SULLIVAN
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Iwrote the piece, but more importantly, I did my research.
I know who the kid from the video Adrian showed me is, and I know what school he goes to.
It’s enough in a way, but in so many other ways, it’s not even close.
I don’t know the depth of either Adrian or Quinn’s depravity, but I think, if I’m strong enough, if I’m smart enough, if I have help, I can slow them down or make them think twice before bringing someone else into their home under false pretenses and promises with barbed conditions attached.
That, and I did look at myself in the mirror.
I weighed myself, too. I looked at the before and after photos Deandre took of me—the ones I had to turn in to the Health and Fitness professor when the semester was over for extra credit.
That I did not like doing because I don’t like the idea of some other strange older man having photos of me, but D insisted I get the credit he said I deserved for remaking my body in a few months.
Prior to any of my trips to Adrian’s, I usually get a request from him to send a list of anything I might want from the store.
I usually don’t respond to it, but this time, I did.
And it was a long, detailed list of everything I needed for my morning smoothie, the meals I planned to cook for myself like I’ve been doing all semester, and my favorite brand of coconut water.
When I arrive, he looks me over with surprise, which quickly morphs into suspicion. His gaze lingers on my shorter hair, my broader chest. “Taking better care of yourself, I see.”
“Were you able to get the protein mix?”
He nods slightly. “I had to order it, but it arrived yesterday.”
“Do I get to come in?”
He checks to see that I’ve brought my violin before stepping aside to let me into his house.
The smell of Pine Sol and citrus tells me the cleaning lady has come and gone.
Otherwise, Adrian prefers the seasonal scents.
This time of year, it’s usually a Christmas tree smell or something like mulled cider.
There’s piano music coming from the formal living room, and I turn toward the entrance, making sure it’s recorded and not Quinn or some other young prodigy at the keys of the baby grand. My courage threatens to flake away, but when I find the room empty, I let out a breath.
“I have the piece ready for you,” I tell him while we’re still in the foyer.
He gestures to the stairs. “Would you like to clean up and settle in first? We can go over that in a while.”
I shake my head. “I’m really anxious for you to hear it.”
He grimaces, and a nervous hand flutters up to his throat.
“I’m proud of it,” I add. “You’ll have to let me know what you think. Would you rather listen to it on your own?”
He hesitates, but then, “It’s fine.” His fluttering hand waves toward the living room.
I put down my violin and suitcase and walk ahead of him.
With my phone, I connect to the bluetooth, and before he gives me the go ahead, I press play on the piece I finished mastering just before I got in the car.
I haven’t slept much since the night of the football game, but this is likely the best thing I’ve ever composed, and after this, I never want to hear it again, but I’ll suffer through it this one last time.
Harsh, bitter violin chords replace the soft piano of a moment before, and Adrian visibly startles at the sixteen discordant strikes of the strings.
Chills erupt on my skin, and I sit on the couch calmly, waiting for the eerie oboe to join the melody that begins after the first four measures.
Adrian paces, his head down, from one side of the enormous rug to the other in slow, even steps, his chin held between his thumb and forefinger.
When the cello comes in, and the melody shifts into something melancholy shaped like glittering shards of glass, his right hand flutters to life, as if he’s conducting the piece without knowing where it’s going to go from here but wanting a certain direction regardless.
It goes another way, and his fist tightens with displeasure, but also, it’s my violin, fast-paced and intricate, likely impossible for his own first chair to play without some severe suffering and sleepless nights.
The overriding melody is heavy on piercing harmonics and occasional jarring chords, but the rest of it is just me, fingers flying over the fingerboard, hitting every note based on the intimate, bone deep knowledge I have of that and any instrument I’ve ever touched.
After five minutes, he groans horribly. “Is it all like this?” It’s like he’s begging me to say no.
“Like what?” I ask, feigning ignorance.
“Difficult? Intense.”
“Well, I mean, you have to keep listening.”
