Babylon and Other Stories by Alix Ohlin Read Free Book Online Page A

her.
    He took the book home and laid it on his bed. Then he took his school notebook and ripped out three pages and fastened them side-to-side with Scotch tape. He took a pencil and drew middle C in the center of one page. It looked lopsided and thick and the bottom right side spread downward like something that had been left out in the sun and was starting to melt. He thought of Mrs. Tanizaki's face and Lawrence's chewing and the smell of food that laid itself over all his lessons, and he was angry then and ripped up the pages and threw them in the garbage can.
    But the next day he started over and drew eight white notes and five black ones, enough for a scale and the simple exercises for the right hand, and in the bedroom he practiced from the book, his fingers rustling and tapping against the paper. Before figuring out that he needed to put the paper over a book from school, he broke through it twice and ruined it. Eventually he drew the best, longest-lasting one.
    Rachel, cleaning out the garbage can a week later, found all his failed attempts. By this time she was showing, and although she wasn't too ungainly just yet, the consciousness of weight invaded all her actions, including the way she bent to pick up the garbage can or sat down on the couch to examine the piano pages. When Brian came home from work and turned on the news, she brought him a beer.
    “Brian,” she said, “we need to get Kevin a piano, so he can practice. Maybe we can find him one of those—what are they, like a synthesizer? Those little flat things that shouldn't be too expensive?”
    He looked at her, but not in the face. Lately she'd noticed he wouldn't meet her eyes; instead, he looked at her stomach or his gaze seemed to fasten on her neck, not quite making it any higher, as if seized by that weight she carried, her additional gravity.
    “You want to buy a goddamn piano?” he said.
    “Not a real piano,” she said. “Just something for him to practice on. He loves it, Brian. It's really amazing. He could turn out to be a genius, I mean who knows?”
    “Yeah,” he said.
    “Or maybe if we gave Mrs. Tanizaki a little extra money, she'd let him go over there and practice on her piano. She can't use it all the time, can she? I bet she'd do that. I think she would.”
    Brian put down his beer and held her hand and looked at herlap. When he spoke, his voice was tender and soft. “Rachel, I don't know how to tell you this, but I want you to listen to me. I think you're losing it. I think you really are.”
    The next morning she got a call from Brian's boss asking if he was sick, which he wasn't. When he didn't come home after work, she didn't call Steve or his parents. She wasn't going to ask anybody else where her own husband was, not in this lifetime.
    A month passed and Brian didn't come back. Kevin practiced daily on the paper piano. He could play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Au clair de la lune.” On paper the melodies whispered and tapped, but on the piano, in three dimensions, the sound burst out so strong and plain that he was shocked. A lot of times, when he touched the wrong notes it wasn't because he didn't practice but because the keys were higher and farther apart than in his drawing of them. If Mrs. Tanizaki noticed his surprise or his fumbling readjustments, she didn't say anything.
    “Good, Kevin,” she said softly. “Wrists up. Fingers bent. Don't look at me, it doesn't matter what I look like. Keep going. That's good.”
    Sometimes she rapped against the piano with a little stick, to help him keep time, and this made him feel sick to his stomach. Other times, while he was playing, she disappeared behind him, even leaving the room. He hadn't seen Lawrence for a while, and wondered if Mrs. Tanizaki had to go make Lawrence his sandwiches in the kitchen. These days Rachel wasn't making Kevin lunch anymore. When he got home he'd make it himself in the microwave and eat it alone at the table, the taps of Mrs.