The Summer We Said Goodbye [Installment 2]

Cosmo from the Cosmos

I suppose anything could have happened during that summer of my discontent. It had been over a month since my father left town, and still, there'd been no talk of separation or divorce. I was embarrassed. Since I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know what to tell my friends. So I didn't tell them anything. If my parents were allowed to pretend nothing had happened, wasn't I? 

The houses on my street seemed oddly indifferent to my predicament. I was the first pickup that morning and had the back of the van all to myself, giving me time to stake out my turf and cop an attitude, all-around aloofness spiked with a healthy dose of defiance.

The leafy avenues of my neighborhood rushed by anonymously. I stared blankly at the children gathered for the elementary school's annual day camp. I was only a few years removed from that camp yet felt wholly detached from it. It had been one in a series of rites that had pointed me to my future.  But my parents’ split had severed the continuity.

The van banked left and headed towards the lake.

If my parents wouldn't talk to me, and I couldn’t talk to my friends, where did that leave me?

The van swung into a driveway and came to a halting stop. The side door swooshed open with a flourish.

"Cosmo from the cosmos," shrieked Aris!

---

Technically, Aris was not a friend. She had moved to town the year before but had yet to infiltrate the social stratum of our school. Something about her didn't make for an obvious fit. She was pretty but had a moxie that made her difficult to read for kids her own age, like in band class, where I knew her best. 

I played the trumpet because that's what my brothers played before me, and a brass horn was already in the family. Aris chose the oboe, a refined version of the clarinet.

The trumpet is obvious; just press your lips together and blow. But the oboe is a different story entirely. It requires a disciplined contraction of the facial muscles and a controlled aperture of the lips to coax any kind of sound from the pipe, let alone one you’d want to hear — the "embouchure," as it's called.

Our fussy music teacher, Mr. Otis, loved that word, ahm-boo-sher. He'd ferret each of its syllables out at every opportunity, bastardizing its French sexiness with his Midwestern twang. 

"No, no, no, Luana!" he'd bark, tapping his baton on the music stand in front of him. "Your aim-bow-share is off, way off — sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Are you practicing at home? You must, must, must — every morning and every night! Cheeks taut, lips parted, teeth set. That's your aim-bow-share."

Aris proved no better at prosecuting her embouchure than the other oboists at first.  But unlike the rest, she made no bones and didn't shirk. 

"Maestro," she'd interrupt.

She had a habit of calling him "Maestro," which would have earned her our collective contempt if not for the way it stopped him dead in his tracks. 

"Yes, Aris?"

"Yesterday, you instructed us to keep our jaws relaxed, but just now, you said to set our teeth. Is it possible to do both at the same time?" 

"Quite right, indeed...d-did I -- ?"

It would have been easy to mistake Aris' formality and penchant for detail for brown-nosing, as some of our classmates invariably did. But she was so utterly unselfconscious about it that for anyone paying attention, it was impossible to find fault with her. She was, after all, making a statement of fact. Mr. Otis was our instructor and conductor. "Maestro" was spot on. 

She didn't overplay it, either, pulling it out only for consequential matters, like when Mr. Otis ran off at the mouth. He loved to hear himself talk and frequently contradicted himself from one session to the next. Band class was often pulled under by his blustery theatrics. But Aris had a knack for cutting through his hubris by appealing to his vanity with nary a hint of impudence. 

And she backed it up with an indefatigable verve, doggedly blasting through all manner of squeaks, screeches, and squawks no matter how red-faced and teary-eyed from hypoxia she became. We could only watch wide-eyed and slack-jawed, caught somewhere between embarrassment and awe.

Eventually, Aris’ squawks became less screechy, and her squeaks more melodious. She had done it right there in front of us all.  In raising her own game so unapologetically, she raised the rest of ours, too, the Maestro's especially.

"Best one yet!" my parents called out to a beaming Mr. Otis after one of our recitals. They meant it, too, I’m sure.

That's when Aris probably picked up on my dad's tagline for me. He was a happy-go-lucky guy who enjoyed instigating public displays, like at school performances over the din as the curtain rose or afterward during the applause. 

"Cosmo from the cosmos!”

I'd be lying if I said it didn't make my heart skip, especially when my mom followed with her rejoinder, "Your father, the dreamer." 

She had too much discretion to say her part out loud in social settings, but I'd hear her nonetheless, if only in my head. It was like an inside joke only the three of us shared, and it always made me smile.

I hadn't been smiling much lately, though. So hearing those words ring out on a strange driveway that first morning of tennis camp totally ambushed me. Aris stopped me dead in my tracks as she had so many times before with the Maestro. Her rendition of my dad’s catchphrase for me was like a clarion call that tapped something deep within me.

Cosmo from the cosmos!

Too cool for school didn't stand a chance, and I shot her my toothiest grin.

---

You can find a full archive of past installments and posts here.