The first teacher workday falls on a humid, rather than crisp, August morning. After the staff breakfast, Lauren, Lead Vision Teacher, puts aside her own duties to help her mentee, who, at 23, is less than half her age. She pulls up Jennie’s caseload—her own former students—and runs her finger down the list. The last name stops her. She crosses it out wordlessly.
Any other reason for the deletion—a family move during the summer, a change of teacher—would be better than the reality: that Sammy, her second grader with the curly hair and mischievous grin, died last year.
Lauren pushes aside her weariness and the memories of students past to review new student backgrounds, medical needs, protocols for emergencies. Jennie, who arrived this morning armed with her new employee badge and a sum total of 16 weeks student teaching experience, listens politely but doesn’t ask a single question. Lauren tamps down irritation at the “I’ve got this” attitude. She didn’t ask questions either, her first year; until the day a preschooler’s unending seizure sent her running for the nurse’s aide she’d dismissed, and to her own mentor in the days following, when images of Caitlyn’s blue eyes, glazed and unresponsive, followed her everywhere.
They walk through the office together to meet Judi, the equipment manager. The hallways are barren, beige cinder-block walls, dreary without bulletin boards showcasing student artwork, without the sound of children talking or singing loudly.
Singing, like Sammy, reciting from a class performance, an earworm she now can’t shake: “So much of this story is scary you know, scary you know… so only brave people sit in the front row!” Lauren wakes most mornings with the ditty, now more of a dirge, echoing from her dreams.
Judi greets Jennie warmly, and issues her a parking pass, a mailbox, a laptop, tablets for students, and an assessment kit. Lauren helps load Jennie’s Prius, the pristine trunk revealed beneath temporary tags. Lauren’s own car, a thirteen-year-old relic she uses to transport students for mobility lessons, is packed full of the essentials: GPS, trunk organizer arranged with student tote bags, white canes, a box of tissues. Lauren carries a watch to keep her schedule, and also to record seizures. Like last year, when Sammy’s, long dormant, recurred.
As she steps in the building, Judi calls her back, an updated spreadsheet lying on her desk. Lauren’s stomach drops. She hasn’t informed the team, an awful omission. Both Jennie and Judi need to know, so they won’t contact his family and upset them anew, like she herself did in June after his absence.
“Were you planning to tell me about Sammy?” Judi asks.
“Another seizure,” Lauren says. “In the county pool.” Then the words tumble out in a rush, the scene unspooling as if she witnessed it herself. A cavernous room, dozens of children splashing, shrieking, playing, when Sammy’s parents suddenly realize something is wrong and yell for the lifeguards, who dive in together, everyone trying to pull Sammy to the surface, out of the pool, but he’s fighting off the help, not fully conscious, limbs thrashing, the other adults unable to do more than clutch their own children, as Sammy is pulled to the deck, CPR applied to his weak heart, which lets go its fight in the ambulance.
Judi steps around the desk to embrace her. Jennie stands frozen in the doorway. “Sammy,” Lauren repeats. “He would have been yours this year.”
Jennie declines Lauren’s lunch invitation, intent on heading to her schools, her eagerness to move on as obvious as a puppy straining at its lead.
“I appreciate your help this morning,” Jennie says, “but I need to figure some things out on my own.”
“Just be sure to keep in touch. I’m here to support you. And your students.”
Lauren watches her drive off, the geography of their work meaning they’ll only see one another at staff meetings and scheduled observations. She wanted to say, “you’ll get there,” but the job requires a willingness to absorb and distill experiences, and a certain resilience. The numbers aren’t promising for new special educators—most leave the field never to return. Which means next August, Lauren will begin the cycle again.
For now, she’ll unpack her caseload, making room for new faces, and seeking the spark which will propel her through the next year.
It is January 6, 2003. Winter break has come to a close and Joel is approaching school for the first time this new year. Snow has fallen on the ground and it is clean, fresh, and new. The glistening clumps of snowflakes dissolve in round pools where rock salt lines the concrete, but the salt can’t keep up with the precipitation, and snow accumulates around the school building untouched. The light reflecting off the ice crystals is blinding and he, too, feels new, fresh.
Joel takes one last breath of cool winter air and steps to the door to his high school, where he feels he just left. With his chin lifted, he opens the door, breathes long and even, reminiscent of soft, summer breezes. He looks around and his body feels light. There’s an unfamiliar feeling in his gut, unfamiliar, at least, in this setting.
