Bones

Silence.

“Why get distracted?” he said. “Selena was talented, but as essentially straight as they come. I’m not saying she never puffed a doobie. But even when she and Mom were doing their hostility thing, she never did anything spiteful, like hooking up with someone iffy. Just the opposite. We used to call her Sister Cee. As in celibate.”

“She’d call herself that,” said Chris.

Milo said, “What about boyfriends?”

Marc said, “Nope.”

“Mrs. Green-Bass?”

“No, I never saw anyone.”

She covered her face. Marc reached out to pat his mother’s shoulders. She drew away.

“Oh God,” she said, through her fingers, “this is so horrible.”

Marc’s lip trembled. “All I’m saying, Mom, is that Selena didn’t bring it upon herself. Shit happens, life sucks. Like stepping off a curb and some asshole comes barreling down. That just happened to me. Right after Cleo gave birth to Phaedra. I left the hospital to get some champagne, was floating on air. I step off the curb and this fucking San Francisco Examiner truck comes out of nowhere, misses me by a millimeter.”

“Marcus, don’t tell me those things! I don’t want to hear them!”

Milo said, “So no boyfriend anyone’s aware of. What about friends? People she hung with here in L.A. ”

No answer.

Emily said, “She did seem to be happy about her work. That’s what she finally e- mailed me about.”

“Teaching that rich kid,” said Marc. “She said it was a dream gig. She called to tell me because I’m into music, too. Used to play bass. Not that I was ever close to Selena’s level. I’m competent, she’s brilliant. Sat down at the piano when she was three and just played the fucking thing. By five, she was doing Gershwin by ear. Give her anything, she could play it. I watched her pick up a clarinet cold and run off a scale. She got the breathing right away.”

“Sounds like a prodigy,” said Milo.

“No one used that word, we just thought she was amazing.”

Emily Green-Bass said, “I was so busy supporting us, I was happy she had something to occupy her.”

Marc said, “One day I come in-I’m talking years ago, when Selena was eight or nine. She’s in the living room strumming my guitar. The guitar was new, a birthday present, I got pissed that she took it without my permission. Then I realize she’s actually making music on it. Never had a lesson and she’s taught herself a bunch of chords and her tone’s better than mine.”

Emily said, “When she was eleven I could see piano was something she wanted to stick with, so I got her a teacher. This was back when we lived in Ames, Iowa. Ames Band Equipment had a program for the schools. Selena outgrew the first teacher they gave her, then two others. They said I needed to find someone with serious classical training. When we moved to Long Island, I found an old woman in the city who’d been a professor in the Soviet Union. Mrs. Nemerov-Madame Nemerov, she was ancient, wore ball gowns. Selena studied with her until she was fifteen. Then one day she just quit, said she hated classical music. I told her she was wasting her God-given talent, she’d never play again. She said I was wrong. It got pretty-that was one of our biggest… disagreements. It was a tough time, Selena had totally abandoned her schoolwork, was getting D’s and F’s. She claimed she was learning more from life than any stupid school could teach her.”

Marc muttered, “No shit.”

I said, “Did she stop playing?”

“No. I was wrong. She actually played more, just not a lot of classical pieces. Though every so often she’d do a little Liszt or Chopin, whatever.” Sad smile. “The Chopin etudes. She liked the ones in minor keys. Or at least that’s what she said, I don’t know a thing about music. Selena got her talent from her father, he played guitar, banjo, you name it. Did that bluegrass stuff, he was originally from Arkansas. Madame Nemerov said Selena was one of the quickest sight readers she’d ever taught, had perfect pitch. In her view Selena could’ve been one of the great concert pianists, if she’d wanted to.”

Marc said, “She thought touring around and playing Beethoven for stuffed shirts would rob her life of normalcy.”

“So this was better?” said Emily. “Doing absolutely nothing until she was twenty-one, then packing up and moving to L.A. without telling me? Without any job prospects?”

Milo said, “She ran away?”

“When you’re not a minor they don’t call it that. I came home and she’d packed her bags and left a note that she was moving to ‘the coast’ and not to try to stop her. I was frantic. She phoned a few days later but wouldn’t tell me where she was. I finally pried out the fact that she was in L.A., but she refused to say where. She claimed she was supporting herself with ‘gigs.’ Whatever that meant.”

Marc said, “She got some club dates, playing backup keyboard.”

His mother stared at him. “Well, that’s news to me, Marcus.”

“Then it’s good that I’m here to inform you.”

Emily Green-Bass’s hand rose and arced toward his face. She checked herself, shuddered. “Lieutenant, the fact that Selena and I weren’t in regular contact was her choice, not mine. She shut me out completely. I have no idea what she’s been doing all these years. It’s been hellish not knowing. If I didn’t have a business to run, I’d have come out here and tracked her down. I called the police but couldn’t provide an address, so they couldn’t tell me which station to contact. And since Selena wasn’t a minor and she had left voluntarily, there was nothing anyone could do. Their big suggestion was I contact a private detective. Besides being expensive, I knew that kind of snooping would irritate Selena, so I minded my own business, kept telling myself she was all right.”

Milo said, “When did you call the department?”

“Right at the beginning. Must’ve been… four, five years ago. I kept hoping she’d ask for money, at least I’d have an inkling what she was up to.” Swiveling toward Marc. “Now you’re telling me you knew all along what she was up to.”

Marc Green squirmed. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“To me it was.”

“She didn’t want you to know what she was doing. Figured you’d try to stop her.”

“Why would I stop her?”

Silence.

“I wouldn’t stop her,” said Emily Green-Bass. “Now, you tell us everything you know, Marcus. Everything.”

Marc tortured his hair.

“Now, Marcus!”

“It’s nothing. I’m sure-”

“Shut up and talk, Marcus!”

“Fine. She didn’t want you to know because the scene she was in really wasn’t her thing. She was just playing music.”

“What are you talking about!”

“Mom, she swore me to secrecy, I had no reason to violate-”

“Now you do,” said Milo.

“Okay, but it really boils down to nothing. Like I said, she was playing in clubs. And that led to parties.” Turning to his mother. “Some were situations she didn’t want you to find out about because she knew you’d freak out.”

“What kind of situations?”

No answer.

Emily Green-Bass grabbed her son’s wrist and put her face close to his. “Like I’m some kind of fossil, Marc? Like I’m out of touch with reality? I like rock music. Your sister’s dead! These people need to know!”

Marc licked his lips. “I’m not talking about the music, Mom. These were… specialty parties… swinger parties, okay? Freaks wanting background.”