Chapter 17 Marigold
Marigold
We run out of Hanukkah candles on the third night.
“I have to go out,” I inform Jamie, who has been hunched over the piano for the past four hours, playing and replaying the same twelve measures as if they aren’t already perfect. “Gotta get more candles for tomorrow night.”
“I’m coming with you,” Jamie says almost immediately, straightening upright like he’s been waiting for an excuse. “I need a break. My back hurts.”
“Okay, but it’s a trek. We have to go like fifteen blocks.”
“I thought you New Yorkers considered anything less than twenty to be a light stroll,” he quips, and breezes past me to shove his feet in his boots and grab his coat.
It had started snowing this morning, and it’s still coming down with a vengeance by the time we step outside, although it’s less a blizzard now and more of a flurry.
Still enough for me to be glad I brought a coat with a hood so I can tuck my hair down the back and keep it from getting soaking wet; my beanie is totally insufficient in this weather.
“How does it feel colder here than it does in Iowa?” Jamie asks, burrowing his face down into the collar of his coat. “During the polar vortex a few years ago, we got down to minus-forty windchill. Is it just because it’s so humid here? With the being an island thing and all?”
“I think that’s in your head, because it definitely does not feel like minus-forty degrees.”
“I mean, yeah, but it feels colder than…what is it right now? Twenty-five? I swear I can feel my bone marrow frosting over.”
I shrug and say, “Cull the weak.”
Zabar’s has candles in stock—and sufganiyot, which I take great pleasure in introducing to Jamie, because everyone needs a little more jelly-filled donut in their lives.
“Wait, so you eat these every Hanukkah?” he asks, mouth full of powdered sugar. “I thought the whole thing was, like, candles and latkes and chocolate coins.”
“Dreidels are for kids,” I inform him. “Grown-ups get donuts. Lots of donuts. And anything else fried in oil, for that matter. Like fish and chips, which I must say is my personal favorite.”
“Mmm. Fish and chips. Now I’m hungry.”
“You are literally eating a donut as we speak.”
“I could eat more. Five or six more.”
I laugh, and he reaches over to interlace his fingers with mine. Even through our gloves, I imagine I can feel the heat of his skin, and I tilt in a little closer, bumping our shoulders together as we walk.
We’re almost to Lincoln Center when we spot her: Xinyan and a couple of other students I don’t recognize, all trotting toward the park with what look to be cafeteria trays tucked under their arms.
Jamie spots them the same time I do. “Hey, Xinyan!” he calls, and she turns toward the sound of his voice.
“Well, look who it is,” she says, grabbing the elbow of one of her friends to make sure she isn’t left behind. “The prodigy himself. And herself,” she adds with a nod toward me.
“What the hell are you guys doing with those?” Jamie says, gesturing toward what are indeed cafeteria trays.
“Sledding,” Xinyan says promptly. “Wanna come?”
Jamie glances toward me, and I shrug. “Sure. We could both use a break from practicing, right, Jamie?”
We’re still holding hands, a fact I realize only when Xinyan’s gaze flits however briefly down to where our fingers are inter-clasped. But she doesn’t say anything, and Jamie doesn’t let go.
There are some small hills here on the west side of Central Park, and that’s where Xinyan leads us.
One of her friends hoots and tosses the tray on the ground and throws himself after it, sliding down the hill on his stomach.
I instantly imagine him hitting a rock or something and flipping over the front of the tray headfirst and breaking his neck, which probably means I’m getting old.
I make sure to go last, after watching everyone else make it down safe and alive—including Jamie, who recklessly chooses to do it standing up like he’s on a surfboard, both arms held abreast like wings, wavering in an attempt to balance.
He makes it about three quarters of the way before tumbling off, stumbling into the snow and laughing.
“I suppose if you break your arm, that makes it easier for me to win,” I say when he makes it—breathless—back to my side.
“Hey, it’s your turn now. If you dare.”
I snatch the tray out of his hands and sit on it—feet facing downhill, obviously, because I’m not a testosterone-fueled idiot—and push off.
It’s not as fast-moving as I’d expected.
A little underwhelming, actually…at least until the last ten feet, when my tray hits something hard under the snow and bounces the rest of the way down, ripping a shriek from my throat.
Jamie and Xinyan are laughing at me from the top of the hill. “You have to get a running start,” Jamie informs me once I get back to the top.
“And go down headfirst? I don’t have a death wish, unlike you.”
“I can push you, then,” he offers.
“Oh, you’d love to push me down a hill,” I say, giving him a suspicious look. “But yeah. Sure. Why not?”
I plop back down on the tray and glance over at him.
“Ready?” he asks.
“As I’ll ever be.”
He braces both hands against my shoulder blades and shoves me off.
He’s right; with the extra assist, I move a lot faster, the crisp winter wind nipping at my cheeks as I speed down the slope.
The tray comes to a stop before I do, and I tumble off at the bottom, lurched onto my knees.
The snow’s soft, at least, and with adrenaline still surging through my veins, I find myself laughing.
“See?” Xinyan calls from up top. “Not so bad, is it?”
“Yeah, okay, I’m a convert.”
We take turns going down, since there are only three trays between us. The guys are particularly rowdy, like they’re in a weird competition to see who can be the most foolhardy.
“Honestly, it’s amazing that men survive to age twenty-five,” I tell Xinyan, watching one of her friends try to go down the hill standing on the tray backward.
“Jury’s still out on these particular men,” she says.
“True.”
I bundle my hands deeper into my coat; it’s gotten colder as the night deepens. I’m starting to get what Jamie meant when he talked about the way the chill seeps into your bones here. “So, are you feeling ready? For Stockholm, that is.”
Xinyan visibly shudders. “Honestly? I’m trying to pretend it isn’t happening. Every time I imagine being on that stage, I want to throw up.”
“I can relate. My flight is in four days. And I know I haven’t practiced nearly enough. I’m still making elementary mistakes on my Schumann piece.”
“I’ll tell you what my teacher told me,” Xinyan says.
“At this point, practicing more isn’t going to make a difference.
It’s all the work you’ve done up to now, accumulated, that will drive how you perform next week.
He actually told me that I should take a few days off before prelims just to let my mind reset, so the pieces don’t feel so rote. ”
“That makes sense. Easier said than done, though. Like…even if he’s right, I don’t know if I could actually stop practicing from now until prelims. I think I’d drive myself crazy with the what-ifs.”
“I get it. I’m the same way. He might be right, but if I do that and then underperform…
I’ll blame myself for not practicing hard enough.
Maybe it’s better to fail and then be able to tell myself, well, I tried as hard as I could.
I practiced as much as I could. So maybe everyone else was just better than me. ”
Honestly…yeah, that’s about where I’m at, as well. As much as I like the idea of switching off my brain and letting muscle memory take over, I don’t trust my body anymore. I need to be sure my limbs won’t give up on me day-of. And if they do, I need to know how I’m going to accommodate that.
I’m not Xinyan, who can even consider it. And I’m definitely not her able-bodied instructor with his easy confidence.
I have to find my own way through this.
“C’mon, Marigold—let’s go down together,” Jamie says, hooking his arm through mine once he gets back up to the top after a particularly risky swan dive down the slope.
I give Xinyan a helpless sort of shrug and follow, scrunching our bodies together tight on the same tray, Jamie’s strong arms closing around my middle and his breath hot on my neck as we push off.
This is what I want to remember. Not my body’s many tiny betrayals. Not fear.
Just this.