Page 16 of Exquisite Things

begin. We circle each other at first, smiling, our eyes locked. Something stirs within me. The feeling of connection consumes

me. I want to feel his body against mine, and I take the opportunity by shoving myself into him violently and taking him down.

“Oh wow, I didn’t know we were going to be vicious with each other,” he says as he turns the tables on me, rolling himself

atop me.

“I’m the best wrestler in my high school,” I say with a smile. “Just give up now.” I lock his head in my arms.

Once again, he has a surprise up his sleeve. He bites my arm. I’m so shocked I let go of him.

“I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules,” I say as we circle each other again.

“I’m pretty sure there are no rules here,” he declares, and I know he’s right. We could bite each other, kiss each other,

tear each other’s clothes off, and we would likely be met with cheers of approval.

“What if we declared it a tie and split the money?” I ask. We’re just hopping in front of each other now, each one waiting

for a moment of opportunity.

“I think we would disappoint our adoring audience,” he says. “Besides, I don’t care about the money. If I win, I’ll just spend

it all on you.”

“On me?” I ask. “I don’t need anything money can buy.” I briefly ponder the truth in this. The things I want—love, freedom,

a more accepting world—can’t be bought.

“Then what will you do with the money?” he asks.

The answer comes to me like a tidal wave. “I’ll get my mother a beautiful room overlooking the ocean for a holiday. On the

Cape.” I imagine her hair freely blowing in the salty wind. The sun warming her face. Mother deserves to glow. She would ask

where I got the money. I would have to think of something, but that’s a problem for later.

“You, Oliver, are too good for this world. You might be what I’ve been searching for all this time.” His body language changes

when he says this. He seems to deflate. The competitive tension is gone.

I take my opportunity and slam him down to the ground.

I hold his body down hard. He doesn’t struggle against me.

Perhaps he’s tired. Or perhaps he’s letting me win.

Either way, I’m declared the victor. The emcee helps me back up.

Lifts my hand up into the air for me. I feel a rush of pride and adrenaline.

Brendan is hooting for me. Cyril is jumping up and down.

Jack is shouting to everyone near him that I’m his friend.

Farther down the crowd, Edna watches with a delighted smile on her face.

She tips her top hat to me. I wish Mother could see me now.

I wish she could be proud of the person I am, not just the one I pretend to be.

But perhaps that’s asking too much. In this moment, I have more than I’ve ever had.

More than I thought possible. I feel, for perhaps the first time, like a winner.

The elation of the masquerade ball lingers in my body, filling me with my own personal glow. Even Mother notices it. As she

fries me some eggs one May morning, she asks if I’m in love. I grab my tall glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and take

a long, slow sip, using the cup to hide any reaction on my face.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.” She pushes the eggs around the pan. They sizzle, oil popping up like little fireworks

that seem to mirror the crackling beat of my heart. “I remember being utterly mortified when my own mother asked me the same

question when I was about your age.”

“But you didn’t meet Father until you were nineteen,” I say, confused.

She plates the eggs and places them in front of me with a smile. “It wasn’t your father she was asking about.”

“Mother!” I exclaim. I laugh nervously, and she does too. It’s been just the two of us for eight months now, and we’ve spoken

about many things, but never anything like this.

“I did have a life before I met your father, you know. Perhaps not a very exciting one.” She sighs.

She pours herself a cup of coffee and grabs a breakfast roll.

She dunks the roll in the coffee and eats it soggy and dripping.

When Father was around, she rarely ate breakfast, too busy making sure his bacon was crispy enough to suit his peculiar taste for the burned and charred.

Father liked things better when they had been destroyed.

“And yet, no matter how dull our lives may be on the outside, we still have our dreams. Perhaps, and this is just your foolish old mother talking here... But perhaps the more mundane our lives, the more fantastical our fantasies.”

“I don’t think that’s foolish, and I don’t think you’re foolish.” I keep my eyes peeled on her as I eat, wondering who she

was when she was my age. I’ve never, not once, asked her. How shameful of me. I’ve acted as if her life began when mine did.

“Who was he, Mother? Were you really in love with someone before Father?” The question I almost asked, the one I didn’t dare

ask, is if she was in love with Father at all. There are so many reasons she may have married him despite not loving him.

Duty. Fear. The pressure of parents. Social expectations. And of course, the most obvious one... she was pregnant with

Liam and was forced to marry the man who would become her son’s father.

“Oh, he’s ancient history. We mustn’t haunt the past. It deserves peace. You tell me about this girl who makes you feel like

I once did in my youth.” She utters these words like the beginning of shared intimacy. “This young woman who’s making my son

glow.”

How is she to know her words have the opposite effect she intended? She can’t possibly imagine it’s not a girl I have feelings

for, but a boy. Even this version of Mother, this cunning woman with a girlhood crush she’s ready to reveal... Even she

would be horrified by the truth of me.

“Son... Are you in love?” she asks tenderly.

I close my eyes. I can’t answer. Besides, I don’t know.

Am I in love, when I don’t know what love is?

I know I think about nothing but him. I’m certain he’s occupied a space in my mind and in my heart that will linger forever, no matter what the future holds.

I’m aware I’ve barely been able to sleep since we met, and yet I never feel tired.

In fact, I’ve never felt more awake, more certain that this is what life is meant to feel like. But I can’t say any of this.

