Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 01:45:36 -0500 From: Michael Weiss Subject: Toccata & Fugue - Chapter One: The Creation of a Symphony Disclaimer: The story you are about to read is based solely on the imagnitive mind of this author. Any situations in this story, unless otherwise noted, is purely coincidental to what has happened in real life; it is a work of fiction. This story is about the building and destruction of relationships, and at some point will include sexual acts that may be offensive or immoral to you. If this is the case, then don't read it. It's your choice from here on in! _______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter One: The Creation of a Symphony Amidst the decoratively bright colors that naturally are associated with the generous season of Christmas -- red, yellow, green, blue, orange -- that shone intensely throughout the house and living room where I was, an old but virtually untouched ivory key on a grand piano awaited the delicate pushing to make a sound. Both mom and dad sat back on the black leather couch beside the glowing embers of a fire that desperately needed rekindling, on the other side stood a pine meticulously ornamented as if it came out of a professional catalogue. Jessica, my eldest sister of three years, sat by herself on the same styled armchair cross-legged and leaning forward with her head resting in her palms, eagerly waiting for the music to begin. Joel, my older brother by just over a year sat beside on the piano bench with his fingers finding their places on the white keys, and his eyes stared intently at the notes the followed the treble clef. Afterward he would shift his eyes below to the bass clef and try to align his left hand properly with the correct notes that followed on the staff after the time signature. Joel would then nod while looking at me, indicating that it was now time to start the concert. My job was to address our guests and family about what this evening was going to be about. I stood up on the bench and swallowed while looking at everyone not just directly in front of us sitting and lying on the carpet, but also everybody that stood behind the couch and chair where my immediate family sat and smiled. My knees buckled a little, and while trying not to let anyone notice, bent down so that I could whisper something into my brother's ear. "I can't do it, Joel," I murmured. "I'm scared." Joel, while not taking his eyes off the music nor his heads off the keys, slightly adjusted his head sideways and replied in the same quietness, "Justin, don't be scared. You should just stare at mom or dad and say the intro." "But mom and dad are smiling immensely!" I had to whisper back. There was something funny about the way our parents were smiling. It was sort of as if they were enjoying themselves, but at the same time being, well, fake. That was my first excuse for not wanting to go along with the in-house concert tonight. "That's because they're happy to see us go through with this. Trust me, there's nothing to worry about." I stood up straight again, and opened my mouth with a loud voice that could fill the entire living room, "Welcome friends and family to the Jakobson home this evening." At that point, my eyes ceased from wandering the room and all of a sudden, came to a stop on our cousin Jordan who sat on the floor seemingly to laugh. I felt sick again so I bent down again. However, before I could mumble anything, Joel said, "You're doing fine. Keep going!" "Joel, I thought I was too but Jordan's laughing at me!" I whined. "That's non-sense. I cannot even hear a peep coming from him or anywhere by him. Just continue and don't look at him." Then he shifted his head back straight, probably telling me he was not going to talk anymore. Just as I began to stand up again though, his whole head turned quickly and his emerald green eyes that glistened in the light, met mine. "Look little buddy, I want to get this done and over with as quickly as you do. Let's just get it finished and who cares if we screw up." He then looked back at the sheet of music, and I then stood up straight. Thinking it would be proper to explain why I had to talk with my brother, I began by saying "After the show, Joel and I have considered that we will sign autographs for our dearest fans. We weren't going to it originally, but he managed to convince me." A chuckle arose from the gathering faces and I felt my brother's elbow poke me on the back of my leg. Even I surprisingly giggled at the autographing joke despite my uneasy stomachache. I felt as well that I had to continue for Joel's sake. "As I was saying, welcome to our home. Tonight, we are entertaining you with a sing-a-long concert filled with all the familiar Christmas tunes that apparently have been around longer then both my mom and dad put together!" At that point both of my parents mouths shaped into an `o' while at the same time laughingly hysterically, joining in with the rest of the crowd. Mom's hand had actually covered her mouth right after her first laugh at my joke. "Without further delay, we shall begin in about ten seconds just to allow me to get off this chair and help my brother change the