“I don’t get it,” Tyler said. “Emma’s good at math. She does all kinds of measures and calculations in the shop.”
“The shop?” Ms. Beaumont, the intervention specialist, raised an eyebrow.
“Her woodshop,” Tyler said.
Emma’s team looked at one another. They had nothing to say.
“I’m good at word problems,” Emma said. “Problems where you know where you are and where you want to go and there’s a reason to get there.”
“Many colleges are looking for calculus, these days,” Ms. Abraham murmured, typing a few notes into her computer.
“What if I don’t want to go to college?” Emma said.
It was like she’d sprayed a flock of hens with a hose. Everybody started squawking at her at once, a mingle of What are you thinking? And Let’s not be hasty and Don’t sell yourself short.
Ms. Abraham raised her hand to quiet them. “What would you like to do, Emma, after high school?”
“I want to be a luthier,” Emma said. Met with a circle of blank looks, she added, “I want to build guitars.”
“That’s great, Emma,” Ms. Beaumont said, “but how do you want to make a living? What are your plans for a career?”
“What I said. I want to build guitars,” she repeated stubbornly. Even though she knew that wasn’t on the official list. She had a plan, after all.
They all looked at one another. They wanted to roll their eyes. She knew they did.
“In a classroom, I can’t help but feel boxed in—sitting in the same spot, every day, while people talk at you. I need to move around. I need to make something real—that I can hold in my hands. Something out of wood.”
“Perhaps there is something in career and technical ed,” Mr. Boyd, her English teacher suggested.
“What about automotive technology?” Ms. Beaumont suggested, scanning a list. “Or audio engineering?”
“That doesn’t sound like what I want,” Emma said. “I was in an apprenticeship program in Memphis. I’d like something like that.”
“Apprenticeship program” sounded more official than “I helped my grandfather in his shop.”
“I don’t think we should rule out the idea of college just yet,” Ms. Abraham said, pushing back from her desk. “You’re just two months into your junior year. We’ve arranged for tutoring in language arts and math. You’ll need those skills, whatever you do, and a high school diploma gives you lots more options. I’m going to refer you to Ms. Britton to test for special needs. I don’t find any evidence that you’ve been evaluated for that.”
Thumbing through a file, she pulled out a sheet and handed it to Tyler. “Mr. Boykin, I’d appreciate it if you would fill out this questionnaire and return it to me in the next few days.”
Emma read the title upside down. Does My Child Have SADD/ADHD?
Ms. Abraham followed Emma’s gaze and put her hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Emma. Everybody has a different learning style. We need to figure out what works for you. Meanwhile, I’ll find out if any of the CTPDs in the area offer a woodworking track.”
“CTPDs?” Tyler asked.
“Career and technical education,” Ms. Abraham said. “We used to call them vocational schools. When we have all that, we’ll meet again at the end of the semester.” She paused. “You also need to come to class, Emma. None of this matters if you’re not in your seat. If your attendance is good, there are waivers we can apply for when it comes to testing and the core curriculum. But your attendance in Memphis was—what’s the word I’m looking for—awful. All right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Emma said.
They drove back to Tyler’s in silence, worry on both sides. She still thought of it as Tyler’s, even though he’d done his best to make her feel at home.
Her father lived in one of those neighborhoods that teeter on the knife’s edge between chic and shabby. From the outside, his house had crossed to shabby a long time ago, but inside it was all beautiful oak woodwork and rooms big enough to throw parties in. And, surrounding the house, the remains of an overgrown garden.
It was a lot of house for a single man who never had any visitors. Not one, since she’d been there. Emma was used to all the comings and goings at Sonny Lee’s shop. Tyler’s place seemed designed more to keep people out than wel come them in.
It was fitted out like a fortress, with iron bars behind the leaded windows and dead bolts on all the doors. It was good Emma had a knack for tools and devices; otherwise she’d never have mastered the alarm system.
“You must have a lot of crime here,” Emma had said, when he gave her the tour.
“Better safe than sorry,” Tyler said. He led her around the house to show her all his hiding places—the gun safe behind the bookcase in the office, and the regular safe hidden at the back of the closet in his bedroom.
He had her unlock and lock it several times. The combination was her birth date.
“What do you keep in here?” she asked as he locked it back up again.
