I should have fessed to Tess at the start, but who knows when love begins? Two trary impulses pulled at me. I did not want to scare her away with the geling story, yet I loo entrust all my secrets to her. But it was as if a demon shadowed me everywhere and clamped shut my mouth to hold iruth. She gave me many opportuo open my heart and tell her, and I came close once or twice, but each time I hesitated and stopped.
On Labor Day we were at the baseball stadium iy, watg the home team take on Chicago. I was distracted by the enemy ru sed base.
"So, whats the plan for The Coverboys?"
"Plan? lan?"
"You really should record an album. Youre that good." She attacked a hot dog thick with relish. Our pitcher struck out their batter, and she let out a whoop. Tess loved the game, and I e for her sake.
"What kind of album? Covers of other peoples songs? Do you really think anybody would buy a copy when they have the inal?"
"Youre right," she said between bites. "Maybe you could do something new and different. Write your own songs."
"Tess, the songs we sing are not the kind of songs I would write."
"Okay, if you could write any musi the world, what kind would you write?"
I turo her. She had a speck of relish at the er of her mouth that I wished to nibble away. "Id write you a symphony, if I could."
Out flicked her too her lips. "Whats stopping you, Henry?
Id love a symphony of my own."
"Maybe if I had stayed serious about piano, or if I had finished music school."
"Whats stopping yoing back to college?"
Nothing at all. The twins had finished high school and were w. My mother certainly did not he few dollars I brought in, and Uncle Charlie from Philadelphia had begun to call her nearly every day, expressing an i iiring here. The Coverboys were going nowhere as a band. I searched for a plausible excuse. "Im too old to go baow. Ill be twenty-six April, and the rest of the students are a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. Theyre into a totally different se."
"Youre only as old as you feel."
At the moment, I felt 125 years old. She settled bato her seat and watched the rest of the ballgame without another word on the subject. On the way home that afternoon, she switched the car radio over from the rock station to classical, and as the orchestra played Mahler, she laid her head against my shoulder and closed her eyes, listening.
Tess and I went out to the pord sat on the swing, quiet for a long time, sharing a bottle of peach wine. She liked to hear me sing, so I sang for her, and then we could find nothing else to say. Her breathing presence beside me, the moon and the stars, the singing crickets, the moths ging to the porch light, the breeze cutting through the humid air—the moment had a curious pull on me, as if recalling distant dreams, not of this life, nor of the forest, but of life before the ge. As if ed destiny or desire threatehe illusion I had struggled to create. To be fully human, I had to give in to my true nature, the first impulse.
"Do you think Im crazy," I asked, "to want to be a poser in this day and age? I mean, who would actually listen to your symphony?"
"Dreams are, Henry, and you ot will them away, any more than you call them into being. You have to decide whether to act upon them or let them vanish."
"I suppose if I dont make it, I could e bae. Find a job. Buy a house. Live a life."
She held my hand in her