Backfire

Emma smiled, though it wasn’t easy. Her brothers didn’t need to see that she was afraid—no, not just afraid, she was terrified—their father would die. “Mama, do you need me to do something with the boys?”

“No, sweetie, I’m going to clean them up myself. I wanted to tell you the Gershwin sounded wonderful. Do you know I listened to Gershwin himself playing Rhapsody in Blue on iTunes and sometimes you sound just like him? Maybe better.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “You’re my mother. Of course you’d say that. You know I’m not as good as Gershwin. Mrs. Mayhew says he was brilliant.”

Molly said, “Ellie will be here soon to watch the boys so you and I can go back to the hospital.” She glanced at her watch. Emma knew her mother hadn’t wanted to leave her dad at all, that she’d rather have stayed beside his bed, holding his hand, telling him he would be all right. But it was better for the twins that she came home to see them. The hospital staff always patted Emma’s head, her shoulder, telling her every other minute that her father would recover. She was grateful everyone cared so much. She closed her eyes for a moment. Her father’s stillness scared her the most. He was never still, always in motion, laughing or using his hands when he talked. She always clutched her mother’s hand when they were with him.

Cal and Gage pulled away from their mother and ran to the corner of the music room, where they had stacked piano music into two equal piles, one for each of them. What on earth did they plan to do with those piles? They knew better than to tear the pages; she’d yelled at them too much about that over the past year. The boys were arguing now, and about what? Emma said, “I wonder when they’ll start speaking English to each other?”

Molly smiled. “They already say your name and Mama and Papa to each other.”

“And ice cream.”

That got a small smile. “And ice cream. Don’t worry about the Gershwin, you’re ready to play for the audience and the orchestra. You know they love listening to you. The concertmaster, Mr. Williams, told me you were a miracle. Naturally, I agreed.”

“That’s because Mr. Williams doesn’t have perfect pitch and he wishes he had mine,” Emma said matter-of-factly. “I sure hope Giovanni will like my Rhapsody in Blue.”

“Of course he will. Emma, I really don’t think you should be calling the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra by his first name. Maybe best to call him Mr. Rossini. You’re eleven. You want to show him respect.”

Emma was silent for a moment, a frown between her eyebrows, identical to her mother’s. “I know I’m only a kid, but he asked me to call him Giovanni. He said he’d like me to go to Milan to study with Pietro Bianci.” She said the name slowly, careful to get the pronunciation right.

Molly went on alert. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday at Davies Hall, while you and Dad were trying to get Cal and Gage to behave—before Dad—” Emma swallowed. “He doesn’t think Mrs. Mayhew is the right teacher for me anymore.”

Molly, momentarily distracted, said, “Not only does Mrs. Mayhew know every single serious piece of music for the piano in the universe, she’s played most of them, including Gershwin, both in Paris and London.”

“Mrs. Mayhew is very old, Mama; that’s what Giovanni—Mr. Rossini—said. He told me her teaching isn’t what it used to be.”

Emma’s eighty-two-year-old piano teacher had elegance, style, and immense talent and goodwill. She had known George Gershwin. Who cared if she didn’t play as well as she did fifty years ago? As for Emma going to Italy to study at her age? Not a chance. She wanted to tell Emma she wasn’t about to let her out of her sight until she was twenty-one, maybe even thirty-five, not after what had happened five years ago, but the words fell out of her head. She swallowed. She would have a talk with Mr. Rossini, but even that didn’t seem important now. Ramsey was fastened to more high-tech machines than she’d ever seen in one place. He could still die. Tears gushed up into her throat, and she had to swallow to keep them down.

But Emma knew, of course. She rushed to Molly, squeezed herself against her. “Dad will be all right, Mama.” She pulled away a bit. “I had a dream about him on Wednesday night, the night before—it was Thanksgiving, and we were all sitting around the table and he was carving a turkey about as big as our backyard, and he was singing ‘Roll out the Barrel.’ He looked really good, Mama. He looked happy.”

Molly drew in a deep breath. Thanksgiving was six days away. She was not going to lose it again in front of her child. “I’ve never heard your father sing that song.”