Record Breaker

by Robin Stevenson

  “I don’t think it’s crazy. Kind of weird, maybe, but you’ve done plenty of weirder things.”

  “Oh come on, Allan.”

  He shrugged. “I know it won’t…well, it won’t fix her. Still, it would be a nice thing to do.”

  Something else Mrs. Levine had said slipped into my mind. Sometimes all you can do is keep on loving someone anyway, and make sure they know it. I walked in silence for a few minutes, listening to the sound of the leaves crunching under my feet. Mom knew I loved her. Not that I said it all the time, like I did when I was little, but she knew. Still, maybe I should think about Kate’s idea.

  “Too bad you’re such a lousy singer,” Allan said.

  I turned up the driveway to Kate’s house. “Kate’s mom says everyone can sing,” I told him. I knocked on the door and heard a series of thumps from inside—Kate flying down the stairs two at a time. I was grinning even before the door opened and revealed a pink-cheeked, wild-haired Kate.

  “Hi,” I said. “I brought my friend Allan. Is that okay?” I gave her a look meant to convey both hopefulness and an apology.

  “’Course it is. Come on in.”

  We unlaced our boots and left them on the mat by the door, and Kate took our jackets. “My mom’s getting groceries, but she’ll be back soon. So are you two in the same class? I wish I was going to the same school as you.”

  I’d assumed she would be joining us in January. “You’re not going to Memorial? How come?”

  “Mom says there’s another school closer.”

  “Oh yeah. C.H. Bray.” It was a newer school, a low brick building near the rail trail. I’d walked right past it on my way to Kate’s house, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she’d be going there. “That’s too bad.”

  “We’ll see,” Kate said. She hung our jackets on a tall wooden coatrack. “It’s not as though I mind walking. I walk everywhere. Yesterday I walked to Spring Valley arena. You know where that is, right?”

  “Of course I do.” I made a face. “I used to play baseball there. My dad was the coach.”

  “Cool.” Kate’s eyes were wide. “I wish my dad played baseball. All he plays is violin. Actually, anything with strings. And piano, of course.”

  “Too bad we can’t trade,” I said. “Not that I want to play violin, but anything would be better than baseball. I hate baseball.”

  “How can you hate baseball? I love baseball. You should see me pitch. I’m a great pitcher. Come on in. You want a glass of juice or something?”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  “What kind?” Allan asked. “Because orange juice makes me a bit nauseous. My mom says I have a sensitive stomach.”

  “Oh, that’s not good.” Kate ducked her head and winked at me before turning back to Allan. “Apple juice?” she suggested, with no hint of amusement in her voice.

  “Thank you,” Allan said. “That’d be great.”

  We followed Kate into the kitchen and she poured Allan a glass of juice. We stood awkwardly for a minute. The Monopoly game appeared to be still in progress, and there wasn’t a free inch of space on the table.

  “Let’s go in the living room,” Kate said. “More comfy.” She led the way into a large sunlit room and we followed her, padding in our socks across the soft orange carpet. Kate flopped onto the couch—robin’s egg blue. A television stood on a low stand opposite the couch. It was even bigger than Allan’s. The room looked like something out of a catalogue, with everything brand-new and modern-looking. I sat down beside Kate.

  Allan remained standing, looking around. “Wow,” he said. “That’s some piano.”

  “I thought you hated piano,” I said.

  “I like playing it,” he said. “I just don’t like having to practice every day when I’d rather be doing other things.”

  Kate looked at him. “You can play piano?”

  “I’ve been taking lessons practically since I was born.” He walked over to the piano and ran a finger along the keys. “Do you play?”

  She shook her head. “I can, but I don’t. I used to take lessons, but I hated it.”

  “Do you play anything?” Allan asked.

  “Recorder.” She made a face. “Badly. I’m the only person in this family who’s not some kind of musical genius.”

  Allan played a quick scale. “I’m not a genius, but I’m pretty good.”

  I didn’t understand how he could say things like that without blushing. I nudged Kate’s foot with mine, trying to catch her eye, but she ignored me. There was a faraway look in her eyes.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  Allan stopped playing and turned to face us. “About what?”

  She looked at me. “Can I tell him?”

  I thought I knew where she was going. “Is it about me singing to my mom? I already told him.”

  “Are you going to do it?” She jumped to her feet. “It’s a good idea, don’t you think, Allan? I bet his mom would love it.”

  He nodded. “I think it’s a great idea. I told him I thought he should do it.”

  Kate grinned. “And you should accompany him, Allan.”

  “I’m not that good,” Allan said hastily.

  “We don’t have a piano,” I objected. “And it’d have to be at my house because, well, Mom doesn’t go anywhere.”

  Kate pursed her lips. “Hmm.” Then she clapped her hands together. “Dad’s accordion! If you can play piano, I bet you could play that. What was the song, Jack? The one she likes best?”

  “ ‘Till the End of Time,’ ” I said. My voice came out husky, and I cleared my throat. “Perry Como. You know the one?”

  She was already flipping through the records. “I have it.” She put on the record, lowered the needle and waited. “Listen. This is it, right?”

  I listened to the opening music, waiting for Perry Como’s voice to sing the first words of the song.

  “Ah. You’re thinking about doing it then, Jack?” Mrs. Levine was standing in the doorway, unwrapping a long scarf from around her neck, bags of groceries at her feet.

  I jumped up. “Let me help you with those bags.”

  “Thank you, my dear, but I can manage.” She sang a few words aloud. “Long as there’s a spring…a bird to sing…”

  “Mom,” Kate said. “Please.”

  Mrs. Levine laughed. “I hope Kate’s offered to accompany you on her recorder.”

  “Actually, no,” Kate said. “But this is Jack’s friend Allan. I thought maybe he could borrow Dad’s accordion and accompany Jack on that. It’s sort of like a piano, right?”

  “Well, I suppose so. Sort of.” Mrs. Levine looked amused. “Nice to meet you, Allan. You’d be welcome to use the accordion. It isn’t getting much use these days. My husband loves it, but his work is rather all-consuming.”

  “I didn’t agree, though. I didn’t say I’d do it.” Allan’s cheeks were pink. “I mean, I’d like to help your mom, Jack, but I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

  “You were sure enough when it was just going to be me singing,” I said. The whole situation suddenly struck me as funny: Allan trying to get me to sing, Kate trying to convince him to play an accordion, Mrs. Levine trying to get Kate to play her recorder—all for my mom, who didn’t know anything about any of it. In the old days, I could have told her about this, making it into a funny story, and she would have laughed and laughed. “I’ll do it,” I said suddenly. “I’m a lousy singer, but I’ll do it…”

  Kate and Allan started to clap.

  “On one condition,” I went on. “You two both accompany me. Recorder and accordion. I don’t care how bad you are—you can’t be worse than me.”

  They both stopped clapping rather abruptly. Perry Como sang on alone: I’ll go on loving you…

 
“Well?” I said. “Are you in?”

  They looked at each other. Kate looked at her mother. Then she looked at me. “We’re in,” she said.

  “Don’t I get to decide for myself?” Allan asked grumpily. “You can’t answer for me, you know. I don’t even know how to play an accordion.”

  Kate turned to him and raised her eyebrows. There was a moment’s silence. “Oh all right,” he burst out, his cheeks flushing brighter still beneath his freckles. They were closer to scarlet than pink now. “I’ll do it too.”

  Sixteen

  For the rest of that week and all of the next one, the three of us met as often as we could, which meant that Kate and I met every day after school, and Allan joined us whenever his mom would let him.

  “I’ve told her why I need to see you both,” he said. We were sitting around Kate’s living room, eating apple slices and cubes of cheese that Mrs. Levine had cut up for us. “She says that’s all the more reason I shouldn’t skip piano lessons.”

