The Broken String

by Diane Chamberlain

  “On my bike?” I suggested.

  “You’d have to be pretty stupid to fall off a bike with training wheels,” he said. “How about the steps that go up to the porch? You caught your toe on one of them and fell. Scraped yourself all up.”

  “Okay,” I said. I thought of his Game Boy, lying dead in the dusty earth beneath the tree. “I’m sorry about your Game Boy,” I said.

  He shrugged. “It’s just a thing,” he said.

  He sprayed the antiseptic on my cut arm, then looked in the direction of Daddy’s office like he could see through all the walls that separated us from him. I pictured our father surrounded by his lighters and compasses and violins.

  “They care more about things than people,” Danny said as he set the spray bottle on the sink and reached for a bandage. “I’m never going to be like that.”

  It says something about my parents that they never noticed the scrapes or bandage on my arm. They only noticed my swollen lip because I had to tell them about my tooth so I could put it in the special “Tooth Fairy Pocket” when I placed it under my pillow. The tooth fairy must have been very busy, though. It took her three nights to show up with my dollar.

  ***

  A week later, our school held its spring concert. The gymnasium was transformed into an auditorium filled with gray metal chairs that clanked against each other every time we fidgeted in our seats, and there was plenty of fidgeting going on, given the age of the children in the audience. A platform was set up at one end of the gym for the chorus to stand on so we would be able to see the singers better. The kindergarteners had the seats closest to the “stage,” so I could see my brother clearly when he sang with the fourth- and fifth-grade chorus. He looked serious, dressed in his white shirt and black pants, and he was very sincere about his singing. I could hear his voice rising above all the others as they sang “Wind Beneath My Wings,” and I sat quietly, my hands folded in my lap. I loved listening to the music and watching my brother sing louder than anyone else. I thought that his strength and confidence was a good thing. I had no idea it was the beginning of a defiance that would later rule him.

  After the chorus finished their four songs, our school’s small orchestra took the stage. Like the singers, they all wore white shirts and black pants. They stood in a row at the front of the stage and bowed to us before noisily taking their seats. I was instantly mesmerized by the three girls carrying violins. One of them had blondish hair, but she was not the girl in my mother’s photograph. Still, I stared at her and the other two violinists as they sat down. Once they started performing, those three girls were all I could see. It wasn’t the music that interested me. To be honest, it sounded screechy and hurt my ears. But I was fascinated by the way the girls held their instruments tucked beneath their chins. I loved the delicate way they held their bows and the way the bows stuck up in the air when the girls turned the pages of their music. But as I watched them, the photograph of my mother and the little girl clouded my vision. That big smile on my mother’s face. The way she hugged the girl, with her cheek pressed against the girl’s blond hair. Would my mother love me more if I played a violin? She and Daddy made me take a couple of piano lessons, but I’d hated it and they let me stop. I wondered if they’d let me try the violin instead? Maybe I could put a smile on my mother’s face and make her want to cuddle me the way she cuddled that little girl in the picture.

  When the first piece ended, the girl closest to me rested her violin on her knee and turned a peg at the end of the violin’s neck. I was fascinated. Why did she do that? Was it an on-off switch? Or maybe it controlled the violin’s volume? The girl had long glossy black hair, and she looked so self-confident as she turned the little peg and plucked one of the strings, her head close to the violin. She turned it again and I could almost feel that small black peg beneath my own fingertips.

  That afternoon, Danny and I walked home from school together, as we usually did. He hated walking with me because older kids made fun of him for hanging out with a kindergartener, and especially for holding my hand. So when we saw those kids, he’d let go of my hand and act like he hardly knew me, but as soon as they were gone, he’d take my hand again, especially when we had to cross the street.

  “How old do I have to be before I can play music at school?” I asked when we were about halfway home.

  “You have to be in the fourth grade to be in the chorus.”

  The fourth grade was so far in the future, I couldn’t even imagine it.

  “What about the other thing?” I asked. “The band thing?”

  “Orchestra,” he corrected me. “Band is different. You have to be in the fourth grade for the orchestra, too, but in the third grade you’ll learn how to play the recorder, which is the world’s most totally lame instrument.”

  I remembered how much he hated his recorder. Our mother was always after him to practice.

  “When I get to be in the band,” I said, “I mean, in the orchestra, I’m going to play the violin.”

  He let go of my hand and stopped walking altogether, looking at me like he had no idea who I was. “The violin is the lamest instrument of all.” He sounded angry and I felt embarrassed that I’d even mentioned it. He started walking faster than we had been. “Play the flute or something,” he said, ignoring my hand when I reached for his. “Anything but the stupid violin!”

  “Okay,” I promised, but I couldn’t keep up with his quick, angry strides and I wasn’t sure he heard me. Anyway, I knew as soon as the word left my mouth that this was one promise I was going to break.

  I had never paid much attention to the violins in my father’s office, always being lured by the cute lighters and the slightly less interesting compasses, but now they were all I could think about. When we got home from school that day, Danny went to his room to build something with his Legos and Mom was parked in front of her soap opera.

