Chapter 4

My mother was looking worried too, and I saw her holding Gerri's hand tight while my father opened the door to the apartment. Actually, I don't think she needed to, because the minute the door opened, Gerri calmed right down as if she were about to step into a museum or church or someplace where you had to be really quiet. My mother took her right through the living room and I followed them; I was really anxious to see what Gerri would do when she saw her own room.

My mother had put my old stuffed rag doll, Woodie, on the bed (Woodie has the vest with the buttons and buttonholes and laces that taught me how to tie a bow), and Geraldine made a beeline for it and laughed and said "Blixen," or something like that, and then she just lay down on the bed and hugged and hugged the doll and held it like somebody was going to try to take it away from her. My mother looked at me with this funny look like she was going to laugh with one side of her mouth and cry with the other side, but then she just smiled and put her hand on my shoulder. I guess she'd decided right there and then that elevator disasters or no, having Gerri home was going to be worth it.

My father was standing in the new doorway and smiling too.

"She seems to like it here, doesn't she?" he said.

Gerri had noticed the flowers on the window sill and was already on her way to examine them. "Smell them, Gerri," my mother said, and Gerri put her face right smack into the vase and practically knocked it over trying to breathe in the perfume. "Dasha," Gerri said and she inhaled again. I'd never seen anybody in my life who appreciated flowers that much, or for that matter, everything. My mother showed her the chest of drawers full of her new clothes and the wicker chest she'd filled with some of my old picture books and a xylophone with a little hammer and a top that never really worked right. Everything–bedroom slippers, comb and brush, wooden bank shaped like a train–went over very, very big, like we were giving her the lost treasure of the Incas or something.

She liked the Welcome Home cake too, although–believe it or not–she didn't seem to know what it was for. The minute my mother took it out of the refrigerator Gerri looked like she was going to make a dive for it with both hands. It looked beautiful and I could see which way she was heading right off, but luckily my father saw the look in her eyes too, and got to the cake just in time. He pulled it out of her reach and said, "No, no, Gerri, we eat this!" and he cut her a nice big piece with a cake cutter and put it on a plate for her and set it down on the table. My mother gave Gerri a fork and tried to show her how to use it, and Gerri sat down at the table and oh, good, grey grief, she couldn't eat the cake.

I mean, she couldn't get a piece speared on the fork. And when my mother had helped get the cake and fork together, Gerri couldn't seem to aim it towards her mouth. My mother said, "They've never really taught her to feed herself properly, Ted," and my father nodded. Then, with my mother's help, once she got it into her mouth, she didn't really get the hang of how to chew it.

"I'll unpack her things, Margery," my father said, and I said I'd go help him put her suitcase away. I guess neither of us wanted to watch Gerri learn how to eat.

In fact, when we got back from putting Gerri's suitcase in the basement storage room, my mother was still wiping up the mess in the kitchen; there was whipped cream everyplace you wanted to look. There was even a little whipped cream on my mother's forehead, but my mother was smiling. "Gerri loved the cake," she said.

"But wait until you try to give her carrots," my father said, smiling, and he disappeared into the living room, while my mother was still sponging the floor. She'd given Gerri a sponge too, and Gerri was helping, if you can call waxing the floor with whipped cream helping.

Every evening when he comes home from work, my father plays the piano. He usually practices scales, then he runs through some of the pieces he's written. He hums along with the music with his head to one side (as though he can concentrate better if his head is tilted) and sometimes he sort of half closes his eyes like he's trying to remember which note comes next, or maybe he's thinking of something altogether different, like who won the Spanish-American War or what we're going to have for dinner. He says he has to play to relax and when he plays I'm not allowed to disturb him unless it's a real emergency, like the bathtub overflowing or a stove fire.

Tonight, the minute the sound of the very first note came plinking into the kitchen, Geraldine went absolutely zonkers. She dropped the sponge and sat smack on the wet floor and threw her head back and said, "Eee! Donneh, donneh."

Then she was dead quiet for a long time listening. My mother winked at me. "Looks like your sister likes music, Neil."

It did look that way. She shuffled-shuffled into the living room and pulled a chair next to the piano and climbed aboard, like it was the back of a pickup truck and she was going on a hayride. She just plumped herself up there and crossed her legs and tilted her head to one side like my father's and just sat up there smiling her head off.

My father had stopped playing, of course, and just sat there staring as if he couldn't believe his eyes. "What's going on?" he said.

"Gerri seems to like your playing a lot," my mother said, coming out of the kitchen smiling, the whipped cream still on her head.

"Listen, she can't sit on the piano," my father said. He wasn't smiling a bit.

"Geraldine, get off the piano," my mother said.

Even though his moustache was hiding his mouth, I could tell my father was annoyed. My dad loves his piano. It's a big Bechstein, and no kidding, it's the size and color of a hippopotamus when it comes out of the water at the zoo. It was my grandfather's and is a hundred years old, but it plays great. It takes up a big corner of our living room and my mother said that when we moved in they couldn't get it into the elevators and had to pull it through the windows on pulleys and ropes in pieces. To my father, his piano is like something behind glass at a museum, like priceless. He never even opens it, because he doesn't want the dust to float into it and mess up the strings, and he won't let my mother put wax on it, either. He doesn't trust wax any more than he trusts dust.

Geraldine got the message right off; she could tell she'd goofed by my Dad's tone and climbed right off the piano, but not before she'd knocked the picture of my grandfather to the floor on her way down. The glass luckily didn't break or anything, but my dad jumped up and rushed to pick it up and examine it for cracks.

"She didn't mean it, Ted," my mother said helping Gerri down. "Tell Daddy you're sorry, Gerri," my mother said, and Gerri said, "Vixen, vixxxen."

My dad was now looking over the piano, trying to find scratches. Gerri said, "Vixen, blixen," but my father didn't pay any attention. He was too busy running his finger back and forth along a little mark he'd found along the edge.

"I think she apologized, Ted," my mother said, and my dad finally looked up.

"I know she didn't mean it, Margery," he said and then he said, "You have whipped cream on your forehead, did you know it?" but he still looked serious.

My mother wiped the cream off her forehead with the back of her wrist and said," I think I'll give Gerri something warm to drink and put her to bed. She's exhausted," and she took Gerri by the hand and led her back to the kitchen, which is where we were now eating since we had given Gerri the dining room.

My father sat back on the piano bench and looked at me.

"I'm tired too, Neil," he said. "Really tired. Aren't you?"

"I guess so," I said.

"It's been quite a day," he said, and he struck up a minor key chord and closed his eyes. "Quite a day," he said, sort of to himself. I just sat on the sofa and listened to him play, but I should have gone right to bed. I didn't know that within a few hours I'd find out what had made the bumpy-bald mess out of my sister's head.

It had been quite a day. It was going to be quite a night too.