Echo's Sister

by Paul Mosier

  After dinner I show the flyer to Mom and Dad, though not in that order—I show it to Dad and he shares it with Mom. Then later in the evening, after Echo has gone to bed and I’m working on homework in the kitchen, they call me into the living room.

  They’re sitting on the couch with one space between them. I sit in the armchair and start twirling my hair.

  Mom begins. “This is a very nice gesture from Miss Numero Uno.” She holds the flyer up, sets it down. “Please tell her that I would like to contribute a dress to the fund-raiser.”

  I smile. “Okay.”

  “And,” Dad says, “please tell her that I will do my best to come up with a painting in time to contribute.”

  Immediately I wonder where the heck this is gonna happen. The apartment is already crowded enough, and Dad was known for his large work. But I stay positive. “Cool,” I say.

  In the week that follows, Dad is absent from the apartment most of the time, but I don’t think much of it. Mom is busy making dresses with chemo port access for little girls and grown women and having me run packages to the post office to mail out. She works on her dress for the gallery show after I’ve gone to bed. Dad gets home from teaching art to preschoolers and kindergarteners and then disappears after dinner.

  On Thursday evening, Mom is finishing the dress she’s contributing to the fund-raiser. It’s short and made of waterproof shipping envelopes. They’re white with bits of black and red and blue printed on them. There are also address labels here and there with actual addresses written on them. The pieces are joined with stitching where she’s doubled over the rip-proof paper for extra strength. I had my doubts as to how it would turn out, but it looks really, really cool.

  Then I remember Dad was going to contribute a piece, and ask him about it.

  “I’ll show you after dinner.”

  The four of us dine on spinach enchiladas with pomegranate seeds as a side, made and brought to us by a woman Mom used to do yoga with. After I do the dishes, which has suddenly become my chore, the four of us put on our shoes and head out the door.

  Dad leads us downstairs and outside our apartment building, then into the basement. The landlord lives in an apartment that’s six steps down from the street. The other half of the basement is taken up by the laundry room.

  We enter to warm air and the smell of fabric softener, like fake flowers. Mom and Echo and I all gasp, as immediately we are confronted with a giant painting, on a board about seven feet wide and four feet high, of a woman in a gown reclined on a couch. Except it’s not really a painting, or at least there isn’t any paint on it. The entire surface is covered with scraps of newspaper glued into place, and the scraps with wider expanses of black ink have been arranged to make a line drawing. The red outline of the couch is made from the red ink of newspaper advertisements. The couch and the reclining woman look like they’re trying to soak up the entire area of the board.

  Altogether it looks amazing. Mom leans into Dad and puts her arm around him. “Brings back memories,” she says.

  At this moment, I’m so proud of Mom and Dad, for the dress and this giant painting made of newspaper scraps. Maybe they don’t make as much money as some other parents, but they can do this.

  “I just have to cover it with clear acrylic,” Dad says, “and then it’ll be ready to go.”

  He puts a key in the door of a storage closet that has decals with our unit number, 3A. He opens the door and reveals a small closet filled with art materials—cans of gesso and paint, and bottles of paint, and rolls of canvas, and tubes of glue. Everything looks old.

  “Have you had this stuff all along?” I ask.

  Dad turns to me and smiles. “Yep. And I’ve been away from it for too long.”

  I look at Dad and Mom and I imagine them as a younger couple, living in a closet in the Village and starving together this way. I can see why it seems romantic to them to remember it. Because it seems romantic to me.

  Late at night after finishing my homework, I climb quietly into the upper bunk so as not to wake Echo. But then her voice sounds in the darkness.

  “El?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Am I still me?”

  I wait for her to expand on her question, but she doesn’t. “Of course you are.”

  “I look different and I feel different and I never get to do the things I used to do.”

  I lean over the edge and look at her. She’s scowling sadly at my mattress above her. “You’re still my little sister,” I say. “You still make me laugh.”

