Playing With Fire

by Tess Gerritsen

  “They haven’t even made the diagnosis,” I snap. “Don’t talk about surgery.”

  “Okay. Sorry.” At last he reaches for my hand. “Are you feeling all right, Julia?”

  “I’m not the patient. Why are you asking me?”

  “Dr. Cherry told me that when a child’s sick, the whole family becomes a patient. I know this has been really tough on you.”

  “And it hasn’t been for you?”

  “You’ve had to bear the brunt of it. You’re not sleeping, and you’re hardly eating anything these days. Do you think it might help if you talked to someone? Michael recommended this psychiatrist, a woman who specializes in—”

  “Wait. You’ve been talking to the guys at work about me?”

  He shrugs. “It just came up in conversation. Michael asked how you and Lily were doing.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell him all the humiliating details.” I pull my hand away from his and massage my head, which is aching from this conversation. “So your colleagues now think I need a shrink?”

  “Julia.” Sighing, he drapes his arm around my shoulder. “Everything will be fine, okay? No matter what happens, whatever the test shows, we’ll get through this together.”

  The door opens and we both look up as Dr. Salazar walks into the waiting room. “Lily is the perfect little patient,” he says, smiling. “The tech’s keeping her busy with some toys right now, so let’s talk about the results.” He sits down facing us, and I try to read his expression, but all I see is that bland smile. I have no clue what he’s about to tell us. “During the test, we challenged her with a number of different stimuli, both visual and auditory. Flashing lights, different acoustic tones. Loud and soft, high frequency, low. Nothing we tried elicited any seizure activity whatsoever. Her brain appears to process and react in perfectly normal ways.”

  “You’re saying she doesn’t have epilepsy?” Rob asks.

  “Correct. Based on these results, I’d have to say she does not have a seizure disorder.”

  I feel as if I’ve been whipped into another turn of the roller coaster. I’d already accepted that epilepsy was the cause of Lily’s behavior; now I’m left with no explanation at all, which is even worse than epilepsy because I’m back to my daughter the cat killer, the mom slasher. The monster who chants hurt Mommy hurt Mommy as she plunges broken glass into my leg.

  “At this point, I don’t see any need for further testing,” Dr. Salazar says. “I think Lily is a perfectly normal child.”

  “But what about her behavior?” I ask. Yes, that pesky little issue that first brought us here.

  “Now that we’ve ruled out neurological abnormalities, it might be appropriate to consult a child psychiatrist,” says Dr. Salazar. “She’s very young, but her behavior might be significant, even at only three years old.”

  “And you tried everything during the test? Did you play the waltz for her? I know Gerda sent you the recording.”

  “Yes, we did play it. It’s a beautiful piece, by the way, very haunting. We played the entire recording three times, through Lily’s headphones. All we saw was some increased electrical activity in the right prefrontal and parietal cortex.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Those particular regions of the brain are thought to be associated with long-term auditory memory. When you hear something for the first time—a random series of tones, for instance—it stays with you for only a few seconds. But if you hear it repeatedly, or if it’s something with personal significance, then it recycles through the hippocampus and the limbic system. It picks up emotional tags and gets stored in the cerebral cortex. Since it’s stored in Lily’s long-term memory, clearly she’s heard this waltz a number of times before.”

  “But she hasn’t.” Bewildered, I look back and forth at Rob and Dr. Salazar. “I’ve only played it for her twice.”

  “Even in utero, fetuses register voices and music. She probably heard you practicing while you were pregnant.”

  “I’ve had the music for only a few weeks.”

  “Then perhaps she heard it somewhere else. In preschool, maybe?”

  “It’s an unpublished piece.” As my agitation mounts, both Dr. Salazar and Rob appear maddeningly calm. “I don’t know of any recording, anywhere. How could it be in her long-term memory?”

  Dr. Salazar reaches across to pat my hand. “This is nothing to get excited about, Mrs. Ansdell,” he says in his soothing I have all the answers voice. “You’re a professional musician, so you probably process sounds in a different way than most people. If I played a new tune for you, I’m sure you’d pick it up right away. Maybe you’d still remember it next month, because your brain’s primed to send it straight to long-term memory. It appears you’ve passed that remarkable skill on to your daughter. Also, there’s the fact your husband is mathematically inclined.” Dr. Salazar looks at Rob. “Math and musical ability seem to be strongly linked in the brain. Children who learn to read music and play an instrument at an early age are often gifted in math. So your genes probably contributed as well.”

  “That makes perfect sense to me,” Rob says.

  “I read a biography of Mozart that said he needed to hear a piece played only once, and he could write it all down. That’s true musical talent, and your daughter’s clearly wired for it. Just like you are.”

  But my daughter is not like me. While I can hum the first bars of the melody, I have certainly not memorized Incendio. Yet in my three-year-old daughter’s brain, the waltz has somehow embedded itself as permanent memory. An old memory.