“I have some things put away for you, Emma,” he said, “that I want you to have after I’m gone.” It was like he was just sitting in the eye of the hurricane, waiting for the wind to start howling again.
He took her to the shooting range and taught her how to fire his gun, with both hands on the grip, feet spread apart to provide a good base against the kick. It was something that near strangers could do together.
Emma had to admit: Tyler had done his best to give her a sanctuary; a place of her own. Maybe it was because he was so solitary himself. He’d moved several years’ worth of clutter out of the basement and covered the walls with soundproofing, creating a space where she could amp up the sound—like a bare-bones sound studio.
Her shop was divided into two rooms—the “clean room,” where she glued things up and applied the finishes. Where Sshe kept Sonny Lee’s vintage guitar collection. Where she could plug in and play and sing as loudly as she wanted.
Through a closed door was the “dirty room,” housing the lathe, band saw, joiner, sander, and drill press, where she did the major cutting and shaping, making the sawdust fly. It was lined with racks of seasoned wood—wood that had come from Sonny Lee’s Memphis shop, along with the blanks and plates they’d made together.
A luthier has to know what he needs ten years in advance, Sonny Lee always said. Because it takes that long for the wood to settle and decide what it wants to be.
Maybe me and Tyler are the same way, Emma thought, with a spark of hope. Maybe we just haven’t settled yet.
She’d hoped Tyler would be willing to share stories of her childhood. He didn’t seem eager to go back there, though. In that way, he was nearly as closemouthed as Sonny Lee.
He did give her a five-by-seven photograph of Gwen, one of those black-and-white studio portraits that look like nobody in real life. Emma set the photograph on her bedside table.
How my parents ever got together, I’ll never know, Emma thought. Some stories just don’t have happy endings.
Emma still found it hard to think of Tyler as Daddy or Papa or any of those family kind of names. He was not a family kind of man. And yet, she kept stubbing her toe on ways they were alike. They even dressed a lot alike—in jeans, flannel shirts, and random T-shirts that came their way like T-shirts always do, promoting this show or that club or an up-and-coming band. They had that in common, along with the music. She’d not seen the slightest sign that her father was magical in any way. If he had it, he didn’t flaunt it. And wouldn’t answer questions about it either.
Tyler pulled around behind the house and parked in the garage. They scuffed through gold, brown, and scarlet leaves to the back door. Leaves spiraled down from the trees overhead like flakes of gold.
“I kind of like Ms. Abraham,” Emma said as Tyler navigated the door-opening routine. “I’m not too fond of the Monts.”
“The Monts?”
“Beaumont and Marmont,” Emma said.
Tyler laughed, his shoulders shaking, and dabbed tears from his eyes. His laugh reminded her of Sonny Lee’s . . . a mix of whiskey and honey that went right to your heart. “Are you all right with the plan, Emma?” he asked.
“I don’t have much choice, if I have to stay in school.” She eyed him sideways.
“Don’t give me that look. You know you do.” Tyler threw his keys into the dish on the table. “We both know it’s not that you’re lazy. You work all the time—either you’re at school, or doing homework, or you’re down in the shop. You don’t even sleep that much.”
“It’s not that I can’t focus,” Emma said. “It’s like I hyperfocus, but it’s on things they don’t approve of.” She stuffed her hands in her jeans pockets and lifted her chin. “I’ll tell you right now—I need to work with wood. I just have to. I’m not giving that up.”
“Nobody’s asking you to give it up,” Tyler said, raising both hands.
“People think I don’t have a plan, but I do. I’m going to build guitars and sell them, and save my money, and one day I’ll get enough together to open my own shop.”
“How are you going to go about that, Emma? Selling them, I mean.”
“Well . . . it was easier when I was in business with Sonny Lee,” Emma said. “Because he had so many connections. I thought I could work for him and ease into it. Now . . .” She shrugged. “I have some guitars already out there, mostly in Memphis. Now it’s going to be hard for people to find me, though, even if they decided they wanted one. There’s a limited market for the kind of work I do. I need buyers with deep pockets who know quality when they hear it.”
She’d set up a blog page to promote her business while she was still in Memphis: Studio Greenwood—Custom Guitars and Expert Repair. She’d left it up since the move. Surely that wouldn’t hurt. It didn’t list an address or anything, just an e-mail. She’d had a few contacts through the site since she’d moved north.