Page 67 of Life Out of Order

“Hi,” she says. She isn’t sure if she wants me here right now. I open the door. Alba is sitting on the bed, pouting. I laugh—I can’t help it.

“You should see your face,” I tell her. “Boy, do you look mad.” I try to make her smile by making a smooshed/angry face; my little self looks like she’s been eating lemons while doing math homework. She doesn’t say anything: if I’m going to be mean then she wants me to leave.

“You know you won’t quit,” I say. “It’s fun. The more you work, the better it will be.”

She shakes her head. Go away.

I bend over and pick up my little violin. “Here, I’ll show you. What are you working on?” She still won’t answer, so I riff through the sheet music. “Oh, this is all baby stuff,” I tease her. “This is what I’m learning.” The violin is way too small for me now, but I raise it to playing position and tune it. Then I play.

Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor. When I began to learn it, a year ago, it hit me—it hooked me, stuck to me; it was the first time I played music that opened itself to me, suggested other paths, other time; but on this day I am borrowing the future beauty of the Bach partita to catch my little self and keep her moving toward the moment when the music will begin to make some sense.

I play as though I am trying to find my way by organizing this maze of sound into shapes and the shapes into feelings. The sadness that always hovers around me lifts briefly. “That’s it,” I say. I stand with the bow in one hand and the violin in the other, feet apart, casual. “So don’t waste a bunch of time sulking.”

She is impressed. Her stubborn pout is gone. “Okay,” she says. “How?”

“Just listen. Do what they say.”

“Who?”

“Grandpa. Mr. Lane.”

“Who’s he?”

“A teacher.” I shrug. “Just stop whining. Pretend it’s fun.”

“It’s not fun.”

“It will be. It’s glorious.” It is, almost always. Enough. “Do you want to play Monopoly?”

“I have to do homework.”

“Just one game.”

“That’ll take hours . . . okay.” We are playing quietly when Mama peeks in.

“That was lovely, Alba,” Mama says.

“Thanks, Mama.” I smile.

Later I am still here, and Mama orders pizza for dinner. She looks unhappy—too thin, dark circles under her eyes, fingernails bitten down to the quicks. My little self watches Mama constantly, feels guilty after the afternoon’s outburst; I always felt I had to be extra good because Mama was so miserable about Dad. I was sad, too, but Dad is still in my life—or at least I see him often enough to feel like I have a dad. Tonight, watching my self and Mama, I remember how lost we were then. Mama thought her life was over. I needed her to comfort me and found myself comforting her. Now I want to reassure Mama, to draw her attention from past to future, but she isn’t ready yet. Mama is barely getting through each day, dragging herself along for my sake.

Mama recently told me this day was the first time she’d heard me really play. Until then it was all scales, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” “Ode to Joy,” squeaks and complaints. She said it gave her the will to keep driving me to my grandfather’s apartment, to continue sitting through the endless lessons.

When we’re finished eating and my younger self and I have cleared the table, I say to her, “Why don’t you play something for Mama and me?”

She is startled. “I can’t really play anything.”

“Play something from the Yellow House.”

“That music is weird.” She doesn’t sound hostile, just curious. “What is it, anyway? Someone is writing it. Is it you?”

“Yes, that’s my music. I wrote something for you, that piece called ‘Bad Monkeys’? You can play that.”

Mama chimes in: “I’d like to hear it.”

Alba shoots me a resentful, panicked look; she wants to please Mama, but she has no idea what that piece is supposed to sound like. I remember trying to play it, alone in the music room in the Yellow House. I tell her, “It’s just a set of notes—you can fool around with it, mess with it. Here, I’ll write it down.” Mama brings me some scrap paper and I draw staves and write out the notation. It’s not difficult, but Alba is right, it’s unusual.

Alba says, “What key is it in?”