A Song for the Road

discover in January that every note she’d written was complete, utter, derivative drivel. Christmas carols! She’d managed to write Christmas carols into it!
Miriam ran a finger over the pencil marks. Blaise’s handwriting was better than hers. “You should have been a doctor,” Teo used to tease.
She slid onto the piano bench, smoothed the notebook flat, and began to play.
The themes were lyrical, a window into the beautiful, sensitive soul of her beautiful, sensitive boy. The sinuous melodies massaged her heart, only to be repulsed before evoking any emotion. What remained of her heart sat beneath her sternum, slowly compressing like coal, getting hotter and hotter. Much longer and she’d either lay a diamond egg or blow like Mount Vesuvius.
If she had loved Blaise, surely a few of the notes pouring from her fingers should have sparked an answering call in her heart. And if she hadn’t really loved Blaise, who had been a mirror of her own soul, how could she hope to look Talia’s ghost in the eye and say she’d loved Teo?
Miriam found her hands at a standstill on the keys, her gaze fixed on the last measure Blaise had written. “Come on, Miriam,” she growled, starting in again. He’d laid out all the material. She only had to develop it. Motive, sequence, inversion, secondary dominant. She closed her eyes, trying to let her fingers find a path forward. Instead, she found her hand drifting toward the e-mail that barely protruded from the manuscript.
“Is that it?”
Miriam snatched her hand back and looked to her left. Becky leaned against the archway between the kitchen and the living room, holding two glasses of wine.
“It’s beautiful,” Becky said.
The sonata. Becky was talking about the sonata. Not the e-mail. “Sorry,” Miriam said. “I should be …”
“Don’t apologize. Do you want to talk?”
“No.” Miriam switched off the piano lamp.
“Okay, then.” Becky held out a glass. “You ready to get started?”
Miriam took a sip. “Not even remotely.” She got up from the piano and started down the hallway toward Talia’s room. She hadn’t been inside in eleven months. Not since she’d received an overdue notice from the library. She’d gone in but left without searching. Paying the fine seemed easier.
The moment she pushed open the door, ghosts darted out. She could hear it so clearly: the sound of six-year-old Talia, banished to her room for punching Blaise, throwing a bouncy ball at the ceiling. When the sound stopped, Miriam thought she’d gone to sleep. But then she’d found Blaise on the floor of his room, whispering into the old heating vents, keeping his twin sister company through her incarceration.
“You can’t fight with someone who has no heart.”
Miriam had heard Talia’s words in her head a hundred times since her daughter shouted them at her. What she wouldn’t give to hear them in reality now. To have a chance to make amends.
Becky stood watching her anxiously. Miriam edged over the threshold and turned on the light.
Just inside the door lay two music cases: Teo’s guitar and Talia’s cello. Yo-Yo Ma and Steve Jobs still looked down from the walls; award cups covered every surface. Books, sketch notebooks. Stuffed animals Talia had relegated to a hammock but couldn’t bear to get rid of.
Talia’s laptop case lay on the bed. “You start with the accounts,” suggested Becky. “And I’ll take the stuffed animals. How many do you want to keep?”
All of them. Miriam twitched a shoulder. “Maybe just Blue Beary. He was her favorite. And the unicorn. You think we can send the rest to a children’s shelter?”
“I don’t know. We can ask.” Dust showered down as Becky unhooked the hammock. She set the two privileged animals on the bed and started stuffing the rest into a trash bag.
It made Miriam ill to watch. She opened Talia’s computer. After a year, it was dead, of course. She plugged it in. Blaise’s interest had been composing; Talia’s was programming. She and Teo had been forced to concoct increasingly complex rules about screen time to make sure they honored her gift without losing her to the online world altogether.
“Closet?” Becky said.
Miriam looked up to find Becky awaiting permission. Behind her hung an array of flowing skirts, loose blouses, and bright scarves: Talia’s lovely, bohemian wardrobe. Her daughter could work magic with a scarf tied into her dark curls.
Why on earth had Miriam ever thought this was a good idea?
Becky put a hand on her shoulder, her voice gentle. “I’ll tell you what. For now, let’s just lay it all out and take inventory.”
Miriam’s fingers crept toward the rainbow of scarves Becky laid across the bed. She picked up one embroidered with baby blue. Talia had always made fun of her mother’s penchant for no-fuss slacks and soft cotton blouses. How many times had Talia tried to get her to wear some of these beautiful, feminine clothes?
Miriam tied the scarf into her hair, the way Talia had, with the long tail hanging down her back. She regarded her reflection in the mirror. It didn’t look as ridiculous as she’d feared. She was only thirty-eight, after all.
Miriam turned back to Talia’s laptop. They’d required the kids to share all passwords with their parents. Cellista00! she entered, and the familiar background came up: a close-up of the twins, taken after a high school choir concert. Miriam clutched her locket, then took a swig of merlot. She could do this.
As Becky murmured and sorted and laid things in piles, Miriam found the floral delivery and canceled it. Then she headed for Talia’s e-mail, reading and deleting, forwarding to herself anything she wanted to keep. The wine helped. Her brain felt fuzzy.
“I don’t remember this one,” Becky said, and an inky black dress with huge red flowers dropped into Miriam’s lap.
Miriam recoiled. It was the dress Teo and Talia had bought for her birthday. After the fight, Miriam couldn’t bear to look at it. She’d forgotten she’d hung it here.
“It’s gorgeous,” Becky said.
Miriam shoved it toward her. “You take it.”
Her friend laughed. “Oh, honey,