Beginners Welcome

by Cindy Baldwin

  “Mmm,” said Mitch, kicking off her shoes and backpack and homing in right away on a cutting board on the counter. “Want some bread with honey butter, Annie Lee? Nana makes bread every week and it’s amazing.”

  Mrs. Harris smiled. Today she was wearing a zebra-print jacket and glasses with thick frames the color of ripe bananas. “I was never much good at a lot of things, but I know my way around a kitchen.”

  I took the slice of bread Mitch was waving at me and bit into it. It was soft and warm and wheaty, the sweetness of the honey butter soaking into it like syrup. “Delicious. Thanks.”

  Mitch’s mom patted the chair next to her. When she’d driven me home after the last time I came over, I’d said Thank you, Mrs. Harris, but she’d laughed and said Mrs. Harris was Mitch’s nana, and that I could call her Lisa or Ms. Johnson.

  “Come on, girls,” she said now. “Sit down a bit before you get started. Annie Lee, how are you?”

  I shrugged. It was strange sitting there with somebody else’s mama and grandma who I hardly knew, after a whole summer when I’d hardly talked to my own mother. Last time I’d come over, Mitch and I had spent most of the time outside, and even when her mom drove us home, she’d talked at us more than with us.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I never even asked you when you were here last time. What do your parents do?”

  I rubbed my fingers together until they were sticky with honey and all I wanted was to get up and wash them off.

  Mitch opened her mouth. “Annie Lee’s—”

  “My daddy’s dead,” I said, my words cutting in front of hers. Short. Sharp. Hard. Filling up the kitchen around us with invisible bubbles of guilt and awkwardness. Nobody ever knew what to say to a girl whose daddy had dropped dead playing basketball at church one day, so I mostly stayed away from talking about it.

  From the corner of my eye I could see Ms. Johnson’s eyes widen just a little, but when she spoke, her voice was smooth and even. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  Everyone was always so sorry to hear that. But none of them were as sorry as I was.

  Mitch cleared her throat. “So, we’d better get brainstorming, right?” It had already been three days since Mr. Barton gave us the egg-drop assignment, and we hadn’t done anything so far. I didn’t like big projects like this one, where you did a demonstration in front of the whole class. It just meant there were more people to see you fail.

  “Yeah,” I said, and jumped up to rinse my sticky fingers in the sink. From here, I could see through a doorway into another room, sunlight spilling through tall windows onto the glossy ebony of an upright piano. Something snagged in my chest. I could almost see Daddy sitting at that piano, like in my dreams. He would’ve liked Mitch’s house—liked all the books, liked the way Mitch’s mom and grandma sat at the table talking to me and Mitch like we were grown-ups.

  Ms. Johnson stood. “I’ll be in my study, so you girls go ahead and take over the kitchen table for your project. If you need any help, let me know.”

  “Mmph,” said Mitch’s grandma, following her daughter-in-law. “I’m gonna go check if I’ve got any hits on my online dating profile.”

  I felt my jaw drop down at the same time that my eyebrows shot up, exactly like when a cartoon character is surprised. Online dating? I mouthed to Mitch. When she nodded, a giggle started somewhere around my belly button and rose up and up until I had to plant my hands over my mouth to stop it escaping and echoing all the way up the staircase to where Mrs. Harris had disappeared.

  “I know,” Mitch whispered, giggling herself. “And you should see it. It’s so much worse than what you’re imagining.”

  “Did she wear those glasses in her profile picture?”

  “I wish. She has another pair that makes those look like nothing. And she wore at least three huge chunky necklaces and an electric-green scarf, too. She looked like an old-lady version of Professor Trelawney.”

  I leaned back against the counter and buried my face in my hands, the giggles taking me over.

  “Girls!” Mitch’s mama called from her office down the hall. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?”

  That just made us laugh harder.

  Later, after we’d written up a list of weird contraptions we thought might protect our egg from its drop, Mitch’s mama popped back out of her study, stretching her arms above her head and yawning.

  “Friday! Thank goodness. We should celebrate! Annie Lee, what time is your mama coming to pick you up today?”

