Page 92 of Life Out of Order

“It can be in my mind, too, Beck?” Isadora’s tone is wheedling. I’ve never heard her speak this way. “We can play music? In the Yellow House? In the notebooks?”

Alba says, urgently, “Can you turn her off?”

Beck says, “It’s time to go to sleep, Isadora.” The head obligingly droops, the whirring fans hush. Alba carefully puts her bow and violin into their case, closes it and snaps the clasps shut.

Alba says, “Can she hear us now?”

“No,” Beck says.

“What did she mean? When she asked you to get her the Yellow House?”

Beck explains that she has built a Museum of Lost Souls from real places, real libraries and museums, and Isadora is asking Beck to make a digital copy of the Yellow House for the Museum. “I know it feels invasive and weird, Alba,” Beck soothes, “but Isadora means it as a compliment. She already has several music libraries—the British Museum, the Morgan, Stanford—and I think she was excited because she liked your music, and it was new to her. I’m afraid she is designed to be acquisitive; she’s a collector, a curator. She wants to make your music part of her.”

Alba frowns. “I thought she wanted to take it away. But she’s an ugly old head—what would she do with a house?”

“The head is nothing, Alba; Isadora really lives in there, somewhere.” Beck points to the hundreds of servers, blinking and humming along the far wall. “I had my student make the head so people would interact with Isadora as though she is a person, not a bot on a screen. But maybe the head is too distracting. It’s time for something else. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

Alba looks pleased. She says, “You should make her pretty.”

“All right,” Beck says. “I’ll work on that.”

Beck’s phone rings. The tow truck is downstairs. We put on our coats, gather our stuff. Beck goes through her elaborate security procedures. Alba gets into our Honda, and I turn on the car so she can stay warm. It feels later than it is. Beck and I huddle under my umbrella, watching the driver loading Beck’s Jeep onto the tow truck. Beck says, “Alba wrote that music? It was so strange. Unearthly.”

“I think she will write it. Someday.”

Beck frowns. “How will she write it, if she already knows it by heart?”

“You know that locked closet, in the music room at the Yellow House? That’s locked so that this doesn’t happen. The piece must have been left out where Alba could see it for some reason. Maybe deliberately, for today.”

“That house is so spooky. I mean, I know it’s just Alba moving things around, but it really feels haunted.”

“Beck. Don’t go home tonight. Stay over, with us.”

“Okay. What do you want to do about dinner?” Beck sounds casual, but she looks worried.

“Or, you know, maybe you could just, um, move in?”

“Yeah?” Beck takes off her glove and clasps my ungloved hand. Her hand is soft and warm; mine is chapped and cold. We listen to the rain hitting the umbrella. She glances at Alba, who is reading her phone in the back seat. “She’ll be okay with it?”

“I mean, she knows we’re going to get married, eventually; she’ll be fine.”

Beck presses my hand. “Yes. I’d like that.” The driver comes over with his clipboard to get Beck to sign something. She signs with a flourish, we get into my car and soon we are home, all three of us, together. We have pizza for dinner, explain the new arrangement to Alba, who is unsurprised but pleased, and suddenly Beck lives with us. We are a family.

Is it possible to be truly happy after enormous grief? For now, I am happy, and the grief recedes. I try not to look back too much, or think too hard about the future. Sometimes I dream about Henry, and when I wake it takes a few moments to reorient myself—but Beck is here, and what we have is love—the surprise of it, and the electrical thrill of being alive.

Richard

Thursday, December 6, 2012 (Alba is 11 and 35, Clare is 41)

Alba: I’m staying over at Grandpa’s apartment. Mama has gone to Michigan to see my other grandpa. I am lying in my dad’s bed in his old room, waiting to sleep. We had tacos for dinner and watched The Big Bang Theory on TV. It’s different when I come over just to hang out, not to have a lesson. It isn’t as interesting but it’s way more fun. Grandpa never decorates for Christmas, he just has a few cards sitting on the mantel. He usually comes over to our house on Christmas morning. But this year he bought a snowman night-light for me and plugged it in next to Dad’s dresser, so the bedroom is glowing. It’s kind of spooky. It’s funny to have a new thing in here with my dad’s old stuff. The bed smells like Dad, that’s the best thing about this room.

Grandpa is in the living room. He is playing a piece I don’t know. He says he can’t play like he used to, but he sounds good to me. Sometimes he improvises. I like to listen to Grandpa thinking out loud, his music swooping around like it doesn’t know where to rest, modulating from key to key like it’s falling down stairs, not soothing but kind of silly. He’s trying to make me laugh, so I try not to. After a while he plays “Goodnight, Ladies,” and that means Go to sleep, Alba. I stay awake as long as I can. He starts to play again, something else I don’t recognize, and just as I might be asleep I think the door opens a little and someone is standing there, then they’re gone.

(Alba is 35)

Alba: I find myself naked on a cold floor, in the dark. Music; a violin; Brahms; my grandfather is playing. My eyes adjust to the weak streetlight coming through his kitchen window and I sit up. My head hurts, in a mild, achey way, not a head-injury way.

I stand carefully and walk down the hall to my dad’s old bedroom to get some clothing, but when I open the door I see my young self lying in bed almost asleep, the whole room lit up by that infernal snowman night-light, so now I know where I am in time, alas.