My Father's Best Man

Chapter 4

When my mother dropped me off at West Lutheran Academy for the first time, I didn't think I was going to cry. She did a lot of pre-dropping-off pep-talk, but I still cried that first night. I didn't let anyone know. I hid under the blanket and kept my sobbing to a minimum. I was afraid others might see me reaching out for a tissue, so I wiped my snot on the pillow cover instead.

The next day, we were allowed to call back home. All the new students let their tears fly on the phone. I pretended everything was fine. I didn't let my mom know how scared I was. She told me over the phone that if I couldn't take it there, if it became too hard, I could always come home. She asked me a lot about my living condition. I kept my answers short. I could hear my sister practicing piano in the back and my dog howling in tempo. I missed home, but I didn't let them know. I had no idea why I didn't. I just kept those feelings to myself.

Then after a month, everything was fine. It felt like summer camp every day! Then after a year, it turned into a prison. The campus felt smaller. There were no new territories to explore.

Break time became shorter, and curfew was stricter. The worst thing was that the teachers here were constantly looking over our shoulders. When I was in Mrs. Wilson's class back home, she would only come to us if we raised our hands. Here, the teachers were always checking on our progress. It was incredibly nerve-wrecking, especially when I was doing arithmetic. Whenever I wrote down a number, Ms. Chen would come up from behind and ask me, "Are you sure?" I knew I did it wrong, but I didn't know the right answer either. So I would just keep guessing until she said, "Good job!"

Art class was the one I enjoyed the most. We were allowed to do anything we want. My drawings were pretty good, but somehow we all received the same grade. There was no way Robert's squiggly stick figure was the same as my reindeer. A blind person could tell that I was the better artist! But art is "subjective," so, who cares...?

I thought that was how they were going to treat the music classes, too. These classes were electives. WLA was known for their music. My mother signed me up because I was already taking trumpet lessons back home. They were not kidding around with these classes... We had to clock-in to the practice room for at least two hours a day. And if the assigned teacher didn't hear sound coming out of our rooms, he would come in and add more time onto our sign- in sheets. I would often leave with a bit of blood in my mouth after attempting some of the higher notes. And I think this was genetic; I would get these things called canker sores, usually after a cut inside my lips.

My mother said that when I first got these sores, when I was only two, I wouldn't eat anything because it would hurt too much. She asked my father to buy some ice cream to ease the pain. But after they fed me my first bite, I still cried out in pain. Apparently my father bought the wrong kind of ice cream with peanut chunk.

My father also had these sores. He said it was from vitamin B12 deficiency. I tried his supplement and the sores did go away. But his vitamin made my pee super yellow, and the instant I stop taking it, the sores came right back. I didn't want to be dependent on the vitamin, so I stopped taking it completely. I would still get these sores every now and then, but it wasn't as bad as before.

It was brutal practicing the trumpet with an inflamed mouth. In a way, I was glad that I quit the band. Mr. Cooper didn't plead for me to stay because he knew I wasn't anyone special. I knew that, too... I didn't audition for any conservatory because I didn't think he would write a recommendation letter for me. Most of the schools that I applied to I did not declare a major. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. All I knew was that I did not want to be another seat-filler again.

For me, it was always weird seeing these private schools filled with white students working so hard on that one song for that one competition. Nothing wrong with that. But without improv, where was the jazz spirit?

Maybe I was just bitter because I needed to justify the fact that I quit, that, and I didn't know what to do with my life.

Brooke was sure of her life. She knew what she wanted. She was a dance major. She wasn't great, but she was passionate. I should say she wasn't bad either, but you could tell she wasn't the best one on the stage. Obviously, I never told her that.

We used to joke about going to New York together. She said that she would open a studio to teach little kids, and I could get a band going at the local bar. We'd share the performance space with others like us, and she could teach yoga in the morning. We didn't talk about how expensive it would be to live out there. It was just a dream of ours.

But for a moment, I thought all that was going to happen. I thought I was going to introduce her to my family at my father's wedding. We would then drive to New York together in my truck. She would pursue her MFA there, and I would get my bachelor at Columbia. I would eventually discover something like photography as my true passion, and we would live in the art district and hang out with the local writers on open-mic nights. As our family grew, we would move to the suburbs with a dog and a cat. I would repeat what my dad had with my mom for the twenty years they were married. I thought all that was going to happen...

Instead, I was now driving on an empty freeway alone, going to a wedding that wasn't mine, worrying about the inevitable canker sores that were coming because I accidentally bit myself back in the diner.