  I hope that she’ll smile at what I’ve said, but she doesn’t. So I ask, “Are you excited about the fund-raiser party tomorrow night?”

  Her brow furrows. “Is everyone mad at me for my cancer being so expensive?”

  I’m shocked. “No.” I climb down the ladder and kneel at her bedside. “You beating cancer is the most important thing for all of us.”

  She’s still staring at the bunk above, looking unhappy. I put my hand on the top of her smooth head.

  “What happens if I don’t beat cancer?”

  This hits me like a truck. But it’s my turn to be the strong one, so my face, my expression, remains unchanged.

  “Not gonna happen. You’re kicking cancer’s butt because you do everything the doctors ask you to do. You take all the medicines and you eat healthy foods, and you’ve got a great attitude. When cancer sees you laughing and being silly, it wants to run and hide.”

  This makes her smile. “Good. ’Cause I don’t wanna die.”

  It’s hard for me to keep smiling when she says this, but I will myself to. Somewhere in my heart I’ve known that she understands the stakes, the size of the beast she’s fighting. Every now and then she proves it to me.

  “Someday, far in the future,” I say. “But not tonight.”

  “First I wanna be a cartoonist, and have a French bulldog, and be a mom, and I wanna be an aunt when you have kids. And then I wanna be a granny!” She starts laughing.

  I smile. “That laugh! Cancer has just left the building.”

  “Lock the door!” More laughter.

  I kiss her on the forehead, then climb back up to my bunk. Lying on my back I think of how much braver she has become, and how much stronger. I think about how I’ll explain this to her, that she’s still Echo, only now she’s a warrior princess. But when I look back down to her face, her eyes are closed and she’s breathing evenly.

  The next day after school I’m up in the Garment District, running errands for Mom. The Garment District is an area of Manhattan where all the stores sell things needed by clothing designers. There’ll be a store with nothing but feather boas next to a store that sells only gold lamé. I first visit a store that sells buttons and then a store that sells zippers, both for Mom’s chemo dress line. She’s staying busy with it, which means I’m not as worried about us being homeless, but which also means the home we have, and particularly the living room, is filled with three or four dress forms at a time, standing like headless guests at a dull party.

  Heading home, the things I picked up for Mom are practically weightless, but my book bag filled with school texts is dragging me down. I’m hoping I’ll have a chance to rest before Miss Numero Uno’s gallery fund-raiser tonight.

  When I get off the train at the Washington Square station, I hear the piano. It’s been ages since I’ve been in this station—we were here every day when Echo was in the hospital. With Echo home we haven’t ventured outside the neighborhood much, so it’s been a while since I’ve seen the piano guy.

  I have to walk right past him to get to the stairs. He’s wearing an unbuttoned, forest green cardigan over a comic book T-shirt. His dirty-blond hair is pulled back in a short ponytail. Though my first thought was to get by him quickly before he notices me, I find myself taking slow steps.

  “Hey!” he shouts, and bangs on the keys. “Long time, no see!”

  I’ve halted, standing ten feet from him. “Long time, no hear.”

 
He scoots to the left side of his bench. “You owe me a duet.”

  Sheepishly I smile. I could use a rest. There wasn’t a free seat on the subway, and I’ve been walking all over the Garment District. So I sit on the bench, to his right.

  He plays four quick notes. “As I recall, you said you had trouble with your left hand.”

  “Yep.”

  “Well,” he says, and pats me on the back, “I’m happy to lend you one of mine. I’ll play left and you play right. Sound good?”

  “It might,” I say. “We can try.”

  “The last time I saw you I played ‘Everything Happens to Me’ at your request.”

  “You’ve got a good memory.”

  He smiles. “Well, it’s not every day a schoolgirl requests a mighty standard like that. Shall we play it like Thelonious Monk?”

  I smile. “You play it like Monk and I’ll play it like a seventh grader whose instruction has been spotty.”

  He nudges me. “Just peck it out on your right hand, and my left hand will be here for harmony.”

