Oscar

Then

The house was so quiet it deafened me. The staccato of my knocking against the wooden door woke up all my senses. I knocked again and again.

“I’m coming in, Mom!”

I stuck my head inside and saw her on her window seat, lost in thought. Her drapes were closed so tightly that not a single ray of sun shone though. Whatever she was “Mom, it’s still sunny outside, wanna go for a walk?”

“No, baby.” Her whisper barely made its way through the air between us.

I took a few steps closer to her. 

“Not even sit on the porch? I have some summer reading to go through, and I can read out loud . . .”

“No, baby, I’m too tired.”

“Okay, okay, I wanted to hold on to the surprise until your birthday, but I can’t do it anymore.” I said it loudly so she would hear me. In time, I had learned to be as lively as possible and talk with my hands too when I addressed her because it helped to interrupt her train of thought. “I learned La Campanella by myself.  I practiced at school only.” That got her. She let out a small gasp. I didn’t stop talking while grabbing her hand and pulling her gently, urging her to follow me to our living room.

“Please, I need your super-ear to know if I’m going off track.”

Reluctantly, she followed me, treading as soft as if she’d break at every step. I fought the tightness in my chest and sat at the grand piano, starting the metronome and the song.

She sat next to me and watched my hands moving. Piano was control. Muscle memory. And with that came comfort.

“No, baby, that leap is too rushed,” she whispered and stopped the metronome so I could start over.

My mother was a pianist at Portland Philharmonic when my dad fell for her. She had brilliant sense of rhythm. She never hesitated in starting my piano education very early, with a firm and gentle hand that never steered me too fast or too far.

But I’d been studying Liszt’s rendition of the famous Italian song religiously, with the help of my music teachers and only at school for the better part of the last four years. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready. The song was a treacherous lover. It took you from light into darkness with a hypnotizing grace; it sounded plain, but it took everything to offer that plainness with clarity without stumbling.  

I went through the introductory waltz again, glancing at her time and time again from the corner of my eye.

When I was younger, she used to smile. In fact, the only times I remembered her smiling was while she taught me. It made our lessons all the more precious. With each of our house moves, with each of my dad’s deployments, her smile had grown more and more faint. She wasn’t smiling then either, but at least her eyes were trained on something other than emptiness, watching my fingers for accuracy.

“Stop. This trill needs more speed,” she told me in her soft voice, her fingers caressing the keys, showing me how.

We played it together until our hands went numb.

“Excellent, baby. I’m proud of you,” she said as she got up, and it was then that I heard the breathing of someone else in the room. Oswald was watching us from the doorway, arms crossed at his chest. He lifted his chin to salute us.

“Have you eaten, Mom?” he asked, and she shook her head. She moved slowly, as if she were floating on clouds, and went between the two of us to place small kisses on our cheeks.

“Hi, baby,” she told Oswald. “No, I’m too tired. I will eat after I sleep for a while.”

“Wait, I can make you something really quick,” Os said, but she was already almost back to her bedroom door, waving a dismissing ‘no’ behind her.

“Congrats on your song, you selfish prick,” Os gritted in my direction.

“What’s your problem, man?”

“My problem is you never help her eat when I’m not around, and your songs take priority,” he shot back and stalked toward the kitchen.

“My songs make her happy,” I told him, going after him and trying to keep it down. “Maybe, if you were ever at home during the day, you’d have time to talk to her about food more often.”

I ignored his scoff. “But no, it’s more important to be out there at target practice, making yourself into the image of a guy who isn’t even around.”

“Dad does his best, Oscar, stop being a mule about it.”

“Hey! I do my best too. You’re almost sixteen, what will she do when you go off to the academy and never sees you anymore? Or is this what you’re training her to do, get used to your absence? That’s part of the problem, smartass.”

“Get off your high horse, man. Not like she’ll see you much when you go off to Julliard.”

“I’m going to NYU,” I told him that new information, feeling instant guilt at the surprised look on his face.

“Well, good riddance.” He let the juice glass he’d been drinking from go into the sink with a clang. “It wouldn’t harm your fingers to do the dishes from time to time, you know,” he spat at me. “Forget it, I’ll do them when I’m back from my run.”

“I just forgot, Os,” I grumbled and grabbed the dishrag.

“You know . . .”

I looked at his back and his face in the profile. He was only half turned toward me.

“It’s a good thing you can sing so well without your eyes, Oscar. Because you’re a blind fool.”