She was sitting and playing the piano, and the statue of Stalin was with her. He was whipping her knuckles with an economic sting, every time her hands dropped, or she made another mistake. There was so much silent love in him; she was still just a pale little kid. It was twenty-seven times, for twenty-seven musical sins. And her father gave her a nickname.
At the end of the lesson he’d said it, with the snow and its falling outside.
That was when she was eight.
When she was eighteen, he decided.
He decided to get her out.
But first he’d eventually stopped her.
He’d stopped her playing and held her hands, and they were whipped and small and warm. He clenched them, but did it softly, in the width of his obelisk fingers.
He’d stopped and eventually told her—
And the boy.
Our boy.
This young but story-hardened boy of ours, he stepped forward, and believed in everything.
He stepped forward and kneeled down slowly.
Slowly, he spoke to our dad.
Michael Dunbar didn’t hear him coming, and if he was surprised he didn’t show it—he was numb on the grass, unmoving.
The boy said, “Dad—it’s okay, Dad,” and he slid his arms beneath her, and stood, and took her with him. There was no looking back, our father didn’t react, and her eyes, they didn’t seem yellow that day; they were hers and always would be. Her hair was down her back again, her hands were crisp and clean. She looked nothing like a refugee. He walked with her softly away.
“It’s okay,” he said again, this time to her, “it’s okay,” and he was sure he saw her smile, as he did what only he could, and only in his way:
“Juz wystarczy,” he whispered quietly, then carried her through the translation. “That’s enough, Mistake Maker”—and he stood with her under the clothesline, and it was then she’d closed her eyes, still breathing but ready to die. As he took her toward that note he heard, from the light to the smoke in the doorway, Clay could be totally certain; the last thing Penelope had seen in the world was a length of that wire and its color—the pegs on the clothesline, above them:
As weightless as sparrows, and bright in the light.
For a moment they eclipsed the city.
They took on the sun, and won.
And so it was.
All of it led to the bridge:
It had finally been enough for Penelope, but for Clay it was one more beginning. From the moment he carried her away, it was life as he’d never known it. When he came back out to the clothesline, he reached up for the first of his pegs.
His father wasn’t able to look at him.
They would never be the same again.
What he’d done, and what he became at that moment, would turn so fast to regret.
He never remembered the walk back to school.
Just the lightweight feel of the peg.
He was sitting down, lost in the playground, when Rory and Henry found him, and lifted him up and half carried him.
“They’re driving us all back home,” they said. Their voices like broken birds. “It’s Penny, it’s Penny, she’s—”