  “Soon. She gets off at six o’clock.”

  “Mr. Harris is bringing a movie home with him in a few minutes—want to stay for dinner and watch it with us afterward?”

  I opened my mouth, the yes dancing forward to the tip of my tongue, but then closed it again. I thought of Mama after our hike, saying that about jellyfish.

  Losing your daddy—it was like being wrapped up in those tentacles, Annie Lee. Sometimes it still is.

  There was something in this kitchen, here, folding itself around Mitch and her mama and me, a web of love and happiness like I hadn’t felt for months. It was tempting to stay right where I was and let that love and happiness soak right into me, filling me up.

  But being filled up that way just made it hurt more down the road, when something bad happened.

  How had I let my invisibility cloak drop so much this month? First Ray, then Queenie, then Mitch: I was letting people see me more and more each day, forgetting that invisibility was my only chance to never again be hurt as much as I’d been when Daddy died.

  “Annie Lee?” Ms. Johnson asked. “Everything okay?”

  “I can’t stay,” I mumbled. “My mama wouldn’t like it.”

  Mitch’s mama’s smile sank a little. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Maybe another day.”

  When Mama knocked on the door a few minutes later, I jumped up and had my arms into my backpack straps faster than anyone could react. Mama, though, wasn’t in such a hurry to leave.

  “Hi there,” she said, coming inside to shake Ms. Johnson’s hand. I tried hard not to notice that Mama—with her used-to-be-blond hair slicked back into a ponytail and her pink polo with a big stain on it where she’d splashed some kind of cleaning product on herself—looked poor and plain next to Mitch’s mama, who wore a comfy-looking striped maxidress and stylish tortoiseshell glasses. “I’m Joan Fitzgerald.”

  “Lisa Johnson. I’m glad our girls have become such good friends. Mitch just loves Annie Lee. Things were a little rough at her last school—I’m glad the two of them connected this year.”

  “Mom,” Mitch groaned from inside the kitchen, where I could see her sneaking the last slice of her nana’s bread. “Can you not make me sound like a five-year-old, please?”

  Ms. Johnson rolled her eyes, and Mama laughed—a nervous little laugh that didn’t sound exactly happy, but was better than I’d heard for months, anyway.

  “I’m real glad they’re friends, too,” Mama said.

  “Well, Annie Lee is welcome over here anytime.”

  I closed my eyes, silently begging Mama not to return the invitation.

  “I know she appreciates it,” Mama said, her lip puckering a little as she chewed the inside of it. “It’s hard for her, being home all afternoon while I’m working.”

  “Annie Lee told me about her dad,” Ms. Johnson said, her voice taking on the soft gentleness that people always had when they heard about Daddy. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  Mama swallowed hard. “Thanks.”

  Mama pulled me close as we walked toward her car. “I’m glad you have a friend, honey. Mitch and her family seem nice.”

  “Yeah,” I said, wishing so hard it hurt that our home felt more like Mitch’s, filled with love and light.

  22.

  Sometimes at night when I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, I’d picture what it would feel like to sit at the piano the way Ray did, letting my fingers whisper against the keys exactly right so the sound that ca
me out of them was pure magic. I could feel it, there in my bed, the way the music would pull itself out and heal all the broken parts inside me. I could feel it in every muscle from my fingertips to my shoulders.

  But every time I managed to sneak away to Brightleaf to practice or get another lesson from Ray, it wasn’t one bit like that those twilight dreams.

  After my lesson last week, Ray and I had agreed to meet again the next Tuesday. I’d shown up early today and found Ray at the piano in the atrium, playing something sad and sweet while a few passers-by—Queenie included—lingered to listen. The melody was the kind that reached right into my heart, and I didn’t think I’d ever felt anything before that was more comforting and uncomfortable all at once, the way it held me up but laid me bare at the same time. Ray’s magic lights rose and fell like ocean waves in blue and silver, and I couldn’t look away.

  By the time he’d finished playing, I didn’t even know if I was breathing anymore.

