Better Food for a Better World. Erin McGraw
the sheet music from the stand. Sandy looked up with her brackish green eyes, then took her time unlatching the violin case and nestling her violin back into its velvet.
While she was still loosening the strings of the bow, a knock came at the door, and Cecilia sighed. A part of her was always waiting for some neighbor, perhaps the woman two apartments down, so edematous that her ankles looked like quivering bags of fluid, to complain about the noise. Feeling Sandy’s interested gaze, Cecilia went to the door, searching for words of appeasement that dissolved when she found Sam, with his shaggy, exuberant curls, grinning at her.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s that design coming? I’m on my way downtown. If you want, I’ll take them right now and swing by the copy shop. Save you a trip.”
“Oh Sam—I forgot all about it. Darn it. I’m in the doghouse now.” She’d meant to design the new ad last night, something Paul could post to the website and they could use for new flyers. But Cecilia had spent last night brooding about David, and the design was nothing but a stack of rough sketches on the kitchen table. “I’ll get them in by this afternoon.”
“We can do them right now, if you want,” he said, shrugging. “Take a half hour. I can still drop them off for you.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” she said, then stepped back to let him into the apartment and put her arm around Sandy. “This is my new Paganini,” she said.
“I heard her,” Sam said, and turned to the girl. “Do you like playing the violin?”
“Not exactly,” Sandy said, wiggling with embarrassment. “Do you like listening?”
“Not exactly,” Sam said, and Sandy let out a bray of laughter.
Cecilia gave the girl’s shoulders a squeeze and turned toward the kitchen. “What kind of ice cream today?”
“Mocha Crunch.” Sandy looked back at Sam as they followed Cecilia. “This is the best part of the lesson,” she said.
“I believe it.”
“Hard work deserves a reward,” Cecilia said, scooping out a generous cone for the girl. “Now, remember: move your arm from the elbow. You want a touch that’s light, but firm.”
“A feather on the strings.” Sandy’s smile was ironic, older than her years, already defeated.
Cecilia matched her smile. “That’s right.” A tan dot of melted Mocha Crunch shone on Sandy’s violin case as she threaded her way back to the front door and left it half open behind her.
“Am I wrong, or is that girl’s heart breaking?” Sam asked.
“Every day a little more. It’s killing me. Want some Mocha Crunch?”
“I’d think you got enough of this at the store,” Sam said, nodding at the freezer stocked with brown and beige Natural High cartons.
“This is how I keep violin students: bribery. Believe me, Sandy McGee doesn’t leave here feeling uplifted.”
“I listened for a few minutes. You have amazing tolerance,” Sam said.
Cecilia winced. “Was it too awful? The poor girl tries, but I think she’s working off sins from some other life.”
“I did wonder what the song was supposed to sound like.”
Cecilia walked into the living room and fetched her violin from the top of the piano, where it had lain untouched for days. “Something like this,” she said, returning to the kitchen and swinging the violin onto her shoulder. She skimmed her bow over the easy notes, the baby tune. Sam clapped in time, so she played another chorus, nudging the sequence, speeding up the tempo, turning and working the melody a little. The lighthearted music chimed in the space between her and Sam. Attentive now, Sam really clapped, and Cecilia showed off, adding the first six measures of a Bach partita before putting down the violin. “It starts that way, anyway.”
“Speaking of Paganini.”
“BA in music.” She made a mocking face.
Sam shook his head, setting his curls bouncing. “You should be giving concerts, not lessons.”
“And who’s going to come hear me, my mother? I haven’t noticed a big call in El Campo for violin concerts.”
Sam leaned back and stretched out his hairy legs. They reached halfway across the kitchen. “Take it from an old promoter: people don’t know what they want until you give it to them. ‘Imagination Is the Mother of Desire,’ or whatever the hell it is we say on the napkin.”
“‘Right Imagination Is the Parent of Right Desire,’” Cecilia said, laughing. Sam had a knack for making things easier; he found ways to soften corners. With his sloping grin and his ambly-shambly grace he reminded her of a clown. David said that even in college Sam had been the jester, the one who could break up tension in a room. Cecilia could well see why Vivy, that coiled spring, had married him. What she had never been able to see was why Sam had married Vivy. Now she said, “You’ve got to keep your eye on the details.”
“There’s your slogan for the new design: ‘Natural High Ice Cream: Keeping Our Eyes On the Details.’”
“‘Keeping Our Eyes On You,’” Cecilia said, grinning to match his sloping, goofy grin.
“‘We Know What’s Good For You: Natural High.’”
“Hey, I can use that one.” Cecilia sat down across from Sam and picked up a fresh piece of paper and a pencil. Sketching fast, she drew a cartoon man with a bulb of a nose and a toothy smile. He wore an old-fashioned body builder’s leotard and stood with his biceps flexed. The muscles popped up round as scoops of ice cream. In each hand Cecilia put a sundae. Then, casting a quick look at Sam, she drew springy curls all over his head and printed “You Know What’s Good For You: Natural High” under the figure’s floppy feet. “There,” she said.
“My feet aren’t that big,” Sam said.
“Artistic liberty.”
“I didn’t know you were an artist. On top of playing the violin.”
“I doodle, that’s all,” she said, reaching for another piece of paper and a ruler. Suddenly she felt self-conscious, as if she should point out how bad she was at math and tennis. His gaze rippled over her like a breeze. “Why don’t you watch some TV or something? You’ll make me nervous if you sit there.”
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind having some ice cream. I skipped breakfast.”
“Help yourself. Don’t eat the Triple Vanilla—it’s old.”
She marked off four straight lines to make a frame, and then started to draw in her cartoon weight lifter, but the easy confidence had gone out of her hand. She kept lifting the pencil, making pointless little lines; she could see already that the new figure lacked the charm of her first sketch. Several times she glanced up to check on Sam, who had heaped a bowl with Almond Carob and now strolled around the small kitchen, spooning ice cream into his mouth and humming. She said, “This is coming out all nervous.”
“Why not just use the one you already drew? It’s perfect,” Sam said.
“It has a smudge. You don’t know the first thing about being a perfectionist.”
“I try not to.” He sucked another lump of Almond Carob from the spoon.
“Easy to see you were never a musician,” she grumbled, glancing at him sideways but pressing down the corners of her mouth. “You front office people never care about the nuances.”
“So I’m the cigar-chomping front man? Thank you very much.”
“And I’m the grubby little fiddler down in the pit with the nervous twitch. Little Miss Pure Art.” She was prattling, she knew. But it was a