I laugh and kiss him on the cheek. “That’s you being kind, is it? I’d hate to see you being heartless.”
He is so flustered now he doesn’t know what to think. “I’m not sure I should be walking you home from the trolley stop anymore,” he says, but I don’t believe him.
“I completely understand,” I say as piously as I can. “But I do hope you change your mind. You are very handsome when you’re being stern. Good-bye, my dear Howie!”
I turn from him to continue walking on my own, knowing he is most likely fixed to the pavement, torn between running after me and stomping off in the direction of his own house.
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow?” he yells after me.
I turn to him and wave.
As I start to walk the last few blocks alone, I realize I don’t care so very much if Howie walks me home tomorrow. I’d like to swing by that grate again and listen and this time I’d rather he wasn’t beside me.
For a tiny moment there, I felt like I was the only person in the world besides that piano player. It was just me and the piano man and the music. And it was as if the piano man knew who I was, and what I’ve seen and done, and yet he wanted me to sing for him anyway.
That moment lasted only a few seconds, but I can still hear the echoes swirling inside me. When I get home, they will no doubt float away like feathers on the wind. Alex will want to play a game, Papa will want to know if I’ve schoolwork to do, Maggie will want help with supper or sweeping up flower petals in the funeral parlor. We’ve a cleaning lady now, but she comes only on Tuesdays and Saturdays. There’s always plenty to do when I get home from school. I know thespell will be broken when I open the door and go inside the house I both love and hate.
I do sometimes wonder if Mama would still be alive if we’d never come to live in that house. Papa says only God knows what would have happened if we’d stayed in Quakertown. She could have died from the flu there—people did, just not so many—or been in a terrible accident or who knows what else. We’re not like God, he says. We can’t know. We can’t live like we do know or should have known.
“She got the flu from me,” I told him once. And he said no, she did not. The flu came here all on its own like a plague of grasshoppers that had nothing to do with me. But I know the truth. I came down with it, and then she came down with it. I caught the flu from Flossie. Mama caught it from me.
The swirling echo of that moment with the piano man is starting to lift from me and I slow my pace to keep it if I can. When I get to the corner by the Weiss Bakery, I stop and look for the little white dog at the front window above the shop. Gretchen’s parents still have him, and because he’s white, the color of his fur doesn’t tell you how old he is. I know dogs don’t live much past their twelfth or thirteenth birthdays. But I figure if Gretchen’s dog was two when we moved here, then he is only nine now. Only nine. Lots of dogs live to be older than nine. He sees me on the sidewalk looking up at him. I can’t hear him, but he is yapping fiercely while standing on his hind legs and with his front paws on the glass. And yet his little stub of a tail is wagging. He knows me now. I’ve been looking up at that window for years. I smile up at him and his little body trembles with the happy force of his barking.
If I stay too long, Gretchen’s parents will come to the window to see what the dog is so upset about, so I blow him a kiss and resume my slow stroll home.
Maybe Mr. Towlerton will be staying for supper tonight. That would make the approaching evening not so dreary. I like Maggie’s beau. Or maybe Evie will come home at a decent hour and I can get herto tell me about all the crazy people she looked after today. You wouldn’t believe some of the stories she tells when I’m able to pry them out of her.
Maybe Alex will want me to play the piano for him while he pretends to be an opera singer. It’s truly awful and hilarious when he tries to sound like a virtuoso. And maybe Papa will come in early from the funeral rooms and for once not look so sad and alone.
I start to hum “What’ll I Do” as I turn down our street. The words just fall off my lips like I wrote them myself because what I had before the flu is broken and cannot be mended.
