Dad’s bedroom door is closed, but I hear him in there. This is weird. Dad should not be home. Dad should be at work.
I take a shower, my second in two days—a change from the dirty teen-Earl I was trying to become last week—and try to figure out how to talk to Bruce. Try to figure out how to explain to him that I was in some sort of mental hibernation for all this time. Try to figure out how to tell him that Mom went to a movie with ten-year-old Sarah last night. How she loves that Sarah more than she loves me and she’s only known her for a few hours.
It’s a pity shower.
I am awash with pity.
I don’t want my umbrella. I don’t want to be Umbrella. I just want to stand here and feel for once, even if I’m pitiful.
Eleanor Rigby
“Your father is working from home now,” Mom says during breakfast.
This is not going to work out. I know it. She knows it. My scrambled eggs know it. My turkey sausage knows it.
“They did some restructuring at the office,” she says.
I applaud their restructuring. If they were trying to get rid of lazy assholes, they picked the right guy. The sliver of tissue has fallen off the TV and is now lying on the carpet right in front of the entertainment center.
? ? ?
After breakfast Mom pays bills on the computer in the study. The piano is still there but I never play it anymore. I decide to play.
I sound like a girl who hasn’t played the piano in three years. It’s slow and though I’m reading the right notes, I’m also hitting the wrong keys. When I was ten I went through a major Beatles thing. I pull out the book and look over the music for “Eleanor Rigby.” If you don’t know the lyrics to “Eleanor Rigby” then you can’t understand why it’s relevant. In the end Eleanor Rigby dies. Nobody comes to the funeral. Nobody cares.
It’s a little like ruin porn.
The piano is electronic. The house was always too small for an upright. The house was always too small for a lot of things. Maybe that’s why Bruce moved out and never came back. Maybe the house is too small for any of us to be who we are. Mom can only listen to metal on headphones. Bruce had to practice his lines for drama club in the garage. When I think of this, I realize Dad watches his baseball games with the volume way up. He is the only one allowed volume in a house with thin walls. I don’t know what this means, but I want to play the piano.
I plug in a pair of earphones and, while Mom sits with her back to me entering numbers into her bank account to make sure the lights stay on, I relearn “Eleanor Rigby.” I am surprisingly good at this song. After three practice runs, I unplug the headphones and play it and sing, too.
I have a good singing voice. I’ve always hidden it because it’s something I like to enjoy by myself. At home. In the study. When I was ten-year-old Sarah, I would sing for my parents and Bruce and they would look as if I were Aretha Franklin or something. But I am not Aretha Franklin. I just have a decent singing voice when I play “Eleanor Rigby.”
So I sing it.
Mom stops doing the bills. I hear the chair swivel. I hit the keys as if I’d never stopped practicing. I hit a few bum notes, but it doesn’t hurt the song. It almost helps the song. It’s “Eleanor Rigby.” It’s supposed to be sad. It’s supposed to make Mom cry. Last night, she went to a movie with ten-year-old Sarah. Today, sixteen-year-old Sarah is singing her a song. It must be weird for her.
When I finish, we are both crying a little. Not like sobbing or anything, but we have tears in our eyes.
She is remembering a daughter she once had.
I am beginning to remember where I really came from.
She turns and goes back to the bills and says, “I’ll only be another minute or two.”
“Okay.”
“Why don’t you want to go to museums anymore?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I think art is everywhere or something. And the art in museums is just art people paid a lot of money for. It’s depressing.”
She swivels around again to face me. “You used to be so excited about art.”
“I grew up, I guess.”
“Christmas was only five months ago. You were excited then. You were talking about ceramics class. You were talking about getting into the art show this year. It’s like you’re in some sort of shell. I miss you.”
Mention of the art show makes me shiver. “I miss me, too.”
“I want my daughter back.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
When I say this, I don’t know what I’ll talk about. I can’t tell her about the headpiece. It’s stupid. I’ll look like a whiner or something. It was just one mean person, probably. Just one person who decided it. That’s what I keep telling myself.
I’ve wanted to ask Carmen for months now. I’ve wanted to ask Carmen again because I already asked her, and when she answered, she was like one of her tornadoes. She looked like one thing from the outside, but inside, she had hidden other things. The answer is in her tornado.