So I change the subject as fast as I can. “It’s not a girl making me glow, it’s a surprise for you.” I wasn’t planning on

telling her this morning before school, on an average day, over an ordinary breakfast. I was hoping to take her out to a nice

restaurant and tell her over baked pork chops and upside-down cake that I would pay for in crisp cash. But I need a way out

of further inquiry into my romantic life.

“A surprise?” she asks, suitably surprised. “For me?”

“I won a contest!” I announce brightly. Shams and I came up with the idea on one of our walks. We take the longest walks around

Boston together. Shams always arrives with a blue tin of Oreo cookies, and we promise to walk until the tin is empty. We nibble

at the cookies slowly, desperate for our time together to go on forever so we can confide everything to each other. When we

reach the Charles, we stop and stare at it. Let the river guide our conversation forward. I’ve told him all about Father’s

cruelty and my love of music. He’s told me all about how harsh his own father was. How they don’t even speak anymore.

“A contest?” Mother echoes. Her voice sounds hazy and far off, like the voices of Father’s drunk friends when he would have

them over for card games at night.

I don’t answer her. I’m too busy fantasizing that on our next stroll, Shams and I will reach the Cape and discover we can walk on water.

From there, we’ll stride across the Atlantic, subsisting on ocean water and our tin of biscuit sandwiches.

We’ll walk through Ireland, where my ancestors are from.

Through London and Paris, where I’ll visit Chopin’s grave in Père Lachaise and thank him for the nocturnes and sonatas that brought me closer to my mother and filled my heart with hope.

I’ll drag Shams to Vienna, of course, to breathe the same air as Schubert and Beethoven.

And then I’ll let Shams guide me to the part of the world his ancestors come from.

“Are you going to tell me what you won?” she asks impatiently. I pull myself back into the moment. These daydreams of Shams

have been a problem lately. I can barely pay attention in class. We haven’t even gone back to Brendan and Jack’s room. We

both decided we’d rather it just be us, just the two of us for now.

“Oh yes, sorry, I... It’s a holiday weekend at an inn,” I say. “In Provincetown. It includes meals and everything.”

“A weekend on the Cape?” she asks. “How on earth did you win that? That must cost—”

“It was a trivia game at a local restaurant where I was studying. I stopped in because I wanted some water, and they said

I could sit in a corner and study as long as the trivia wouldn’t distract me.” Shams and I landed on this lie when we walked

by a trivia game in a local restaurant. I knew that if I told Mother I won cash, she would insist we invest it in my education.

There was, after all, no guarantee of a Harvard scholarship in my future. The only solution was to tell Mother the prize was

the excursion itself, and that it had to be used on a certain weekend. I couldn’t give her any way to wriggle out of allowing

herself a true getaway. “I couldn’t help but enter the game. Half the questions were about classical music. They asked which

composer’s ridiculously long hands could span twelve piano keys—”

“Rachmaninoff!” she yells, like she’s playing this game that never happened.

“And which composer had a wife who was a brilliant composer in her own right—”

“Schumann!” There’s pride on her face as she answers. It’s not just the knowledge she’s proud of, it’s the fact that she’s

the one who taught me about these great musicians and told me of their lives. Music has been our common language, the purest

way we communicate with each other, free from the burden of words and freed by the key of pure emotion.

“So you see, I won and the prize is a weekend on the Cape for Decoration Day weekend and I’m taking you.” I say it firmly,

knowing what will come next. She will object because—

“Decoration Day is a sacred day. We can’t possibly go. We need to place flowers on the graves of all the local boys we lost

in the war.” She shakes her head solemnly. Her eyes look unconvinced.

“Mother, for once in your life, do not do the dutiful thing,” I plead. “Do the thing your heart wants to do. Be honest with yourself. Would you rather decorate graves for yet another year, or would you rather stare out at the

ocean as you sip some tall, cold drink?”

“Those boys— They did their duty— They sacrificed their lives for us— For our freedom...” She’s stammering through her

guilt.

I want to tell her that yes, they did sacrifice their lives for our freedom, and yet still I’m not free. And neither is she.

Her right to vote hasn’t even been ratified yet, though we’re both hopeful it will be by the next general election. But I

know Mother. Politics are not the way to her heart. “I know they did,” I say. “But Mother, think about it. If they sacrificed

their lives for your freedom, wouldn’t they be pleased to see you enjoying that freedom?” This, I think, might be the winning

argument.

“That’s a fair point,” she whispers. “We can bring flowers back from the Cape, decorate the graves a few days later to show our gratitude.”

“That’s a fine idea, Mother,” I say. My mother will always find a way to do her duty to others. I love her for that. “Then

everything is arranged.”

“I think there’s someone else we need to thank too,” she says. “We have just enough time before you have to go to school.”

“Who?” I ask, genuinely curious.

She laughs giddily. “Rachmaninoff, of course. And Schumann. Come.”

She leads me to the piano, and together we play Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor. Rachmaninoff was one of the

first composers Mother taught me when I had the sufficient skill. She was thrilled to have a partner to play with because

those massive hands of his made his pieces impossible for her to play alone with her dainty hands. Together, we muddle through

his pieces, turning what were two-hand concertos into four-hand pieces. We’ve never played this piece with more joy. She feels

lighter already. When I look down at her hands, their wrinkles and veins seem to disappear. The burden of her hard work evaporates,

and I see what her hands must have looked like when she was just a young woman in love with a boy who was not my father, a

boy who was, in my imagination, kind to her. A boy like the one I’m slowly realizing I might very well be falling in love

with.