The cello gets played so hard, I broke a string when I was recording, but the oboe mellows it out.
What I was going for there was two pieces that go together without going together.
Like it’s undeniable it’s the same song, but you kind of don’t want it to be.
The conflicting melodies make sense together because of the simple truth that they don’t.
I find the sound of it satisfying, but it’s modern, and this, I know, he hates but is capable of appreciating.
“Unbelievable,” Adrian says with some wonder, and I hear him even though the music is loud enough to drown him out.
The violin comes back for what I think of as the bridge.
It’s the most depressing part, the darkest part.
The part that I want to eat this man alive when he tries to sleep at night.
He shivers, and the pleasure that brings me is as hollow as the sound coming through the speakers.
As empty. A few sections repeat with some variations, and then the violin chords strike again as an introduction to the coda, which is meant to snap something delicate inside the listener and never, ever put it back together.
The song ends on a plaintive A of the oboe and a B harmonic on the violin. The low C on the bass clef pulses on the cello, and Adrian won’t look at me.
“What was that?” he finally asks in the echoing silence.
“It was a theory. A nocturne.”
“What made you think it would work?”
“I just knew it would.”
“I hated it,” he tells me.
“And?” Because I know there’s more to it. Confident for the first time ever in this house.
He sighs, unable to look at me. “It was fucking brilliant.”
For all his faults, he knows music. I nod once. “I’ll go settle in now.”
Adrian doesn’t come up to make one of his usual visits that afternoon, and it’s stunning to me that what I envisioned happening in a perfect world is actually happening.
I owe this past semester and my time with Deandre and Knight a lot, I think as I’m allowed to be alone in my room and actually settle in.
I do feel more confident. I can start to appreciate my gift.
It’s like somehow they were developing another muscle inside me with all their training and invitations to spend time with them in and out of the gym.
It’s whatever lives inside me that keeps me tethered to myself—to who I want to be and who I can become once all this is over.
It doesn’t feel real. I almost don’t feel real as I lie on the bed after my shower and replay every moment of watching Adrian experience my piece in my head. He couldn’t possibly get it, could he?
No. I don’t think he has any concept of much besides what he thinks I owe him, and now he’s discovering what he’s wrought. The monster he created. The genius he let go unchecked. Not that I think of myself as a genius, but I do think that’s the way he’d put it, once he can put words to the feeling.
I don’t think he’ll ever know or understand how much he’s hurt me, even damaged me. But I do think he can grasp his own greed and ambition. I do think I’ve managed to humble him in some small way. I do think he understands how much I hate him.
At dinner, when we sit down together, I can tell by his sharp, twitchy gestures that he’s still unsettled.
By my appearance, the song, this false bravado I came downstairs with, I don’t know which.
It doesn’t matter because I need to do what I came here to do.
I need to ask him what I told Knight I would ask him because it’s a good question, and I’d like the answer, too.
The sooner I know, the better.
“I have a question for you,” I say as he’s pouring us each a glass of wine.
“Hm?”
“How do you see this ending? This arrangement we have.”
He nearly overfills his glass but finally puts the bottle down. “Ending?”
“Well, you’re already married, so I know you don’t want to marry me.
I’m twenty-one, and I have new teachers.
I’m clearly working at a level you’re not familiar with or likely capable of helping me advance.
Did you want me to play in your orchestra?
Did you want me to move in here when I graduate? Where do you see this going?”
“You have a lot to say today, don’t you? Have I not given you everything you ever hoped you would have?”
I sigh. “And then some.”
Sharply, he asks, “What the hell does that mean?”
I openly glare at him for the first time in our acquaintance. “Do I have to answer that?”
His thin lips press tightly together, leaving only a suggestion of a mouth.
“I’m asking what the terms of my scholarship are.”
He’s glaring back at me now. I’m guessing he doesn’t want to put words to it.
“Or can I end it at any time?”
“The choice to be here has always been yours, Sullivan.”
