OKAY! YOU CAN QUIT THE PIANO!
BUT YOU’LL REGRET IT, YOU LITTLE BASTARDS!
In a way it was kind of poetry, but not in the nicest sense.
She’d taught us Mozart and Beethoven.
We’d steadily improved her swearing.
* * *
—
Soon after, she made a decision:
She would do something once with each of us. Maybe it was to give us one memory that was ours, and ours alone, but I hope she did it for herself.
In my case, it was a movie.
There was an old cinema further in the city.
They called it the Halfway Twin.
Every Wednesday night there was an older film shown there, usually from another country. On the night we went, it was Swedish. It was called My Life as a Dog.
We sat with a dozen people.
I finished the popcorn before it started.
Penny struggled hard with a Choc-Top.
I fell in love with the tomboy girl named Saga in that movie, and struggled with the pace of the subtitles.
At the end, in the dark, we stayed.
To this day, I stay for the credits.
“And?” Penelope said. “What did you make of it?”
“It was great,” I said, because it was.
“Did you fall in love with Saga?” The ice cream was dead in its plastic.
My mouth fell silent, my face felt red.
My mother was a kind of miracle, of long but breakable hair.
She took my hand and whispered.
“That’s good, I loved her, too.”
* * *
—
For Rory it was a football game, high up in the stands.
For Henry it was out to a garage sale, where he bargained and talked them down: