A Song for the Road

by Kathleen Basi

  She pulled out Blaise’s notebook and played the first two measures for the millionth time. Now she was certain of what she’d heard back in Cincinnati. There were hints of Gus’s compositional style in her son’s music.

  Miriam flipped to the music she’d transcribed at the monastery. Maybe if she made some headway on a third movement, she could get some momentum going to finish the troublesome second. She played it and started improvising. There. That had promise. She scribbled the notes and moved on.

  “Derivative,” Gus’s voice whispered.

  “Go away,” she said aloud, but she changed one note in the chord anyway. Ah yes. It still sounded slightly church-y, but if Guillaume Dufay could make a ninety-minute Mass setting out of “L’Homme Armé”—a Renaissance tavern song—it ought to be possible to go the other way too. If she could just get something on paper, she could start experimenting.

  Colored beams of light crept across the brick wall, then faded altogether. The back pews shrank into shadows. Five cross-outs or erasures for every three measures worth keeping. Things that seemed to work when she played them but felt cliché when she committed them to paper. Was she remembering them wrong? But even so, forward progress.

  “Do you have a phone?”

  Miriam nearly fell off the bench, so startled was she by the unexpected voice. A priest stood next to her. A baby priest, Becky would have called him. She stared at him, confused. She’d never met a person in his demographic who didn’t have a handheld device at the ready every moment. Why would he need hers? “I—I’m sorry?”

  He gestured to the music. “If you have a phone, you can record a voice memo. Then if you get something that works, you don’t have to stop. And you don’t have to trust your memory. You can come back to it later.”

  Oh. That made sense. But Miriam’s forehead furrowed. How did he know what she’d been thinking?

  Then she realized, and her face flamed. “Was I … talking to myself?” It had been known to happen when she got lost in the music.

  The young priest smiled a knockout smile. “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was entertaining.” Baby priest, nothing. Talia would have called him Father What-a-Waste. “I haven’t seen you around before.”

  “I’m just passing through. Needed a piano.”

  “Ah. Well, that’s too bad. I’d have offered you a job.”

  Miriam smiled. “Thanks.”

  In the deepening shadows, a door creaked. Both of them turned to see a young couple walk in, pushing a stroller. “That’s my cue,” said the priest. “A group of us get together for prayer on Tuesday evenings.”

  “Oh. I’ll just pack up, then, and get out of your way.”

  He waved her off. “No, no. We’ll be in the chapel. You won’t bother us. Although you’re welcome to join us, if you’d like.”

  Miriam hesitated, torn. She didn’t want to be rude, but her fingers itched to be on the keys. She hadn’t felt so awake in a long time; her soul craved more. “I think I’d better work.”

  “Of course. Good luck!” He strode down the aisle with a spring in his step as a middle-aged woman entered the church and held the door for an elderly man using a cane.

  Miriam returned to work. It was close to full dark in the church now. She flipped on the gooseneck light clipped to the music stand and tried to ignore the rise and fall of voices in the chapel. But writing was a solitary venture, and no matter what the priest said, she felt like she was intruding.

  She set her teeth and backed up five measures. Nothing. Played it again. There—that little fragment swirling around in her frontal lobe—that might be something. She tried it two or three ways, picked one, and wrote it down. Two more measures done.

  Maybe it would help to get a running start at it. She started at the beginning of the movement. It worked, sort of—she managed to sketch out a melody, and she could tell she needed two more measures to link to the B theme. She reached for her phone to try the baby priest’s trick, thinking the music might flow better if she could play without having to stop to notate. But her mojo was gone.

  After ten minutes, she gave up. She was starving anyway. And she needed to check on Dicey.

  She shuffled her papers together, packed them away, and switched off the light. She stood, the satchel heavy on her shoulder, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The voices in the chapel seemed louder now than they had while she was working. They were reciting the Canticle of Zechariah—the end of Night Prayer. She froze. She knew what was coming, but the brief concluding prayer didn’t give her time to brace herself or to escape.

