The Good Fortune Harvest
“You’re mother is a witch who lives in the trees and eats little children like you.”
“No she’s not,” young Laura snapped back. “You’re a liar.”
“She’s evil. Evil. She hates you,” my Father pointed at me as he said this, as I huddled in the corner of their bedroom, squeezed in between the bedside table and the wall. “If she gets near you, she’ll hurt you. But I’m your Father and I’ll protect you from her because I love you so much.”
By the time my Father had convinced my mother that if she didn’t come back to him he would hide the children and she’d never see us again, he had also convinced Laura (and the rest of us) that our mother was a wicked witch who meant us great harm. When she finally came home and stood at the front door, we were all so scared of her, no one would let her in.
Leaving my Father was the one and only brazen act my mother committed during their thirty some odd years together. She paid dearly for it too. If he was suspicious before, he was vigilant afterwards. He’d go to the grocery store with her, wouldn’t allow her any friends, and absolutely no private phone calls, and every night whether working or practicing, she went with him. That day she came home, she took an opportunity while he was out of the room to inform us that the only reason she came back at all was because of us. Us children.
We carried her burden into adulthood. And not one of us ever referred to this incident again. Even now it seems to have happened in a dream. But I clearly remember a full year went by before I felt safe being alone with my mother in our house. It was during this time I grew so close to my Father.
My Father was a virtuoso on the piano. When he played, the chords hammered down on invisible strings inside of me and pulled me in directions that are impossible to put into words. I learned music through this man. My mother and he met when she was a secretary at the symphony and he was a back-up piano player. It was a short span to the pianist and a lifelong marriage to my mother.
I remember a newspaper article written about my Father describing him in all his glory. He was compared to some of the best contemporary players around. After the dozen or so accolades, there were a couple of questions asked of him about his domestic life. Routine questions. One quote is still indelible in my mind. He told the reporter, “I am nothing without my wife, Janie, and our children. Nothing at all.”
My Father taught me how to play the piano. I was never any good at it, but he acted like he didn’t notice. Laura was the one with musical talent like his, but she never allowed him to teach her anything. I recall an afternoon when Laura was helping me learn my scales. She was humming each note to me and I tried to follow, hammering them out clumsily and giggling the whole time. Whenever I goofed, she would rap my hand playfully and say in a schoolmarm’s tone, “Again!” And I just sat there doing her bidding. She was so beautiful, and her voice rose up into the air like a songbird’s.
Finally I started making headway and we were working our way down through practice when my Father overheard a mistake Laura had made. He called to her from his chair in the living room. “You stupid idiot, that’s not even a chord. What a dope.”
I remember I reached out and held her hand steady against the piano, not wanting her to get upset and leave because of him. She slapped my hand as hard as she could and ran upstairs. Then my Father came in the room and told me to scoot over, and we finished my lesson together in a sing along of This Old Man.