  “You told her?” Kate grabbed her hair, clutching a wild handful in each fist. “Allan! It’ll spoil everything if she tells.”

  “Not that,” he said. “All I told her was that I was learning to play the accordion. I thought she’d be pleased. I even told her your mom is a music teacher.” He shrugged. “Sometimes I don’t understand my mother at all.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said. “I don’t understand my mother either.”

  “My mother’s not really a music teacher,” Kate said. “She used to teach history at a university.”

  I stopped, an apple slice halfway to my mouth. “Wow. Really? Why isn’t she now?”

  “I don’t know exactly.” Kate shrugged. “Back when I was a little kid, she wrote something the government didn’t like.”

  “So?”

  “So she lost her job.”

  “No way.” Allan looked skeptical. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Lots of her friends lost their jobs,” Kate said. “It wasn’t only her.”

  I hadn’t realized Mrs. Levine was listening from the kitchen, but she appeared in the doorway. “Kate…”

  Kate looked up and her face flushed. “Mom.”

  Mrs. Levine was frowning. “No need to drag up the past.”

  “I just wanted to explain that you weren’t really a music teacher,” Kate said.

  “Did you really lose your job because of something you wrote?” Allan asked.

  “Those were difficult times,” she said. “Everyone so terribly paranoid about Communism, people spying on their friends and accusing their neighbors…” Her voice was quieter than usual, and although it was Allan who had asked the question, she was looking at me as she spoke. “That’s why we left the States.”

  “That must have been hard,” I said awkwardly.

  “It was,” she said. “I loved my work. And I loved my country too, though some people seemed quick to doubt it.”

  “That’s awful.” I looked at Kate for help.

  “Yeah. I was only a kid, but I remember it,” she said.

  I tried not to smile: she said it like she wasn’t a kid now.

  “We were lucky, compared to many people we knew. But I didn’t cope very well, I’m afraid. Not for a couple of years.” Mrs. Levine looked at me, her face serious. “Still, I’m fine now, Jack. Hard times don’t last forever.”

  I wondered if she had stayed in bed all the time like my mom did. It was hard to imagine. “Do you think you’ll ever go back to the States?” I asked.

  “We talked about it, when Kennedy was elected. It seemed—well, it was exciting. Hopeful.” She sighed. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “So now…” I wasn’t quite sure what I was asking.

  “Canada is our home now,” she said. “So. How’s the song going?”

  “Not so great,” I admitted. “I’ve learned all the words, but…”

  “The accordion’s great,” Allan said. “And I’ve been practicing the song on the piano at home, so I know it pretty well.”

  “Kate? I haven’t heard you practicing much.” Mrs. Levine tilted her head and watched her daughter.

  Kate shrugged and didn’t answer. She was frowning so hard that her eyebrows almost met in the middle.

  “What is it? Kate?”

  “I stink, that’s what.” She scowled at her mother. “Allan just picked up the accordion and started playing it like he’d played one his whole life. He’s missed half our practices, but he’s the best of all of us anyway. It isn’t fair. And Jack—well, he says he can’t sing, but he sounds fine to me.”

  “But Kate…” Mrs. Levine leaned forward, holding out a hand to her daughter, but Kate pulled away.

  “I’m going to wreck the whole song! My recorder sounds horrible!” She was almost shouting.

  “S’true. It actually sounds exactly like this raccoon I saw get hit by a car a couple of weeks ago,” Allan put in cheerfully.

  Kate whirled on him, and for a second I thought she might hit him.

  “He doesn’t mean to be a jerk,” I said. “He can’t help it.”

  “What do you mean?” Allan looked bewildered. “I was agreeing with her.”

  Kate looked from him to me to her mother. We all held our breath. Then Kate let out a long sigh. “He’s right. It’s horrible. I hate playing the recorder.”

