Nocturne(13)

I did something I have never done in my entire career as an instructor. I shouted at a student, leaning forward over my desk, which had the effect of bringing us nearly face to face. “Miss Marshall, I don’t care if your mother is a harlot selling herself in the street! This isn’t about that. It’s about you and your talent. You are too good for this!”

Her face went slack, reflecting shock at my words. I continued, inching closer to her face until we were almost nose-to-nose. “You have the ability to be one of the premier musicians this school has ever graduated. And yet you waste it. You waste it on your pointless musical experiments. You waste it on your weekends spent … dancing ... and drinking ... when you should be perfecting your craft. You waste it on the time you spend with that boyfriend of yours.”

Her face scrunched up, a mixture of confusion and amusement on her face, and an oddly formed laugh forced itself out. “Who are you talking about? Nathan? Not that it’s any of your business, Mr. Fitzgerald, but Nathan is not my boyfriend.”

We maintained our stance inches from each other’s faces. Inches from each other’s lips. With only my desk separating us.

Not her boyfriend. What was he then? This boy who constantly had his hands on her, this boy who leaned over and whispered in her ear in class, who touched her intimately while dancing, who repeatedly made a fool of himself in my class. I’m not a sociologist, but if he wasn’t her boyfriend, he certainly wished he was. I started to reply, but then clammed up. This wasn’t about that anyway. I took a breath, attempting to calm myself.

Pulling back slightly, I spoke in calm, measured words that belied the tension roiling inside of me. “Miss Marshall, it matters to me not one bit whether or not the boy is your boyfriend. What matters to me is that you accomplish your best possible work.”

“No.” Her voice was low and bitter, if not a bit baiting. “This grade isn’t because the work isn’t good. This is because I disagree with you. You think music is this heartless engineering construct made of nothing but notes and rhythms pasted together by architects. It is not. Music is communication. It’s emotion. It’s passion and love and hate and expression.”

As she continued she leaned even closer to me, anchoring her hands on my desk as her hot breath invaded the space between us.

“Mr. Fitzgerald, music was around long before there were theorists to talk about rules. Music is what makes us alive, and I feel sorry for you for not understanding that. If all you care about is mechanics and theory, then you’re in the wrong field, no matter how talented you may be.”

I recoiled. Since I was sixteen years old, when I won my early admission to the New England Conservatory and a full scholarship, not a single person had ever suggested that I might be choosing the wrong field. That this appallingly arrogant twenty-one-year-old thought she could do such a thing was infuriating.

She stuck out her red polished index finger and poked it on my chest. The same finger I’d instinctively traced with my thumb just last week. “I’m formally appealing this grade. Please reconsider it on its merits, and not your knee jerk emotional reaction to the idea that musicians might feel something. And if you don’t change it, I intend to take it to the Dean.”

With that, she backed up and walked out of my office, leaving a gaping hole of fury in her wake.





Savannah


I tore out of Fitzgerald’s office door in a flurry, breezing past Nathan, who I’d honestly forgotten was waiting for me.

“That … sounded intense.” Nathan followed quickly behind me, stuffing his hands in his coat pockets as we neared the exit.

“You think?” I was still breathless from my face-to-face showdown. “Damn, he’s a prick. Did you hear what he said? He had the audacity to say that his treatment of me has nothing to do with my mother.”

Nathan shrugged and placed his hand on the exit door. “Maybe it doesn’t, Savannah. You know how Fitzgerald is. And, he didn’t even know who she was until a few weeks ago. He was on your case long before that.” His tone fell flat as he spoke.

“Whatever.” I pushed past him and out into the unseasonably warm late-March air. I was still worked up from my first-ever shouting match with a teacher, and I didn’t bother to put on my coat. Looking back, I saw Nathan lagging a few steps behind, looking at the ground. “What?” I stopped, waiting for him to catch up.

“He thought I was your boyfriend?” Nathan gave a slight nervous chuckle and brought his eyes to mine.

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “No kidding, right?”

