The Opposite of Music by Janet Ruth Young

until Marty arrives, watching the car pull up, and watching myself go.
    I go.

GOING
    On the train, knowing I’m where I shouldn’t be sharpens my senses. The world is shouting at me: SCHRAFFT’S in pink neon from a clock tower like a cathedral, H. P. HOOD on the big dairy office building. The graffiti on the empty freight cars are strangers shouting “I was here.” On the Boston Sand and Gravel plant, a big sign cautions ACCIDENTS HAVE NO HOLIDAYS.
    With no cell phone, I can’t get pulled back. No one knows my location for sure, though they could hazard a guess. Watching father-son dyads board in matching Bruins jackets, I try not to think about Dad alone. Looking to the right as the train crosses the Charles River, I try not to think about Dad’s dream of sinking in the metal box. When we see the suspension bridge topped with two Washington Monuments and lit in blue lights, the father-son dyads are already standing, so we elbow around them, through the station, and between the ticket scalpers outside. This is Boston. Streetlamps shining through maple trees with polluted-looking branches. Double-parked cars, brick buildings with garbage bags growing like mushrooms at the foot.
    We take the Green Line to the Hynes/ICA stop. Crossing Boylston, we do a curb dance as an unmarked car and two cruisers careen around the corner, sirens barking. Drunks ask us croakily for a cigarette, and a woman asks for money to buy formula for her grandbaby. See? None of this would be happening in Hawthorne.
    The theater is big, a thousand seats, though not anywhere near as big as the arena at North Station. It feels right to be here instead of home. The theater is already dark and Buddy’s band is already performing when we scuttle to our seats in the front row.

THOUGHTS THAT INTRUDE
ON MY ENJOYMENT,
ALTHOUGH THEY DON’T ACTUALLY
RUIN THE CONCERT FOR ME
    a. This should be fun.
b. This is going to be fun.
c. This should really be a lot of fun.
d. Obviously, there’s been a serious lack of music in my life lately. Unless you count the school assembly that featured a performance by the Hawtones, our high school a cappella group. They are known in a cappella circles for their unique medley of classic songs about New England (“Massachusetts,” “Old Cape Cod,” “Charlie on the MTA”). I’m sure it plays better on the road than it does back home in Hawthorne, in the heart of the region they are singing about.
e. I met someone my age once who had a subscription to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and sat in the same seat every year, at the edge of the right balcony, overhanging the musicians. He impressed me as quite the egghead until he said the main reason he liked going was to feel the vibrations against his skin. That’s something you miss when you listen to music on headphones.
f. Gordy just gave me the quick-glance-nod-and-smile-with-eyebrows-raised. He’s obviously having fun. Good for him.
g. I wonder what we’re going to eat later.
h. For a while Dad was getting me to sing his favorite tenor/baritone opera duets with him, with the volume of the CD turned way up. Especially a duet from The Pearl Fishers , in which a pair of best friends are in love with the same woman. “It’s her! It’s that goddess!” he would sing in French. “She threads her way through the crowd.” And if Mom walked into the room at that moment, he would really play it up. Toward the conclusion of the song, some falsely tense music signals the strife in the friends’ relationship. It always reminded me of the soundtrack to an action movie with planes colliding or planets exploding. It’s like someone went in with a Roto-Rooter and churned up the orchestra, and you could tell the story would come to a bad end. But the two friends sing, “Nothing must separate us! Let’s pledge to always remain friends!” Slashes from the strings, and a big crescendo: