Chapter 39

Johanna's turn:

It's not about sex. We're cuddled together. The sex is over for the night. And I still love him. Of course, right now we're both glowing. I mean, if we tossed the covers back, the room would light up. The post-coital (coital? - Damn you, Sheldon Cooper!) tingles will subside in a bit, but that loving glow hasn't. Nope. Hasn't. Not since I first admitted to myself that this was the guy for my life.

I trust him. He trusts me.

Kara's turn:

Kara Sevinsky. That's me. I am five feet four inches tall and I weigh a hundred and six pounds. My hair is brown. Plain brown. At least I got grey eyes (Not blue. Grey.) out of the genetic mash-up between two different genetic paths that were my parents.

Ah, yes, the parental units. Mom is gone. Dead. Since I was eight. It's a horrible, horrible story. Dad was a new-minted attorney in a mid-sized law firm. Mom was a pretty young receptionist. Very pretty. Worked on it. Dad targeted her early on. She met Dad's requirements: Young, pretty and female. They were married. I was the result. I don't think I was part of Dad's plan. Mom certainly wasn't, not with a screaming kid. Dad and Mom divorced when he left his first law firm.

Mom was in love. Dad wasn't. It tore Mom up. She went into depression, drugs and alcohol and I spent a lot of time with her parents while she went in and out of treatments. I spent the occasional weekend with Dad. He tried, I guess. For a while. When I was eight, Mom went into yet another hospital. I had the optimism of an eight year old. I kept hoping that THIS time it would work.

It didn't. Mom checked out of the hospital and checked into a cheap motel with a bottle of pills. I lost my Mom. I ended up with Dad when Mom's mom died a year later.

By this time Dad was on his second wife, another young pretty one. And Dad was making money, so I never lacked for anything, except a parent. Stepmom wasn't signed on to be a parent. It wasn't out of any great love for me that Dad decided to divorce her. I harbored the thought that with her out of the picture, I'd end up with Super Dad, unencumbered by a twenty-something bleached-blonde bimbo.

I was wrong. Dad performed his duties within the statutory (yes, I'm the daughter of an attorney. I know 'statutory') requirements, but perfunctory hugs every night ... I can't explain.

Two wives later, here I am. Dad's on billboards all over Houston. Rolls in dough. I get anything I want, but what I want is to be wanted. I do private schools. Somewhere along the line I got the idea that I wanted to play music. Our private school class went to a performance of a chamber orchestra and a beautiful girl played some classical music on a violin. It's like switches lined up in my brain. This is what I want to do, I told Dad.

That's easy for Dad. Write a check, and <<poof!>>, the daughter is immersed in music. Some kids would've bristled, some would have lost interest, some would've added it to the long list of interests to rotate through. Me, Kara Sevinsky, I was meant to play the violin.

I was a good student of academics, too, mind you. Along with the grey eyes, something else came out of the genetic cocktail that created me: brains. I'm adept. Polymathic. I have favorites subjects, for sure, but NO subject has been difficult. That's nice in one way. I can let my mind wander. I can read. I can play music.

By the time I reached my middle teen years, we were in a big house, commensurate with my Dad's status as a premier ambulance chaser trial lawyer. Gated community. Servants. The sweet lady who cared for our house and did the cooking, Ysabela Luna, was more my parent than dear Dad was.

Her English was heavily accented but much better than my Spanish, although I made a concerted effort to learn Spanish. I did pretty good. Ysabela was good and honest and religious. Every dime she made went either right back to her Guatemalan family or into a savings account, but honestly, she had a daughter here in Houston, a grey-eyed Anglo daughter whom she graced with long conversations about what was right and wrong with life.

I learned from her. Morals. Life. Cooking. Being a decent human being.

By now I was in private school. When we moved into this neighborhood Dad thought that it would come with a good public school. He was wrong. The seond day I was there I got my purse stolen. On the third day I caught a girl trying to get my new purse and I got in a fight. Dad's intervention kept an expulsion off my permanent record, and his intervention got me into this exclusive school.