  “Where’s Daddy?” I asked my mother. I planned to ask him if I could see the violins.

  “At the RV park,” my mother said, her gaze never leaving the television. Daddy worked at a motor-home park sometimes.

  I walked quietly up the stairs, knowing I was about to break one of the most sacred rules in our house: I was going into our father’s office alone.

  I tiptoed into the office, shutting the door behind me. Then I sat down cross-legged in front of the five violins where they leaned against the wall, trying to decide which of them I should look at first. Only one case had a tag on it. The white tag was covered in clear plastic, and I leaned forward for a better look. On one side of the tag, someone had drawn a purple flower. A name and address was on the other side. I recognized my last name: MacPherson. The first name was L-I-S-A. Who was that? The address was too hard for me to read, but I knew it wasn’t my address. It wasn’t even a North Carolina address. North Carolina was NC. This address was VA. Maybe L-I-S-A was my mother’s sister or cousin or someone? Could she be the little blond girl in the picture?

  I took the case from where it rested against the wall and set it on the floor in front of me. I felt a thrill as I opened the latches and lifted the top of the case. The violin was so beautiful, with its pretty shape and warm reddish-brown wood, but it was much too big to have belonged to the little girl in the picture, and it was certainly too big for me. I’d never be able to hold it under my chin the way the girls in the orchestra had held theirs. Still, I wanted to try. I lifted the violin from the case, surprised by how awkward it was to hold. It took both my hands to try to fit it beneath my chin and it kept slipping down my chest. I stared at it in frustration. There were those pegs the girl in the school orchestra had turned. They’d made no noise, I remembered. It would be safe to play with them.

  I turned one of the pegs just a tiny bit and one of the strings popped off with such force that it slapped me in the face. It didn’t hurt, not really, but it surprised me to the point that I yelped and scrambled to my feet, dropping the violin to the floor.

  “What was that?” my moth
er called up the stairs.

  “I don’t know,” I shouted back, hoping she thought my voice was coming from my room rather than Daddy’s office. I stared at the violin on the floor. I didn’t think it was broken except for the string, but when I picked it up I saw a little ding on the side of the wood. I heard my mother’s footsteps on the stairs. Quickly, I put the violin back in its case, my hands shaking. My mother’s footsteps reached the hallway. I almost had the violin fully in the case now, but when I closed the lid, that broken string stuck out, and when I hurriedly rested the case against the wall, it fell over.

  My mother opened the door. “What are you doing in this room?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You know you’re not supposed to be in here without Daddy.”

  “He always lets me look at the compasses and lighters,” I said.

  Mom’s eyes were on the violin with the tag and I knew the moment she spotted the loose string.

  “What did you do?” she screamed.

  I backed away until I butted up against my father’s desk and could move no farther. My parents never spanked us, but I had the feeling today was the day that would change. I saw Danny in the doorway, his pale blue eyes as big as I’d ever seen them.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said in a small voice.

  My mother was down on the floor next to the violin case. I watched helplessly as she opened it, and there was my handiwork. She lifted the wounded instrument into the air and gasped when she saw the little ding on the bottom. My whole body went stiff because I was sure she was going to hit me. Instead, she started sobbing. She held the violin in her arms like it was a baby. Danny and I looked at each other, both of us frozen with fear, unsure what would happen next. We watched as our mother finally seemed to pull herself together, her steady tears turning to an occasional gulping sob. She placed the violin tenderly back in the case. She seemed completely lost in her own world and oblivious to me, and I wondered if I could somehow escape.

  Danny motioned to me with a small wave, and I had taken one step toward him, when she roared up like an angry bear, towering above me. “Don’t you dare leave!” she shouted. “Don’t you dare even think of leaving this room. How many times have you been told never to touch anything in this office? Now you’ve ruined it. You’ve …”

  “It can be fixed,” Danny said from the doorway.

  “What do you know?” she snapped at him, then turned to me again. “This is the most terrible thing you could do to me,” she said. “To your father and me.”

  “Are you going to hit me?” I almost wanted her to. I wanted to feel the sting of a slap instead of the sting of her words.

  She grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard. “I can’t even think of a way to punish you that matches this crime!” she shouted.

  Danny turned and I heard him running down the stairs. I didn’t blame him for trying to get away from her, but I felt deserted. Then suddenly from downstairs came the loudest crash. It seemed to echo up the stairs, and a second crash followed. My mother let go of me, turning her head in the direction of the sound. She ran out the door and down the stairs and I stood where I was, terrified, gripping the edge of my father’s desk behind me. I heard her screaming and shouting, while beneath her fury, Danny yelled words I couldn’t understand. I left the office and walked quietly down the stairs. From the bottom step I could see through the living room and into the kitchen, where two of the Franciscan Ware plates lay in pieces on the tiled kitchen floor. I couldn’t see my mother, but Danny stood in the center of the room, holding a third plate in his hands above his head. He was ready to smash it as well, and I knew he had saved me from my fate upstairs. Or at least he had tried.

