Fourteen
“Have you finished your School of Mines application yet?” Dad asks.
Aunt Liz is over for dinner, and everyone is sitting around the table, stabbing at Tater Tot hot dish with their forks. Great timing, Dad.
I nod and take a bite to avoid having to say anything.
“Good.”
Garrett scrutinizes me, head tilted to the side. It was easy to tell him about Burton-Clark when we were by the lake. Out there, it was a different world, one where I could forget about the break-in and our business’s finances and the near impossibility of me affording tuition.
But Garrett’s gaze makes me feel like a coward. He asserts himself with confidence and doesn’t let people walk over him. I place my fork on my plate and swallow. “I’ve also been thinking about applying to this conservatory that seems cool.”
Aunt Liz’s face lights up. “A conservatory!”
I look at her instead of Dad. “Yeah, they have a great composition program—”
“Composition?” Dad interrupts.
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do with a degree in music composition?”
“I dunno, I’d probably … compose music.”
Dad’s face darkens.
Aunt Liz tries to smooth things over. “Tell us more.”
“It’s pretty selective, but a lot of the best film composers went there. And it’s small—”
“Small, as in private?” Dad growls.
“Yeah.”
“And how do you think you’re going to pay for it?
” he asks, and I can tell we’re both thinking about the missing cash register.
I’m sure he blames me for not noticing that someone was robbing us blind, for not doing something about it, like Garrett did.
And now I have the balls to bring up a school we can’t afford when Dad is working his ass off to keep our shop from going bankrupt.
“Scholarships and financial aid and—”
“Financial aid is code for student loans,” he says. “So after you graduate and end up working at a coffee shop because your degree is useless, you’ll be buried under a mountain of debt you can never crawl out of.”
The table has gone quiet.
“Composers make money,” I argue, trying to keep my voice even. “And not just the ones who do major films. There’s lots of work in the video game industry and television.”
Dad takes a deep breath. “Enzo, you have to understand that there’s a difference between hobbies and professions. Plenty of people would love to paint pictures for a living, but almost none of them can actually support themselves at it. Only the ones with real talent make it as full-time artists.”
I feel anger boiling in my chest at his patronizing tone, anger at the way his comment belittles not just me but also Aunt Liz, who has been trying to get her own art career off the ground for years.
“I am talented,” I say, and the sentence sounds strange to me because of how much time I’ve spent minimizing myself. “Do you have any idea how hard I work at this? This isn’t just a hobby!”
“If it doesn’t pay the bills, it’s a hobby,” Dad says.
“Joe—” Aunt Liz starts, but he cuts her off, his voice raised.
“He’s a kid, Liz. I’m his parent. I have to make sure he doesn’t make stupid mistakes like spending a couple hundred thousand dollars to go to a school in … Where did you say this place is?”
“Los Angeles.”
Something like a roar erupts from the back of his throat. “Los Angeles! Are you so desperate to get away from us that you want to move to the other side of the country?”
I feel heat rushing to my cheeks. “Maybe I am! Maybe I’m desperate to actually do something with my life!” The room is still, so still, like everyone is watching a glass teetering on the edge of the table, waiting for it to fall and shatter.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t want to be stuck in this fucking town running an antique shop for the rest of my life! Maybe I don’t want to have to worry about not being able to support my family because I forgot to bring five thousand dollars to the bank!”
The air is sucked out of the room. Dad looks at me like he doesn’t recognize the person sitting across from him.
Aunt Liz looks at Dad. Emma and Garrett look at their plates.
The problem with a family as close as ours is that you know exactly what will hurt someone the most, and once you say it, you can’t take it back.
When Dad speaks, his voice is soft. “I’m sorry you feel stuck here, Enzo. I hope your new life in Los Angeles is better than the one I’ve been able to give you.”
He slides his chair back, stands up, and leaves the room.
Dad and I avoid each other for the next few days, speaking in clipped sentences only when necessary. I’m too ashamed to look at him, ashamed by what I said, ashamed at how foolish I seemed in my belief that I could attend college in L.A., like a child asking for a pony for Christmas.
The weather stays gray and cold, and then it’s the deer season opener.
Every year, Dad closes the shop for a couple of days and heads to deer camp with his friends.
Emma and I are invited, but neither of us has any interest in sitting in a deer blind for ten hours a day, freezing our asses off, in the hope of ending the life of a woodland creature.