Wait, what is that? He thinks to himself. Excitement? He is awake, alert, alive. A new man! He is saying goodbye to the days of staring at the floor, at the laces of his shoes, avoiding eye-contact; it is time to look life in the face. He is tossing away his insecurities, his lack of courage. This time, he will be heard!
He places one foot gently inside the building and steps out into the hallway, his books in hand, ready to take on the day. Stride after stride, he advances, not noticing the floors were fresh and clean, too. Right foot first, then left, and — there he flies!
Shoes in line with his eyes, Joel is airborne for one terrifying second before landing flat on his back.
His head hits the freshly waxed floor and he sees supernovas. Hears them, too. Joel opens his eyes and the sparkling stops as fluorescent lights fade into view. He hears laughter that sounds both near and very far away. He rolls over, crawls forward, picks up his books, and stumbles to his feet.
The laughter does not stop. He brushes the wetness and rock salt off of his pants and he can see his own reflection on the floor as he looks down. I must have forgotten, Joel thinks with a hint of angst and disappointment. I’ve returned to high school.
He steps forward much more carefully now, eyes focused on the glassy surface of the floor. He doesn’t lift his head, he doesn’t close his eyes, just in case he should ever again forget exactly where he is.
Rob shoved the truck into gear. It lurched forward. At the turn onto Deb’s street, he skated through the four-way stop. “You’re my girl and I want everyone to know.” As the pickup gained speed, it rattled like a bucket filled with spinners. Deb slapped at his shoulder and yelled at him to slow down. And still, he went faster. His recklessness was foolish. The risk made her angry. The truck swung into her yard and slid to a stop. Debra stomped into her house, the screen door smacked shut behind her. The tires ground a divot in the gravel as he spun out of her driveway.
At school the next day, Debra ticked like there was a Geiger counter in her brain. The clicks sped up as Rob approached. He laughed with his friends as they ambled into the calculus review class. He chose a chair three desks over and one row back from hers and stood for a moment, all tight jeans and neat plaid shirt, then grinned her way. He tossed a textbook on the Formica-topped desk and boosted his leg over the back of the chair, entertained by the chatter surrounding him.
The smell of mower exhaust blended with freshly cut grass wafted through the open windows. The early June sunshine filled the room and ricocheted off the chairs lining the far wall. The desks, arranged in two half circles like bowls nested one inside the other, barely confined their restlessness.
The teacher called on Rob. Deb turned to watch him answer. She caught his eye, dared him to remember when his rough fingers spread across her belly and slowly inched downward.
Rob waited for her in the hall. He took her hand, intertwined his fingers with hers, and kissed the tips. This was his apology. Debra let him stand that way for a moment, before taking her hand back. They strolled down the hall, their arms bumping occasionally. She pinky-grabbed his little finger, squeezed and then let go. Both of them understood, two hands clasped together was a declaration. Graduation was less than two weeks away. They could wait that long.
They sat at the same table for lunch. A girl wearing a handmade dress of cotton calico glided by. The fabric may have begun life as tiny orange flowers on a white background, but with hard washing and line drying, it had faded to a pale peach.
“Tell me about your sister,” Debra said. She expected answers. It was part of his penance.
He sighed, “You know we live on our grandparents’ farm, right?”
She nodded, waited for him to explain the oddness. “My grandparents are Mennonite Brethren. They took Mary and me in when our parents were killed in a car accident.”
“Do your grandparents make her wear those high-necked dresses with the long skirts?”
“No one makes her. It’s called simple clothing. It’s a sign of respect and devotion.”
Debra hadn’t thought of it that way before. Clothing as a signal of piety, like a nun dressed in a habit. She looked down at her short skirt and camisole. “But you wear normal clothes.”
He shrugged. “Debra, what can I do? Girls get to choose just like guys do. It’s up to her.”
Debra smacked her hands on the table. “Rob, it’s not fair and you know it.”
He snorted and lifted one of her hands. “Getting mad at me won’t change anything. When I leave, she’ll stay. There’s nothing I can do.”
“No! You get to go to college.” She pulled her hand back. “Saying you can’t do anything isn’t good enough.”
“I know you don’t like it, but it’s her life and it’s her choice.” The school bell sounded and Rob pushed his chair out. “Anyway, I gotta head to work.”
“This isn’t ended, you know.”
“I know, Deb. I’ll call you later. Okay?”
“Fine, just don’t expect me to wear simple clothing.”
🙡🙣
He didn’t call that night. When he didn’t answer her text, she sent a second, then a third. They went unanswered, too. Was he ignoring her on purpose? Frustrated, she set her social media accounts to mute and turned off her phone.
🙡🙣
The school was unnaturally quiet when Debra stepped over the school threshold on Monday. Students milled around in the central hall. They silently clumped together then parted like fluff spun in circles each time the heavy front doors opened.
“What’s going on?” she asked Kathy. “It’s like they’re zombies.”
“Didn’t you hear? Rob Robertson died Saturday night. He was out with Chris Kinney and Mickey Shaw. They say he was driving too fast down East Main and crashed his truck.”
The words punctured Debra. She staggered, reached for the wall, slid down the cold tile. “But, I saw Mickey as I came in.”
“Chris and Mickey weren’t hurt. The ambulance brought them to the ER. They got checked out and sent home.”
“How do you know?”
“Where’ve you been Debra? It was all over the news yesterday.”
“I was studying. My phone was off. I have to talk to Mickey.” She rose from the floor. Ignoring Kathy, she searched the crowd. Mickey sat on one of the long wooden benches lining the hallway, ringed by a collection of seniors. She knelt and placed her hand over his. Normally, they didn’t converse.
“I’m sorry,” Deb whispered.
Mickey nodded, mumbled something.
She couldn’t breathe. “How did it happen?” Her steady eyes searched his.
“He wanted to see how fast we could go, but a car pulled out in front of us. Rob swerved, and we skidded into a light pole. The truck wrapped around it, right where Rob was.”
She whimpered then and folded over. Her forehead touched his knee in benediction; his hand rested in absolution on her head. The morning sunlight streamed through the windows that lined the hallway. The slanted shadows fell into chiaroscuro highlights on the scene. Sandy Garmond caught the picture. Later, the yearbook would use it for Rob’s memorial page.
🙡🙣
Rob’s family chose a small stone chapel, lined with rows of wooden pews for the memorial service. A simple closed casket rested in the center front. Several people already knelt in prayer when she arrived. She stood against the back wall and wondered what she could say. It was more than sadness. How could she tell them she too had lost a future? The path that joined her with him and this family was now a cliff. The barrier was broken and hung loose where his truck punched through.
She waited in line; she touched the casket. Her head lowered, Deb murmured her sympathy to his grandparents. They had no idea who she was. They had never met.
Debra returned to her place and followed along with the memorial bulletin. A discreet notice at the bottom of the page caught her unaware. It read the family of Robert John Robertson, III, wishes to thank everyone for their condolences and kind words. There will be a graveside service at a family cemetery. Your kind acceptance that they would like to do this privately is gratefully acknowledged.
🙡🙣
Debra heaves the thirty-pound pail of frozen berries into a metal cooler in the back of the pickup. As she slams the tailgate closed, across the parking lot, she notices Mary Robertson standing in the shade near the Agway loading dock. A thick braid of light-brown hair crowns her head. The last time she saw Mary was at Rob’s funeral two months ago. Deb crosses her arms and watches the farmers shift their purchases off the platform into their trucks and horse-drawn wagons.
Debra takes a deep breath and strides towards Mary.
“I never got to tell you how sorry I am about Rob.” She takes Mary’s left hand and holds it in both of hers. Mary’s ring finger, usually unadorned, now wears a simple silver band. “Mary, did you know I liked your brother?”
Mary blinks a bit, and a film of tears begins to fill her eyes, then she nods.
“I liked him a lot. And I think he liked me too. No, I know he liked me.”
Mary stands silent, tall and stately, placidly allowing Debra to hold her hand, without pulling or straining to take it back.
“He almost made it out, you know? He would have wanted you to try too.” The smell of laundry soap floats off Mary’s dress. Debra whispers. “Do you want that Mary? I can help you.”
Debra isn’t sure she hears it right, but then Mary shakes her head and says a bit louder, “No, no I don’t.”
Mary slips her hand out of Debra’s. “Mr. Weishaupt has asked me to marry him. After we’re wed, he’ll run my grandfather’s farm.”
“But Mary, you’re younger than I am.”
Mary steps back. “When I prayed for guidance, the Lord answered.”
Deb shakes her head, fights off the exasperation that punches at her throat.
Mary turns and heads towards the parking lot where her grandfather stands fanning his face with his straw hat. Halfway there, she turns back towards Debra and with a small nod says, “I’ll keep you in my prayers.”
Mary’s grandfather stares straight at Debra. He waits for Mary to climb into the high front seat of his battered pickup before clambering behind the wheel.
Debra watches him shift into gear and check for traffic before slowly turning onto the road. She glimpses Mary’s profile through the window as the truck rumbles past. After it disappears into the broken woods, she stands for a long time studying the trail of swirling dust as it settles.
