The Nix(45)

“He’s an *,” Bishop said. “A fat f*cking *.”

“I know,” Bethany said.

“Why do they let him in the house?”

“Because he’s the headmaster. But also? Because he’s sick.”

“That’s ironic.”

“He wouldn’t be out walking around if he weren’t sick.”

“If there’s a word for that, it’s ironic.”

“You’re not listening,” Bethany said. “You wouldn’t see him if he weren’t sick.”

Bishop sat up and frowned at his sister. “Just what are you trying to say?”

Bethany stood there with her hands behind her back, chewing or biting the inside of her cheek the way she did when she was concentrating real hard. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail. Her eyes were so fiercely green. She was wearing a yellow sundress that gradually turned white at the bottom.

“I’m pointing out a fact,” Bethany said. “If he weren’t sick, he wouldn’t go for these walks, and then you wouldn’t have to see him.”

“I don’t think I like where this is going.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Samuel said.

“Nothing,” they said in twin-like unison.

The three of them watched the rest of the movie in an edgy silence, watched as the American teens successfully fought off the Russian aggressors, and the triumphant ending of the movie was not nearly as triumphant as it usually felt because the room was overflowing with some weird tension and unspoken conflict, and it felt to Samuel like he was back home having dinner with his parents while they were going through one of their moments, and when the movie finished the kids were told to get ready for bed, and so they washed up and brushed their teeth and changed into their pajamas and Samuel was led to the guest bedroom. And just before they were told to turn off their lights, Bethany softly knocked on the door and poked her head in his room and said, “Good night.”

“Good night,” he said.

She looked at him and lingered there a moment like she had something else to say.

“What were you doing?” Samuel said. “Earlier. With the piano.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “Parlor tricks.”

“You were performing?”

“Sort of. I can hear things. People think it’s special. My parents like to show it off.”

“What things?”

“Notes, pitches, vibrations.”

“From the piano?”

“From everything. The piano is easiest because all the sounds have names. But really from everything.”

“What do you mean, from everything?”

“Every sound is actually many sounds put together,” she said. “Triads and harmonics. Tones and overtones.”

“I don’t get it.”

“A knock on the wall. A tap on a glass bottle. Birdsong. Tires on the street. The phone ringing. The dishwasher running. There’s music in everything.”

“You hear music from all that?”

“Our phone is a little sharp,” she said. “It’s awful, every time it rings.”

Samuel tapped on the wall, listening. “I only hear a thud.”

“There’s a lot more than a thud. Listen. Try to separate the sounds.” She knocked sharply on the doorframe. “There’s the sound made by the wood, but the wood is not a constant density, so it makes a few different pitches, very close together.” She knocked again. “Then there’s the sound of the glue, the surrounding wall, the hum of the air inside the wall.”

“You hear all that?”

“It’s there. You add it up and it sounds like a thud. It’s a very brown noise. Like if you melted all the colors in the crayon box, this is the sound you’d get.”

“I don’t hear any of that.”

“It’s harder to hear out in the world. A piano is tempered. A house is not.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Mostly it’s annoying.”

“Why?”

“Well, take birds. There’s this one bird, the tanager, that makes this sound like chip che-ri che-ri che-ri. Okay? It’s a summer bird.”

“Okay.”

“But I don’t really hear the che-ri. What I hear is a third and a fifth, in A-flat major.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s a C gliding into an E flat, which is exactly what happens in this one Schubert solo, and also in a Berlioz symphony, and also in a Mozart concerto. So the bird starts singing and it ignites all these phrases in my head.”

“I wish I had that.”

“No. It’s terrible. It’s all crashing around in there.”

“But you have music in your brain. Mostly what I have is worry.”

She smiled. “I just want to be able to sleep in the morning,” she said. “But there’s this tanager right outside my window. I wish I could turn him off. Or turn my head off. One of the two.”

“I have something for you,” Samuel said. “A present.”

“You do?”

“Something from the mall.”

“The mall?” she said, confused. But her face brightened as she registered the connection. “Oh! The mall! Right.”