Beginners Welcome

by Cindy Baldwin

  In that moment, I didn’t care about my invisibility cloak. I couldn’t think of anything except the way Mr. Owens had played and the way it had felt to listen. Like being back with Daddy again, listening to all those thrift-store records, music knitting us together.

  For just that moment, I let that old invisibility cloak fall to the polished floor.

  “It was beautiful.” I took a deep breath, clutching my scooter tighter. “And my name’s Annie Lee.”

  Before Ray Owens could say anything else I was already halfway to the door. I didn’t stop until I was outside and my scooter was open and I was riding, whir-whir-whir, along the sidewalk toward home.

  8.

  I woke up Tuesday morning to thunder that rattled the windows in their frames. I felt kind of thundery about going back to school, too. Weekends were boring—especially a long weekend, since the day before had been Labor Day, so it had been me at home all day long while Mama worked. But at least then I was able to do my own thing and pretend like I had lots of friends who just happened not to be with me right at the moment.

  I didn’t think I could take a whole school year of tater tot wars in the cafeteria or watching Tonya and Shonda be best friends in homeroom. It was hard, when I was around the two of them, not to think about how things used to be with Monica and Meredith, when we’d all been in the same fifth-grade class and passed notes whenever the teacher wasn’t looking. Meredith had been really good at origami folding, and she’d taught me and Monica how to fold up our notes so that they looked like little pieces of art.

  Back then, it hadn’t mattered how boring a class was or how stressed I might be about a test, because I could feel that best-friend love filling up the room like a shimmering net that wouldn’t ever let me fall too far.

  Mama was still sleeping when I got up, which meant that the bathroom sink was filled with shaving cream and ginger-colored stubble, and the whole bathroom smelled so much like Daddy had the morning before he died that my heart forgot how to beat.

  Sometimes in these mornings, with the feeling of the ghost all around me, I almost thought I could reach out and find my daddy there, whole and healthy and just the way he’d been in the hours before he’d left for that game of church ball. I’d even opened my mouth once or twice, ready to whisper something, hoping maybe Daddy would hear me if I did. There were so many things I wanted to tell him—so many things that had piled up inside me all summer long.

  A few days before Daddy had died, he’d taken me to my favorite park for a picnic dinner. After we finished eating, he’d pulled out his phone and a set of earbuds, and we’d lain on our picnic blanket with one earbud in each of our ears, listening to a Chopin recording with piano notes that went so fast they sounded like the rushing of a waterfall. We lay there until night fell and the lightning bugs came out, winking their lights one after another after another, until the whole world felt like it was filled up with music and light and the warm feel of Daddy’s shoulder against mine.

  Sometimes I thought the worst thing about Daddy’s heart attack was that I’d never gotten a chance to say goodbye.

  I brushed my teeth hard, like I could brush away the taste of the memories that were rising up to choke me, and then I washed my face and got out of that aftershave-scented bathroom as fast as I could.

  “I don’t feel well,” I said at breakfast, while Mama scrubbed a couple of our shirts in the kitchen sink before tossing them into the dryer, and I pushed store-brand toasted oat cereal around my bowl. “Can I stay home today?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  Mama came over and put the inside of her wrist against my forehead. Her skin was damp from the wash water. “You’re fine. Have you packed a lunch?”

  “But—”

  “That’s enough, Annie Lee!” Mama shouted, banging the container of laundry soap onto the counter. “You don’t have a choice, okay? School is—school is all you have. You have to go, you have to do well, you have to go to high school and graduate and go to college so that you can make yourself a different life than—”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep, shaky breath, like she could will herself into being less upset if she tried hard enough. “I want a different life for you, baby. I don’t ever want you to be stuck like me, depending on a life-insurance payment that’s taking forever to come, okay? Just get ready and let’s go down to the bus stop.”

  We didn’t say another word to each other all morning, even when Mrs. Garcia knocked on our door and asked if we had any margarine and stayed for almost ten minutes, telling Mama a story about the time she’d left a whole tub of margarine in her car in the summertime and how it had taken six months to get the sour, oily smell out. Mama tapped her foot while Mrs. Garcia talked, until finally Mama smiled politely and told Mrs. Garcia we really had to go or I’d miss my bus.

  When the bus came, Mama wrapped one wooden arm around my shoulders and gave me a quick peck on my hair, but I wriggled away after half a second and dashed up the bus steps. I made sure not to look out the rain-soaked window, so that I didn’t have to see how her hands swiped at tears.

  All my life, Daddy had said that our family was like an orchestra: we all played important roles, we all depended on each other to make our music beautiful.

  But if we were an orchestra, Daddy had been the conductor. He’d been the glue that held me and Mama together, and with him gone, I wasn’t sure there was anything else on earth that could.

  For just a minute, as the bus pulled away from the apartment complex, a traitorous little voice whispered inside me:

  It would’ve been better if it had been her.

  I hardly had time to pull my book out at lunch that day before I heard Mitch’s voice cutting across the cafeteria chatter.

  “Hey. Reader girl.”

  She squeezed onto the bench next to me, elbowing a belching Juan Diego out of the way. “How come you didn’t save me a spot?”

  My stomach churned uncomfortably, a whole lot of feelings I didn’t really know how to name tumbling around inside me. I was still the tiniest bit afraid of Mitch—and even more afraid of what it might mean to keep on letting her past my invisibility cloak. Hadn’t this summer taught me that liking people just made it harder when they left you?

  But even so, there was something tangled up in that mess of emotions that felt an awful lot like hope.

  “Sorry,” I said finally.

  Mitch shrugged. “I figure it’s not like either of us has anyone else to sit with. Pretty sure half the student body thinks I might actually hex them. The rest just snap my bra straps and call me names.”

  I was surprised by how breezily she said it, like she was commenting on the weather or asking me to pass a napkin. I didn’t think I could ever just not care like that.

  Mitch leaned down and rummaged in her backpack, popping back up a second later with a book in her hand. She tilted it toward me so that I could see the cover: it was dark blue, with trees and plants and three kids drawn in black, like silhouettes, and Echo written along the top in big white letters. “Have you read this one? It’s really cool so far. Especially if you like music.”

  “I do. A lot.” For just a second, I itched to tell Mitch about Daddy and his records, or Ray Owens and his magic lights. I’d only heard him play twice, but I was already dying to go again.

  “Well, maybe I’ll let you borrow it when I’m done,” said Mitch—and with that, she did the only thing I expected less than her coming to sit by me in the first place: she propped the book open with her tray and glued her eyes to it, reading and eating just the way I always did.

  After a surprised minute, I did the same thing. But I could hardly keep my thoughts on The Book of Three, even with Daddy’s notes in the margin, because my eyes kept sliding over to where Mitch sat. It felt nice, sitting here reading with somebody else. Before June, Daddy and I had done that sometimes, sitting at opposite ends of the couch and sharing a blanket. It always made me feel safe and warm and happy.<
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  Reading with Mitch was a little like that.

  Like being with a friend.

  I felt my invisibility cloak slip down my shoulders, letting Mitch just the tiniest bit in.

  9.

  I set my four-dollar bunch of purple chrysanthemums into the little brass vase on Daddy’s grave, making sure they were all standing up straight and tall. Mama and I came out here at least twice a month, usually on Tuesday afternoons when she got off work early, but it still didn’t feel real, seeing ROBERT FITZGERALD, BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER written out in fancy lettering across a granite headstone.

  “Wish you were here, Daddy,” I whispered, touching my finger to the F in Fitzgerald. “I need my conductor.”

  It was weird, talking to him like this. Hadn’t I learned my whole life at church that heaven was somewhere far off, out of my reach? But being here, seeing his name written out with a birth date and a death date like his life was wrapped up and closed, I couldn’t help it.

  At least when I was at the cemetery I had something to talk to. It was better than trying to whisper to the ghost at home.

  I stood up slowly and stepped back, looking at my bouquet of mums. They were bright, each petal catching the sunlight, the purple deepening and sparkling like a prayer. I thought suddenly about the dream I’d had last week: Daddy playing the piano underneath a rainbow of colorful umbrellas. It was nice to think of him that way, somewhere off in a beautiful place, doing the thing he loved best in the world—even though the memory of the dream was shot through with how much it had hurt when I’d called to him over and over and he hadn’t seen me, like my invisibility cloak was too strong, even inside a dream.

  “I’m gonna walk around,” I said.

  “Be safe!” Mama’s voice was thin and anxious.

  “It’s a cemetery, Mama. It’s all safe.” What did she think, that somebody would come abduct me in a place where most people didn’t even raise their voices?

  Maplewood Cemetery was huge, like a little city made of grass and headstones and winding drives. There were sections that went all the way back to the Civil War, graves with little blue-crossed red flags on them to show that a Confederate soldier was buried there. Daddy’s grave was in the newer section, where all the headstones were flat and set into the grass, and the green awning that meant that somebody new had been buried was up a lot.

  I wandered through the short-clipped grass, over the curving road and toward the woods that hugged the edges of the cemetery. It didn’t seem right, thinking of Daddy in this quiet, perfectly-kept-up place. Daddy had been more than the life of the party—he’d been any party’s heart and soul. He’d been the one who’d kept our house full of music, who’d made me and Mama laugh. He’d been the one who loved to turn on the radio loud on a Friday night and polka Mama around the kitchen until she could hardly breathe and her face looked ready to crack with smiling.

  Even being at home in our lonely apartment, with Daddy’s ghost turning Simon and Garfunkel on his thrift-store record player when the place got too quiet, was better than this solemn cemetery.

  I took out my lucky quarter as I walked, flipping it over and over in my fingers. Heads. Heads again. And again.

  Daddy had been carrying his own luck with him the day he died. How much good had it done him?

  I’d made it to the woods when a joyful bark startled me so bad I nearly ran into a tree. There, trotting toward me with its tongue hanging out of its mouth, was a white dog with golden patches and eyes the color of honey on a warm day. It had a collar on, but no leash.

  “Hey there, sweet doggy,” I said, dropping into a crouch so I could hug its neck. “Where’d you come from, huh? Are you lost?”

  “No, ma’am, she’s not lost,” wheezed a voice from the direction the dog had come from. “She’s mine.”

  I looked up to see someone coming toward me through the trees, a tattered baseball cap on his head.

  It was the piano man.

  10.

  Hello again, Miss Annie Lee,” he said, stepping forward and sticking out a hand so I could shake it. His white skin was dry and scratchy, his fingers covered in calluses. “Remember me? Ray Owens. We met at Brightleaf Square t’other day.”

  My eyes felt like they’d grown as big as balloons, but I didn’t know how to stop staring. I stood up slowly, keeping one hand on the dog’s head, the warm softness of her fur was the only thing that made sense right now.

  Ray nodded toward the dog. “That there’s Clara. Named her after Clara Schumann. You know who she was?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Probably one of the greatest female pianists who ever lived, that’s who. Figured it was a good name for the dog. I got her after my wife, Margie, passed on, to keep me company. She lives over in that cemetery now—Margie, I mean.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Missing people’s a part of life, Annie Lee. I expect since you’re here, you’ve got cause to know that.”

  I looked down at my fingers, still resting on Clara’s head.

  “I always wanted a dog,” I said softly. “My best friend—I mean, one of my best friends—I mean, my old best friend . . . well, anyway, one of my friends’ dads is a veterinarian, and their whole house is full of animals. I used to go there all the time to play with them. But Daddy is allergic. I mean, was. And we had to move to a place that doesn’t allow pets.”

  “Your daddy’s the one buried here?”

  I nodded, swallowing past the thickness in my throat. “He died at the beginning of the summer.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, child. You’re awful young to carry that kind of burden.”

  I shrugged, wanting to change the subject. “How’d you learn to play piano the way you do, Mr. Owens?”

