something odd appears.
Dark green particles are floating around one of the magnified cells.
Like any good scientist would do, I yell, “Eureka!” My assistants lean even closer towards me, trying to get a better look.
Before they even get a chance, I remove the slide from lens view and turn around. A large grin appears on my face. I am alpha in the laboratory, therefore, I know they’ll follow my rules and regulations.
In a slightly more confident voice than my own, I speak over the hoards of fellow onlookers.
“My hypothesis was correct. Not only has the dressing industry been feeding us infected food for the past few months, but this sample is filled with e coli. We can now sue.”
My colleagues jump up and down, hug me, and applaud. I have done it! Most likely, another Nobel Prize for me!
Ha-ha Albert Einstein! My new discovery totally just beat e=mc2!
The laboratory scene quickly fades back into our red dining room. The slide with contaminated Italian dressing turns back to a fork covered in perfectly fine Italian dressing. I turn back into the goody-two-shoes nobody no one cares about.
I look back at my salad bowl and realize I need a break from dreaming. I ask my mother if I can be excused.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
It’s around seven thirty, and the sun is starting to set behind the houses that live on the hills in our development. I hurry to the back deck and slip on some black flip-flops I had gotten over the summer. I open the deck door and quickly scamper down the steps.
Our backyard isn’t all that big. It’s maybe only an acre, and is surrounded by a five foot tall fence that had been built by the developers when we first moved in. There’s a small fire pit in the middle and a trampoline on the left side. My favorite feature of the yard is the swing my dad built when I was seven. It hangs from one of the sturdy branches of the oak tree right next to the fire pit.
I gallop towards the swing. When I sit down, I grab the rope holding me and feel like everything’s right with the world. I push against the grass and fly into the air.
Air pushes my hair back, and an exhilarating feeling washes over me. I start pumping my legs, and even more air rushes past me. After a minute or so, I’m up by the trees. It’s easy to touch the leaves. The jagged, green edges rustle in the wind.
Being up in my swing is the only place where I don’t dream. I don’t know why, but when I’m soaring through the sky, dreams never come to me. Must be because I already have my head in the clouds.