“Everyone has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years…which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn…Who knows what beautiful and winged life…may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society’s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!” —Henry David Thoreau
When I was a kid my mother had me take piano lessons. We had a player piano in our basement. It was the most remarkable thing we owned but we kept it in the basement, a huge, unfinished space with concrete walls and no ceiling, just floor joists and pipes and spiders. My mother probably thought the piano would lure us down there, along with all the neighborhood kids, and our basement would be filled with music and dancing and become the social epicenter of the neighborhood. We had boxes of music rolls and we’d plug in one and the keys would bounce up and down as a ghost played, “Bicycle Built For Two.”
But the lessons didn’t take. The teacher was a kind lady but she had a messy house. The stickers she awarded me for completing a lesson couldn’t overcome the dread I felt going downstairs to our cobwebby basement and sitting all alone in the gloom, plucking at those keys. Plus, baseball. Then one night my cousins came over and we were all downstairs raising hell and in some horrible act of mindless vandalism we unspooled all the music, all over the floor, and destroyed most of the music rolls. And then the player piano mechanism stopped working, and the piano just sat untouched in a corner of our basement for the next forty years.
When we had children, we bought a piano from our next door neighbor and carefully selected a good teacher, who had a clean, elegant home. Kara stuck with it and played beautifully. Then she stopped one day, just dug her heels in, a month before her final recital. No more. She would not sit at that piano.
Did we do something wrong? Did she just snap under the pressure of our huge parental expectations? I didn’t want her to quit; you don’t quit. Finish the month out, give the final recital, finish things. But we never badgered her about playing. We loved hearing her play, but we thought our joy tiny compared to the vast pleasure and satisfaction we thought she must be feeling. Then she stopped.
One of the sorry mysteries of my life. It made me sad to walk past that piano for the next ten years and hear its silence. We kept it dusted and polished, our best piece of furniture.
As retirement approached, one day it struck me: I could learn to play it. Why not? I’d have plenty of time on my hands. Why not? After sixty years, I resumed my lessons.
Now I sit at my piano most every day and try to learn something. My teacher is a phenomenally talented young man who looks at sheet music and hears it; he can play a piece fairly well on sight. But after two years of lessons I still need Every Good Boy Does Fine and Good Burritos Don’t Fall Apart to identify a note; it’s all hieroglyphs to me. And the torturous way I figure out a song, which finger hits which key, I can’t practice comfortably when anyone’s around. I feel so sorry for them.
Still, I have fun staving off senility, breeding lilacs out of the dead land. My body is still limber and compact and healthy. I go to the gym most days, and stretch and power-walk on the treadmill for 45 minutes while reading a novel on my iPad, then soak in the hot tub. Sitting there, I often think of Pat, one of the excellent assistant principals I once worked with, who grew huge and unhealthy as she aged and died just a couple months after she retired. Unfair. That’s not going to happen to me. Growing huge. I may suddenly die, of course. Those things happen.
But until it does, I have time. Time to plunk away at those keys. Time for an afternoon nap every single day. Time to lie on the couch and wake and stare at the ceiling and hear the house creak, hear new things wiggle out of the woodwork, being born, taking my place.
The Last words shared between us. We were at a family dinner in the local Chinese Buffet. Now it keeps closing down and reopening with a different name and the exact same food. I sat right opposite you at dinner so we could talk the whole time, challenging each other to see who could eat the most banana fritters. I ate so many I thought my little belly was going to explode. You let me win with seven. I told you all about rehearsals for the talent show coming up and how I was going to sing Magic Moments. On the way out you asked for a sneak preview. I wish I sung that day.
You never got to see the talent show where I sang Magic Moments. I even had a solo part. I was a backing dancer in Super Trooper and Rocking All Over the World too. Even without you cheering me on, I didn’t shy away from the stage. You never saw our production of The Button Box where I played Auntie Nellie the belly dancer and ‘Crow Two.’ Not the most glamourous roles, especially when I had auditioned for the lead. You still would have been proud though, telling me I was the shining star of the show.
Two days after it happened I went to Choir like I did every Wednesday. We were learning to sing songs from The Lion King because the kids in year six were going to see it performed in the West End. Next year I would get to go, but I never got to tell you that. The song that day was Endless Night, coming straight after Mufasa’s death. You promised you’d be there, whenever I needed you, whenever I call your name, you’re not anywhere. I couldn’t get the words out. When I was fourteen I downloaded the West End album on my iPod. I skipped Endless Night every time. I haven’t listened to it since that day in choir.
