Alix Ohlin - Babylon and Other Stories

Sometimes she rapped against the piano with a little stick, to help him keep time, and this made him feel sick to his stomach. Other times, while he was playing, she disappeared behind him, even leaving the room. He hadn't seen Lawrence for a while, and wondered if Mrs. Tanizaki had to go make Lawrence his sandwiches in the kitchen. These days Rachel wasn't making Kevin lunch anymore. When he got home he'd make it himself in the microwave and eat it alone at the table, the taps of Mrs. Tanizaki's stick still beating inside his ears. His mother would be sitting on the couch, looking out the window at the park, there and not there at the same time. He thought the baby in her stomach was dragging her down; it was round like a bowling ball and maybe that heavy.

Rachel had decisions to make, had to figure out what to do— about her job, the rent, the future. The words what to do ran together in her mind until they lost meaning and became a chant instead, whattodowhattodowhattodo. At times she felt like she was drowning in air — too thick, it bore down until she couldn't move or breathe. The baby was due in two months. This much she knew: she was going to name the baby Jennifer, she was going to put little barrettes in her hair, she could practically feel the silky skin of the baby's cheek against hers. One day a fifty-dollar bill came in the mail, in an envelope with no return address. She was waiting to find the strength inside her, waiting for it and building it up. In the meantime she rested, and Kevin played piano in his room.

It was summer and Kevin did not have school. He stayed in his room playing the piano. The apartment was hot and dense. He played “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Rachel was lying down in the bedroom. Then the doorbell rang, and he answered it. It was his father. Kevin looked at him. Rachel had said that Brian was away on a trip, but he hadn't believed her. Maybe it was true.

“Hey, buddy,” Brian said, “how's it going?”

“Okay.”

“Just okay? Not good, not great?”

“Good.”

“Good,” Brian said, holding out a plastic bag. “Here, I brought you something.”

Kevin took it and looked inside. It was a toy truck.

“Can I come in?”

Kevin stepped aside, and Brian walked in. Rachel was standing in the living room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Each time she went to sleep she seemed to fall deeper and deeper, and it took her forever to wake up. Even the sight of her husband couldn't shake her into action; she stood there blinking.

“Hey,” Brian said. “I came to see how you guys are doing.”

Rachel rubbed her stomach. “It's a girl,” she said. “Jennifer.”

When Kevin closed the door, the sound of it made Brian turn around. He smiled at Kevin. Rachel and Brian sat on the couch, and he did all the talking. It was like he'd been storing up words all the time he'd been away, and when he got home and opened his mouth they tumbled out on top of one another, falling and falling. But the things he was talking about had nothing to do with his trip — baseball scores, stories about his job, jokes he'd heard. Kevin sat down next to him, on the other side of Rachel, and put his hand next to Brian's knee. He could feel the weight of his father's leg on the couch. A while later Rachel went into the kitchen to make dinner and Brian stood there in the doorway, still talking. After dinner, Kevin went to his room and could hear his parents' voices rumbling in a steady rhythm through the walls. With a book and the paper piano on his lap, he turned this rhythm into a song, making it the bass clef to a melody he made up as he went, a tap-tap beat up and down and around the scale.

In the middle of the night he thought he heard a scream and jumped up out of bed. Standing outside their door, listening, he heard his mother sob. Was it the baby? So heavy that it dropped out of her, ripping her open? “Mom?” he said.

“Go to sleep, Kev,” Brian said. “Everything's fine.”

Kevin looked at the closed door. “Mom?” he said.

Finally she called, “It's okay.”

He was still standing there, and Brian said, “Did you hear her, bud? Go back to bed.”

In the morning, they were still asleep when he left for his piano lesson. He drank a glass of juice and ate some toast and walked around the park, green and weedy now. He rang the doorbell at Mrs. Tanizaki's.

“Come in, Kevin,” she said. “Today I've got a surprise for you.”

He followed her into the house. Lawrence stood in the kitchen doorway, chewing. When Kevin passed by, he opened his mouth wide and showed him the pile of chewed-up food on his tongue. Kevin stared.

“When you're finished eating,” Mrs. Tanizaki called, “we'll be waiting for you, Lawrence.”

Lawrence smiled at him with his mouth still open and his tongue covered with food. His eyes were barely visible behind his glasses and his hair. Kevin sped past him.

“Sit over here, Kevin,” Mrs. Tanizaki said, pointing to the chair at the back of his room, where Lawrence used to sit chewing his sandwiches. “Where is your book?”

He opened his backpack and took it out.

“Open to the last page,” she said. “I want you to learn this piece. This section in your book is just a small part of the piece. But Lawrence knows the whole piece and plays it very well, so I asked him to play it for you. And I want you to listen to it very carefully.”

“Okay.”

“Lawrence, are you ready?”

Lawrence came into the room with his mouth closed and sat down on the piano bench. Kevin looked at his slouching back. All he could think about was bits of food falling out of his mouth and landing on the white and black keys, and when Lawrence started playing he could barely hear the music. He was thinking about the food, and the notes were wooden and dull. He closed his eyes. Lawrence's fingers moved over the piano without ceasing, and he pictured them and made them into his own fingers, and then he was playing and finally he could hear the piano. He heard it without Lawrence in it. And there it was. The notes lined up, partnered and separated and circled, moving swiftly through a clear, empty hall; there were no smells in this place, just a pale and pure background, like water. Then he thought, This is the castle. These are the dancers.

A cascade, a chord, a castle.

The music stopped, and he opened his eyes. Mrs. Tanizaki smiled down at him, not at his face but at his hands, and he looked and saw they were balled into fists. Lawrence made a snorting sound.

“Thank you, Lawrence,” Mrs. Tanizaki said. “Kevin, would you like to thank Lawrence for his performance?”

“Okay.”

“Kevin,” she said.

“I mean thank you,” he said.

“No big deal. Can I go now, Mom?”

“Yes, Lawrence.”

He slipped heavily off the bench and disappeared into the kitchen, where Kevin could hear him opening and closing the refrigerator door, then took his place at the piano.

“Now, you try,” Mrs. Tanizaki said, opening the book.

Kevin's fingers moved thickly, sluggishly through the first bars, and it sounded nothing like what he had just heard. He thought about his paper piano and his mother and his father there or not there and his fingers making empty sounds on a flat surface and he bit down, hard, on the inside of his cheek. His fingers stopped.

“It's all right, Kevin,” Mrs. Tanizaki said. “It takes practice. If you go home and practice, you'll be able to play the piece, I guarantee it.”

He looked at her dark eyes. She was the teacher. He bent his head over the keys.

When he got home his father was not there. His mother looked dazed, and kept moving her hands over her swollen stomach, from top to bottom, over and over.

“I don't think he's coming back this time,” she said. “He packed a bag.”