“That leaves only Amy. What about her?”
From his far side, Amy spoke up. “I only got the beat, I didn’t get the voice, so I play drums in the school band.”
Brian smiled. “And dance, I’ll bet.”
“Yeah. Just wait and see.”
Theresa knew a kind of keen envy. Amy could dance the socks off any three partners who tried to keep up with her. The sample she’d given earlier today in the living room had been only a hint of the rhythm contained in her svelte, teenage limbs. Theresa had always been extremely proud of Amy’s dancing ability, and more so, her sister’s lack of inhibition whenever any music started. While Theresa herself had felt a lifelong urge to dance, she’d never yielded to it.
She should have grown inured to giving up enjoyments such as dancing. By now, she shouldn’t miss them, but she did. She transferred all her emotions into her music and took from it the satisfaction she was denied in other modes of self-expression, as she did now on this Christmas Eve.
She shunned the petty envy that she’d come to hate in herself and lauded, “Amy is the best dancer I know. It’s too bad she isn’t old enough to go with you on New Year’s Eve.”
Brian only smiled from one sister to the other, hoping the older of the two would agree to go with him, after all.
On the way home they dropped Jeff off at Patricia’s house, where another family celebration was winding down. Jeff would get in on the end of it. When the remainder of the group reached the Brubaker house, the two older ones toddled off to bed while the remaining three turned on the tree lights and sat in the cozy living room exchanging anecdotes about past Christmases, music, the Air Force, school dances, Grandpa Deering and a myriad of subjects that kept them up well past midnight. Jeff joined them then, announcing that he’d just flown in on his jet-propelled sleigh and was looking for a plate of cookies and glass of milk before he filled any stockings.
When Theresa went to sleep that night, it was not to visions of sugar plums dancing in her head, but to visions of Brian Scanlon’s long, dexterous fingers moving along the fingerboard of an Epiphone Riviera, picking out the chords to a love song whose words she strove to catch.
__________
O
N
CHRISTMAS MORNING
Theresa was awakened by Amy, pouncing on her bed, giggling. “Hey, come on! Let’s make it to those prezzies!”
“Amy, it’s blacker than the ace of spades outside.”
“It’s seven o’clock already!”
“Ohh!” Theresa groaned and rolled over.
“Come on, get your buns out of here and let’s go get the boys and mom and dad.”
From down the hall came a hoarse call, “Who’s doin’ all that giggling out there?” Jeff. “Come in here and try that!”
Amy sprang off Theresa’s bed and went to wage an attack on her brother, and the squealing that followed told clearly of a bout of tickling which soon awakened Margaret and Willard. The thumping on the floor aroused their houseguest downstairs, and within ten minutes they had all gathered in the living room and snuggled around the Christmas tree, dressed in hastily thrown-on robes, jeans, half-buttoned shirts, bare feet and bedroom slippers, sipping juice and coffee while gifts were distributed.
Brian was sharing a Christmas unlike any he’d ever experienced. This boisterous, loving family was showing him depths he’d never known. The gifts exchanged among them underscored that love again, for they were not many but well chosen.
For Willard, his children had decided on a telescope that would take its place before the sliding glass door downstairs; for Margaret, a mother’s ring that would take its place proudly on her right hand, and which prompted a listing of the three birthdays. Brian carefully marked in his memory the date of Theresa’s. To Margaret and Willard together the children gave a gift certificate for a weekend at the quiet, quaint Schumaker’s Country Inn in the tiny town of New Prague, an hours’ ride from the Twin Cities.
From their parents, Jeff, Amy and Theresa received, respectively, a plane ticket home for Easter, a pair of tickets to an upcoming rock concert by Journey and a season ticket to Orchestra Hall.
To Brian’s surprise, each of the Brubakers had bought a gift for him. From Margaret and Willard, a billfold; from Amy, blank tapes—obviously she knew he and the other band members learned new songs by taping cuts from the radio; from Jeff, a Hohner harmonica—they’d been fooling around on one at a music store, and Brian had said he’d always wanted to play one; and from Theresa, an LP of classical music, including Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat.
When he opened the last gift, he looked up in surprise. “How did you have time to find it on such short notice?”
“Secret.” But her eyes danced to her father’s, and Brian remembered Willard’s leaving the house for “last-minute items” yesterday.
To Brian’s relief, he, too, had brought gifts. For Mr. and Mrs. Brubaker, a selection of cheese and bottle of Chianti wine; for Amy, a pair of headphones, which brought a round of good-natured applause from the rest of the group; for Jeff, a wide leather guitar strap tooled with his name; and for Theresa, a tiny pewter figurine—a smiling frog on a lily pad, playing the violin.
She smiled, placed it on her palm and met Brian’s irresistible green eyes across the living room.
“How did you know I collect pewter instruments?”
“Secret.”
“My darling brother, who can’t keep anything to himself. And for once, I’m happy he can’t. Thank you, Brian.”
“Thank you, too. You’ll make a silk purse of this sow’s ear yet.” Which was ironic, for Brian was far, far from a sow’s ear.
She studied the frog with its bulging pewter eyes and self-satisfied smile and lifted a similar smile to Brian. “I’ll call him ‘The Maestro.’”
The fiddling frog became one of Theresa’s most cherished possessions, and took his place at the forefront of the collection shelved on a wall in her bedroom, It was the first gift she’d ever received from any male other than a family member.
__________
THAT CHRISTMAS DAY,
filled with noise, food and family, passed in a blur for both Brian and Theresa. They were more conscious of each other than of any of the others in the house. The family ate and got lazy, ate again, and eventually their numbers began thinning. That lazy wind-down prompted dozing and eventually, an evening revival of energy. As most days did in this house where music reigned supreme, this one would have seemed incomplete without it. It was eight o’clock in the evening, and the crowd had dwindled to a mere dozen or so when out came the instruments, and it became apparent the family had their favorites, which they asked Jeff and Theresa to play. Margaret and Willard were nestled like a pair of teenagers on the davenport, and applauded and chose another and another song. Eventually, Brian and Jeff branched off into a rousing medley of rock songs, during which Theresa joined in, Elton John-style, on the piano. Then Jeff had the sudden inspiration, “Hey, Theresa, go get your fiddle!”
“Fiddle!” she spouted. “Jeffrey Brubaker, how dare you call great-grandmother’s expensive Storioni a
fiddle.
Why, it’s probably cringing in its case!”
Jeff explained to Brian, “She inherited her fiddle from one of our more talented progenitors, who bought it in 1906. It’s modeled after a Faratti, so Theresa is rather overzealous about the piece.”
“Fiddle!” Theresa teased with a saucy twitch of the hip as she left the room. “I’ll show you
fiddle,
Brian Scanlon!”
When the beautiful classic violin came back with Theresa, Brian was amazed to hear the sister and brother strike into an engaging, foot-stomping rendition of “Lou’siana Saturday Night,” along with which he himself provided background rhythm, while he wondered in bewilderment how Theresa happened to know the song, so different from her classics. After that, the hayseed in all of them seemed to have stuck to their overalls, and Jeff tried a little flat picking on “Wildwood Flower,” and by that time, the entire group had gotten rather punchy. The usually reserved Willard captured Margaret and executed an impromptu hoe-down step in the middle of the room, which brought laughter and applause, to say nothing of the sweat to Margaret’s brow as she plopped into a chair, breathless and fanning her red face but totally exhilarated.
“Give us ‘Turkey In The Straw’!” someone shouted.
Again Brian was shown a new facet of Theresa Brubaker, a first-chair violinist of the Burnsville Civic Orchestra, as she sawed away on her 1906 classic Storioni, scraping out a raucous version of the old barn-dance tune, in the middle of which she lowered the violin and tapped the air with the bow, the carpet with her toe and watched her mother and father circling and clapping in the small space provided, while in a voice as clear as daybreak, Theresa sang out:
Oh, I had a little chicken
And it wouldn’t lay an egg
So I poured hot water up and down her leg
Then the little chicken hollered
And the little chicken begged
And the damn little chicken
Laid a hard-boiled egg.