music when he's done the page. Guests of our home, I give you my brother, Joel Jakobson!" I stepped down from the bench and heard my brother mumble through his teeth, "Way to go smart ass." I just looked at him surprised, because he swore on the eve before Christmas, and because I had thought that the jokes, although not in the original script planned, were funny. How often can you say something about your parents and not get punished for it? "Sorry," I whispered back Joel, as soon as my hands grabbed the first sheet of music, began playing instantly, his fingers running over spaces of keys my hands could not yet cover. The twelve song concert that Joel and I planned were going to be mixed with fast paced songs like Jingle Bells and slow paced songs like my favorite, The First Noel. Over the past couple of weeks, Joel has been practicing at making the songs continue without a break in between, so he asked me to help him flip pages as he went along. I agreed, and then he said I would have to be the host that welcomes everyone, which I did not like because I do not like talking in front of big crowds. Despite his unwillingness to change his spirits and after much bickering over how I would do anything else, I gave into his commands since he was the person orchestrating the symphony, as he called it. I find it funny that on every trip downtown to see the music hall, the conductor was the person who acted as host. The first song that Joel wanted to do was the 12 Days of Christmas, which was his way of telling everybody indirectly that there were only going to be twelve songs, or at least that is what he told me privately the night before. Joel also said that by the time the concert was over, all the practice he put into his fingers to be able to sustain half an hour of piano playing, would pay off. Every once and again between turning pages, I would turn my head around and glance at everyone in the room. My dad had invited his younger sister and their two kids, one of whom was Jordan, and his sister Victoria. Mom was an only child, but she ended up asking Grandma to visit for Christmas. Then there were three other people dad and mom considered apart of our secondary family, only because they were close friends from the church that dad preached at. The remaining family that was visiting was my mom's closest friend since elementary school, or so she says, and there son Chad. After much joyous singing and laughing, the first song ended, but faded slightly as Jingle Bells jingled its way through. Jordan was the youngest child on both mom and dad's sides of the family, but not by much because he was only five weeks younger than I was. Our mom and dad often let him come over for some nights during the week, and sleep over on some weekends to give his parents a break because Jordan had a severe case of `not really ever being able to settle down completely' as his mother put it. Today he was actually doing good compared to the other times that I had seen him. Last year if I remember correctly, he spent the entire evening trying to beat up his sister. Chad was more my age, only being a month older. We have been in the same class since kindergarten, and frequently visits our house quite a bit. This is due partly because he is my best friend and his mom and my mom are the same, but also because he has a heck of a lot more problems than Jordan does. My mom says that Chad is a `blue baby', which accounts for why he has a similar attention span problem as Jordan does, and also why he must go to see another teacher for a couple of hours throughout the day when we are at school. Despite me being younger than Chad, he is much shorter than I am, and out of a class of twenty-five students, he ranks in as the second smallest. His eyes are at my chin level, and he is not at all fat, where as the smallest kid in our class is extremely overweight. Joel was an expert at music. You could give him any piece of music, no matter what the difficulty and he would try his absolute hardest to play it on the spot, and if he could not, he would practice at it until he could play it. I focused my attention back towards him, and watched as he intricately wove two songs together that I would never have thought sounded good when played back to back, Jingle Bells and the Little Drummer Boy. It was amazing; somehow, during the last verse, he managed to split one hand into playing two parts, two completely different songs. I had heard that along time ago at the age of six Mozart was composing and performing his works, but I swear my brother could probably do everything on the piano that Mozart could when he was eleven. He is a good brother; he has never really picked on me, though he has not really spent a lot of time with me because he is constantly at the piano trying to do something new. When Joel turned eleven nearly a year ago, mom and dad actually had to ground him from using the piano just to join a party they arranged for him. Around dinnertime, Joel managed to slip away and once someone realized he had and mentioned it, mom shrugged it off saying, `he is probably at the piano again'. Then, dad seemed to have clued in and flew into the living room to find Joel fingering