  “It’s a lovely instrument,” her mom said. “And so portable. You’ll be able to play it anywhere you want.”

  “But I don’t want to play it anywhere at all,” Kate said. She was turning pink, and her eyes looked suddenly wet. “I know it’s really important to you, Mom, but I hate it.”

  “Important to me?” Mrs. Levine looked startled. “Why would I care?”

  “Because. Because you’re like Allan: you can play anything. Dad too. And you’re always telling me to practice, practice, practice.”

  “Because I thought you wanted to learn.” Mrs. Levine ran her fingers through her hair, which was now sticking out around her head in crooked little spikes.

  Kate sniffed and rubbed her hands across her face. “Well, I don’t.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I don’t know where you got the idea…” She broke off. “We can talk about this later. You have company.”

  Kate turned to us as if she’d just remembered we were there. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You want to sing with me instead?” I asked.

  “Maybe.” She gave a hiccupy laugh. “Or I’ll think of something else. Maybe I could be an announcer. You know…” She put one fist below her mouth as if she were holding a microphone. “And that was the one and only Jack Laker accompanied on the accordion by Allan—what is your last name, anyway?”

  Kate kept on with her announcing, and as I watched her, I couldn’t help thinking how she’d been so sure her mom wanted her to play recorder, and it turned out she didn’t really mind at all. Parents were so hard to figure out sometimes.

  My mom didn’t seem to be getting any better. She hardly ever got out of bed before I went to school, but some days when I got home I’d find her up and dressed, making dinner. Even on those days—her good days—she didn’t talk much. When she did, it was in a slow, flat voice, as if it took a lot of effort to get the words out. And most days she just stayed in her room.

  I hadn’t told my father about my plan. For one thing, it all seemed rather silly and embarrassing when I tried to put it into words: Me and my friends are practicing a song for Mom. For another, he’d probably tell me not to bother her.

  “Jack?” Kate nudged me.

  “What?”

  “What did you think? Was that okay? Can I be the announcer?”

  “Sure, if you want.”
/>   “Because I know you don’t really like singing and you’re doing it anyway. I don’t want you to feel like I’m abandoning you.” She bit her lip, waiting.

  “No, it’s fine. It’s a great idea.” I hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings by saying so, but the recorder really had sounded pretty awful. “I don’t mind the singing as much as I thought I would.” It was true, too. The first time I’d had to sing in front of the others, I’d been so nervous I thought I might throw up, but Mrs. Levine had sung along with me and it had been all right. Now I could sing the whole song by myself, and while I was no Perry Como, I secretly thought I sounded pretty darn good.

  Mrs. Levine smiled. “There, didn’t I tell you? Everyone can sing.”

  “So, when are we going to do it?” Allan asked. “I mean, you know the song now. And I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty good on the accordion. What are we waiting for?”

  “This weekend!” Kate jumped up and down. “Let’s do it this weekend.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “Tomorrow?” Allan suggested.

  “Not when my dad’s home.” I looked at Mrs. Levine. “He always tells me not to bother her.”

  “Hmm.” That was all she said, but she looked as if she wanted to say more.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” She looked at her watch. “Goodness, four o’clock. I should get dinner started. I thought I’d make pork chops, Kate. Your favorite.”

  “Mine too.” There was a lump in my throat, and I swallowed hard. Pork chops. Mom used to make pork chops. Pork chops with mashed potatoes and peas, and chocolate pudding for dessert. Your favorite, she used to say, kissing me on the top of my head as she served the food.

  “You’re welcome to stay, Jack.” Mrs. Levine smiled at me.

  I shook my head, thinking. Dad wouldn’t be home until five thirty. There was time. “We could go to my place. We could do it right now.”

  “Now?” Kate’s eyes were wide.

  “Now,” I said.

  Seventeen

  The three of us walked to my house, Allan carrying Kate’s dad’s accordion in its hard grey case. It was cold and already getting dark, and a light drizzle was falling.