Music From Standing Waves (9 page)

I swallowed hard. Justin put his hands on my
knees and knelt in front of me.

“So maybe you’ll leave in a couple of years,”
he said, his voice gentle again. “But you’re here now, Abby. Can’t
you just deal with that? I’m here too you know.” He leant his
forehead against mine. His breath was warm against my cheek, his
smell hot and musky. He slid his hand under my ponytail and pulled
me closer to him. I shook my head suddenly and pulled away.

“No,” I spluttered. “I can’t just deal with
it. I’m going to the city. You’re not going to make me forget about
that.”

Justin exhaled loudly. “I’m not asking you to
forget about anything!” He stood up. “I can’t handle this messed up
obsession of yours any more, Abby!” He started to walk away,
leaving me curled up alone on the road. “Let me know when you’ve
got a real fucking life.”

I saw every day of my life in Acacia Beach
before I had even lived it. Every day was summer and the town
seemed to warp in the heat and close in on itself, becoming smaller
and smaller as the months trickled away. Sometimes I would pass
Justin in the street, or in the hallway at school and we’d be
strangers. Then our eyes would catch for a second and I could see
his thoughts laid out; thoughts that I was wasting my life on a
fantasy he was no longer a part of.

My only freedom was my jam sessions with
Andrew, when we stayed in the basement for hours, refining our
pieces as though music was the only thing in the world that
mattered. Then I would rifle through his piano albums and demand he
play for me. Sparkling Mozart sonatas, haunting Messiaen, dizzying
Bartok. I insisted on the performances partly because it was my
only chance to witness live music and partly to keep Andrew’s
talent intact. I was painfully aware of how easily it could
disappear on a diet of teaching students who pretended they’d
practised, and girls who deliberately played with flat hands in the
hope that he’d lift and curl them on the keys.

“I hate the amount of time you’re spending
with him,” Sarah would say each time I crept home through the dark
maze of caravans. “He puts bad ideas in your head.”

“Like what? Leaving this place? Doing more
with my life than scrubbing camp ground toilets?” I never let her
reply, disappearing upstairs and falling asleep to my Dvorak
concerto.

“So Abs,” said Andrew one night as we walked
up from the basement. “I’m driving down to Brisbane this weekend to
hear a friend play bassoon with the state orchestra. Wanna come?
They’re playing that Dvorak concerto you love.”

“Are you serious? I’d love to!”

“Great. I’m driving down Friday and staying
with my brother in the city. You’re more than welcome.”

“You’re going all that way for a
concert?”

“Sure. It’s my friend’s debut. Besides, I’m
picking up someone from uni on the way that I haven’t seen for
ages.”

Hayley looked up from the kitchen table where
she was cutting up a bowl of spaghetti for Oliver. “Ex-girlfriend,”
she mouthed.

“Is that why you’re not going?” I asked.

She laughed. “No! I’m not going cos of this
one.” She ran her hand through Oliver’s wavy hair. “Besides, it’s
not really my thing. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it much more than I
would.”

“So are you going to do the deb ball this
year?” asked Andrew as we drove down the highway. Every few years,
Acacia Beach became a mess of champagne and chicken as the high
school kids celebrated their adulthood with copious amounts of
underage drinking.

“As much as I’d like to avoid it,” I said. “I
think if I tried, Rachel would actually kill me. She’s been drawing
pictures of her ideal dress for the last six months.”

Andrew laughed. “That feral red-haired kid
has volunteered to play piano for the presentations. I’m having a
great time trying to beat some musicality into him.”

“That guy plays piano?”

“Well, if you use the term
playing
loosely…”

I laughed. “Aren’t you supposed to support
your students?”

Andrew flicked the radio dial as an
irritating ad for roof tiles came on. “I do support them. Some are
just so unmusical there’s nothing I can do. Anyway, that kid’s a
massive nob. I spend half his lessons reminding him which one’s his
right hand.”

I smiled. “Oh yeah? And what are you saying
about me when I’m not around?”

“You know what I think about you, Abs.” He
wound up his window. “Hey did you ever find out who gave you that
violin?”

“It was probably my dad. When I asked him, he
said he didn’t do it, but I figure that’s just because he was
scared of what my mum would say.”