notes without pressing the keys. Dad chuckled for a bit after getting into a heated discussion about Joel being grounded and not able to play, and the response of him not playing because had never hit the keys. Jessica was virtually non-existent in our home because if she was not with friends, then she spent her time in her room listening to music and doing homework from school. The only time that she would ever come out of her room and socialize with the rest of us was when she was out of her room. Mom was a lawyer way back before she had us kids. Her firm, which still operates now under a different name, used to mainly deal with business contracts and just before she left, the partners began spreading their wings into different areas of law. Now since I am relatively old enough to learn more independence, she volunteers her time during the day when my sister, brother and I are in classes at a youth hostel downtown. Then she comes to pick Chad and I up from school. In all the years Chad and I have been alive, mom has only been late once at picking us up. Not only was she late for the only time, but it was the only time she allowed a `client', as she called them, in her car. That day was the only time she ever brought a complete stranger into our house. About eight months ago, a kid who had just turned fourteen years old and been kicked out of his house because he was doing many bad things. Occasionally now and again, especially on New Years Eve and Day, he will come over and babysit. His name is Troy. That time mom let him spend the night, she phoned the Child Advocacy with the hopes that within a week, the relations between him and his family would work out, or have a foster family lined up. Unfortunately, things did not work out the way she planned, and Troy ended up in a group home, and back on the street. As soon as mom heard that he was working something bad, she spent the entire night driving around trying to find him once dad got home to look after us. She could not find him that night, or for the remainder of that week. Once she did find him, she cleared out an old room in the house and made him sleep there until the Advocacy could find a suitable family to place him with, which took about a month. Dad on the other hand, works for the man upstairs, as a pastor. His day operates on a twenty-four-hour-day-seven-days-a-week shift. He has a pager that seems continually to be buzzing with mostly either bad news, or some little good news. How he can manage all the bad stuff must truly be a gift from God. Every night at dinner, dad would mention Troy in the prayer of thanksgiving, that he was happy to have Troy stay with us for a bit and that God would look after him day in and day out, both in our home and when he moved somewhere else. Now Joel had switched over to a different song, Rudolph the Red Noses Reindeer, and I started thinking. A long time ago in June before I turned ten, Troy and I talked a bit about his life, about my life, and about life in general. I remember him telling me the stuff he did, was still doing, and what he would go back to if he ended up in another group home. He said he would continue doing a drug called ecstasy, and possibly start a new drug called Special K (and for a bit when he talked about it I was convinced it was the cereal) that some of his street friends wanted him to try. He also talked about mushrooms, weed and drinking a lot of whisky. The conversations always overwhelmed my mind with so much information. Then he started telling me the prices he has paid for some of these drugs. I asked him how he could afford those prices if he lived on the street. His reply went like this, "It's easy. But what I do goes against everything your family stands for. I cheat, I lie, and I steal. I also have to sell my body on occasion. There's a lot of money in that. One day, if you want, I teach you how to do it. All you have to do is learn how to suck dick and how to get it. And trust me, it feels great!" Since the night that he told me that, I have been curious a number of times to ask him what he meant by selling your body, and about sucking a dick, or receiving it. I am the type of person who likes trying something new, no matter what it is, so long as it meets my tastes. The way I look at it, my life has been way too ordinary, and I though I am scared to touch the drugs that Troy described to me, I am not afraid of doing something disgusting. I mean, I have eaten worms before just to win a two-dollar bet when I was five. Ugh, and now that I think about it, I feel like puking. Mom was disappointed though when she found out that Troy could not make it for our party tonight. She said after a phone call to him that he has made so much progress at changing over that last few months and that it was sad not to have him for a Christmas dinner or something. Then he ended up calling back and said if she and my father wanted to go out for New Years, he would be able to babysit for them. Partly because it would not allow him to go on one of his drug fests, he admitted, and because he has not been around all that much because of school and the strict rules forced onto to him by his foster parents. After talking