Chapter 11 #2
The Vietnamese woman has her eyes on her hands.
Oksana keeps crying.
The therapist says gently, “Oksana, breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“Slow.”
Oksana’s hand stills on her belly.
“Slow is for women who didn’t just hear Mila speak for the first time.”
The therapist’s mouth moves. Not quite a smile.
“All right, Oksana.”
“All right, Doctor.”
The session ends early. We walk out into the hallway with Oksana’s hand on the small of my back, her voice already going, filling the corridor.
“You’re coming to my baby shower. Everyone here is coming. We’re doing it here. Cassia already said yes. I’m making cabbage rolls my grandmother made me promise to make for her great-grandson. You don’t get to say no. I know you don’t say. You don’t have to say. You have to show up. Yes? Yes.”
I don’t say yes.
She squeezes my elbow.
“Yes.”
She lets me go, walks toward the lobby, and calls back over her shoulder.
"Do svidaniya, milaya. Do svidaniya, Sofia."
Goodbye, darling. Goodbye, Sofia.
Sofia raises her free hand.
Oksana is gone.
The music room door is half-open.
Sofia stops at it, pulls a folded page from the front of her notebook, and holds it out.
I take it. Unfold it.
Three words in pencil, folded four times.
I got you.
She doesn’t wait. She walks past me into the music room.
I follow.
The violin is on the stand against the far wall.
The wood is warm where the morning light has been sitting on it. I pick it up and the chin rest finds the small place under my jaw before I’ve asked it to. My left thumb settles into the neck.
The bow is in the stand below. I take it.
I play one bar.
The first bar of Tonkaya Ryabina.
The bow is rough on the strings. The rosin is dry. The strings are slightly out of tune.
The bar is not clean.
Sofia, behind me at the doorway, hums the bar back. Perfect. First try.
I lower the violin and put it back on the stand.
Cassia is in the hallway by the front office, folder under one arm, phone to her ear, voice clipped.
“No, the badges were the wrong vendor. I want the new ones by Thursday. Tell Marco. Tell him I said Thursday, not Friday. We are not running this clinic on a vendor who can’t make Thursday.”
She shifts the folder under her arm.
“Yes. I know what he’ll say. Tell him I said it anyway.”
She hangs up, looks at Sofia, looks at me, adjusts the folder.
“You both look like you’ve had a morning.”
Sofia nods.
My shoulders adjust a quarter inch.
Cassia looks at the door.
“Tell Nonna Rosa I’m staying late. The intake form needs me until six.”
At the side office door she pauses.
“Mila.”
I turn.
“There’s a violin technician in the city. He used to come to Casa Lucia for the piano. I’m going to bring him out for the violin in the music room. The strings are gone. The bow needs rehair. If she’s going to be played again, she needs the work.”
She looks at me.
“I’m bringing the technician out to have her ready. I have a favor to ask, only if you want to. Dante’s birthday is coming. If you wanted to play for him, it would be the best surprise I could give him. You don’t have to decide now.”
She walks in and closes the door.
Nico is leaning on the driver’s door. He pushes off, opens the back for Sofia, walks around and opens mine.
He doesn’t say anything.
I get in.
The thermos is at my feet. The bread is in my pocket. Sofia’s note.
Nico gets in and puts the SUV in first.
We pull out of the Casa Lucia drive.
Sofia is asleep inside three blocks, cheek against the glass, notebook closed on her lap.
I look at him. The line of his throat in the passing light. The tendon at his throat jumps once and then he locks it down. His profile, which I have been not-looking at for weeks because looking means wanting and wanting is the most dangerous thing I know how to do. I look at it now anyway.
At the light on Magazine, Nico speaks to the windshield, quiet.
“Vsё khorosho?” Everything okay.
My hands close around the thermos.
I lift my right hand off my thigh and put it on his forearm. Just below the watch. His skin is warm and the muscle under my palm is hard and I feel his breath change, one catch, barely, before he goes still.
Neither of us speaks. His throat moves. I take my hand back, my palm going cold the second it lifts from his skin, and I press it flat to my thigh and hold it there. I look at the road. I want his hand back.
His hand white on the gearshift the rest of the way home.
The compound gate closes behind us.
I get out at the front door. Sofia gets out behind me, half-awake, and walks past me into the house.
I follow.
I climb the stairs and close my bedroom door.
The place on my palm where his skin was is still warm.
I set the sweater on the dresser. Sofia’s note goes on top, folded four times, three words in pencil. The empty thermos at my feet.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
The bread is still in my pocket. I’ll eat it later.
The muscle of his forearm is still in my palm, the warmth of his skin already fading, and I miss it already. I close my hand around nothing and open it again.
The words are already in my mouth before I decide to say them.
“Spasibo.”
Quiet.
For the bread. For Sofia’s note and Oksana calling me milaya and Cassia and the violin I haven’t earned yet.
For Nico.