  “May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.”

  Miriam swayed, her hand coming down hard on the piano cabinet. Peaceful death. Those words had gone round and round in her head for months before she’d managed to suppress them. Peaceful death. Peaceful death.

  Her family hadn’t gotten that.

  The satchel slid off her shoulder and thumped the floor. She sat down again on the piano bench, her fingers trembling with the need to drown out the voice screaming in her head: Peaceful death. Peaceful death.

  She launched into the first angry thing she could think of: the final movement of the Moonlight Sonata, as raging as its more famous movement was placid.

  Had Teo seen that big-ass pickup truck cross the median? Had Talia or Blaise? Or had the crash come out of nowhere? Did the airbags knock them out, or were they conscious when their tiny rental car was smashed between the heavy-duty truck and the bridge railing? Did they feel their bones break, their bodies burn?

  Miriam pounded the keys until the church was fully dark and deserted. Her underarms were soaked and her voice raw, as if she’d been screaming without realizing it. And when she was spent, she collapsed on the lacquered surface of the piano, calm enough at last to face the truth:

  Nothing about her family’s death had been peaceful. Not even the days leading up to it.

  And in the end, she had no one to blame but herself.

  26

  Spring, one year earlier

  Atlanta, Georgia

  ON SUNDAY OF THE terrible week, Teo woke up with a toothache that put him down for the count, leaving Miriam to lead all the Masses—including Confirmation Mass with the bishop—on her own.

  On Monday, he had a root canal the insurance wouldn’t cover.

  On Tuesday, a pipe broke, rendering their only bathroom off limits until almost six PM. The kids reacted to the aggravation by fighting over who got the last English muffin, who was playing too loudly for the other one to concentrate on his or her own practicing, and who was hogging the wireless bandwidth.

  By dinnertime Wednesday, Miriam had just about reached the end of her rope. “So!” Teo said as she cleared the chorizo platter, “who’s got what this evening?”

  “Youth symphony, and I get the car,” said Talia.

  “You always get the car! I have astronomy club!” Blaise protested.

  “Well, you should speak up faster.”

  “Well, you should consider somebody other than yourself once in a while.”

  Talia’s phone trilled. She whipped it out of her pocket.

  “You’re not supposed to have your phone at the table!” Blaise said.

  Talia, her thumbs working furiously, ignored him.

  “Talia,” said Teo in his warning voice.

  Sighing, she put it back in her pocket.

  Miriam closed the dishwasher. “You two know perfectly well you have to share the car. Dad and I have choir practice, so we don’t need it, but you have to figure out how to make it work for you both.”

  Another sound, this time from Miriam’s phone. She glanced to see who was calling. “Uh, I think I need to take this,” she said.

  Talia made a guttural sound of disgust.

  “Miriam! So glad I caught you,” said the director of the community orchestra. “Our soloist for this weekend was just diagnosed with can
cer. He has to fly out to the Mayo clinic tomorrow morning. I know this is really short notice, but we need someone who can play the Mozart twenty-one. Would you be able—would you want to step in?”

  Did she want to? Of course she wanted to! She already knew that concerto. “It’s this weekend?”

  “Sunday afternoon.”

  Miriam squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m supposed to be in California with the kids this weekend.”

  “Oh, this is the week of nationals, isn’t it? Well, it was worth a try. I guess I can call …”

  Miriam rested her head against the refrigerator as the only good thing to happen all week threatened to slip through her fingers. She’d traveled with the kids to state and regionals. Did she really need to be there for nationals too?

  “Hang on, Phil,” she said. “Give me half a second, okay?”

  She turned to her family, who stared at her, electrified by her mention of the trip, the first real family vacation they’d ever taken, the one for which they were going to miss an entire week of school.

  “The soloist is sick,” she said. “They need someone to play a Mozart concerto Sunday afternoon.”