  We’ve got a little Mozart on our hands is the message that Rob took away from our visit with Dr. Salazar, and he’s smiling as we drive home. Instead of a daughter with epilepsy, it turns out we have a golden-haired musical genius. He’s forgotten about the reason why she had the brain test to begin with, and how this cycle of doctor visits and X-rays and EEGs all began. He doesn’t have the painful reminders that still plague me: the dull headache that persists after my fall against the coffee table. The healing laceration on my thigh that still throbs even though the stitches have been removed. He’s already moved on to thinking about his genius daughter, and has skipped past the question that no one has answered: Why did my daughter attack me?

  By the time we arrive home, Lily’s fallen asleep and she doesn’t stir as Rob lifts her from her car seat and carries her upstairs to her room. I’m exhausted as well, and after Rob leaves to go back to work, I stretch out on our bed for a nap. But when I close my eyes, all I see is Lily’s face, which looks so much like my own.

  And so much like my mother’s. The mother I don’t remember. The mother no one ever wants to talk about.

  According to aunt Val, my mother was a gifted musician who sang and played the piano. My father was certainly no musician. He sang off-key, couldn’t read a note, couldn’t keep a beat. If musical talent is something you inherit, then mine came from my mother, and through me, those genes were passed to Lily. What else did I unwittingly pass on to my daughter?

  When I awaken from my nap, I find the sun has already fallen behind the trees and the room is cast in shadow. How long have I slept? I know Rob is home from work, because I hear a kitchen cabinet thump shut downstairs. He must have found me still asleep and decided to start cooking dinner.

  Groggy, I climb out of bed and yell from the doorway: “Rob, I have pork chops defrosting in the refrigerator. Did you find them?”

  Downstairs, a pot lid clatters.

  Yawning, I shuffle to the stairway and call down: “I’m up now. I can take over. You really don’t have to—”

  My foot suddenly shoots out from under me. I try to catch myself on the railing, but a chasm seems to open up beneath me and I tumble into its jaws, falling, sliding.

  When I open my eyes, I’m lying at the bottom of the stairs. I can move my arms and legs, but when I try to turn onto my side, pain stabs my right flank, sharp as a spear. Sobbing, I collapse flat on my back and feel something roll away from
my foot and skitter across the wood floor. It’s something small and pink and it collides with the wall a few feet away.

  A little plastic car. A toy.

  “Rob!” I cry out. Surely he heard me tumble down the stairs. Why doesn’t he answer? Why doesn’t he come out of the kitchen? “Help. Rob, help me…”

  But it’s not Rob who comes out of the kitchen.

  Lily crosses to the toy car, picks it up, and examines it with the detached gaze of a scientist studying some failed experiment.

  “It was you,” I whisper. “You did it.”

  She looks at me. “Time to get up, Mommy,” she says, and walks back into the kitchen.

  11

  “She did it on purpose. She placed that toy car on the second step, where I’d be sure to slip on it. Then she made noises in the kitchen, to wake me up and draw me downstairs. She wanted this to happen.”

  My husband is trying his best to maintain a neutral expression. He sits by our bed, where I lie propped up on pillows and groggy from Vicodin. I’ve broken no bones but my back is knotted in pain and I can barely move without sending my muscles into fresh spasms. He doesn’t look at me, but stays focused on the duvet, as if he can’t bring himself to meet my gaze. I know how absurd I sound, claiming that a three-year-old plotted to kill me, but the pain pills have loosened all the connections in my brain, and a whole host of possibilities floats around me, like poisonous gnats.

  Lily is downstairs with my aunt Val, and I hear her call out: “Mommy? Mommy, come play with us!” My darling daughter. I shudder at the sound of her voice.

  Rob lets out a troubled sigh. “I’m going to make an appointment for you, Julia. This doctor comes highly recommended. I think she can help you.”

  “I don’t want to see a psychiatrist.”

  “You need to see someone.”

  “Our daughter is trying to kill me. I’m not the one who needs therapy.”

  “She’s not trying to kill you. She’s only three years old.”

  “You weren’t here, Rob. You didn’t see her studying that toy car, as if trying to understand why it didn’t work. Why it didn’t kill me.”

  “Can’t you hear her calling for you right now? That’s our baby, and she wants you. She loves you.”

  “There’s something wrong with her. She’s changed. She’s not the same baby anymore.”

  He moves onto the bed and takes my hand. “Julia, remember the day she was born? Remember how you cried because you were so happy? You kept saying how perfect she was, and you wouldn’t let the nurse take her away because you couldn’t stand not being with her.”

  I bow my head to hide the tears sliding down my cheeks. Yes, I remember weeping with joy. I remember thinking that I would willingly throw myself off a cliff to keep my baby safe.

  He strokes my hair. “She’s still our little girl, Julia, and you love her. I know you do.”

  “She’s not the same girl. She’s turned into someone else. Something else.”

  “It’s the pain pills talking. Why don’t you go to sleep now? When you wake up, you’ll wonder why you said all these crazy things.”

  “She’s not my baby. She’s been different ever since…” I lift my head as the memory takes shape through my Vicodin haze. A warm and muggy afternoon. Lily sitting on the patio. My bow gliding across the violin strings.

  That’s when everything changed. That’s when the nightmare began, when I first played Incendio.

