String Boys Read online

  Matty’s mom asked Seth in for hot chocolate after he helped Matty get the stroller up the stairs to the top of the fourplex. Seth and his dad lived in the two-bedroom apartment downstairs, but Matty and Kelly needed a room, and the twins—Lily and Lulu—needed one too, and Matty and Kelly’s mom, Linda, had one as well.

  Seth sipped his hot chocolate and stared at the small Christmas tree that stood in front of the landing window in a haze of colored lights, and listened as Matty proclaimed his relief to be done with all stringed instruments, at least for a while.

  “But Mrs. Joyce says we may have to practice for the spring concert too,” he finished, deflating.

  “We need to practice,” Kelly said pragmatically, “so we can walk Seth home.”

  Matty got the same look on his face that he got when Seth was trying to help him with his math. “Why does Seth have to do it too?”

  “Because Seth’s really good,” his mom said, laughing a little. When Seth got old enough to appreciate grown-ups being pretty, he would always think Matty and Kelly’s mother was the gold standard to pretty people. She had glossy brown hair that she pulled into a thick ponytail, lush lips that often curved into a smile, skin the color of pale clay—darker than white but light enough to show blushes on her cheeks easily when she was pleased, and the biggest, brownest eyes Seth would ever see in anybody other than her son, Kelly.

  She was lovely, and her smiles always made Seth feel warm.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled, embarrassed and pleased.

  “No,” she said seriously. “Thank you. I know you three had to work hard to be string boys this year, but I think you should keep going. Matty, Seth doesn’t have a mom or an older brother. He needs you to keep him going to practice. Kelly, you’re the best cheerleader in the world—I know you’ll help him out.” She bit her lip and looked a little sad. “Boys, I know your father tells you that you need to play sports to be men, but sometimes all you need is to do something really super good, and work to do it better. That’s what it takes to be men.” She eyed Seth thoughtfully. “Seth, sweetheart, I think being a string boy is your thing.”

  Seth nodded soberly and took a sip of his chocolate. He didn’t want to argue with her. He loved this idea. But he didn’t like being the center of attention either.

  “Fine,” Matty said, sounding bored. “Fine. We’ll be string boys one more year. But after that, we’ll just walk him home from practice. Playing the violin isn’t anything I want to do any more than soccer!”

  “Understood, Little Man,” Linda said, her face completely straight.

  Seth wondered at first if he was the only one who could tell she was laughing kindly at her son’s machismo. Then he caught Kelly rolling his eyes, and he smiled back.

  For once he was in on the joke.

  There was a knock at the door then—not scary. An asking knock.

  Seth jumped to his feet, and Linda gave him an understanding look.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly. “You won’t get in trouble for being here. Besides, I don’t think it’s him.” She frowned as she moved from the tiny kitchen to the door. “Javi?”

  Matty and Kelly’s dad stood outside, an obviously newly purchased bouquet of flowers in his fist and a small bag of toys dangling from his other hand.

  “Hi.” Xavier Cruz was a barrel-chested man with a blocky head who wore giant denim cargo shorts and oversized sports shirts all year round. Tonight he wore a thick navy peacoat over the ensemble and a shy, tentative look on his face. “I… I wanted to tell the boys congratulations. And say hi. And see the girls. I should have called, I know, but I didn’t know if I could get the second job off, and—”

  Seth never knew why they had split up in the first place. He was a child, and they were grown-ups, and he wouldn’t have asked anyway. But for the rest of his life, he would remember what forgiveness looked like.

  “Come in, Javi,” Linda said, smiling shyly back. “We were celebrating.”

  Xavier ducked his head. “That’s awesome. Is that hot chocolate?” His look held a terrible hope.

  “Sit down—I’ll get you some.”

  Matty and Kelly’s dad walked inside, laughing when Lulu, the more adventurous of the twins, who had a head full of fine black curls like Seth’s except his were yellow, ran headfirst into his legs. “Lulu-bear! Come here!”

  And that was the signal. All of the children, Matty included, ran to embrace their father, and it was time to leave.

