“Don’t think I’m terrible,” she said softly.
“I don’t,” I said.
When someone dies, there always has to be someone left behind. She doesn’t know that I am studying her, that she is teaching me the gestures of survivors.
I stopped working when I first got sick, entertaining romantic notions of dying, mostly that it would be my primary obligation. I thought the world as I knew it would stop for me now that I was sick. But dying isn’t the way I imagined it. Credit card companies still want their minimum payments; landlords still want their rent. So my hiatus was short-lived, and I am glad now for the distraction that sewing provides. But even when my hands are busy, my mind is still free. It wanders farther than it used to. I suppose that’s why today I found my tape measure wound around Bog’s dog dish and the iron propping up a row of books on my mantel.
Sometimes I worry about the other things I stand to lose. My faith, my temper, my way. I have lost weight. My hair. Great portions of my breasts. But unlike my scissors and pins, they don’t seem to be coming back. I know that other things will go unless I get better, there is still plenty to lose.
He lost his child. Felicity. He was reluctant to tell me how. It wasn’t as easy as describing the peace in his wife’s face or the way the lights reflected off her seatbelt buckle and the broken windshield, blinding him. Felicity, happiness. I still wonder if he was just trying to tell me that after his wife was dead, he lost his happiness.
Becca, who has reappeared after all these years (an auburn-haired angel from some other time), assures me that I have held on to the most important things. Dignity. My sense of humor. And, most important, my voice. She knows, as I know, because she was there when I found it, that if I were ever to lose it again, I would have to let go. That losing my voice would mean losing hope.
My mother said that I always sang myself to sleep, so there was never any need for lullabies. I know now she told me this to make me believe I could take care of myself. To prepare me for her departure.
She said I began humming Brahms’s Lullaby as an infant, and that later the music became unidentifiable, my own and strange. She said it was terrifying, holding on to me as I sang myself to sleep. I don’t remember singing, but I do remember her arms.
Sometimes I still sing without realizing it. Singing is as unconscious to me as breathing or swallowing or blinking my eyes. Trying to control it is like holding my breath.
After my mother left, I became quiet. For a little while, I thought that maybe she had taken my voice with her, along with the good Phillips-head screwdriver and her only pair of heels. But I must have known she wouldn’t take that away from me, no more than she would take my lungs, my tongue, or my eyes.
This is the way it feels when I sing: colors and then nothing but breath. The color I see is one she kept in a bottom drawer of her cabinet of glass. Holiday. It was the only color she ever made up. When I asked, she pulled a record from the sleeve and touched the vinyl in small, gentle circles. She made me close my eyes and listen. The color I saw then, the color the woman’s voice made, was the same one I felt when I sang. Funny, my mother never found any glass to put inside that drawer. She said the glass would have to be the color of sorrow, and where could you find that?
It was because of Becca. We don’t talk about it now, but I’m certain that she remembers. Becca was the one who convinced me to go to the high school auditorium with her after school that day.
“Please?” she whispered as we stood outside the auditorium doors. “Wouldn’t it be fun?” But I knew what she was really thinking. I knew she believed that inside costumes we might be able to become something other than the Pond kids we were. Becca became an actress out of necessity.
We stood there for several minutes, staring at the mimeographed audition announcement, until finally her face fell, and she shrugged. “Forget it. It was a stupid idea anyway.”
“It’s not stupid,” I said. “But why do you need me to do it too?”
“I don’t want to be alone,” she said softly. Her brown eyes were wide and scared. I knew she wouldn’t go without me.
“All right,” I said, acting more irritated than I actually was.
It was Becca who convinced me. To stand alone on the stage while the Quimby girls sat snickering in the dimly lit aisles below me. Convinced me to close my eyes and share the voice I’d been swallowing since my mother left. I remember the sweater I was wearing, an oversized man’s cardigan with chipped wooden buttons and stained cuffs. I remember how cold it was, and the way I let the sleeves cover my hands. I already knew the words to the song. I’d seen the movie a thousand times, so I didn’t need sheet music. I remember the plunk, plunk of Mrs. Jasper’s piano in the wings and the smell of mothballs lingering in my hand-me-down sweater. I also remember the hush that fell like snow when I closed my eyes and opened my mouth and allowed the color of sorrow to escape.
Afterward, I blushed and rushed off the stage, sinking into the chair next to Becca, who was smiling. She squeezed my hand and then went up when her name was called.
After a thousand renditions of “My Favorite Things” and “Do-Re-Mi,” Mrs. Jasper stood up from her piano, shielded her eyes, and peered out into the audience. “That’s everybody, Mr. Hammer,” she said.
“Okay,” a voice answered.
“Who’s that?” I whispered to Becca.
“Tenth-grade English,” she said. “He’s going to direct the show.”
“Oh,” I said.
“If Mr. Hammer calls out your name, please come up to the stage,” Mrs. Jasper said.
From the back of the auditorium, Mr. Hammer coughed and then started to read off names. I was nervous despite myself. Suddenly, I wanted this more than anything in the entire world. “Lucy Applebee. Peter Kauffman. Rebecca O’Leary.” Becca squeezed my hand hard and fast and then scurried quickly up onto the stage. “Steve Gauthier. Melissa Ball. Krista Monroe, and Howie Kramer.” My heart sank. And then he said softly, “Piper Kincaid.” I stood up, crossed my arms self-consciously, and walked up the stairs onto the stage.
Mrs. Jasper shuffled us around like mannequins, according to our height. I was the tallest girl. Becca was the shortest.
“You’ll be Liesl,” she said to me. “Unless…Mr. Hammer, have you found a Maria?”
“Yes,” he said. “Charlene Applebee will be playing Maria. We’ll also be casting some children from the elementary school to play the younger Von Trapp children.”
Charlene Applebee was Lucy Applebee’s mother. Lucy was a senior, a Quimby girl. Her parents owned the big brick house with the columns on the park in town. Lucy smiled knowingly at Melissa Ball, whose family also lived on the park, and nodded. Mrs. Jasper clapped her hands together and said, “Good, good. Then rehearsals will start tomorrow after last period. On the dot. Don’t be late, because the doors will be locked at two-thirty.”
At Boo’s, Becca tried on a pair of silver stilettos and wobbled across the driveway, turning her ankles and laughing. I watched her through the window and wondered if it was really this easy, becoming someone else.
Boo was sorting through men’s suits, donated by a woman whose husband had just died. The cardboard box was tearing with the weight of wool.
“Liesl.” Boo nodded. “That’s a big part. You’ll have to sing that duet…what is it? ‘I am sixteen, going on seventeen.’ I just love that movie.”
“I’m just doing it to keep Becca company.” I sighed and leaned over to pull out one of the jackets. I slipped the jacket on and buttoned it up. It smelled like a nursing home.
Boo handed me the matching pants. I took off the coat and hung them both on a hanger.
Boo said, “Your mum would be proud of you.”