The shame clogs my throat, and it takes strength for me to swallow it back down, to let it settle in my empty stomach. “I think I’d like to reconsider.”
Something in his expression, a pulling together of his brows and a softening of his eyes, relents.
“There was a time when I did want you for my orchestra, but when you showed such a gift for composition, I understood that a performance role would be stifling a great deal of your talent. It’s why I advocated for you to attend USM. ”
“And now?”
“Now, I see I was right to encourage that. You’d be wasted in an orchestra.”
“Maybe I’m not one of those people who needs to be operating at optimal capacity all the time. Maybe it’s okay to waste some of my talent for a good paying job.”
Adrian rests both his hands on the table and sits back in his chair.
He levels me with a look that almost makes it feel like we’re equals.
“That would be a shame. And I suppose all that’s left for me to ask of you is a line in your memoir.
Or a mention in an interview, I suppose. As a benefactor. Or a mentor.”
“That’s it?” I ask, because it can’t possibly be this easy.
“So long as you do something worth memorializing with your life.”
“And if I decide not to visit as often?”
He grabs his glass of wine and takes a long swallow. “You’re growing up. Every child leaves the nest eventually. Your school is paid for. Your car is paid for. I don’t see the point giving you an allowance now that you’re all grown up, but that’s up to you.”
“Meaning what? I’d have to earn it?”
He sips his wine again without answering, which is its own answer. Yes.
“I’d rather go without the allowance then.”
“I see.” He sighs heavily and pushes his plate of food away. “I think I’ll have this later. I’m not feeling well. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I say nothing, too shocked to attempt speaking as he rises from the table and leaves me alone in the dining room. I never asked about my mother or my sister. What will he do to them? Selfish, I tell myself. So fucking selfish.
My stomach growls at the sight of the grilled chicken breast in front of me, and I wonder once again—is this what freedom feels like?
The fight starts down the hall, muffled by the two closed doors and the carpet between the bedrooms. Quinn is home.
The noisy argument isn’t unusual. When they aren’t partying, they’re fighting, so I put one of my earbuds in, turn onto my other side and close my eyes, letting Chopin drown out the sporadic shouts.
I could have left earlier, I think. Could have gone back to Missouri or traveled all the way up to Sunrise Point, but I already drove several hours today and didn’t want to get back in the car yet.
The pounding on my door startles me. I sit up so fast my headphone falls onto the comforter. The knob rattles, but it’s locked. Then the pounding starts again, and I hear Adrian shouting. “Stop. Come back to bed. You’re drunk. Leave him alone.”
“Open the fucking door, you freeloading piece of shit!”
I freeze, not knowing what to do.
There’s a scuffle, a loud smack, and then a thud. Oh fuck. I get out of bed and grab my phone. “Adrian?” I call out.
“Open the goddamned door. This is not your house,” Quinn shouts again.
Adrian doesn’t answer me.
“I’m calling the police.” I already have the screen open.
“I have pictures of you. Videos, too. Remember New Year’s?”
I was far, far too fucked up on New Year’s to remember much of anything, but I understood the gist of what happened to me when I woke up so sore the following morning. “What do you want?”
“I want what my husband promised me, and since he never seems to want to give it to me, you’re the next best thing. Hmph. Well, better if I’m being honest.”
“I’m not opening the door.”
“Then I’ll just go get the key.”
He has a fucking key?
Stomps down the hallway signal Quinn’s temporary departure, but I’m still frozen.
It’s like I’m sixteen again, and all this is happening for the first time, although it was never like this—never overtly violent.
Never demanding or involving shouts of protest across locked doors.
I used to comply. I used to want to please them.
To my surprise, when the steps return, I hear him again, but this time he’s speaking to Adrian. “Open your eyes, darling. There you go. Just a little bump. You’re all right. Keep those open, darling. I know how you love to watch how much I enjoy your precious protégé.”
The door opens on Quinn’s formidable bulk, and that night, I learn the most important lesson of all about freedom.
It comes at a price.