  Seth set his chocolate down quietly and walked through the kitchen toward the door, but Linda stopped him. “Sit down, honey. I’m breaking out the cookies, and you don’t want to miss that.”

  Seth gaped at her, but then Matty and Kelly’s dad stuck his head into the kitchen. “Come on out, Seth. I got you a present too—you played real nice.”

  Seth’s face heated. “Thank you,” he stammered.

  Xavier winked and walked to the sink, the grocery store flowers still clutched in his fist. “Wanted to make sure they got water,” he said, looking shyly at Linda again. She glanced away, biting her lip, and Seth wouldn’t have made it to the door anyway without getting between them. He turned around just as Xavier touched her shoulder and she murmured something about a vase, and they probably kissed after that, but Seth was already in the living room again.

  “Look!” Matty said, waving three Hot Wheels triumphantly in front of him. “Dad brought presents, and Christmas isn’t until next week!”

  He thrust a small rectangular fire truck into Seth’s hands, and Seth turned it around delightedly. “That was really nice,” he said softly. “I have to remember to say thank—”

  At that moment, they all heard the slam of the door to the apartment below them.

  Seth’s skin went cold. “I have to go,” he said simply. He looked to the table where his violin case sat, and thought of the consequences of his father coming home so late and what they might mean for the fragile instrument he’d come to love. He’d gotten all of his practice in well before Craig Arnold had any idea what he was doing. “Watch my violin for me?” he asked, not wanting to know what Kelly and Matty’s sober nods might mean. He swallowed. “And the car,” he whispered, pushing it into Matty’s hand. “I’ll get them tomorrow.”

  They could all hear Seth’s dad knocking about in the apartment below. “Mrs. Cruz, Mr. Cruz, I gotta go!” he hollered, and then, bypassing the kitchen, he ran around the living room to the landing, grabbing his coat from the peg before he hit the door.

  His father was still kicking off his boots and hollering his name by the time he slid inside.

  “Seth!”

  “Right here.” Seth kept his voice even, because the consequences of shouting back were terrifying.

  Craig Arnold turned around, displeasure written large on his once-handsome face. Seth had seen his parents’ wedding photo. His mother had been beautiful, golden-eyed, with skin of pale bronze, black curly hair. His father had been just as pretty—narrow peach-toned face, blond hair even as an adult, and eyes about three shades darker than his new wife’s.

  He’d smiled in all of Seth’s baby pictures.

  But once Kesha Arnold passed away in a car wreck, all smiles stopped.

  “Where were you?”

  “There was a school assembly. I went with the neighbors. They walked me home.”

  Craig nodded. “Get ready for bed,” he said gruffly, and Seth gave a sigh of relief. Not tonight, maybe.

  He was pulling on his pajamas—they were tight, showing his wrists and ankles, but that was the only size he had—when he heard his father’s heavy tread down the hall.

  “What kind of school assembly?”

  “Christmas,” Seth said and then wished he’d lied. Their apartment was painfully bare. None of his projects on the wall. He kept them all in a folder under his bed. No family pictures—no pictures, period.

  And no tree, no lights, no decorations.

  “Christmas?” Craig scowled. “Since fucking when?”

/>   “It’s next week. There were people singing and a band and….” He swallowed. “Violins.”

  “Aw, man.”

  Seth’s heart dropped for a moment.

  “Pretty? Was it pretty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry about Christmas,” Craig slurred. He must have had another swallow or two while Seth was dressing. “This was a good thing?”

  “It was pretty,” Seth told him. “Fun.”

  Seth could hear his father’s uneven temper spike. “Like I’m not?”

  “I was part of it.” He hadn’t wanted to tell him, but… but Craig was his father. Once upon a time, he’d smiled at Seth. He’d held him gently. This—this hadn’t happened overnight. They’d moved to Sacramento, and they’d been all alone.

  “You didn’t think I’d want to go?”

  “I didn’t want to bother you,” Seth said, hating where this seemed to be going. It had only happened once before, but it was enough to make him walk on eggshells.

  “You fucking embarrassed of me?”

  A spark of anger shot up Seth’s spine. “I thought you’d be too busy at the bar,” he replied baldly, retreating to the corner of his room.

  He made it two steps before his father’s heavy hand caught him across the face. Then another blow hit across his chest, and he went flying into the coffee table, catching it painfully across the thighs.

  It hurt, but he tuned out the pain. He was good at that. It was like tuning out the lack of a Christmas tree or the way his once smiling father had become this terrible alien, a thing to be afraid of. In his head, he heard the lone, pure note of the violin.

  He finally dragged himself to bed, where he pulled the covers over his head to hide from his father’s broken sobbing.

  “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry….”

  Now Seth cried. He’d been sorry the last time. Sorry enough to quit drinking for a week, to be home on time, to try to make up for the bruise on Seth’s face.

  But was there a way to be sorry enough to make that stick?

  Daddies

  HAVING THEIR father back was really the best part of Christmas, Kelly thought.

  After Seth ran out of the house and their mother got the girls to bed, Matty and Kelly climbed up onto Daddy’s lap, even though Matty was a little too big, and Kelly probably was too.

  But they hadn’t seen him in a week, and he was there, in the apartment. And he’d brought their mother flowers, and she was smiling softly at him.

  Oh, they’d missed him.

  He’d been there for their soccer banquet and wanted to know all about indoor soccer and if they were going to play again this year.

  “Only if we can still walk Seth home after violin practice,” Kelly said staunchly.

  “He can’t walk home by himself?” Daddy asked.

  “He needs us,” Matty told him, and Kelly let out a little sigh of relief. Matty was the leader. “Other kids will beat him up.”

  There was a thump below them, and Kelly and Matty both jumped and hunched their shoulders. “Or maybe not kids,” Matty muttered.

  They’d seen Seth’s bruises that one time.

  Another thump sounded, and Mom walked back into the living room, wincing. “Oh no,” she said. “Not again.”

  She went back into the kitchen and picked up her phone from the charger.

  “Wait!” Dad said, standing up. “What are you—”

  “Calling the cops,” Mom said, voice low. “He swore the last time it would never happen again, but Seth’s been terrified. He’s obviously drunk again. Maybe they’ll bring CPS in and Craig will stop for good. Or Seth will get put somewhere else. It sucks, but it’s all I can think of!”

  “Why don’t you—”

  And for the first time since Dad walked in, Mom got that scrunched-up look on her face. “What? Go down and knock on the door so he can belt me too? Not when I’m the only adult home, Xavier!”

  Dad looked stricken, then nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I hear you. I’ll go down. I… I might not be back soon. I’ll text you to go down and get the boy if this goes how I think.”

  Mom tilted her head. “Where do you think it’s going?” she asked.

  “Same place I went,” he replied with a crooked smile. “I was gone for a month, Linda. With a couple of half days off because I asked permission and signed myself out. Twenty-eight days to be exact.” He looked away. “I was going to tell you—”

  She stopped him with a kiss. “You really mean it,” she murmured. “You mean it about changing. You never did that before.”

  “I mean it. Let me go talk to Seth’s dad, okay?”

  She nodded and let him go.

  Kelly would wonder later why they weren’t scared when he walked out the door. He texted Mom an hour later and told her to go down and get Seth, that he’d be staying with them for a couple of weeks, and that he’d be back by morning.

  But when Kelly’s life had fallen apart again and again, he’d remember his father walking into a potentially dangerous situation, just assuming he’d be back. Because that’s what people who loved you did, right? They came back.

  Well, they did that night.

  AND WHEN they woke up, Seth was asleep on the couch. He spent that Christmas with them and helped bake cookies and decorate, helped watch the twins. He didn’t go back to his own place until after they started school again, after he started playing the violin again.

  After school, Matty and Kelly would join him for practice and then walk him home. Sometimes they’d go to indoor soccer practice, and Seth would play the violin alone in his apartment until it was time to come upstairs for dinner.

  And sometimes, Kelly would have to watch the twins with Matty, because Mom needed to work.

  But sometimes, Kelly would sneak downstairs, just to listen to Seth. When they played together as string boys, Seth was still a lion and Kelly still played like a goat.

  But Kelly loved to see Seth being a lion.

  He loved the way Seth’s green eyes glowed when he was playing something hard, something no boy his age should be able to practice, and he was doing it right.

  He loved the way Seth’s lips curved into a smile when a piece was long and slow, and he had to concentrate on just the pure sound of the string.

  He loved the way Seth’s tightly kinked blond hair fell loose out of its gel by the end of the night, clustering over his brow.

  He loved the way Seth smiled shyly at him when practice was done, as though coming out of a dream and Kelly was the face he needed to see when he woke up.

  Kelly especially loved that last part.

  Even after Seth’s daddy came home and started working again, Kelly would still listen to Seth play. His mom had quietly told him to mention if any bruises showed up on Seth’s face after that, or if he seemed scared any more than usual.

  Kelly wasn’t sure what words to say to open up the tightly locked box of Seth Arnold. Even at his most animated, Seth spoke quietly, in as few words as he could.

  But when he came out of that moment, out of that practice, when he smiled at Kelly and offered him something to drink from what was often an empty refrigerator, then he would talk.

  “I like that piece,” he said one day in March. “It reminds me of spring.”

  “Me too. What are you doing for Easter?” Easter was one of the three days a year Kelly’s family went to church, the big Catholic one in downtown Sacramento. Kelly and Matty privately agreed that doing it every Sunday would be the worst, but dressing up on holidays wasn’t so bad. It seemed to make that day seem more special.

  Seth frowned. “I don’t know.” He looked at the table uncertainly, where a bag of decorations sat. “I was supposed to decorate the apartment before he got home.”

  “I’ll help you!” Kelly bounced on his toes a little. He loved art things.

  “Sure. But, you know, once my dad gets here, you gotta go.”

  Oh yeah. He remembered all those crashing noises and Seth’s b
lack-and-blue face on the night Kelly’s dad came home.

  “Has he…?” Kelly pulled out a package of brightly colored paper eggs and some tape. “Has he… you know…?”

  Seth shrugged. “Naw. He said he was sorry for all that.” But Seth still grabbed the stuff out of the package tentatively, like he was afraid to rip it.

  “Sorry?” Did that work? Did adults say sorry for things and it just went away?

  “He hasn’t done it since,” Seth defended. “He gets home on time, right after work.” He gave Kelly one of his guarded smiles. “I just don’t want to bother him, you know, with the violin.”

  Yeah, well, Kelly would have been walking on tiptoes too if his daddy beat his face up. But Kelly wasn’t going to say anything to make Seth feel less safe.

  “Then we’ll go really fast,” Kelly said. “So he thinks you did it right after school.”

  Seth nodded, and they strung the Easter banner up in the window and carefully taped the colored eggs there too. There were spangles that they taped over the couch, and plastic eggs that were supposed to go in a bowl on the small table. Kelly made Seth laugh by pretending he pooped them out himself and plopped them on the rug, which was totally gross. But Kelly didn’t care.

  He got Seth to laugh.

  It was a perfect gift.

  They were so involved laughing, they didn’t even notice when Seth’s dad came in—quiet, this time, and smiling.

  He and Seth had the same smile.

  Seth saw him first and started picking up the eggs super quick. “Sorry, Dad. We were just messing around, but see? We got everything else done, right? See?”

  “Yeah, Seth,” his father said, voice sounding gruff but not mad. “It looks good. Kelly, you don’t have the right equipment to lay eggs. You’re going to have to buy them from the supermarket like everybody else.”

  Kelly laughed, because it was a good joke.

  “Okay, Mr. Arnold,” Kelly said, grinning and showing off his lost teeth. Third grade was the year of nobody having any teeth. Kelly liked it very much because all the smiles were equally ugly, and he could show his off, just like everybody else. “I’ll put these in a bowl, then, howzat?”