  “Gracious, that man has a gift,” Queenie said when Ray had finished. “You ever hear anything quite like that, Annie Lee?”

  “Never ever. I guess since you’ve known Mr. Owens so long, you’ve gotten to hear him play a lot.”

  “Sure have. I used to be friends with his wife, Margie, before she passed away. When Mr. Richardson, the mall owner, was looking for a musician to bring an ‘ambience’ to the mall ten or so years back, I suggested Ray. It was a good thing, too, because it was only a few years later that Margie died, and not even a year after that that he got injured and had to retire as a roofer. It’s just the tips he makes here and the disability payments from that fall that get him through now. I’m grateful to have him here, though. Anytime he’s out here playing, if I haven’t got a client in the salon, I come to listen.” Queenie let out a long, satisfied sigh, like everything in life was just the way she’d hoped. “How’s your mama doing, child? She get off work soon?”

  “Oh,” I said, trying not to let my heart race too much. “She’s fine. She’ll be off in . . . uh, a little while.”

  “You oughta bring her by sometime after her shift, if she isn’t too tired. I’d like to meet her. I’m a little surprised she hasn’t been by already,” Queenie added with a pucker of her forehead. “I figured for sure she’d want to meet Ray, maybe sit in on your lessons once or twice—”

  My skin prickled all over. “She, uh—I don’t know, Miss Queenie. She works so hard, and she’s always real tired. She usually doesn’t have energy for much extra. Hopefully she can come soon, though.” I was lying about Mama working at the hotel, but not about this. It was the plain truth: Mama was tired, and she did work hard. Me and her may not have known quite how to be around each other without Daddy there to draw us together, but even I could see how hard Mama was trying.

  Queenie clucked her tongue. “Poor woman. Ray told me about y’all’s lesson schedule, how you can’t have them on regular days because her shifts are so unpredictable. That’s tough on anyone.”

  “Yeah.” I curled my fingers into my palms. “Anyway. I gotta go have my lesson now.”

  “See you later, shug.” Queenie headed back to her salon, and I went over to Ray.

  “Annie Lee,” Ray said as he collected the coins from his baseball cap and put the hat on his head. He slid over, patting the bench next to him.

  An old man with ruddy, white skin and a newsboy cap on his gray hair pushed a long broom into the atrium. “’Lo, Ray,” he called over to us. “You okay? How’s the arthritis?”

  Ray waved his cane. “Hasn’t claimed me yet, though it’s trying, Stan.”

  Stan chuckled. “Takes more than arthritis to do in an old cuss like you.”

  “Okay, Miss Annie Lee,” Ray said as Stan disappeared around a corner. “Take it from the top. Maybe we’ll see if you’re ready to start the next piece today, too.”

  I unfolded the sheet music for “Russian Folk Song in G” and played through it, my fingers like elephants on the keys, until I got to the middle and things snarled up so bad I let both my hands smash down on the keyboard in frustration, making a sound like the piano’s last dying wail.

  Through the big window of a music shop nearby, I could see a teenage clerk jump and drop the cell phone she’d been scrolling through. I scowled.

  “Now, come on,” said Ray, and I wondered if he ever in his life had gotten truly mad about anything. “It didn’t sound half-bad.”

  “How can you say that? It was terrible!”

  “Nah. It’s coming right along.”

  I closed my hands into fists and banged on the keys again, short and sharp. The music-store girl winced. So much for my invisibility cloak.

  “I’m never gonna be any good, Ray. I might as well give up now.”

  “Aw, don’t give me that, now. It just takes practice, don’t it?”

  “What’s the point? I’m hopeless. I’m—” I paused, looking down at the keys, cool under my hands. “I’m all broken.”

  “I don’t know, Miss Annie Lee. I guess I kinda think it’s our brokenness that makes us beautiful—makes us who we are—and not our perfection.”

  I let my fists slide off the keyboard into my lap.