You might think that absent the lower tiers of society, a private school would be quite the place to grow. You'd be wrong. If you're in a position for your parents to send you to an exclusive school, you have plenty of options to be spoiled and feel entitled. Except you dress better and have better toys.

I sort of folded in on myself. Music. I was friendly enough and polite enough to the other students and I was smart enough so that I wasn't on my teachers' radar except when they noticed that Kara Sevinsky has been running 98% on every test they gave her.

The letter home to Dad about that got me praise. After all, I was HIS daughter, therefore anything positive that came out of my existence was a credit to him. Some kids would rebel at that supposition. I knew some in school who were doing just that.

I knew better. Ysabela saw the letter too. "Kara, mi Corazon," she said, "let your father be happy for his reasons. You should be happy for your own. Hurting him is not going to do you good."

That was sort of my mantra: Let others find satisfaction in what I did, but I did it for me.

Except ONE thing. Sex. Knew all about it. After all, it was a big portion of my dad's relationships to Stepmoms One through Three. And heaven knows, as soon as I had breasts (not that they're that big anyway) I started getting urged to contribute to the happiness of any of several boys.

The only mother in my life spoke with me frankly about it, about how love was still a reason. "There are other reasons, too, mi Corazon. I know of many of them. When I came to America, I had friends. They found they could make more money much faster by understanding those feelings."

"Prostitution?"

"Perhaps. Or just trading their bodies for better pay in jobs like mine. There is a cost, though, for many. Unless your head and your heart are both different than mine."

I knew. I read, you know. Quite a lot, contemporary things, and I can understand when the writer is glossing over the downsides of things to justify a stance. Free sex wasn't. And it certainly wasn't free love. Mine wasn't free. And I certainly didn't see anybody my age, or any other age, for that matter, that I was going to let do me just so they'd hang around me.

Music. Ah, music. I had good teachers. Dad paid well. And with good teachers and the desire to succeed and I guess, some natural talent, I was first violin of the school orchestra. That wasn't that big a deal because the orchestra was small. But my teacher made some phone calls and I got a chance to play with the orchestra of a big public school, so I got to see others my age. The music was okay.

The interactions with other students, well, not so much. Most weren't serious. I don't understand why one would waste the time if it's not serious.

There were three others, though, that were serious and possessing more than average talent. We hung out together. It was pretty good. Music. Friends. But then Brian started hitting on me. At first it was kind of cute and flattering and I sort of fended him off. But lately he's making me uncomfortable. And I won't EVER be alone with him.

The four of us went to a concert. I mean, I'm sort of angling towards that college anyway, so I try to go to any of their music functions I can. That's where I saw Johanna and Stoney for the first time. Johanna, I could believe. It's a chamber orchestra, and naturally they have a flutist.

It wasn't even unusual that they chose her for the solo. She's that good. But they brought out Stoney. He was limping a bit, and carrying a banjo. I had all kinds of thoughts about that. I know this professor/conductor's reputation. He's been known to bend the rules a bit when it comes to classical music. But a BANJO? That's quite a bend.

I recognized the music, even if it wasn't on the program and wasn't announced. Mozart is a genius, after all, and I know a lot of his works. But this is supposed to be composed for flute and harp.

Stoney made it work. Not a note for note effort, you know, but definitely right there with the original composition. And when Jo started playing...

Jo is striking. That almost carrot-red hair. Those eyes. And she was wearing a black, floor-length dress that set her off like the setting of a diamond: red hair, white skin, blue eyes, and of course, that silver flute. When she came in to play her part alongside Stoney, she looked at him like she was drawing something from him. They connected.

After the concert the four of us in our little group stopped at a little diner for coffee and donuts and talked. One of them made some disparaging remark about the place of a banjo in classical music.