Finding the Music
(Title needs some help. Suggestions welcome and appreciated!)
A steady metronome ticking sounded from the analog alarm clock on the bedside table.
In the silence of solitude, each forte click of the second hand was invasive to her thoughts, unwilling to be ignored. It begged to know, How many clicks does it take to find a sweater?, her excuse for retreating to this neutral-toned bedroom. It questioned persistently, How many clicks before anyone downstairs notices her absence? , and refused her lack of answer, How many clicks would she sit here alone, trying to block it all out?
It teased; even the steady, sonorous beat wouldn’t overpower the sound that she wanted to ignore and forget in her moment of aloneness.
The clock ticked on in harmony to the subtle choir of muffled voices.
She exhaled a slow, complete breath -her knees pulled to her chest on the corner of the bed - before biting her lip in resignedly determined manner, dropping her toes to the carpet, and leaving the tick-tick-ticking of her aunt’s guest bedroom.
Her timid step slowed to a pause at the end of the hall. The voices were clear now, not muted by distance and closed doors any longer. They rose and fell like the practiced melody of an instrumental orchestra, pitches and patterns melting together, and meeting the ears with beauty.
She idly traced the door frame as the wave of incomprehensible noises greeted her unseen person. The beauty, to an American girl struggling to catch a familiar word and fighting to string a conversation together, was hidden by the desperate sensation of drowning.
She heard her mother’s voice; a bright, happy sound weaving and blending as the counter melody to her aunt’s enthusiastic tones.
Hearing the natural way her mother formed the mysterious sounds - syncopated with the easy laugh that characterized her two happy summer months with her family and childhood culture - infused sadness in her language frustrations.
She drifted back from the vibrancy of the kitchen, her face lax in saddened resignation. In defeat, she treaded the rooms of her aunt’s house, mourning the unreality in which she could share her mother’s lighthearted joy, in which one American generation had not robbed her of heritage and language, and any connection to this family overseas besides the warmth in her veins.
Trying to relax her heavy emotions and blur out the auditory source of her despondency, she almost missed the sudden rush of a lively cadence.
With a lightness displacing the settled sadness in her chest, her curiosity and the clear, staccato notes led her to a small front room containing a misfit assortment of furniture: a desk and filing cabinet, an unmatched armchair, and an upright piano tucked against a wall.
A genuine, timid smile tugged at her lips as she let the sounds of Bach cascade over her. Under her foreign cousin’s practiced hands came the rising and falling of the music, the brief conciseness of eighth notes, the swelling build-up of crescendos, and - too soon - the strong, final chords left ringing in the sudden absence of sound.
The cousin turned a curious gaze to his audience, and the soothing, familiar comfort that the music had offered vanished into self-consciousness again. She stumbled over a basic word of praise in his native tongue and awkwardly back-stepped from her position in the doorway.
Rapidly and unintelligibly he spoke, to stop her retreating motion. He met her eyes, and seeming to understand the scared motion he saw there, signed out his message with an easy, unembarrassed assurance.
She felt the tensed muscles of her shoulders relax when she returned his smile and navigated the room to receive the music book he offered. Relief hid in the familiarity of the blackened circles and lines. Even the italicized Italian notation was an odd comfort.
She recognized a favorite lullaby of Brahms and showed it to her patient cousin, not ruining her moment of relief by attempting verbal explanation. He nodded in encouragement, and shifted on the bench so that her hands wouldn’t collide with him when she played.
As the last of the notes faded into the room, and her cousin started into another familiar tune, she felt herself fall into the familiar embrace of classical music, the language she understood, the lingua franca of black and white notes.