  “Think about the courtyard out there,” Ray continued. “All those bricks making up the path. Have you ever noticed how the weeds push up through them anyway, all green and brave and strong?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s like that, Annie Lee. You can think how you want, but it’s my personal opinion that everything’s more beautiful when it’s had to fight hard to come up the way those weeds have. The way I see it, Annie Lee, avoiding risk is no way to live. You can get hurt no matter what you do—if you take chances or if you don’t take them. But think of all the good parts you’d miss.”

  I thought of Ms. Johnson asking me to stay for dinner the week before, and Mama saying, Her family went to the beach a few weeks every summer, and she said she still kept swimming. I don’t think I could’ve done that.

  “But doesn’t it just open you up to get hurt more, when you take risks like that?” I told him about Mama’s friend and the jellyfish.

  “I read once that a man-of-war sting feels like getting cut all over with a hot knife. How could Mama’s friend risk that again?”

  “Sounds like she was pretty brave, your mama’s friend. Brave enough to go off and find her joy, even if it had cost her pain in the past. And wise, too. Just think of all the things she’d have missed if she’d stayed away from the water her whole life. You ever been to the beach, Annie Lee? You ever felt that silky salt water against your skin?”

  I hunched my shoulders, pulling into myself like a turtle.

  “I dare you to tell me something, child. Tell me what you’d do right this very minute, if you were ready to be the bravest, wisest version of Annie Lee Fitzgerald you could be.”

  I swallowed. “There’s a girl at school.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Her name’s Mitch. She’s my friend, I guess. Maybe my best friend now.”

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “Sometimes it feels like there’s a cage wrapped around my heart, ever since my daddy died.” I laced my fingers through each other, hard and tight like bars. “Like this.”

  I thought with a pang about what it had been like when Mitch hadn’t shown up to school the week before—like I’d been twice as alone, twice as invisible, as before. A few days ago in English class the teacher had read a poem about two roads diverging and how the writer had to choose which one to take. In some ways, everything in my life right now felt like that poem: like I was stuck between two different roads and I didn’t know which one was better.

  Down one road, there was just me, invisible Annie Lee who couldn’t be hurt or broken anymore. But it was awfully lonely and boring, too. And that Annie Lee was the one who couldn’t remember how to smile, or have fun, or what it even felt like to be happy.

  Down the other there was Mitch, and Ray, and Queenie, and even Mama—the happy, smiling Mama who’d tak
en me hiking at Eno River State Park the Sunday before. That road had note-passing in science class and sitting together at lunch and piano lessons and smiles and friends. Love.

  But that road was scary, too. Because what if all those people disappeared? Like Daddy? Like the M&Ms?

  If I was really brave and wise, maybe I’d know how to stop holding on so hard to Daddy. Maybe I’d figure out how to let go of the “pro” section on that pro-con list about the ghost in our apartment. Maybe I’d be ready to live my life the way it was, instead of the way it used to be.

  I didn’t know how to say any of that to Ray, though. Instead, I took a deep breath. “If I was really brave and wise, I’d figure out a way to open up that cage and let Mitch in. And . . . maybe other people, too.”

  “That would be brave and wise indeed,” said Ray. “And you know what, Annie Lee? I bet you could do it. I’m sure of it. You just have to stop thinking about what’s hiding in the water and get out and swim.”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “And—” I stopped, squeezing my laced-together fingers so hard they hurt.

  If I was really brave, I’d go all in. Take my invisibility cloak all the way off.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s something else I’d do if I were brave, too.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  Slowly, I pulled my right hand away from my left one and reached into my pocket. The paper was still there, where it had been for weeks now. It was fading fast from rubbing against the inside of my shorts and from being washed once or twice.

  I took the paper out now and spread it out on the piano in front of me.

  Cash prizes. Beginners welcome.

  Ray studied it for a minute, his expression never changing. When he’d finished reading it, he nodded. “I’ve heard good things about this competition, Annie Lee. I’m not a member of the association, of course, but I’ve got a friend who is, and I bet he’d help me register you for the competition if you liked. So—if you were brave, you’d enter it, is that right?”

  My chin jerked up and down, so quick it was hardly a nod at all. I couldn’t meet Ray’s eyes.