Jesse, I loved the McGarrigles.
Um. Okay. This isn't a drabble. It's more of a circuit dump. But it wanted out and it's on topic.
Memories of an Easier Heart
I remember.
Curled up on the too-small sofa, watching you, listening, feeling the warm-up music of choice on any given day, moving along my nerves. All three cats doing the same, after their peculiar cat fashion: your boy Pig, all twenty-plus pounds of him, crouched on the half-open lid of the Steinway, stalking the hammers as they hit the strings, never fast enough. Fluff, useless and ornamental and pleasingly silly, staring up at you, freshly bewildered every time you used the soft pedal. My girl Tekla, blue eyes calm as lake water, on my lap, on my shoulder, glancing up at me, sharing the moment.
Damn, the moment.
Some days it was Chopin, played with the lightest hands on earth. I never cared for Chopin before you played him for me, but you changed that; I stopped despising the romantic, began to value the dreaming behind it. I remember that you played Chopin most often when you felt the healthiest, when the heart wasn't doing something off, when the kidneys weren't acting up, when you weren't in any real pain, at least not pain that was louder than the music. Yet it was Chopin on rainy days, too, when the sky was soft and the weight of the weather came down like cheap tears.
Some days, it was rock and roll, pure thunder. You'd get a half smile going, the fingers would start smacking really hard against the ivories. Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, all over the scale on the full gamut of lowest bass to highest treble, all the octaves there for you to use, and honey, you used them. Pig looked eerily like you at those moments: same gleam, snaking out a foreleg, never catching up. I never caught up, either.
And some days, the best days, it was the blues, barrelhouse, nothing like it on this earth and no one ever played it better. My memories of those days, perching at the edge of the bench, singing - I was a better singer than you, by far, oh man, those memories. Stop breaking down, baby please stop breaking down.....
It's nothing and everything, that so much of what you did is available to me. But these moments, they'll never be caught anywhere else. They can talk about you, write about you, and they know nothing, nothing at all.
They weren't there.
It was just us, and the cats, and a Steinway in the A-framed main room of the house on Erica Road.
And now? It's just me.
Grammar question:
"Ultimately, she decides to act as if the child WAS her husband Sebastian’s, conceived just before his death."
or
"Ultimately, she decides to act as if the child WERE her husband Sebastian’s, conceived just before his death."
I know sometimes "if" gets a "was" and other times a "were," I'm just not sure whichi is appropriate here. But, hey, once I've figured this out, the synopses are done, and all I have left are the cover letters and a last read of the partial itself.
"Ultimately, she decides to act as if the child WERE her husband Sebastian’s, conceived just before his death."
Were. Condition contrary to fact takes the subjunctive. If I were you. If I were a carpenter.
I think it's were. Can I tell you why? of course not.
Yup - it's "were". I just looked it up; Betsy's absolutely right.
Smart people are so damned hot.
Christmas, one year out of college, Christmas sing-along at BYU. Good old carols, the stuff a singer can get her teeth into. People around me smile at me, compliment my voice, ask "Are you in the choir?" "I was in school, I'm not now."
The last song is announced, Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus." The people shuffle their feet and look good-naturedly intimidated. I fight a grin. And it starts.
Yep, choir. College oratorio, 1st soprano, two years. We did the whole "Messiah." People are staring, and it's not because I suck.
Thanks for the compliments on the Pied Piper. It was the first thing that came to mind when I read the topic, but the POV took a while to fall into place.
Drabble
"Why are you listening to that?" She looks up from her cleaning. "Are you in love? Did someone break your heart?"
Love? Heart? I'd never thought of those before. I play the song over and over, searching for their meaning, trying to feel their drama.
I'm nine. I can't.
But as time passes, I learn to pull the weft of their lyrics through the warp of my imagination. Where that isn't enough, I embroider with the emotions of the lyrics, and stitch with the stories of my friends.
I wrap this robe around me and pretend that I am warm.
OK. Per the advice of people in my RWA chapter, I'm including a line in my cover letter about how I'm doing a major revision on Lucy's story, to prevent me from getting in trouble if by some strange chance the agent and/or editor happens to get it on Friday, toss it in her briefcase to read over the weekend, and call me Monday to request the full. Because if that's ever going to happen, it WOULD have to be when the full is around a quarter rewritten, wouldn't it? Anyway, here's my draft for the relevant sentence:
I am in the midst of a major revision to strengthen character development and conflict, which I expect to complete by the end of December.
Should I take out the bit about "to strengthen character development and conflict"?