She was joined by the entire entourage as they finished by bellowing in unison, “Boom-tee-dee-a-da ...
slick chick!”
Brian joined in the rousing round of applause and shrill whistles that followed. As he laughed with the others, he saw again the hidden Theresa who seemed able to escape only when wooed by music and those she loved most. She covered her pink-tinged cheeks with both hands, while the “fiddle” and bow still hung from her fingers and her laughter flowed, sweet and fresh as spring water.
She was unique. She was untainted. She was as refreshing as the unexpected burst of hayseed music that had just erupted from her grandmother’s invaluable 1906 Storioni.
He watched Theresa bestowing hugs of goodbye on her aunts and uncles. She had forgotten herself and impulsively lifted her arms in farewell embraces. Already Brian knew how rare these moments of forgetfulness were with Theresa. Music made the difference. It took her to a plane of unselfconsciousness nothing else could quite achieve.
He turned away, wandered back to the deserted living room, wondering what it would take to make her feel such ease with him. He sat down on the piano bench and picked out a haunting melody, one of his favorites, with a single finger, then softly began adding harmony notes. Soon he was engrossed in the quiet melody as his hands moved over the keyboard.
The house quieted. Amy was in her room with the new headphones glued to her ears. Willard was downstairs setting up his new microscope. Margaret had gone to bed, exhausted.
There were only three left in the room where the tree lights glowed.
“What are you playing?” Theresa asked, pausing behind Brian’s shoulder, watching his long fingers on the piano.
“An old favorite, ‘Sweet Memories.’ ”
“I don’t think I know it.”
Jeff wandered in. “Play it for her.” He swung the old Stella up by its neck, extending it toward Brian, who looked back over his shoulder, with a noncommittal smile. “Do old Stella a favor,” Jeff requested whimsically.
Brian seemed to consider for a long moment, then nodded once, turned on the bench to face the room and reached for the scarred, old guitar. The first soft note sent a shudder up Theresa’s spine.
Jeff sat on the edge of the davenport, leaning forward, elbows to knees, for one of those rare times when he didn’t have a guitar in his hands. He simply sat and paid homage. To the song. His friend. And a voice that turned Theresa’s nerve-endings to satin.
She realized she had not heard Brian sing before. Not alone. Not ... not ....
It was a song whose eloquent simplicity brought tears to her eyes and a knot to her throat, tremors to her stomach and goose bumps to the undersides of her thighs as she sat on the floor before him.
My world is like a river
As dark as it is deep.
Night after night the past slips in
And gathers all my sleep.
My days are just an endless string
Of emptiness to me.
Filled only by the fleeting moments
Of her memory.
Sweet memories ...
Sweet memories ...
He hummed a compelling melody line at the end of the verse, and she watched his beautiful fingers, the tendons of his left thumb grown powerful from years of barring chords, the square-cut nails of his right hand plucking or strumming the steel strings.
She watched his eyes, which had somehow come to rest on her own as the words of the last verse came somberly from his sensitive lips.
She slipped into the darkness
Of my dreams last night.
Wandering from room to room
She’s turning on each light.
Her laughter spills like water
From the river to the sea
Lord, I’m swept away from sadness
Clinging to her memory.
The haunting notes of the chorus came again, and Theresa softly hummed in harmony.
Sweet memories ...
Sweet memories ...
She had crossed her calves, hooked them with her forearms and drawn her knees up, raising her eyes to his. And as he looked deeply into the brown depths, grown limpid with emotion, Brian realized she was not some soulful groupie, gazing up in adulation. She was something more, much more. And as the song quietly ended, he realized he’d found the way to break down Theresa’s barriers.
The room rang with silence.
There were tears on Theresa’s face.
Neither she nor Brian seemed to remember her brother was there beside them.
“Who wrote it?” she asked in a reverent whisper.
“Mickey Newbury.”
She was stricken to think there existed a man named Mickey Newbury whose poignant music she had missed, whose words and melodies spoke to the soul and whispered to the heart.