13

The Second Time I Saw Her

Once Mom was all tucked in at the hospital, Nomi and I left her. She hated it when we waited around, pining for her eyes to open. If she caught us there when she woke up, she’d only be angry.

A streetcar came along just as we got to the stop, and we jumped on. We were coming up Steinway when I spotted her again: the Girl with the Dreads. She was standing out in front of Dave Mizra’s jewelry shop. He had closed for the night and, even though it was early evening, the whole block was deserted. All except for her.

Our stop was still two blocks away, so I only saw her as we rolled past. I knew it was the same girl. The same jean shorts, the same eruption of dreadlocks, the same T-shirt dripping down one arm.

She still had the cross, too, only now it was propped up in front of her (in front of her face, actually, so I still couldn’t make out her features). She had the butt end of the horizontal bar level with her mouth, almost like she was kissing it.

It was a humid night, so a bunch of the streetcar windows were tipped open. That was how I realized it wasn’t a kiss. She wasn’t frenching the cross, she was playing it. It was some sort of musical instrument.

Just as the streetcar rounded the curve at Emerson, I saw the horn, something like a bugle or a trumpet, nailed to the crossbar.

The melody she played was a sad one, all in a minor key, slow and kind of beautiful. We only heard a snatch of her music and then she was gone, the streetcar grinding around the shallow corner.

We got off at our stop and I tried to hurry back. I was so curious. Nomi, however, wasn’t in the mood to rush.

“I’m tired,” she whined.

“It’s just two blocks. C’mon!”

Instead, she stopped dead. “Can you carry me?”

Stupidly, I figured with Nomi on my back, we would both go as fast as I could run. When she climbed up, however, I realized I hadn’t carried her in a long time. She had grown a lot since then, and it didn’t help that she started up with a familiar complaint.

“We used to have a piano, didn’t we?” she asked suddenly, speaking directly into my ear. (I wondered if this was the real reason she wanted a piggyback: to get my undivided attention.) “Mom gave you piano lessons, didn’t she? When you were my age?”

It was true. Once upon a time, Mom had been a real professional. She gave recitals and had a great job playing with the city orchestra. Back when I was a kid, I worked pretty hard under Mom’s tutelage, but I was never any good. I took after Dad more. He was the athletic one. Mom kept trying, though. She never really gave up on me, at least until the somnitis started. Then it all fell apart.

Her first attack was right in the middle of an afternoon performance at Rosemount Concert Hall. Every time I hear that music, my stomach clenches. Gymnopédie Number 1 by Erik Satie. It was one of her favorite pieces. Halfway through the song, she slumped forward on the piano and … zzzzzzzzz.

Nobody could wake her up. She slept for eighteen hours, and the first thing she did when she was conscious again was quit the orchestra. Since then, she hasn’t played a single note.

When I was a kid, she always talked about how deeply music affects the human brain. That’s why she stopped. She thought the illness was triggered by the music. She believed that by playing just the right notes, in just the right sequence, she had flipped some forbidden switch inside her mind.

Now, she works part-time at the Evandale Public Library. When she applied, she didn’t tell anyone there about her illness. Her idea is that if her work environment is quiet enough, unmusical enough, it’ll prevent anything from happening. So far, it seems to have worked. She still has attacks—obviously—but she’s never had one while sitting behind the checkout desk. Between the money from Dad’s life insurance and what she earns from the library, we get by.

“Okay, yes,” I said to Nomi, “but that was back when we had room for a piano.”

“We still have the synthesizer. In the laundry room.”

This was also true. In the closet where we kept the washer and dryer, wedged in between the machines and the wall, there was a thoroughly outdated Casio electric piano.

“I don’t even know if it still works,” I said.

“But you could teach me to play on it. I asked Mom again this week, but she said she can’t remember how to do it. She says something’s wrong in her head.”

“Maybe.”

When I came around the bend, I expected to hear the girl’s music, but I didn’t. The sidewalk in front of Dave Mizra’s place was empty. The girl, whoever she was, had vanished.