When I was learning to play the piano I was so excited to tell you that I was learning Puff the Magic Dragon. You asked me if I knew what it was really about and I told a story of finding magical dragons down by the water. You told me my version of the story was much better and that really it was about drugs. I was so excited that I knew something other people didn’t, it was our little secret. When I lost you on Monday I didn’t go to piano lessons. My teacher was your friend and she hurt too. I wanted to go but I couldn’t move my body from the left hand corner of the sofa, staring blankly at the board games on the shelves opposite. Asking why it happened. It wasn’t fair. I still sit in that spot on the sofa, holding on to a little part of you. I kept playing even without you. When I dusted off the keyboard for the first time in ten years I thought of you as I played a shaky version of Addict with a Pen. In Copenhagen I did a duet of Welcome to the Black Parade with a friend, it reminded me of our duets. I knew you’d be happy that I returned back to music that was our special bond.
I’ll never get to tell you that I got the part of Mary in the nativity, just like you always said I would. How I sat in Church on the alter and sang Away in a Manger, cradling a real baby in my arms. When my little baby Jesus started filling the Church with screams, I had to pass her through a little arched window and the real mother passed back a tissue box hidden in a white blanket because someone forgot to bring the emergency back-up doll. We never got to laugh about how they couldn’t get a real donkey because the couple who owned the usual nativity donkey got divorced and were in an angry custody battle. They had to use a Shetland pony, who refused to walk down the aisle to the tune of Little Donkey which they played three times before he decided to trot towards the crib.
When Christmas comes around I put your unreleased Christmas song on. I know it would be a hit if we released it, maybe even Christmas number one. You were the most wonderful singer and hearing your voice at Christmas fills the air with your presence. Each snowfall reminds me of you. You always had a powerful voice, your laughter filled every room. For months afterwards, each time I heard a Scottish accent I thought it was you. The day of the funeral a tall man with a deep voice came in and I caught my breath. You had come and it was all a prank. No matter how hard I wished, no man was you.
Granny thinks of you when Can’t Help Falling in Love starts to play. It makes me think about you too. I know if you could see her now you’d beam with joy. Her wonderful hats, her tiny little Scottie dog, her enthralling conversation, her warm heart. She still lights up every room just like you’d remember. Sometimes when I don’t believe in love, I think about the way you would look at each other, peeking through the glass of the framed photo of you both on my desk. She still wears a locket with your hair inside.
When I sing out of tune I know it would make you smile. When I grab the microphone and pour my heart out at karaoke I know you’d be glad that I never hid my voice in shame. Your little girl grew up and never stopped thinking about you, wishing you could have been there for all the big moments in her life. I know you’d be proud of every little thing I did, you always were. I started doing the things you told me I could do. Twenty-one I picked up a pen and wrote again. It was a poem about loss. You always told me I could be a writer, you loved listening to my stories, those little fantasy worlds I dreamed up in my head. That’s where you live now.
The first poem I ever wrote, I read for you in the crematorium. A tremble in my voice I stood in front of the masses of people who loved you like I do. Each stanza ended in the same rhyming couplet: “there’s no need to protest / my grandad was the best.” Everybody told me I was very brave. They still tell me that fourteen years later. I’ll never see it as brave. It’s what you deserved. A doodle of a tiny little girl with plaits and a full fringe holding hands with a six-foot man with a big belly. My big grandad. Sometimes I sit at your bench and trace the letters in your name. I read that phrase over and over again. Life is fleeting. Love is eternal.
Magic Moments never had the same feeling again. It’s always for you. Time can’t erase it. Time won’t erase you. Our magic moments, filled with love.
“With Double Fantasy, I’m saying, ‘Here I am now. How are you?
How’s your relationship going? Did you get through it all? Wasn’t
the seventies a drag, you know? Well, here we are, let’s make the
eighties great because it’s up to us to make what we can of it.” — John Lennon
I was a ten-year-old kid living in Queens when John Lennon was shot and killed in New York City, gunned down in front of the Dakota where he and Yoko Ono resided. On the morning after John’s murder, I was awakened by my mother—who, as a teenager, had screamed at the first grainy, gray sight of The Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1963, who peeked her thirty-something head into my bedroom and asked me to pray for John’s soul.
I was born in the summer of 1970, a year after my parents’ nuptials, and a few months after The Beatles’ official breakup. I had never known life without The Beatles or their music. They were like sunlight, like water, like air—always surrounding me, always present.
By the end of the seventies, New Yorkers were long numbed to reports of knifings and shootings and muggings. But this news shook us out of our city-wide defensive stupor. We had come to understand that violence would happen to ordinary people like us, but not to someone like him.
