"I guess I was afraid," he said. "I was afraid I would get so I couldn't live without it and that would make it terrible. Ice."
I had never known my grandfather. He had died when I was only two, but if he was alive now, I wouldn't be able to look at him without hating him. Amazingly, Daddy didn't sound hateful or angry.
"Didn't you hate him?"
"No." He smiled. "He couldn't see how it mattered in my life then and the money was sure handy that month," Daddy said.
Hearing him speak about it made me wonder about all the secrets people buried in their hearts, all the dreams that had been crushed and interred. Those were the real silences, the ones they were afraid to disturb. It frightened me and did the most to make me hesitant when it came to my own singing and dreams of success. Dare I dream?
It was probably why I just shook my head at Balwin and thanked him for his compliments as if I knew he was doing it just to be nice. I could see the confusion and even the anger in his eyes.
"I mean it." he insisted. "You're going to make it. Ice. I love music too much to lie about something like that." he added.
"Okay," I said. "I'm sorry. Thank you."
We scheduled another rehearsal. As if he was afraid talking about it or even referring to it during the school day might put a hex on it or something, he actually avoided me. I quickly realized he was the shy one when it came to being with someone from the opposite sex. Like me, he used his music as both a shield and a way to communicate with others. Without it, he was almost as much a mute as I.
Even at chorus rehearsal, he didn't say anything special to me. When I said I would see him later, he nodded quickly and turned away, afraid someone nearby would notice.
Mama wasn't home for dinner. She had gone to a movie with two of her girlfriends. Daddy had another one of his late nights. I expected to be home before either of them. so I didn't leave a note telling them where I was.
Just as the first time, practically the instant I rang the doorbell. Balwin was there.
"Hi," he said and I stepped in. He looked nervous. jittery. Without another word he started for the doorway to the basement studio.
Just before we reached it. however, a tall, lean man with a patch of gray hair encircling his shiny bald head stepped into the living room doorway. He was holding a neatly folded copy of the New York Times and was dressed in a three-piece pin-striped gray suit and tie.
His lean, long face was as shiny as the top of his head. His skin was so smooth in the reflected hallway light, he looked like he shaved with one of Marna's tweezers. I saw a resemblance in his and Balwin's mouth and eyes and the shape of their ears.
"Who's this?" he asked sternly.
Balwin glanced at me as if he had smuggled me into his home and been caught in the act. I saw a look of abject terror take over his face, his eves shifted guiltily away and down as his shoulders slumped and his head bowed slightly to make him look like a beaten puppy.
"Her name is Ice Goodman." he said almost too softly for even me to hear.
"Ice!"
Balwin raised his head and nodded.
"If you have a friend coming over, why don't you tell your mother or me and why don't you make a proper introduction instead of stealing away to your bunker?"
"I wasn't stealing away. We were..."
"Well?" his father demanded.
Balwin stepped forward, glanced at me and then said. "This is my father. Mr. Noble. Dad, this is Ice Goodman. a girl from school who is in the chorus."
"I see. And you are here to do what?" he asked me.
"She's here for a rehearsal," Balwin said before I could reply. His father glared at him and then turned back to me, his eyes narrowing,
"Rehearsal? Why would you rehearse with only one member of the chorus and why can't you do this sort of thing at your school?" Although he was asking Balwin these questions, he continued to stare at me.
"It's not a chorus rehearsal," Ballwin said.
"Oh?"
He turned to him.