it over awhile with dad, they agreed to go out for the night and let Troy babysit us. Joel suddenly cut from the Rudolph song he was playing into O Come All Ye Faithful, which was a major change in pace. I kept trying on focusing my attention on helping my brother out, but every time I looked over at my mom's face, or my dad's, their smiling just did not seem normal and we were only five songs into the concert! I then looked over at every one else in the house again. Jessica moved from her cross-legged position on the couch and extended her legs out, and fell back into the comfort of the chair, while she shut her eyes and took in the song by mouthing the words. This was her favorite song. Jordan still looked restless, his legs slightly bouncing up and down from where he sat, kind of looking as if he was up to no good. Chad was sitting between his mother's legs, with his mom leaning over his shoulders giving him a gigantic hug and swaying back and forth to Joel's hypnotic playing of the piano. Chad's father sat beside his mother with his arm placed over her shoulders, and looked up at me singing and smiling, then turned and watched his wife for a bit. I thought that was beautiful. Eventually, O Come All Ye Faithful became Hark the Herald Angels Sing, which then well merged together with Angels We Have Heard on High. Away in a Manger followed that song, then was followed by Joel's favorite song, O Holy Night, which at the very second he started intertwining it with the previous song, you could tell he was going to make the song contain all his energy. Generally when Joel plays the piano, and because he hasn't learned how to sing and play simultaneously and keep in sync, he will keep the stature of a true pianist by sitting up with his back perfectly straight, and keep his arms level just above the keys. With this Christmas song though, I say he would resemble an amateur because, for the first time that I have ever seen him play the piano, he actually got involved with the song. His posture was a wreck, but he sang, loud enough that I actually heard him and, it was good. I stood at the grand piano, black in color with the cover up revealing the multiple copper colored strings vibrating from either being hit, or silently getting the reverberation from the ones making sound, in complete utter awe. I had never seen Joel like this, but I did like it because it showed a more lively side to his personality. I hope that everybody can see more of it from now on! "Hey, Joel, you better put enough energy into my favorite song as you did in yours!" I whispered into his ear as he finished his trip on the wild side and began playing White Christmas. He turned his head sideways to look at me, and I noticed his forehead started glistening with sweat. He really was getting into this concert thing. "Don't worry Justin, your covered!" Joel managed to gasp. I glanced over at Chad, who was staring at me, smiling and then gestured an `I don't know what your brother was doing but it was funny' look. I just nodded getting somewhat anxious because my brother started the beginnings of Silent Night and my song was directly after. Troy, all of sudden came back to my mind. I began to think that the reason why my parents were upset underneath the fictitious smiles was because maybe Troy got into trouble, and that was the real reason why he couldn't show up for dinner. My mom and dad were cuddling in each other's arms when I checked back to look. I had to try to deter my mind from continually thinking about him. What I had to do was tell myself that I would see him again, and pray that he never went back to the street and gotten caught by the police for doing bad things. A conversation that I had with my mom a couple of weeks ago exposed some deep profound truths about him that he does not know yet. She told me that he had arrest warrants out for him because of several breaking in and entering crimes he did before mom took him off the street again. She also said that if he hit the streets again, her friend's at work would not be able to protect him as much as if he would stay in foster care. This would be many things that mom would have to discuss with Troy the next time he decided to visit our house again whether before he babysits us on New Years Eve or after. Then I heard the faint sounds of the First Noel being interwoven together with the final bars of Silent Night. It was beautiful, and I thought that immediately following this little concert Joel planned, I would have to give him a big hug and thank him because of how extravagant he made it sound. As the song went forward, I swear I must have been glowing with some sort of luminescent light. I was so happy that I had to close my eyes for a couple of seconds and sing. I do not know why but there is an advantage to singing with your eyes close besides the fact that it hides the crown from your sight. For me, singing with my eyes closed makes whatever song I am singing become a little more personal, that at some point, singing it for so long can actually have a long lasting effect on your soul. Now that I am getting into this soul thing, I think I should describe myself a little more that what I have. You do not really know who I am yet, and here I start talking about one of the most precious gifts given to humanity. Being the youngest of three in my family, have had to strive for the abilities that came naturally to my older sister and brother. My sister is a goddess when it comes to sports, soccer in particular because that was what mom was good at when she was a kid. My older brother is strong academically, whipping through the entire math and science curriculum at school, and just simply excels in English and history because of his creative mind. Between the two of them, Jessica does all right in the academic part of school, but Joel fails miserably at anything beyond gym class. I got lucky because I surpass Joel in every competitive sport and just fall short of meeting his intellectual expectations. But surprisingly enough, the school board that governs us, has already started preparing Joel and I for an enriched program when we enter junior high in a year and two. Jessica, when see goes into high school next, was told that she could take some enriched courses if she so chooses, however the stipulation being that she would have to wake an hour earlier just to get to the school. Dad has specifically put down an ultimatum that if her grades start falling in the enriched courses, she quits the extracurricular sports until her grades have improved. This demand on her has instigated many fights between herself and dad. Meanwhile, Joel continues playing on the piano. With me however, I got mom's rebel attitude to challenge everything and dad's ability to let go of a situation faster if I lost than mom could. I have mom's compassionate heart and loving manner, but I have dad's mind-set of adventure, always being on the go and never stopping, whether it is something that I am familiar with or something I know nothing about. When it comes to a challenge, the word `no' leaves my vocabulary. Troy says that this part of my personality is what will set me apart from the winners and the losers; that it allows me always to be trying to better myself while keeping the losers behind me. A lot of the stuff we talk about, come to think about it, kind of makes no sense to me. I believe in winning at everything I do, but when it comes to losing something, I would not put my foot on their head and grind it into the ground because all else, if I lost at something, I would not want the winner rubbing it in my face. I expect that admitting to defeat is a good thing, but also being told something positive, like, "better luck next time' is the best thing. Like dad's saying goes in so many of his sermons, treat others they way you expect to be treated. "The concept was made so simple that even a child could understand it." Dad preached in his most recent sermon, adding a joke that I never got, but the rest of the congregation did, "And given enough repetition, maybe they might actually start practicing it!" When I asked my dad what the joke meant later on, he asked me how I learned the A, B, C's. I did not remember, but he went on saying that by saying the alphabet so many times, over and over and over again, it engraved itself into my mind. The concert had finally ended, and I opened my eyes and ears to a warm, cozy feeling of happiness. Chad was sleeping over, Santa was coming later on, and I swear there was nothing more I could dream of getting. "That was great Justin! Your brother, like, went crazy singing that other song. I wanted to laugh as soon as I saw him move. Don't tell him I said that." Chad said after he got up from sitting with his mom and started following me to the kitchen where my grandma was pouring everyone a glass of eggnog. "Don't worry about it!" I shrugged it off, "I was laughing at him. I have never seen him do that before either." The two of us walked through the dining room into the kitchen, where grandma immediately grabbed a hold of my shoulders and pulled me into a huge hug. "That was magnificent, Justin!" She finally said releasing me from her grasp. "The beginning speech was so funny. Tell me, where's Joel at?" "I don't know grandma." I lied. I knew he was still at the piano, and would probably remain there for another five or ten minutes. "Wouldn't you agree that his playing was brilliant?" She asked, and then turned her head looking for either my mom or dad. She found my dad, and instantly began chatting away. "You know what you should do John, you should enroll that kid Joel of yours in the local music school or something. There have on of those around here right?" "Well, I don't know mom? I'd have to look into it." Dad said. I turned my attention to Chad, grabbed two glasses of the creamy eggnog beverage, and motioned to leave. Chad followed. We passed by the living room, and I went up to Joel and said that grandma wanted to see him and talk to him about that music school idea again. He smiled, and then I told Chad to come with me up to my room. "Why don't you like it when your parents or grandma start talking about your brother in front of your face? You either leave either leave like we did just now or get extremely sad." Chad had asked once we reached the top of the staircase, far enough away that nobody in the