When the first chords of “I Will” sounded, she gave a long sigh, as if releasing a held breath. I asked myself what the music must be making her feel, so close to me there. Her lips were open slightly and her eyes lost in the sea where night was falling.
“I like this one,” I said.
“I will,” she whispered the lyrics in reply.
“One day in the studio, your father made me listen to it from beginning to end with my eyes closed.”
She started to get up, but I quickly grabbed her arm and held her beside me.
“He told me they said Paul McCartney had to find inspiration in the person next to him to write. He had a couple of muses, among them his dog when there were no women around. Then Linda appeared. And this was one of the songs he played for her. You know what Douglas told me? That the first day he saw your mother, he heard the notes of this song in his head. That’s why he always put it on whenever he painted anything related to love.”
Leah batted her eyes and I felt my heart sink when I saw the tears in her eyelashes, and I asked myself how I would draw them if someone asked me to that exact moment when they were moving like a pair of wings trying to ward off sorrow.
“Why are you doing this to me, Axel?”
The pleading tone in her voice… Fuck. I wiped away one of her tears with my thumb.
“Because it’s good for you. Crying.”
“But it hurts.”
“Pain is the collateral damage of living.”
She closed her eyes, I felt her shiver, and I hugged her.
“Then I don’t want to live…”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever fucking say that.”
I pulled away from her, afraid that she would fall to pieces, but what I saw was the opposite. She seemed stronger, more whole, as if some piece inside her had slipped into place. I wanted to understand her. I wanted…I needed to know what was happening inside her. To enter, to dig around, to open her heart and see everything. And impatience was overwhelming me, curiosity consuming me. I tried to give her space, but I wound up taking it away.
“I knew that about my father,” Leah said so softly that the night breeze swallowed her words and I had to bend down to hear them. “He told me that if you hear a song in your head when you find your soul mate, that’s a gift. Something special.”
I nodded, quiet, leaning back against the wood.
“Did that ever happen to you?”
I was trying to be light, to lift the mood a little, but Leah looked at me very sternly, lips clenched tight and eyes shining after crying.
“Yes.”
24
_________
Leah
Dad was always listening to music and I adored every note, every chorus, every chord; when I walked back from school with Blair and saw our roof in the distance, I always imagined our house like four magic walls with melodies and colors, emotions and life inside. My favorite song when I was little was “Yellow Submarine.” I could sing it with my parents for hours, covered in paint in my father’s studio or hugging Mom on the couch, which was so old it swallowed you up when you sat on it. It stuck with me as I grew up. The childish rhythm, the disordered notes, the unpredictable lyrics that talked about the town where I was born, a man who traveled through the sea and talked about what life was like in the land of the submarines.
A week after my sixteenth birthday, Axel came to our house, talked with Dad in the living room for a while, and knocked on the door to my room. I was mad at him because I was childish and he hadn’t come to my birthday, choosing to go to a concert with friends in Melbourne and spend the weekend there. At that age, things like that got to me. So I scowled at him when he came in and set my paintbrush down on the open watercolors case on the table.
“Why the long face?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Axel grinned, that grin that made my knees quiver. And I hated him for provoking that feeling and not even knowing it, for still treating me like a girl when I felt like an adult around him, for breaking my heart several times…
“What’s that?” I pointed at the bag in his hand.
“This?” He gave me an amused look. “It’s the present you’re not going to get unless that wrinkle you have here disappears…” He bent over and I held my breath while he smoothed out my forehead with his thumb. Then he handed it over. “Happy birthday, Leah.”
I was so excited that I forgot my anger in a split second. I tore the wrapping paper and opened the little box impatiently. It was a thin supple nib from a well-known company, and it had cost a fortune. He knew I had started using them to perfect my other techniques.
“You bought this for me?” My voice shook.
“So you can keep creating magic.”
“Axel…” I had a knot in my throat.
“I hope one day you’ll dedicate a painting to me. You know, when you’re famous and you’re all over the art galleries and you can barely remember the idiot who didn’t come to your birthday.”
My eyes were foggy and I couldn’t really see his expression, but with my heart pounding in my chest, I heard that childish melody, the notes swirling in my mind, the sound of the sea accompanying the first notes…
He couldn’t imagine the words getting caught in my throat, yearning to come out. The words that burned. That slipped back inside. I love you, Axel.
When I opened my mouth, all I said was: “We all live in a yellow submarine.”
Axel knitted his brows. “Are you talking about the song?”
I shook my head, confusing him. “Thanks for this. Thanks for everything.”
25
_________
Axel
Starting april 9, the beginning of the first vacation period, we started spending entire days together. Leah refused to get in the water in the morning, but when she did get up early, she would walk along the beach and sit in the sand with a cup of coffee in her hands. I would see her from afar while I waited impatiently for the next wave in the silence that accompanied the dawn.
We would have lunch together without talking much.
Then we’d work. I managed to make a space for her on my desk, and while I dealt with my commissions, she would do her homework and study in silence, an elbow leaned on the edge of the surface and her chin in her hand. Sometimes I was distracted by her even breathing or the movement of her legs beneath the table, but in general it surprised me how easy it was to have her beside me.
“Can I put on some music?” she asked one day.
“Sure. Choose the record.”
She put on one of my favorites, Nirvana.
After the first week of vacation, we had a routine marked out. At dusk, I would work a little longer while she would go to her room alone, lie down on the bed or draw with a little nub of charcoal. She’d come out to help me with dinner, and when she was done, we’d hang out on the porch.
One night, the cat came around.
“Look who’s here.” I got out of the hammock and stroked her spine. She responded with a purr. “That’s how I like her, sweet and grateful,” I said with a hint of sarcasm.