My Sweet Audrina (Audrina 1)

Finally the funeral was over. The people drifted away to leave only our family ready to ride home in Papa’s car. “I’m going to New York,” I said to Papa as he held open the front passenger door for me to get in. “I’ve decided I’m going to be a concert pianist like Momma wanted to be. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing that you can do to stop me.”

Arden was right behind me, ready to climb into our car, too, and sit with Vera and my aunt in the back seat. “You don’t know how to play the piano,” Papa replied harshly. “When your mother was your age she’d been playing for years. You have not once put your hands on the keyboard. That surely indicates you are not drawn to music.”

“Neither was she, Papa. She told me her parents forced her to take music lessons, until eventually she caught on. Then she began to like it very much. I’ll like music, too, once I know how to play.”

“Give Audrina her chance,” said Arden, who’d clung to my other hand during the funeral. I was hurt because Billie hadn’t come to see my mother buried.

“You stay out of this, young man,” growled Papa, throwing Arden a hateful, mean look. “You’re only a child, Audrina, and you don’t know yet what’s right for you. You have other gifts, gifts far more important than banging on the ivories.”

I didn’t believe for a minute that he really regretted making Momma only a wife and mother. Nor did I believe he’d let me escape him—but I was going to give it a try. I’d accomplish everything my mother had desired for herself when she was young and full of dreams. I’d make her dreams come true, rather than sitting on the rocking chair to make Papa’s dreams come true.

“It’s a foolish ambition,” began Papa, still glaring at Arden, as if he hoped he’d drop dead and never bother me again.

“Now, wait a minute, Mr. Adare. Stop putting Audrina down. It’s not a foolish ambition to want to fulfill her mother’s dreams. Audrina is just the sensitive, feeling kind of person who’d make a great musician. And I know just the right teacher. His name is—”

“I don’t want to hear his name!” stormed Papa. “Are you going to pay for her lessons, boy? For damned if I will. My wife’s father spent a fortune, thinking his daughter would become world famous, and she failed to follow through.”

Why, he was forgetting all he’d said the day Momma died. He didn’t have any regrets! None at all! “Because she married you, Papa!” I raged loud enough for the people still in the cemetery to turn their heads and stare our way. I blanched from their interested stares and moved my eyes to where that slender white headstone stood stark against the stormy sky. How disquieting to see your own name on a headstone.

“This is not the place to discuss careers,” said Papa.

Once more he addressed Arden. “And you, young man, can stay out of my daughter’s life from this day forward. She doesn’t need you, or your advice.”

“See you later,” called Arden, waving to me and, in his own way, showing his defiance.

“That boy means nothing but trouble,” grumbled Papa. Somehow or other, Vera had climbed over the backseat and sat between me and Papa, making him even more angry as she waved frantically to Arden when we passed him by.

Now that Momma was gone the house seemed empty, without a real heart, and Papa seemed to forget the rocking chair. It occurred to me one restless night that if Papa thought I could contact the First and Best Audrina by rocking and singing, perhaps I could communicate with Momma by doing the same thing. I wouldn’t scream if I saw my mother again. The thought kept me from falling asleep. Did I dare steal into that room and rock all alone, without Papa in the hall outside? Yes, I had to grow up. Somebody had to teach me how to, and Momma surely would know her mistakes and tell me how to avoid them.

Silently I tiptoed down the hall, past Vera’s room, where I could hear her radio playing. In the playroom I lit one dim lamp before I closed the door and looked around. It was not nearly so clean as it had been before Momma died. Aunt Ellsbeth said she had too much to do if she had to cook and clean and do the laundry as well. The few spiders that had scurried away to hide from Momma had reproduced and were clinging to the ceiling. Some were spinning webs between the lilies of the rocking chair. Feeling repulsed, I went to one of the two armoires and reached inside to find a baby dress. I yanked it off a hanger and dusted the rocking chair, then used the baby dress to shield my shoe before I squashed each spider dead. It was a messy, gruesome thing I’d never done before. Already I was growing stronger.

Trembling and weak, I sat gingerly in the chair, ready to jump out if anything bad happened. The house was so quiet I heard myself breathing. Relax, I had to relax. I had to become the empty pitcher that would fill with peace and contentment, and then Momma could come to me. As long as I thought of Momma and not that other Audrina, the boys in the woods wouldn’t come.

It was one of Momma’s songs I chose to sing.

… and he walks with me,

and he talks with me,

and he tells me I am his own …

For the first time since Papa had forced me into this chair, it didn’t terrify me, for Momma was waiting, as if she’d known I’d do this. Behind my closed lids I saw her, about nineteen, running in the fields of spring flowers, and I was a baby in her arms. I knew it was me and not the First Audrina, for around that little girl’s neck was my birthstone ring on a golden chain. Then I was seeing Momma helping me tie my sash, teaching me how to form bows. Then, much to my surprise, she had me beside her on the piano bench and was showing me how to play the scales. I was older this time, and the ring once worn on a chain was on my index finger.

I came back from the playroom terribly excited. Nothing terrible had happened. And what was more, I’d found out a secret. A lost memory had filled one hole in my brain. Unknown to Papa, Momma had given me a few piano lessons.

That knowledge I carried back to my bed, hugged tight in my heart, for now I knew for certain. It had been my mother’s desire to see me take her place, and find the career love had stolen from her.

Part 2

Music Begins Again

Life became very different in our house after Momma’s death. I no longer went into the cupola to find peace and solitude. I sat in the once-dreaded rocking chair, where I could feel that Momma was near. Because life was opening up for me more and more, I paid little attention to Vera, who had difficulty climbing the stairs. When it rained she limped worse than when it was dry. Still, I couldn’t help but notice she was beginning to be very concerned about her appearance. She washed her hair every day, curled it, polished her nails so often it seemed the house smelled constantly of polish remover. She pressed her slips, her dresses, and sometimes even her sweaters. Even her voice changed. She tried to speak softly and not shrilly as she used to do. I realized in many ways Vera was trying earnestly to imitate my mother’s many charms—when I thought they belonged to me alone.

The fall days that had seen the last of my mother soon shortened into winter. Thanksgiving and Christmas were bleak celebrations that made my heart ache for Papa and me. Even Vera looked sad when she stared at Momma’s empty chair at the foot of the table. When Papa was working I was alone in a house of enemies, a shadow of what I used to be when my mother lived. I clung to her memory desperately, trying to keep her image sharp in the vagueness of my nebulous memory. Never did I want anything about my mother to sink into those bottomless holes in my brain where all those awful forgotten memories struggled to reveal themselves.

Papa kept me almost a prisoner in our home, clinging to me with a kind of desperation that made me pity him, love him, hate him … and need him, too. I wasn’t supposed to be seeing Arden at all, but quite frequently I managed to slip away to the cottage in the woods.

Whenever I had the chance, I was at the grand piano trying to figure out how to place my hands, how to make a tune come magically from the keys. For hours and hours I banged away before I began to sense the piano resented the sour, ugly noises I made. I couldn’t play. Even if Momma had tri