  Dead silence. Wide eyes from her children. A thoughtful look from Teo.

  “I could change my ticket, come out right afterward, and meet you guys there.” Miriam tried to keep her voice neutral, to disguise how much she wanted this, but she could feel the tremble.

  Teo pursed his lips. He rubbed his face and nodded slowly. “We could still celebrate your birthday in San Francisco.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Shut up, Talia,” said Blaise, his eyes fixed on Miriam. “Can’t you see she wants this?”

  “You are so selfish!” Talia shrieked, and stormed out of the kitchen.

  And that, right there, was why Miriam needed this. Because she’d given up everything for those kids, and her daughter still called her selfish. “Phil,” she said into her phone, “I’ll do it. I’d love to do it.”

  It took a couple more minutes to iron out the details. Miriam was only vaguely aware of Blaise moving around the kitchen behind her while she scribbled notes on a piece of scrap paper. When she disconnected, she found him running dishwater, unasked. “Thanks, honey,” she said.

  He shrugged a reply, not really meeting her eyes as he squirted hand soap into his palm. “Don’t worry about Talia,” he said. “She’ll be okay. You deserve to do something for you.”

  Blaise didn’t try to escape the kiss she planted on his cheek, but he didn’t accommodate it either. He just endured it, like a proper teenage boy, and then shuffled soundlessly in his stocking feet out to the living room to practice.

  Talia didn’t speak to her for twenty-four hours.

  But Thursday night, while Teo and Blaise labored outside in the yard, there came a knock on her bedroom door. “Mom?”

  Miriam turned away from the computer. “Yeah?”

  Talia held a package in her hands, neatly wrapped with a red bow. “I was thinking,” she said. “I mean, Blaise and I were talking. I guess I understand why you want to do this. I mean, I guess you should get to do something for you.”

  The words fell like rain on scorched earth. Miriam couldn’t speak; she just crossed the room and enfolded her daughter in her arms.

  “All right, all right,” said Talia after a moment, but she couldn’t quite hide her smile. “Daddy and I have something for you. We were going to give it to you—” She caught herself and started over without the accusatory tone. “We were going to give it to you on your birthday, but we figured maybe you’d like to wear it for your concert.”

  Miriam opened the box Talia handed her. Inside, she found a beautiful dress—crinkled black, splashed with enormous crimson hollyhocks. Cap sleeves and a billowing skirt. A skirt meant for dancing.

  “It’s beautiful, Talia,” she said.

  Her daughter beamed. “I’ve been trying to figure out a whole ensemble. You can borrow some of my makeup, and I think if you do your hair right, you could use my red scarf.” She hurried over to the computer. “I know you never put your hair up, but I saw this tutorial—”

  Miriam, mesmerized by the soft fabric, didn’t register the sudden silence until Talia’s voice broke it.

  “What the … hell?”

  “Language,” Miriam said automatically. Then she realized what her daughter was seeing, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach.

  Gus von Rickenbach’s Facebook page, with its header photo of a man playing piano with an orchestra. The profile photo showing his hands on the keys. And, especially, the unfinished private message in the bottom right. The one Teo had been telling her for years to write, and which she’d finally worked up the nerve to compose tonight.

  “‘I wish I’d done things differently’?” Talia read. “‘I’d like to see you while I’m in California’?”

  Miriam dropped the box on the bed. “Get out of there,” she said. “That’s my business.”

  “Your business.” Talia’s face was white. “Are you cheating on Dad?”

  “Of course not!” When would she have had time to cheat on Teo? “I am not discussing this while you’re screaming at me. When you’re ready to be rational, you can come try again.” Miriam headed for the kitchen.