So instead, we spend the weekend at Aunt Liz’s place, working our way through a bottomless pot of risotto and watching cheesy rom-coms.
On the morning of the opener, Emma and I sit at the kitchen island with our bowls of cereal.
I avoid eye contact with Dad as he carries gear out the back door to his truck.
Then Garrett walks in, one of Dad’s rifle cases hefted over his shoulder, wearing a too-large camo jacket and a bright orange vest.
My eyebrows shoot up. “You’re going?”
“You’re surprised a city kid would go hunting?”
I swallow a mouthful of Cheerios. “No. I’m surprised you’d want to spend four days in the woods with a bunch of middle-aged men.”
“We’ll find something to talk about,” he says.
Of course they will. I picture Garrett effortlessly picking up the inside jokes and banter Dad shares with his friends.
“Plus,” he continues, “I feel like I’d be missing a major part of the exchange experience if I didn’t do this, since it’s such a big deal and everything.”
Emma looks up at me from the book she’s reading. “Are you going to apologize to Dad before he leaves?”
“Why would I apologize?”
“One of you has to.”
Garrett squeezes my shoulder. “I’m on Team Enzo.” It’s the first time he’s touched me since that Friday night he doesn’t seem to remember, and the brief, solid warmth from his hand spreads through my body.
Then the back door opens and Dad steps in.
He’s been letting his beard grow out for the last couple of weeks, and he looks particularly gruff and unfazable, like nothing I could say or do would affect him.
He steps over and gives Emma a side hug on her stool.
His eyes flit to me and I receive the smallest of nods, and then he and Garrett walk out the door.
I hear his truck engine start, and they’re off.
“So,” Aunt Liz says, snuggling in next to me on the couch and placing a bowl of popcorn on my lap. “You’re going to be a composer?”
Her living room is warm and cozy, with her own art decorating the walls.
The Holiday plays on the TV, and Emma has fallen asleep, curled and catlike, in the big armchair in the corner.
What makes this movie fantastic is the way Hans Zimmer balances his poignant, lilting piano and string melodies with upbeat themes that echo Hollywood’s golden age.
It’s pure rom-com soundtrack genius, which fits because Jack Black plays a film composer in Los Angeles.
“I haven’t applied yet. It was just an idea.”
“Still, it’s exciting.” She carefully watches my face for a reaction.
I pretend to pay attention to the movie.
“You are going to apply, right?”
I shrug.
She reaches for the remote and pauses on an unflattering shot of Kate Winslet laughing, which is good because the soundtrack was about to slide into an oboe solo that I don’t want to miss. “Is it because of what your dad said?”
I nod, unable to tell her that it’s also because of what I said.
“It’s not that he thinks you aren’t talented or won’t be successful—”
I raise my eyebrows at her.
She reaches out and places her hand on my cheek, and turns my face so that I’m looking at her directly. “Enzo. Your dad believes in you more than anything in the world.”
“Then why is it so hard for him to imagine me getting into this school?”
“That’s the point. He knows you’ll get in. And that’s what scares him.” She shakes her head in exasperation at the confused look on my face. “God, sometimes I think the two of you need a translator. Enz, he’s scared of losing you.”
“Losing me?”
“He’s never lived anywhere but this town. He’s watched as his friends’ kids have grown up and gone away to college, and how they’ve never come back. The thought of that happening with you terrifies him.” The edges of Aunt Liz’s eyes crinkle with sadness. “I mean, think of your mom.”
I swallow. She never brings up my mom.
“You came back,” I argue, thinking about how she went to a college out east to get her art degree.
She sighs. “Yes. But not right away. I was gone for years.”
What she doesn’t say is that she moved back only because she didn’t want Dad to raise two young kids on his own.
She’s not mentioning the career she gave up when she returned.
While Aunt Liz does have an art workshop in her garage and teaches classes at the Arts Guild, most of her time is spent waiting tables at Cheeky’s Bar and Grill and picking up shifts at our shop.
You can’t make it as an artist in this town.
“I could come back,” I say.
She looks at me long and hard. “You’re going to get a music composition degree from a prestigious conservatory and then move back here, and … do what?”
She’s right. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair that Irontown’s biggest export is its young people. It’s not fair that kids who grow up near cities don’t have to make the choice between being near their family and being near career opportunities.