kitchen would be able to hear us. I don't know I just do." I answered while taking a sip from the glass of eggnog in my hand. "To me when my parent's or anybody start talking about how well Jess can do this or how well Joel can do that, it just makes me angry. They'll get so caught up talking about who's good at what, without even mentioning my name, and then forget I'm in the same room!" I was starting to get aggravated about the whole scenario so by the end of what I said, I was speaking rudely but Chad did not seem to get the gesture to stop talking on the subject. "But you're better than both of them. I mean, look at this past season in football we had; you were the top leading receiver on the team and fifth in the league. Heck, you only missed two games because of Troy, so you could have done even better! That has to count for something doesn't it?" He said. It was true that I might have finished off in a better position in the league if it wasn't for Troy running away from the group home that the Advocacy placed him in. That threw two whole weeks up in hiatus, but I still tried my hardest to finish off better than I had. "Justin, you got a trophy, and not some plain regular thanks-for-playing-come-back-next-year trophy, but the Most Valuable Player trophy, and I men, that's more than I got." I looked at his eyes and they seemed so sincere. "Me doing something only means something at the time it happens. After a couple of hours, anything and everything I've done means absolutely nothing!" At this point, we had passed the door entrance to my room, and I headed over straight over to my bed, plopping my body into it. I then looked over at my alarm clock, which read three minutes past the twenty-second hour. Chad let out a long yawn, and since I was watching him, instantly followed suit. Yawning is contagious. Then Chad came up with an idea that I had never in a million years thought he would ask. "Hey Justin, do you wanna watch the championship game that we won this year?" He was over by my bookshelf, eyeing through everything that stood on the wooden boards, until he came across the section I dedicated to all the games that dad videotapes of the team, and throws them on VHS tapes. This I found extremely odd for Chad to be asking, so I had to confront him on it right away. "But I thought you only like playing sports and hated to watch them?" "I do, but I mean come on, how many times can you say a championship game was completely lopsided and not rigged. We annihilated the Tigers team, and we won fair and square!" "Well, which league do you want? CFL? NFL? You name it, I'll play it!" "Shut up Justin, or I'll have to kick your ass!" "Shh, remember not to swear. Someone might listen in if they walk past the door. And besides stupid, if there was any ass kicking tonight, it would be me kicking yours!" "Dream on, bitch!" Chad whispered, and then continued, "And right now, unless you start something, I'm too tired to prove you wrong. I need something funny to put me to sleep!" "So pick our championship game to do the trick?" Chad looked over at me. "Yep!" I moved to the side of the bed that was closest to the window just because I knew I probably wouldn't be able to stay awake myself past the first five minutes of the first quarter. "So then grab the tape and put it into the VCR already. You can take the TV side of the bed as well!" I began taking off my pants and socks as Chad had inserted the video into the machine to play it, then both my sweatshirt and T-shirt as he climbed into the bed with me. I was practically naked if it was not for my underwear covering my privates. The game appeared on the TV screen, and Chad started to undress to his night attire of only being in his underwear like me. This time though, I actually watched and paid super close attention to my best friend getting ready for bed. I watched as his pulled his comfortable, wool sweater off, revealing his scrawny arms, and then his T-shirt, showing his equally as skinny chest. I watched as he undid his belt buckle, pant button then zipper and then begin sliding his khakis off his legs and dropping them on the floor. I looked directly at where his private parts were supposed to be, hidden under his own underwear. Then I felt something weird happen to my own private, and quickly crawled under the covers with Chad, not really knowing what was happening down there. It was a funny sensation, and when I put my hand there to see what it could be, my private was in a harder state than usual. I ignored the feeling of whatever it was and fell asleep to the sound of cleats stomping and running on a field of grass, and various people shouting their kids' names out, expecting the to do something good. _______________________________________________________________________________ I would be happy to hear compliments and criticisms about this story, however, where it is headed is already mapped out. Suggestions are always welcome, so if you have to something to say, please send it to me ZK2311@hotmail.com and I'll get back to you as quick as possible. Thank you for reading and the next installment should follow soon, as long as the infamous writer's block doesn't come knocking!