  Her daughter followed. “What is the matter with you?” she shrieked; Miriam cringed, wondering how much the neighbors could hear. For some reason, her memory picked this moment to offer up her mother’s voice, screaming the word divorce at her father. All she could think of was the need for escape, even if the only escape available was work. She pulled out the cleaner and started scrubbing the stove top.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Talia. “This is no time to clean! Don’t you care about us at all? You never do anything with us! You just work all the time! It’s always dishes or floors or—or stove tops! If you loved us—”

  Miriam wheeled. “For your information, young lady, there’s a lot of work involved in raising a family!” She sounded just like Mom. She redirected. “I don’t ask much from you because I’m trying to make sure you have all the chances I never did!”

  “Dad’s been so unhappy!” Talia swiped at her eyes, as if angry with herself for caring. “Even I can tell! He deserves so much more—why do you always push him away? And now you’re trying to hook up with some guy while you’re in California with us? Oh, my God, Mom! You’re always riding us about right and wrong, and look at you! You’re such a hypocrite! Such a two—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, ladies!”

  Talia fell silent. Teo stood there with his arms folded, looking back and forth between them.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “What are you fighting about?”

  Miriam shot him an agonized look, desperate for rescue, but he didn’t know what she needed rescuing from.

  Face flushed, Talia flung her hands out. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all. You can’t fight with someone who has no heart.”

  With a withering glance at her mother, she stomped to her room and slammed the door.

  27

  Wednesday, May 4

  Scotts Bluff, Nebraska

  THE SEAMS IN THE pavement passed beneath the tires, ka-thump, ka-thump, marking the passage of miles like a metronome. Ka-thump, ka-thump, counting the heartbeats between the past Miriam could no longer fix and the desolate future it created.

  “Are you cheating on Dad?”

  “Why do you think I want a divorce?”

  The juxtaposition of her mother’s words to her dad, twenty years earlier, with Talia’s more recent, anguished accusation sent Miriam’s anxiety skyrocketing. Stripped bare of her defenses by the intensity of this pilgrimage, she recognized the fear she’d been running from for the last year.

  What if that fight had been, for Talia, a moment as formative as the one that haunted Miriam?

  The flowered dress, still unworn, now sat at the bottom of her suitcase, reminding her every night and every morning of the broken relationship
with her daughter. A break she’d never get to repair.

  She’d tried. A few hours after the fight, she’d knocked on Talia’s door, but Talia pretended to be asleep. Miriam and Teo had sat outside on the swing for another hour, trying to decide what to do. Even Teo recognized that the day before leaving for a national competition was not the time to drop a bombshell on the kids.

  As for the Facebook message that started it all, she’d never sent it. She’d been grateful for that in the end, when Gus turned out to be the kids’ competition coordinator in San Francisco.

  “Not like this,” Teo had told her on the phone after the awards ceremony, and he’d been right. As he’d been right about so many things. She’d tried to do everything in the wrong order. Gus might have been her unresolved past, but he wasn’t the first person who deserved an explanation.

  The Bluetooth overrode the soft classical music Miriam had playing. Dicey was asleep, so Miriam glanced quickly at the screen. Jo—again. It was the third time in eighteen hours.

  For the third time, she ignored it. She knew she couldn’t put her sister off much longer. But telling Josephine Lewis-Thurston no took a lot of emotional energy, and right now Miriam simply didn’t have any.

  Chimney Rock turned out to be more a photo op than a destination. They stopped briefly; Dicey took Miriam’s picture with the distinctive rock formation jutting up in the background like a birthday candle jammed into a giant mole hill. There was a small museum, but Dicey hated reading signs as much as Talia had.

  When they realized the bluffs twenty miles down the road offered a more substantial attraction, they decided to finish the day with a shuttle bus to the summit and a hike back down.

  Dicey spent the ten-minute ride watching a Latino couple wrestle their whirlwind of a little girl whose perpetual motion made her too slippery to hold onto. When the bus stopped, the girl took off across the parking lot while her parents were still gathering paraphernalia.

  “Lena!” called the man. “Wait for a’pá! Annamaria, go. I’ll get this.”

  “How old is she?” Dicey asked, when she and Miriam joined the family on the sun-swept plateau.