Scene 16
After finally watching the film, released two years before, he cannot help but ponder the importance of leaving a record, a letter, a photograph. He remembers times when he himself unsettled the dust in the wings just offstage in his high school auditorium and shivered under the enormity of the act.
On such evenings he had returned to the half-vacated childhood home and stayed up too late because of the need to sentimentalize with a different movie. The need is the same, but the object of the sentiment has changed or been changed and it is ironic.
He reconsiders his budget, his need/want continuum and how many books he should have and how long he should be allowed to keep the ones he still has not read.
On the bus he was carried across the state and he thought it was some huge coming of age. In the notebook he wrote about himself to romanticize his disappointment.
Months before his dad had told him, pulling out of a parking lot that he understood. He wanted what was best for him but hated the thought of being without him.
These years later the young man is reminded of that and thinks of all the times he saw his father pause, while driving, to breathe and form a gentle sentence. All the things he was sure of and all the things that seemed melodramatic at the time.
He remembers the day his trumpet was bought. For two years he had played his uncle’s old instrument and for some months his parents had been planning to get him one of his own. Initially his dad insisted that there would be a contract. That the boy must “repay” them in the form of hours spent practicing. Nothing concrete had been agreed to, or rather, imposed on him.
After the final selection was made and the brass-in-case was in the back seat of the car his dad stopped. With a long index finger to his lower lip he began (staring forward):
There are no strings with this...
W-what do you mean? The boy asked, knowing full well that this was not a string instrument.
This is a gift. It is yours because I love you. You don’t have to practice, though you should. You don’t have to earn it and you are not indebted to me.
This last part was said while dropping the long index finger to the bottom curve of the steering wheel and turning his head slightly to the side to look at his son. His eyes were blue enough to be called pretty and twinkling beneath a moistened gaze.
The boy, no more than ten, understood that there was something profound happening to his father, but had no idea where it was coming from.
A young father himself, he now wonders what exactly motivated this concession. Was it the same love that moved God to part the clouds, drop a dove and boom “This is my son whom I love. Be careful with him?”
He will not ask for and receive clarity over this. It will not be known to him. He will not steal the show again. Instead he will pause in the driver’s seat of an automobile that he despises and puzzle at how to speak to his son.
