Everything After(18)

I sat at the baby grand in the living room, and your dad picked up the guitar that always rested next to it. Ari had taken lessons as a kid, but they never really stuck. Still, the guitar stayed, almost as if it had been waiting for your dad to come into our lives.

“What do you want to hear, Mr. Solomon?” your father asked, tuning the strings.

“How about some Kansas?”

Your dad raised an eyebrow at me. “Queenie?” he asked.

I flexed my fingers. “I think I could do ‘Dust in the Wind’ or ‘Carry On Wayward Son,’” I answered. It had been a while, but I was sure I could still get some of the progressions pretty easily, especially if your dad was leading with his guitar and vocals.

“I think I know all the words to ‘Dust in the Wind,’” he answered. “Let’s do it.”

I closed my eyes and listened to your dad play the opening guitar riff, then started fingering the second guitar’s riff with my right hand, my left playing chords. After we got through that bit, your dad started to sing.

I loved the earthiness of his voice, loved hearing it without a microphone distorting its raspy quality. I didn’t want to join in, to mar his beautiful sound with my own. But then your grandpa started singing along, deeper than your dad, and not as beautiful, but on key. I joined in then, balancing their lower register with my higher tone.

The electric feeling that shot through the music at Webster Hall had made its way to your grandfather’s living room. Only he was part of it now, too. Music is transformational like that, when you’re part of its creation.

When the song ended, I looked up, and wasn’t surprised to see that all three of us had tears in our eyes.

Your grandfather cleared his throat, all of a sudden embarrassed by his singing or his emotion or something else I wasn’t sure of.

“Now I know where you get it from,” your dad said, winking at me and then smiling at your grandfather. Though I knew my musical ability was my mom’s.

Ari had walked in while we were playing, and she hadn’t taken her coat off. She was just standing in the entryway, watching.

“Well,” your grandfather said, “I was going to go into town to pick up some of those dura logs for the fireplace. Anyone want to keep an old man company?”

Your dad looked at me. I was looking at Ari. “I’ll come,” he said.

Your grandfather seemed chuffed by the offer, and the two of them took off into town.

Once they left, Ari wrapped me in a hug. “How are you holding up?” she asked me.

I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.” Then I paused. “Actually, not really okay at all.”

She nodded and rubbed my back. “Of course you’re not.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I told her, sitting down on the couch.

She sat beside me. “What happened, exactly?” she asked.

So I told her the whole story—about the show and the green room and not getting married and how I knew your dad didn’t really want to raise a baby, even though he’d never come straight out and said it.

“What would Mom say?” I asked her.

She thought for a moment. “Well,” she said, “Mom always said that whatever happened to us was God’s doing and any choice we made was the one we were supposed to make. Which probably doesn’t help much.”

I thought about that. It was the way our mom was able to accept her illness, her death. Everything happens the way it’s supposed to happen.

“Does that mean that if I agonize over this, I’m supposed to be agonizing over this?” I asked Ari, half joking.

She smiled. “I guess so.”

We sat for a moment.

“Do you believe that?” I asked, quietly.

Ari looked at me seriously. “I try to,” she said.

She walked across the room and picked up a photo of the three of us—Ari, me, and your grandma. “What if it’s her spirit?” she asked me. “You know how there are those stories about past lives and recycled souls? What if that baby has Mom’s soul?”

I looked at her in shock. “How could you say that to me?” I asked her, my eyes brimming with tears. “Now if I decide to do anything other than raise this baby myself, I’ll be thinking about that.”

I got up and grabbed my coat.

“Wait,” Ari said. “Em, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that out loud. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—it was a thought. A fleeting thought.”

“Just forget it,” I said; my tears were full of anger and disappointment and guilt. I opened the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

I scanned the yard. I didn’t really have a plan. And then my eyes landed on the oak tree on the other side of the yard. “My old tree house,” I said. “Don’t follow me.” It was somewhere I went often as a kid when I needed to be alone. I’d tell her not to follow me then, too.

I could see my breath making mist in the cold air as I walked quickly across the lawn and climbed up the broken ladder to the house my father built when I was eight years old. I did my homework in there, ate my after-school snacks, had my first kiss at twelve with one of our neighbors, Jared Stewart.

Once I got inside, I saw what a mess it had become. Dead leaves, dead bugs, dirt. I used my gloved hands to sweep what I could out the windows and entry, and then leaned back against the wall where I’d carved ES loves JS, after Jared’s and my first kiss. We kissed a lot more after that—for two years, until I didn’t want to kiss him anymore. Or anyone. I wanted to focus on my mom and on school and on choir and that was it. Letting too many people in made everything seem worse, seeing their pity, their sympathy. I couldn’t handle it.