Treacherous

It’s December and it’s snowing and your American father is driving way too fast. You only have ten minutes to make your “call,” forty minutes before the concert begins at eight. You’ve become first violin and without you, you figure, the Charles Ives High School Orchestra is hopeless.

“We’re going to be late,” you whine, as your dad drives ten miles over the thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit. On the car radio the weather guy warns, If you don’t have to go out, stay at home. It’s treacherous out there.

“We’ll make it,” your father promises as he squints into the swirling darkness ahead.

Time wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d have planned better. If he’d have scraped the ice from the windshield earlier. If he’d have ironed his shirt sooner. Things would be fine if you were seventeen instead of fifteen and could drive yourself. Or if your mom was here to do this instead of your dad.

“Can’t we go any faster?” you plead.

Snake Hill Hollow is a typical New England back road. It’s well named. It curves like a backward “S,” and even under normal conditions you can’t take the curves too fast. But it cuts a good five minutes off your trip.

You’re halfway between home and school -- maybe five miles to go -- when the car goes into the skid. You hear your father pump the brake. You close your eyes and clutch your violin case and feel yourself moving more smoothly, more effortlessly than you ever have before. So this is what death feels like, you think to yourself.

And then it’s over.

“Are you okay?” you hear your father say.

You open your eyes and see that you’ve stopped on an embankment, safely off the road, your car tilted maybe sixteen degrees to the left.

“Get us out of here!” you demand.

Your dad restarts the car, puts it in reverse, goes nowhere. He tries to pull forward, but still doesn’t move.

“Great,” you say. “Just great.”

He turns on the interior light, grabs a flashlight from the glove compartment, and when he opens his door it falls open. A minute or two later he’s back. His dress shoes are snow-covered and the knees of his suit pants are muddy. You also notice the back of his hand is bleeding, and as if he can read your mind he smiles self-consciously and says, “I must have cut myself somehow.” He finds some old Dunkin’ Donuts napkins and makes a compress. You don’t ask him if he needs help; instead you switch off the interior light with an excuse that battery power needs to be saved.

“One of our back wheels isn’t even touching the ground,” he says. “We’re going to have to call for a tow.”

“How long is that going to take?”

He shrugs and takes his cell phone from the beverage holder. “Night like this, who knows?”

“Is there a house we can walk to?”

You already know the answer. The only thing on Snake Hill Hollow is the landfill, and it was put there to avoid complaints from town residents. The closest house is probably yours.

Your father finally finds a garage that says they’ll send somebody out. But they’re busy and it’ll be at least a half-hour. You call Dr. Schulte, the orchestra leader, and tell her the situation. “We’ll hold for as long as we can,” she says.

You sit silently in the car as it idles, heater and flashers on, radio off. After fifty minutes go by -- during which time your father calls the garage a half-dozen times and no one answers -- he says, “At least it stopped snowing.” He’s right. The clouds have broken up and the bright moon shines through.

“The audience are probably all in their seats by now,” you say. “All the musicians are on stage tuning up.” But your anger has dissipated, the hurt has gone from your words.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have been more careful.”

You look over and in the muted moonlight you see that the mud has caked on his pants, the blood has dried on his hand, and you picture him -- not many years from now -- dead and removed from your life. A nice guy most people seldom give a second thought about.

“I guess I shouldn’t have rushed you,” you say.

“After the concert I was thinking I’d buy us a steak dinner at the Olde Coach House Inn,” he says.

You hate the place almost as much as he loves it. “That’s all right,” you say.

“I really wanted to hear you play Trepak,” he says.

A minute or two goes by. You accept your fate, stuck on this mound of snow and frozen earth, waiting for a tow truck that might not even show up. Everything outside is as clean and white as pressed linen, and there isn’t a sound other than the car and your breathing. Under different circumstances, you think to yourself, this might not be a bad place to be.

“Hey, Ming,” he says. “Can I tell you something?”

Dao-Ming was what they called you in the orphanage. When your parents learned it meant “shining path,” a nickname was born.

You glance over. Your dad looks young in this light, almost handsome, undefeated. “Every so often,” he says, “I look at you and I worry that so much love might stop my heart from beating.”

You smile. “In that case, you’d better get into some serious cardio,” you tell him, and he smiles back. “You really want to hear Trepak?” you ask.

“Here?” he says. There’s no room.”

“Outside then.”

And before he can protest, before you remind yourself how bad cold temperatures can be on a violin, you reach over and switch on the headlights, battery-be-damned. You uncase the violin, climb out of the car, walk a few yards, turn and face your audience, who plods through the snow and leans uncertainly on the hood of the car.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” you announce. “I give you Ming the Merciless.”

The sound of Tchaikovsky carries into the night. Your father, gloveless, applauds. You play and you play and you don’t stop, not even when the tow truck, blue lights flashing, pulls as close as it can and bathes you in a spotlight you’ve only dared to imagine.

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