He shrugged, looking just past my shoulder for a second. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh come on!” I rolled my eyes. “Gregory Fitzgerald is so damn out of touch with reality that he can’t even decipher your sexual orientation? You don’t find that the least bit humorous?”

Nathan’s face paled for a split second before his nostrils flared and he pointed his eyes damn near through me. “ Wait, you think I’m gay? I’m not gay, Savannah.”

I jumped as he shouted the end of his sentence.

Looking around the vacant sidewalk, I was knocked dizzy by his words. “Wait. Wait. What? Nathan. Wait.” I was out of breath, my cheeks heating and feeling dizzier still. “Aren’t you?”

“No!” He took a step back, running both hands through his hair before turning to the right and storming off.

What the hell?

“Nathan, wait!” I ran, nearly falling on the still-slick sidewalk before I caught up to him. I grabbed the fabric of his coat and pulled as hard as I could until he was forced to stop and turn to face me. I almost wish he hadn’t. There were actual tears in his eyes. “What do you mean no?”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Savannah? We’ve been friends for ten years!” He couldn’t even look me in the eye.

“Yes, I know!” I shouted, matching his volume. “And in ten years I never saw you date anyone—”

“We only saw each other during the summers at camp!”

“Stop yelling!” I took a breath and felt tears rising in my own eyes. In a much softer voice, I continued, my mind racing a thousand miles a minute. “You never once talked about any girls, not even when we talked during the school year.”

“I never mentioned any other girls, Savannah.”

“And that time at camp when I was fifteen, when you punched Jared Reese after he grabbed my boobs?” I felt anger at the slimy little saxophonist all over again.

“What’d you think that was?” he asked condescendingly.

My eyes bugged out. “Uh, sticking the fuck up for me, not you being pissed that someone else copped a feel!”

I felt bile rising through my chest and my face flushed.

Nathan grabbed my shoulders as I staggered back a step. “What? Are you okay? You look pale.”

“I’ve told you everything, Nathan. Everything. Oh my god.” My knees gave out and I collapsed, cross-legged in the snow-covered grass. Squeezing my eyes shut, I placed my head in my hands.

“What?” Nathan sounded irritated as he stood in front of me. “Get up, Savannah, you’re going to get soaking wet.”

“We hold hands, you kiss my head, I kiss yours … we dance…” I breathed for a few more seconds until I felt Nathan sit next to me. Looking over, I found his knees bent, arms resting on them as he looked ahead.

“I’m sorry…” He shook his head and looked at me from the corner of his eye.

“You’re sorry? For not being gay? Wait. I’m confused. Why the hell didn’t you ever tell me you weren’t gay?”

Nathan scoffed. “I didn’t realize it was an issue.”

“You never talked about any girls, Nathan.”

And then he said it again, the words that made me feel like I’d been punched in the gut. “No. I never talked about any other girls, Savannah.”

Looking over at him, I found Nathan pinching the bridge of his nose. “What are you talking about?” My voice was barely a whisper.

When he finally opened his eyes to look at me, he didn’t say anything as he stared at me, apparently waiting for something to sink in.

It did.

I squeezed my eyebrows together, certain I was misinterpreting.

Nathan shrugged and cocked his head to the side as he took a deep breath.

All of my dizziness and guilt I felt for assuming my friend was gay for the last ten years was instantly replaced by anger.

“You’re a bastard,” I hissed as I stood up. Brushing snow from my jeans, I took off in the direction of my dorm.

“Excuse me?” Nathan shouted as he ran after me, catching up to me. “You’ve spent the last decade thinking I’m gay and I’m a bastard?”

“Jesus Christ, I’ve told you everything! You knew about my first kiss, when I got my fucking period, and … fuck! I told you about when I lost my virginity to that jackass of a trumpet player during our last summer at camp together! This whole time you liked me, or whatever, and you just let me spill my guts to you over and over again?” My mind played over every secret I’d told him, every tear I cried on his shoulder over every boy that had broken my heart.

“We’re friends, Savannah, that’s what friends do.”