“You didn’t get one of these dreams?” John asked her.
She shook her head. “I was in Boston. Out of her . . . I don’t know . . . transmitting range?”
“It’s been almost three years since 9/11,” John said. “I assume other stuff has happened since then.”
A lot of other stuff had happened, and now that he had managed to speak of the first (and most unbelievable) thing, Dave found himself able to talk about the rest easily enough.
“The piano. That was next. You know Lucy plays?”
John shook his head.
“Well, she does. Since she was in grammar school. She’s not great or anything, but she’s pretty good. We’ve got a Vogel that my parents gave her as a wedding present. It’s in the living room, which is also where Abra’s playpen used to be. Well, one of the presents I gave Lucy for Christmas in 2001 was a book of Beatles tunes arranged for piano. Abra used to lie in her playpen, goofing with her toys and listening. You could tell by the way she smiled and kicked her feet that she liked the music.”
John didn’t question this. Most babies loved music, and they had their ways of letting you know.
“The book had all the hits—‘Hey Jude,’ ‘Lady Madonna,’ ‘Let It Be’—but the one Abra liked best was one of the minor songs, a B-side called ‘Not a Second Time.’ Do you know it?”
“Not offhand,” John said. “I might if I heard it.”
“It’s upbeat, but unlike most of the Beatles’ fast stuff, it’s built around a piano riff rather than the usual guitar sound. It isn’t a boogie-woogie, but close. Abra loved it. She wouldn’t just kick her feet when Lucy played that one, she’d actually bicycle them.” Dave smiled at the memory of Abra on her back in her bright purple onesie, not yet able to walk but crib-dancing like a disco queen. “The instrumental break is almost all piano, and it’s simple as pie. The left hand just picks out the notes. There are only twenty-nine—I counted. A kid could play it. And our kid did.”
John raised his eyebrows until they almost met his hairline.
“It started in the spring of 2002. Lucy and I were in bed, reading. The weather report was on TV, and that comes about halfway through the eleven p.m. newscast. Abra was in her room—fast asleep, as far as we knew. Lucy asked me to turn off the TV because she wanted to go to sleep. I clicked the remote, and that’s when we heard it. The piano break of ‘Not a Second Time,’ those twenty-nine notes. Perfect. Not a single miss, and coming from downstairs.
“Doc, we were scared shitless. We thought we had an intruder in the house, only what kind of burglar stops to play a little Beatles before grabbing the silverware? I don’t have a gun and my golf clubs were in the garage, so I just picked up the biggest book I could find and went down to confront whoever was there. Pretty stupid, I know. I told Lucy to grab the phone and dial 911 if I yelled. But there was no one, and all the doors were locked. Also, the cover was down over the piano keys.
“I went back upstairs and told Lucy I hadn’t found anything or anyone. We went down the hall to check the baby. We didn’t talk about it, we just did it. I think we knew it was Abra, but neither of us wanted to say it right out loud. She was awake, just lying there in her crib and looking at us. You know the wise little eyes that they have?”
John knew. As if they could tell you all the secrets of the universe, if they were only able to talk. There were times when he thought that might even be so, only God had arranged things in such a way so that by the time they could get beyond goo-goo-ga-ga, they had forgotten it all, the way we forget even our most vivid dreams a couple of hours after waking.
“She smiled when she saw us, closed her eyes, and dropped off. The next night it happened again. Same time. Those twenty-nine notes from the living room . . . then silence . . . then down to Abra’s room and finding her awake. Not fussing, not even sucking her bink, just looking at us through the bars of her crib. Then off to sleep.”
“This is the truth,” John said. Not really questioning, only wanting to get it straight. “You’re not pulling my leg.”
David didn’t smile. “Not even twitching the cuff of your pants.”
John turned to Chetta. “Have you heard it yourself ?”
“No. Let David finish.”
“We got a couple of nights off, and . . . you know how you say that the secret of successful parenting is always make a plan?”