“That was really nice of him.”

“Yeah. Now if I could only get him to sign my
audition form…” I sighed. At seventeen, I had all but given up on
my parents. In just a year I could cut myself loose from them. Fly
away and never come back.

“Have you got your learner’s yet?” asked
Andrew.

“I’m still getting around to it.”

“Lazy thing. I was going to let you drive my
car.”

“Sure you were.”

“I was!”

I crossed my legs. “I bet my mum would love
that.”

Andrew smiled to himself. “Yeah well, your
mum already hates my guts, so I figured-”

“She doesn’t hate you,” I said.

“Yes she does.”

I sighed. “She hates everyone. It’s not
personal.” I knew it was. I knew Andrew knew it was too.

I had told my mother I was going on a school
trip. “It’s very educational,” I said. “We’re going to study the
historical buildings in Brisbane.”

I hoped Sarah would be too caught up in the
trials of the caravan park to wonder why I was the only person from
school who was going.

We picked up Andrew’s friend Lily in
Townsville. She had long black dreadlocks tied back with a woven
scarf and matching silver pins through her nose and eyebrow. Her
dress was made from a tie-dyed petticoat with ribbons sewn along
the hem. I thought she would probably like Michelle’s wheat-grass
malarky.

Andrew and Lily talked about uni and laughed
a lot.

“Hey Lil, remember that party when you puked
in some guy’s hiking boot?”

“What about that choir concert we all turned
up to tanked?”

Lily’s laugh was high-pitched and made her
breathe the way my great-uncle had before he had died of emphysema.
At the end of each fit of hysteria, she let out a long sigh and
brushed Andrew’s arm. She looked over her shoulder at me.

“Sorry,” she giggled. “Don’t mean to leave
you out. You’ll have some good stories too if you go to uni.” She
flashed a mouthful of white teeth, which I decided looked too big
for her face.

Andrew slept in the back so he could drive
through the night and I sat in the front beside Lily. We drove for
a while in a silence I barely noticed; my attention with the
changing landscape as we snaked down the coast. Sugar fields and
paddocks became knitted grey green bush. Gum trees made twisted
silhouettes as the sun sunk into a pink sky. Lily flicked on the
headlights and a giant bug exploded on the windscreen. Finally, she
said:

“Pass me my water bottle, mate.”

I unscrewed the lid and handed it to her.

She took a mouthful. “Can’t wait to get back
to the city.”

“I’ve never been,” I told her, then wished I
hadn’t. She raised her eyebrows and the silver pin flickered like
an electric spark.

“You’re kidding. You spent your whole life in
that little hell hole?”

I got suddenly defensive, without having the
faintest idea why. I had always been the biggest advocate of Acacia
Beach’s hell hole-ish qualities. Thrived on gossip, smelled like
fish, etcetera, etcetera.

“It’s not that bad,” I said. “We have a nice
beach. Snorkelling and stuff… you know…”

“Great.” I couldn’t tell if she was being
sarcastic or if it was just her usual bedside manner.

“Andrew likes it,” I said. “He chose to be
there.”

Lily snorted. “Yeah well Andrew stopped
thinking with his head some time ago.” She took another sip out of
the bottle, then held it back to me to put the lid on.

“So you’re a muso?” she asked.

I wanted to say yes, but wasn’t sure if I
qualified. “Kind of.”

“What do you play?”

“Violin.”

“Oh,” said Lily. “I didn’t know Andrew taught
violin.”

“What about you?” I asked curiously.

“Flute.” Lily seemed to fit better at the
front of some grunge band than playing the flute at a
conservatorium. She turned to me. “So you serious about your
music?”

“I want to go and study in the city,” I said.
“Andrew says I’m good enough to get into the Conservatorium.”

Lily smiled wryly. “It’s a bitch you know;
the Con.”

I frowned. “Why?”

She rested one arm on the door and steered
the car with two fingers. “All that studying puts things into
perspective. Makes you realise how impossible it is to actually get
anywhere in the music industry. And how many wankers there are
waiting to shut you down if you do.”

I looked out the window, picking edgily at
the seam of my jeans. “Your friend got into the orchestra,” I said
finally.

Lily smiled to herself. “And that’s such a
rare occasion that we’re driving for twenty-four hours to go and
bloody see it.”

When I woke up the next morning, the sun was
low in the sky and the inside of the car was pleasantly cold. I
pulled my jacket over my shoulders and looked out the window.
Houses began to sprout amongst the brown paddocks as we passed
through the outskirts of Rockhampton. A sign directing us to
Brisbane rushed past the window before the endless paddocks
returned. I stretched my legs across the back seat and closed my
eyes again, listening to Andrew and Lily chatting quietly.

“How’s the little one?”

“Good. He’s four now.”

“I still can’t believe you’re wasting your
twenties changing nappies. What happened to travelling the world?
Doing your masters in Austria? You would have gotten in to Salzburg
for sure.”

“Yeah well…” said Andrew.

Lily laughed a little. “Remember how we were
going to go to Europe after uni and make every decision by tossing
a coin?”

“There’s time for that.”

“Yeah right. Ever wish he hadn’t
happened?”

“Not a day.”

I was glad. Lily’s water bottle crackled.

“Do you ever wonder how things would have
turned out if we hadn’t gone to that shanty town for graduation?”
she asked.

Andrew paused. “Sometimes,” he admitted.

“Me too,” said Lily. “You might be playing
gigs in a real town. We might be in Paris together. Imagine
that.”

“Lil…”

After a while, she spoke up again. “You can’t
really be happy there. You’re just wasting your talent. Don’t you
want to be back in the real world?”

I was scared Andrew might leave me for the
real world. I was relieved when he said:

“I’m staying where I am.”

“But only cos you feel like you have to now.
You’re not really happy there…”

“Lil… Abby doesn’t need to hear all
this.”

“She’s asleep. Is that why you brought her
along? So you had an excuse to not talk to me about things?”

“No,” said Andrew. “If I wanted to do that I
would have brought Hayley.”

“Hayley, Hayley…”

I was glad when it was Lily’s turn to sleep
in the back seat.

“So
are
you happy in Acacia Beach?” I
pushed, hoping I would have more luck than Lily in extracting an
answer.

“I knew you were awake.” Andrew felt around
in the glove box for his sunglasses. “Yes Abby, I’m very
happy.”

“What about your music? Are you happy even
though you hardly get to play any more?”

Andrew didn’t take his eyes off the road.
“Things change, Abs. Priorities change.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Depends.”

I wound my ponytail around my finger. “I
think Lily’s still in love with you,” I said boldly.

Andrew smiled in amusement. “No she’s not.
She’s just angry.”

“About what?” I asked. “Did you ditch her for
Hayley?”

“No. Well… Kind of… You ask a lot of
questions.”

“I’m just learning the ways of the
world.”

Andrew laughed. “Shut up and look out the
window.”

Coming from a town with one supermarket, one
pub and a servo on the edge of the highway we pretended belonged to
us, Brisbane was a heaving, smoky beast I was afraid would swallow
me whole. I was too nervous to walk more than three paces behind
Andrew as we climbed off the train in the city centre, stepping on
his heels until he turned and said:

“Hey Abs, how about a little personal
space?”

Andrew and Lily marched across main roads,
down alleys and over bridges towards the concert hall, without so
much as pausing to check a street sign.

“Where are we?” I kept asking. “Do you know
where you’re going?”

Andrew laughed. “Of course I do. I grew up
here.”

I decided I’d probably die if I ever went to
New York.

And then, Dvorak. Few things have had more of
an effect on my life than hearing my concerto performed live. I
floated out of the concert hall like I was whacked up on LSD,
tripping more than once into an old lady with a faded blue rinse.
Andrew grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the foyer.

“The Dvorak was so brilliant,” I babbled.
Lily reached into her purse and produced the cigarette she had been
rolling during the concert. She slid it delicately between her
teeth and flicked her silver lighter. I danced down the wide stone
walkway, replaying every bar of the performance in my head.

“I want to be a performer,” I told them
excitedly. “I have absolutely no doubt.” Lily’s cynicism had been
lost two bars into the violin concerto. “I’m going to do a national
tour first and play in all the capital cities, then I’ll go to
Europe. Then maybe America.” I hopped in zigzags over the
paving.