Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia Read Free Book Online Page A

mirror, learning how to smile with her nose, Jill was crossing in front of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to play to a packed house.
    Alice droops a little. She feels tragically normal.
    “Hatmaker?” Jill says, and Alice nods, excited to hear her name spoken by this magical creature. “That figures. Hey, listen—”
    The door opens again, and Alice frowns, wondering how many keys the Bellweather cut for this particular room. Then she stops, because the woman with the white ponytail who enters is none other than Viola Fabian.
    The temperature drops at least ten degrees.
    “There you are,” says Fabian. “What did I tell you? You’ve been here all of fifteen minutes and already you’re pissing and moaning.” She sighs and puts her hands on her hips. “I swear to Christ, Jelly, there are faster, surer methods of matricide.”
    “You weren’t there, Mom. You don’t know what he did.”
    “It doesn’t matter what he did,” Fabian says. “It only matters what
you
do.”
    Alice’s brain says
Don’t stare don’t stare
but she can’t help it, she stares, because mother and daughter are so similar and so different. They are severely beautiful, otherworldly, and intense. But while standing beside Jill was thrilling, standing beside her mother is—Alice catches herself, because even though she is prone to melodrama, she seldom feels this strongly—standing beside Viola Fabian is frightening. Where Jill presents possibility, Viola is all coiled threat. Alice thinks of her own mother, of curly-haired Harriet Hatmaker, handing her an oversize red mug of chicken-and-stars soup when Alice had chickenpox, telling her they would fight chicken with chicken. Viola has never made her daughter a bowl of soup in her life, Alice thinks; she has never tended her when she was ill or tucked her in or held her when there was no comfort but to be held. Alice wonders if anyone has ever tended Jill, in any way, and if her intelligent ferocity is what happens when a girl has had to teach herself how to be human.
    “What do you want?” Jill asks. She has dropped the flute to her side casually, but Alice notices there is nothing casual about the way her fingers grip the case. “This isn’t what we agreed.”
    “And you agreed not to have a tantrum. But you did, and that means it’s your own fault that you’re here now.” Viola opens the top dresser drawer, which is half full of Alice’s things. “If you’d behaved properly, you wouldn’t have to suffer the indignation of watching me search your room.”
    “Actually, those are mine—” Alice bites her tongue, because neither Jill nor her mother seems to remember she’s there.
    “I knew you would do this. I knew you wouldn’t be able to leave me alone for ten seconds. I haven’t even unpacked yet,
Mother
.”
    “Then how do you explain this?” Viola holds up a red lace bra that Alice wears because it forces her chest up, making it easier to hit the high notes.
    “That’s
mine,
” Alice says, ripping it out of Viola’s hand. She swallows, and feels perfectly high. “And I’d like to ask you to leave, please, Dr. Fabian. This is not your room, I am not your daughter, and my things are none of your business.”
    Viola’s head and shoulders pivot. For the first time, she trains all her attention on Alice.
    It’s like being caught in a tractor beam.
    “I’m sorry, you are—?” Viola says. “And why aren’t you at rehearsal?”
    “I’m Alice,” she says. “My chaperone got me here late.”
    Viola approaches and stares at Alice. Her eyes are hard and flat, and Alice, whose talent for charming adults is almost greater than for belting a song to the rafters, feels utterly outmatched.
    “What makes you think you’re special?” Viola asks.
    “I don’t—”
    “Oh, you do. You think you’re very special indeed. So special that you can take your time getting to rehearsal. So special that you tell me your first name only, and order me out of my own