New York City was my home, my ancestry, my epicenter. I was a fifth-generation native and I thought nothing of it because so many people in my city microcosm held the same title. New York was a place that I always expected to be from. As a child, I couldn’t comprehend that there was soil and bedrock and earth beneath paved city streets. If the asphalt was jackhammered too far, too deep, I was sure that all five boroughs would collapse into a black hole of nothingness.
As New York City prepared for the Christmas holiday season that year, the song that had the most radio airplay was the startlingly ironic “(Just Like) Starting Over,” the first single from Lennon’s newly released double LP Double Fantasy. New Yorkers, in their shame and shock, lined up in droves to buy the album, and turned up the volume all the way whenever that song played on the radio. It was an infinite loop in those days of mourning, a constant companion to our displaced, Christmas-lit grief. Shopkeepers played it behind the counter, on the AM radios they kept on high shelves and near the cash register. Kids played it on their transistor radios on buses and stoops. No one ever seemed to complain about the noise or repetition. We absorbed it as some kind of collective penance because it had happened in our city, on our streets.
Scott Muni, Dennis Elsas, and Carole Miller, our beloved New York City FM radio DJs, walked us through our stunned, collective grief by playing an endless list of Beatles songs as well as Lennon’s first post-Beatles solo hit, “Imagine.” John’s love poem to his wife Yoko, “Woman,” “Nobody Told Me” from Milk and Honey, a nodding baby-boomer anti-paean, and John and Yoko’s Vietnam-era Christmas song, “Happy Xmas (War is Over.)” It was almost too much to bear by mid-month when Christmas songs dominated the airwaves, and John and Yoko’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” was given airplay, an uppercut to our collective gut each time we heard it. Dear God, what had we done—to our city and our heroes and ourselves? Another year over, and a new one just begun.
Even now, I’m still struck by the whispered opening of their tender holiday protest song. Memories of tinseled row house windows, tired, sixties-era blow-mold-plastic carolers, and WWII-era strings of Christmas lights across shopping streets all arise at the sound of John and Yoko’s voices. My throat still tightens upon hearing it, a clutch of remembrance embedded within me, of a city and a culture tainted and lessened, and of the only home I’d ever known.
New Yorkers all seemed to walk to the beat of “(Just Like) Starting Over” in those mournful days. We recognized the sound of the clanging bell at the song’s opening, as well as the muffled PA announcement from the JFK ticket agent at its close. We played that song over and over again until the melody was imprinted on all of us. I don’t like to listen to “(Just Like) Starting Over” so much anymore because it takes me back to that sad and sorrowful winter when we had lost John to madness, and when we seemed to be losing New York City, our grand urban goddess, as well. I prefer “Watching the Wheels” instead, which is slower and gentler, less produced, more acoustic in sound. It’s still one of my favorite Lennon songs. I guess it’s how I’d rather remember him—enjoying that short span of time in being an everyday New Yorker and a doting father, no longer riding on the merry-go-round, letting it all go. The tune had captured so much of what John must have loved about his life as a stay-at-home father in NYC—baking bread for his son in the Dakota, walking the Central Park Reservoir path like a native, and living among the rest of us New Yorkers as a mere mortal.
If it’s not Acapulco Moonlight, where the first trumpet’s highest note is an optional E, it’s a room full of muddled melodies. Remember, melodies, like life, can be grooved, with directions or blends of the two; just like formulas charted out might turn out jagged or scraped at the edges. Like light that seeped into your room at 16, Bentinck Street, Kolkata, where the changing but unceasing cacophony lingered in the air until nightfall. When darkness drew an impervious curtain, the squalid, overcrowded conditions slightly abated, as did the raised, frayed tempers of the hawkers just underneath your window; where the pavement was usurped each day by screaming men and women selling everything from tea, jalebis to fruits, steel utensils and cheap clothes.
‘Five bananas for ten rupees! Five for ten!’
‘Best quality steel! Plates, larder, glasses! Get anything for thirty! Only thirty!’
Vans, handcarts, rickshaws, egg-yolk-yellow taxis, rickety buses parked erratically wherever it suited the driver—to pee, or chat, or a cup of chai. You never complained to the man you’d married a fortnight ago. Instead, every afternoon, you paced the tiny room to find something to fill the hours with, then defeated you craned your neck to view, just beyond the grilled window, brick-and-mortar shops rubbing shoulders, standing chock-a-bloc, with pigeonholed stalls stacked precariously like Lego blocks over dilapidated, old warehouses, huddled together, covered in dust and soot, waiting endlessly and hopelessly for an end to their agony. Roots of a Banyan or Peepul pawed unbridled the remnants of a bygone colonial era as they stood in stoic silence. Isn’t silence a pause in music?
You breathed in the grimy air, registered the synchronized melody of chaos, until it penetrated you, your life.
You hadn’t prepared yourself to be holding the pink stick to your indifferent partner. Just like you hadn’t prepared yourself for your husband’s drunken ruckus, and the horrors of the night that perforated the walls of the room. After your baby was born, in the static soundless soul of the night, you sat to hear a distant owl’s hoot, whistle of a night train rattling over the rail bridge and the shattering of something very near, like the place between your breasts.
You thought you heard the fluttering of wings — your soul on flight! You thought you heard a spluttering fire that raced towards the closed door but couldn’t escape.
But the next moment there were other melodies — the cries of your baby on the cot asking for you; the lullaby you sung it to sleep; the murmurs of fleas circling your open wound.
Morning dawned with the sounds of pots and pans at your neighbors and then back to the patterns of high notes and lows.
You lived in that room, as if in trance, rode the crests and falls like you were a feather in the wind, like the blue on your left cheek was the plume of a kingfisher. You thought you heard the sunlight break onto the floor, the moonlight tip-toe to lie on your tear-soaked pillow. You thought you heard your mother’s love when the rains splattered on the broken chimney; you thought you heard the harmonica being played when sparrows lined the window pane.
The first digit of your foot turned backwards; sometimes you found you could coo like the cuckoo; sometimes you shook off the bristles that had grown where your eyebrows were.
You waited. You trained your ears to hear. You coached them to hum a tune, until that night after your son left for boarding.
You heard trills and gurgles of a nightingale, a strain rose above the din of your room, above the crescendo your heart was reaching. You let the blood of the demon in the room soak your tail wing; and with rapid beats you flew to where the bird sang an impaling melody.
Seasickness overtook me on my first voyage, a pleasure-cruise to baptize the Queen’s new ship. I heaved over the side. My bile formed the shape of a mermaid’s tail on the water.
A tall, bearded man in uniform offered me a handkerchief. I looked up; I caught my breath; my heart strings thrummed.
The captain appeared at court that evening. I – like the other debutantes – had curtsied to the Queen in white satin, and, I, like them, took my turn to perform. I caught the captain’s eye… smiled… and glowed as I sang the aria of the queen of the night, imparting her dying wish that her lover would claim her before daybreak. Afterward: golden silence, then rapturous applause.
“You stole the voice of a siren,” the captain murmured in my ear.
You stole my heart from my breast.
The Queen congratulated me, saying she hoped to hear me sing again. My giddy ears could only follow the sounds of the captain’s footsteps as he approached to kiss my hand.
The next day he sought my parents’ permission to squire me about town, to picnics, parties, and balls. They reasoned that his distinguished career atoned amply for his birth, so off we went: he took me everywhere. (Indeed, one night he took me to a discreet hotel, and I joyfully relinquished my maidenhood. After that, as I say, he took me everywhere.)
Except on his ship: the merest rocking rendered me queasy.
Meanwhile, the Queen had not forgotten me.
The Opera Director called on my parents to convey her command. They protested, saying I was a lady, not some mere stage-strumpet. The man returned pointedly that it was the Queen’s particular wish.
Naturally my captain had had to go to sea again. Amidst endless rehearsals, I missed him tenderly. I felt the full force of his absence during my arias, voicing my fathomless longing. But when the applause began… when the Opera’s rafters trembled with the crowd’s adoration… I floated beyond the moon and stars…
My captain returned in time for the final performance, and crowned me with water lilies.
We resumed our previous engagements – chaste and otherwise – in a season of delight. But the weather turned, and the Queen’s thoughts drifted toward her winter residence.
The captain and I sat on the pier, our legs dangling vainly. He was due to leave again on the morrow. The Queen had ordered me to attend her – a thousand miles inland.
“Daphne – marry me, my darling.”
My heart broke upon the waves.
“I love you,” I said, “but you are a marine creature, and I, a terrestrial animal. It is not fair for either of us to pretend otherwise.”
We parted. I surrendered to my anguish.
At the Queen’s court, my grief transfigured my music, giving it a resonant, glorious cadence.
I alternated between the capital and the winter palace, occasionally returning to the opera for public performances.
Once in every great while, I found water lilies in my dressing room.
Five rows back, I’m close enough to see the sweat glisten on the first violin’s forehead, and the glimmer of light from the mezzo-soprano’s black diamante dress. The music draws me up from my seat and forwards over the four sparse rows in front of me. Towards the white-haired conductor, and away from my notes to self and the constant vibrato in both my hands and the black oblong case sitting empty in the corner of my apartment. My mind begins to drift over the stage, between the intervals of the melody.
Fifths are earthy, grounded, cycling through channels and strings with the flick of a full hand-
-but fourths are fresh, fresh like a newly-opened piano lid, metallic hopscotch leaps which are desperate to resolve, building a tension each time they rise that makes my neck and right foot jerk and tap with each upbeat and downbeat.
And I’m back there, in amongst the orchestra with my desk light and pencil, surrounded by the blaring reds of the brass, the succulent blue woodwinds, the greens of the strings: grass-green for violins and violas, olive for cellos and double basses.
Thirds, though, don’t have a colour. They’ve made their minds up: black or white, ebony or ivory, major or minor.
I can smell my old pot of resin, feel the slight tension rising just before one of each pair has to reach out and turn the page, taste the chords behind and beside and in front of me.
Seconds are what wrong notes feel like: squashed too close for comfort, pricking the pads of your fingers, the spanners in the wheels of the revolving fourths and fifths, trapped, hammered, broken, until-
Unison. The final chord. Applause all around the concert hall. I smile. The musicians stand up and bow. As one, they turn to their desk partners and shake hands. Mine are still shaking, too. I turn to my right, and then to my left, but the seats either side of me are empty.
My ink was supposed to be a secret, an ode to a character in a storybook, a solemn reminder to myself that I could escape if I should ever choose to. I was locked from the inside of my own mind and I always possessed a key. Instead, smooth hands unearthed it, offered to make a twin, an escape from the locked doors and pitfalls.
Small droplets of ink are tucked behind my ear, tattooed, a nod to Alice and her glass tabletop key, the key that lead her out of the room of too-tall sweets and too-small drinks. Drink me, I thought to myself too often and my love would palm the ink. Drink me.
I wanted him to pour through me like the cherry tart/custard/pineapple/roast turkey/toffee/hot buttered, toast-flavored liquid—to wrap around my tongue and shoot straight to my stomach, flooding my insides like the Pool of Tears and carry me away on a happy tide to a calm shore.
The steam-filled nights of new love we shared were like a caterpillar puffing smoke from his own supply of substances. Now that the holidays and their vibrant lights and mad parties were gone, we finally made it outdoors and into the chill of the city air.
He’d cup the colored area behind my ear in the frigid Chicago days, transfixed in wonder, tuck my hair behind my knitted headband and get a good look at the little key stuck on to my head.
His eyes were the deep green of a hedge maze when he looked at me, little golden flecks the color of crowns appearing when the sunshine hit.
“I don’t know what the meaning is behind this,” he said, “or how personal or profound, but if you don’t mind, I want to get a matching keyhole tattoo on my hand.” He showed me the padded, fleshy part of his right hand where his thumb connects to his palm. “That way, when I hold you, we’ll be even more connected.”
And there, my heart soared. The sub-zero winds of the city smacking my face couldn’t reach my heart and no matter the wind-chill, the blood circulating in my veins was jubilant, and a tingling sensation coursed all throughout my limbs.
I was skeptical this was all a reflection in a looking glass or just a dream, but his hand was still cupping my head behind my earlobe, staring at me like I was his favorite book and I could feel a smile spreading.
I must’ve looked like the Cheshire Cat before his mouth was on mine on the bright winter day with a devastating frost that no flower could survive, but I felt the warmest I had felt. It was as though a magic tonic had been drunk—my limbs had grown and I was taller than I ever thought I could be. My heart was bigger than my skin would ever allow and my body burst from a cottage, time either having no place or operating under warped rules.
I asked him if he was worried about pain in such a delicate spot, a minuscule ax slicing through skin and he just smirked and said no.
He said that if the ink ever lost the darkness of a rabbit hole, he’d get it touched up, even if it were a regular basis because of the location, being so frequently exposed to sunshine and the elements.
Then me, being proper as a pinafore, asked if he minded where the ink would be, so bold, so near the palm of his hand, so exposed to where people of all places could see it as he shook hands, shuffled cards, or sipped a steaming beverage. He replied that he was proud to have such a display and would happily entertain all curious inquiries as to what it was if asked, and who the headbanded girl was who owned the key that turned the lock.
While my key would always let me out, there was a mirror mate to take falls with me no matter how long or mysterious they might be. The awaiting door was and would always be right beside me, nearer than I had ever imagined and always unlocked.