  Now he’d be facing a fate of his own.

  ***

  The lights in the hospital corridor emitted a weird yellow glow that reflected off the nurse’s glasses as she described Danny’s condition to me. It seemed like only minutes since a car had met me at the airport and whisked me to the hospital in Landstuhl after my mostly sleepless flights. I felt grimy and weary and spacey as I stood in the hallway with the nurse, a psychologist, and a chaplain. I’m too young for this, I thought, trying to absorb what they were telling me. My knees were wobbly and my head was light. I wished we could sit down to have this conversation, but there wasn’t a chair in sight in that long hallway.

  But Danny was alive. That was the one piece of information that had made its way into my exhausted brain. Part of me ached to see him, but another part was afraid, and with every word from the nurse, my fear intensified. I knew I was catching only bits and pieces of all she was telling me, but that was enough to terrify me.

  “Projectiles shoot out in all directions … designed to destroy bones … rip muscles … some internal damage to his GI system … rebuild his leg once he gets to Walter Reed in the States.”

  I wanted to ask her to slow down—I couldn’t take it all in—but I didn’t seem to have enough air in my lungs to speak.

  “He’s had two surgeries to remove shrapnel,” she continued, “but there’s a long way to go. The doctors aren’t sure they’ll be able to save it, but that’s the goal.”

  “Save … what?” I asked. My brain was stuffed with cotton.

  “His leg,” she said, and she went on to describe the injuries to his leg, but once again I could take in only every third or fourth word.

  “He’s in and out of consciousness,” the psychologist added.

  “He’s going to live, though, right?” I finally managed to ask.

  The nurse hesitated. “None of his injuries is life threatening in and of itself,” she said, “but taken together, he’s had a terrible blow to his body.”

  “Not to mention his emotional state,” the psychologist said. “He’s going to be in the hospital for a very long time and he’ll need all the support you can give him.”

  I looked around desperately for someplace to sit down in this barren, yellow-lit hallway. My legs were giving out, and I thought I would have to simply sink onto the floor. The chaplain sensed my distress and clutched my elbow.

  “She needs to sit,” he said.

  “Let’s move in here.” The psychologist pointed to the left … or maybe it was to the right? I couldn’t have said. I let myself be led along by the chaplain’s hand on my elbow, and soon we were in an airless room no bigger than a closet, but there was a chair behind a small desk. I sank into it and looked up at the three of them.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so tired.”

  The nurse pulled a pager from the waistband of her scrubs. She looked at it, then at the men. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll try to get back.” She nodded in my direction, then quickly rushed from the room.

  The chaplain smiled at me. “Extraordinarily busy place,” he said, then added, “unfortunately.” He was far younger than I’d thought him to be when we were out in the hallway. Not much older than me. He had ancient gray eyes, though. I thought his eyes had seen more hardship than I could imagine.

  “It’s good you’re here,” the psychologist said. He was decades older than the chaplain and his face was riddled with deep lines. “It will be good for him to see family.”

  “I hope so,” I said. I wasn’t sure about that.

  “Although,” the psychologist continued, “he’s so drugged up that I’m not sure how lucid you’ll find him.”

  “His parents couldn’t come?” the chaplain asked.

  My neck was beginning to stiffen from looking up at them. “My mother is sick and can’t travel,” I said, “and my father’s taking care of her.”

  “That’s rough,” the psychologist said. “A lot going on in your family. So”—he shifted from one foot to the other—“are you close to Daniel?”

  There was that question again. “I used to be.” I pushed the chair back a few inches so I didn’t have to crane my neck to see them. “We were really close when we were kids.” So many examples of that closeness flashed through my mind.
Telling silly jokes in his bed during a thunderstorm. The day he broke the plates to save me. The myriad ways he protected me. The memories were like a long string of events that bound me to him. Somehow, though, that string had broken. The anger that had always been a part of him took over, finally pushing me away as well as our parents. “Not so much anymore,” I said.

  “The few times he’s been alert enough to know what’s happening,” the psychologist said, “he’s talked about guilt. You know, that he’s in here while his buddies are still out there in harm’s way. He talks about wanting to die, so be sure to let him know you love him and that other people love him. Give him a reason to want to live.”

  Oh no. I swallowed hard. “Our sister killed herself,” I said.

  “Oh,” the chaplain said, and both men took a step back from me. They understood the significance of what I’d just said: Suicide ran in families.

  The psychologist frowned. “Was he very close to her?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “She was much older. She was my age now when she died. Seventeen. Danny would only have been about six. I don’t remember her at all and I don’t know how well he does. She drowned herself in a river near our house.” I had nightmares about Lisa, the little violinist with the white-blond hair. The one child who could make our mother smile. In my nightmares, I saw her at the river’s edge, waiting to take that first step into the cold water that would end her life. “We never really talk about her,” I added.