  “Call me Ray. Don’t think I’ve ever been Mr. Owens in my life. It would be strange to start now.” Ray chuckled. “I learned the piano same way anyone ever learns anything—with plenty of practice. I’ve been playing since I was smaller than you. These days, I can only play so long, though. The arthur won’t let me keep going as much as I might.”

  “Arthur?”

  Ray flexed his hands. “Arthur-itis. Been getting bad lately. It always is, when the weather’s about to change, and my old mattress don’t help any. But I’m grateful to have a roof over these old bones—my house is back that way,” he added, jerking a thumb at the woods behind him. “I used to be a roofer, but I took a bad fall and now my joints are too creaky to get up there. Now it’s just the tips from Brightleaf and some disability payments that keep me afloat.”

  “I’m sorry.” Money troubles were something I could understand. Everything had been so tight for me and Mama since Daddy died—no new clothes, no working washing machine, just the two of us crammed into an apartment full of moving boxes and ghosts and promises that things would get better when Daddy’s life insurance got sorted out.

  We’d already had a payout from them. That, plus the Social Security payment you get when your parent dies before they can retire—a tiny one, since Daddy had been so, so young—had covered enough to pay for a funeral, and moving costs, and a week or two of rent in the new apartment before Mama took on more hours at Mary’s Maids. But Mama had said at least a dozen times that the insurance payment should’ve been a lot bigger, should’ve been big enough that we could have lived on it while she went back to school so she could get a job with better hours, big enough that we could buy me clothes that fit and replace our washer.

  Twenty thousand dollars? Mama had said when the insurance check had come, her white skin turning paler than ever. It was supposed to be a hundred! She’d gotten on the phone with the life insurance company that day, insisting that they’d gotten the numbers wrong and should’ve sent us five times as much as they did. The money they sent, Mama had explained, was the insurance money Daddy got automatically for being employed by the school district. But he’d had the option to pay for more, a lot more, and they’d decided together when he started at the school t
hat it was worth doing that, so if something ever happened to him, me and Mama would be taken care of for a little while.

  But the life-insurance person said they didn’t have any record of those payments being made, so he was sorry, but he couldn’t authorize any more checks until they got it figured out. Mama had been on the phone about it at least once a week ever since. The first guy had gotten his manager, and then that manager had gotten his manager, and then that woman had suggested contacting the school district to get a copy of Daddy’s pay stubs, which would give proof that Daddy had bought the bigger insurance policy all those years before. But the school district hadn’t been able to find anything like that yet, and so me and Mama were stuck.

  “I thank you for your sympathy, Annie Lee,” said Ray solemnly. “But even when things are tight, I’m blessed. I’ve got Clara, and my music.”

  Just then, I heard Mama calling. “Annie Lee! Annie Lee Fitzgerald, where’ve you got off to? It’s time to go get some dinner!”

  “That’s my mama,” I said, my heart thumping hard. What if Ray tried to introduce himself? There was no way I could explain to Mama the way I’d been sneaking off while she was at work. “I’ve gotta go. Thanks for letting me pet your dog, though.”

  I gave Clara one last pat and then turned, running up toward the cemetery, where Mama waited.

  “Were you talking to somebody?” Mama asked. “I thought I saw somebody down there. A man. And I heard a dog.”

  I glanced back, but all I could see where Ray had stood a minute before were a few branches waving in the wind. What was he doing, ghosting in and out of the trees by Maplewood Cemetery?

  “It was just me.” The lie tasted funny in my mouth, sharp and as sour as the hard candies Daddy used to buy me, the kind that made your face pucker and your eyes water. I’d spent plenty of time lying to Mama about what I did all day while she was working, but somehow this time was different. It was bigger, scarier, because from that very first day Ray had seen right through my invisibility cloak. All the excuses I’d always had in my head about why it was okay for me to sneak out when Mama was at work (nobody notices me anyway, I keep to myself, I never talk to anybody) fell to pieces if somebody else noticed me—especially a grown-up. A stranger.