  I sigh. Not an unhappy sigh, or an exhausted sigh. More like the sigh of someone about to be revealed as sucking at something.

  My right hand goes to the keyboard. I hit one note, the first. Piano Guy follows with his left hand, but I’ve kept my next space empty.

  “Try that again,” he says. “But this time don’t stop. And remember it doesn’t have to be perfect. Just keep playing through it, whatever happens.”

  “Keep playing through it,” I repeat. It sounds like a cancer mantra. “Whatever happens.”

  I stretch my hand. I hit the first note, and follow it with the next.

  Piano Guy is right beside me. I’m surprised at the sensation of having him there, steady and in time. It’s like I’m having a dream that I can play the piano really well.

  We play on. I’ve never gotten this far into the song before, and didn’t know I even knew it well enough.

  We’re two parts of one whole. I laugh, because I get it. I get why people are in bands, why they jam. But I also get that two brains on one instrument is something else. Like we’re conjoined twins.

  As we keep playing it, I feel like my heart is swelling. Like it’s gonna burst. Even when I screw up, he picks me up, and it sounds amazing.

  Finally we near the end. It’s like watching myself walking on a high wire, and I’ve almost made it to the finish. I just want to run the last few steps, but he keeps me from changing pace, from charging ahead.

  Then we’re there. He leans against me, nudging me toward the end of the keyboard, and I can hear in my head how Monk exits this song. I hit the key at the far right, the highest C, once, then three times in rapid succession. It sounds perfectly out of tune.

  When I look up from the keyboard I feel like I’m soaring as high as that last note. There are five or six people gathered to watch, which almost never happens—actually stopping to watch and listen at rush hour—and they begin clapping. Some of them feed the jar, then they move on to catch their trains or go home to their cats and dinners. I turn to Piano Guy, and he looks into my eyes with a wild happiness, which I know I’m mirroring back at him.

  “That was too much fun!” he says. “You were great!”

  “Thank you! So were you!”

  Being so exhilarated is exhausting. And I feel a little weird being so happy.

  “I have to get home,” I say, rising from the bench.

  “Wait.” He reaches beneath the bench for a small cloth sack and puts it over the top of his tip jar. Then he turns the jar over to empty it into the sack. He pulls the cord at the top to tighten it and hands it to me. “For Echo’s medical expenses.”

  My mind does a quick review of my family’s history with Piano Guy. “How did you know about Echo?”

  He reaches to the right and strikes the highest C. “I live in the neighborhood. Even in a city as big as New York, when you sit in the same place long enough, the faces start looking familiar. I remember you guys all getting on the subway together, and now it’s just you and your pops. But I’ve seen Echo’s face on the jars at the bodega. At all the other businesses. How can I not admire the strength of a kid like that? And a kid like you, being there for her every day.”

  I can’t believe he included me in that. “That means a lot coming from a guy who hauls his piano everywhere.”

  He drops a finger on the lowest D key. “This thing is nothing.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” My heart swells like it did when we were playing together. “Thank you.”

  He smiles. “Thank you. For hearing the music. For stopping to listen. You’re my audience, so I get to make a living playing the piano. And how cool is that?” He plays a ditty with his left hand and tips an imaginary hat at me with his right.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “A-Train Eddie.” He extends his hand to me.

  “El,” I say, giving him mine. He has long fingers, and my hand disappears in his.

  “Ah, like the old train! That can be your jazz name. Third Avenue El.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. And we live between Sixth and Seventh, but I smile. “Thanks for everything,” I say, though it sounds terribly inadequate. “I hope to hear you soon!”

  “Keep practicing, Third Avenue El. Let’s play again, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say. And I know I absolutely mean it.

  Then A-Train Eddie puts his hands to the keyboard, nods to me, and walks me out with “Sunny Side of the Street.”

  It’s the absolute perfect song for right now. It’s exactly what I need.

  I hear it as I climb the steps out of the subway station. I hear it as I enter the world above.

  I hear it over the taxi horns and the town cars streaming north on Sixth Avenue.

  I hear it all the long walk home.

  14

  IT’S FINALLY TIME for the gallery fund-raiser, and Echo can’t even go. She can’t go because she has a fever of 101.6.

  We found this out as we were getting ready. Mom kissed Echo on her forehead, then drew back with a look of concern, putting her hand to Echo’s brow. The thermometer gave the final verdict. So now Echo gets to wear her wonderful pink party dress—which Mom made for the occasion—in the emergency room.

  It’s the stinking protocol.

  There’s gonna be a few hundred people packed into the gallery. Everything is paid for, everyone is on their way. So Dad and I will be the ambassadors of gloom. Mom and Echo will be the ones who have to endure missing out.

  Mom and Dad asked me to say something to the people who come to the fund-raiser. They think it’ll be good for me. And now I’m looking at my speech and modifying it, editing, as Dad and I ride the cab from the emergency room to the party in SoHo. I strike the line Doesn’t Echo look beautiful in her pink party dress?

  When we get to the gallery, we find the ornate cast-iron facade of the building is strung with yellow lights. It looks festive. It would make Echo very happy to see it, which makes me miserable to think.

  “Remember to smile,” Dad says as we get out of the cab. “We want everyone to know how grateful we are.”

  The party is already well under way. There’s a big blown-up photograph of Echo on one of the walls, along with massive reproductions of some of her drawings printed on canvas, which Mom supplied to Miss Numero Uno. They look pretty cool on such a large scale.

  And there are paintings of all sizes by a couple of dozen different artists. There are all sorts of styles and subjects represented, on canvas and panel, in acrylic and oil, figurative and abstract. Then I spot Dad’s piece. I grab him by the arm and pull him to it.

  Hanging on the wall, with good light, instead of in the dim basement with the smell of fabric softener from the laundry, it looks even more impressive. I soak it in, then turn to him and smile. I’m so, so proud of him. He looks proud of himself.

  Then I move in to look at the tag on the wall next to it. The price he chose for it—a thousa
nd dollars—has been crossed out and replaced with two thousand dollars. There’s a red dot next to it.

  “What does the red dot mean?” I ask.

  Dad looks from me to the tag. He squints and moves in closer. “That means somebody bought it. And it looks like they raised the price.”

  “That’s great!”

  He nods. “That is pretty great.” Then he turns to me. “I’ve been thinking. I don’t know if I want to get a master’s and teach college kids. I don’t even believe you can be taught at that age.”

  I furrow my brow. “Then what will you do?”

  He turns toward his painting, opens his arms to it. “This.” He smiles at me. “I did it before, I can do it again.” Then he leans to me and whispers, “And teaching toddlers how to hold a paintbrush.”

  I smile, because this makes me happy. It also terrifies me, but mostly it makes me happy.

  I pull his arm and begin looking for red dots on the price labels of other paintings. They’re everywhere. More paintings have a red dot than not. The prices are often even higher than Dad’s painting. It makes my head spin to think of how much money it adds up to.

  We come to a naked mannequin standing beside the wall. The mannequin is supposed to be wearing Mom’s dress, but the red dot on the tag on the wall beside it shows it has been purchased. Five thousand dollars for a dress! That’s more than we spend on clothes in our family in a year. But I’m so proud of Mom. It really was beautiful, and so worth the price. One of a kind, handmade in Manhattan by my amazingly talented mom. I hope she took some pictures of it.

  The house music is playing the Echo’s Fight Song sampler originally put together by Octavius, which Dad shared with Miss Numero Uno at my suggestion. The sound fills the huge space up to its soaring ceilings.

  We’re spotted by Gwen, the gallery owner. She’s wearing ridiculously high heels and a string of enormous pearls over a red Team Echo T-shirt and black leather skirt. She gives me a hug and one of those fake cheek kisses, then does the same to Dad. I stay by his side as we walk through the crowd, greeting people, thanking people.