  —

  My friend Gerda lives at the end of a quiet lane in the suburb of Milton, just outside Boston. As I pull into her driveway, I spot her straw hat bobbing among the flowery jungle of delphiniums and when she sees me, she rises easily to her feet. At sixty-five, silver-haired Gerda’s still as nimble as a teenager. Maybe I should take up yoga, too, I think as I watch her stride toward me, peeling off her garden gloves. I’m half her age, but my stiff back makes me feel like an old woman today.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I say. “I had to stop at the post office, and the line went out the door.”

  “Well, you’re here now, and that’s what matters. Come in, I’ve made fresh lemonade.”

  We step into her cluttered kitchen, where bundles of fragrant herbs hang from the ceiling beam. Perched on her refrigerator is an old bird’s nest she found abandoned somewhere, and on the windowsill is her dusty collection of seashells and river stones. Rob would call this place a housekeeping emergency, but I find all these messy, eccentric touches strangely comforting.

  Gerda takes the pitcher of lemonade out of the refrigerator. “Did you bring that letter from the shopkeeper?”

  I reach into my shoulder bag and pull out the envelope. “It was mailed ten days ago, from Rome. His granddaughter wrote it.”

  As I sip lemonade, Gerda slips on her eyeglasses and reads the letter aloud.

  Dear Mrs. Ansdell,

  I am writing on behalf of my grandfather Stefano Padrone, who cannot speak English. I showed him the photocopies you sent, and he remembers selling you the music. He says he acquired the book of Gypsy tunes quite a few years ago, along with other items, from the estate of a man named Giovanni Capobianco, who lived in the town of Casperia. He does not have any information about “Incendio” but he will ask the Capobianco family if they know the composer or where it came from.

  Sincerely, Anna Maria Padrone

  “I haven’t heard anything new since I received that letter,” I tell Gerda. “I’ve called the antiques store three times and left messages. No one answers the phone.”

  “Maybe he’s on vacation. Maybe he hasn’t had a chance to talk to the family.” She rises to her feet. “Come on, let’s take another look at that waltz.”

  We go into her cluttered practice room, where a baby grand piano leaves barely enough space for a bookcase, two chairs, and a coffee table. Stacks of sheet music are piled high on the floor like stalagmites in a cave. On her music stand is the copy of Incendio that I scanned and emailed to her three weeks ago, when she recorded the piece for Lily’s neurological test. It’s merely two sheets of paper dotted with notes, but I feel its power. As if, at any instant, it could glow red or levitate.

  “This is a gorgeous waltz, but it’s definitely challenging,” says Gerda, settling down in front of the music stand. “It took me a few hours of practice to get the arpeggios under my fingers and to hit these high notes just right.”

  “I never did manage it,” I admit, feeling as if I’ve just confirmed every bad joke ever told about second violin players. Question: How many second violinists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: They can’t go that high.

  Gerda takes her violin out of the case. “The trick to this passage here is to make the shift to fifth position a measure earlier.” She demonstrates, and her notes scamper up the E string at a blistering speed.

  “You don’t need to play it now,” I cut in.

  “It really does make this next section easier to manage. Listen.”

  “Please stop.” Even I am shocked by how shrill my voice sounds. I take a deep breath and say quietly: “Just tell me what you’ve found out about the waltz.”

  Frowning, Gerda sets down her violin. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m sorry. It gives me a headache listening to it. Can we just talk about the music?”

  “All right. But first, can I look at the original?”

  I open my shoulder bag, take out the book of printed Gypsy music, and flip it open to where I’ve tucked in the loose sheet with Incendio. I’m reluctant to even touch the sheet, so I simply hand Gerda the whole book.

  She pulls out the waltz and examines the yellowed page, both front and back. “Written in pencil. Standard manuscript paper, looks pretty brittle. I don’t see any watermark, and there’s nothing to identify its origin except the title and the composer’s name, L. Todesco.” She glances up at me. “I looked up that name online and I can’t find any published music by this composer.” She squints more closely at the page. “Okay, this is interesting. On
the other side, there are a number of partly erased notes, which were then written over. It looks like these four measures were revised.”

  “So he wasn’t just copying the music straight from another source.”

  “No, these changes are too extensive to be a simple transcription error. This must be the actual page he composed it on. And then he made these changes.” She glances at me over her glasses. “You know, this could be the only copy of the piece in existence. Since it’s never been recorded.”

  “How do you know there’s no recording?”

  “Because I sent a copy over to Paul Frohlich at the conservatory. He ran it through all his music recognition programs, comparing it to every known recorded piece. There are no matches anywhere. As far as he can tell, this waltz was never recorded, and he can’t find any published music under the name L. Todesco. So we’re completely in the dark about where the waltz comes from.”

  “What about the book of Gypsy tunes? I found Incendio tucked inside it, so maybe they came from the same owner. Maybe the book belonged to this L. Todesco.”

  She opens the fragile collection of melodies. The cover is crisscrossed with brittle Scotch tape, which seems to be the only thing holding it together. Gently she turns to the copyright page. “It’s an Italian publisher. Printed in 1921.”

  “There’s something written on the back cover.”

  Gerda flips over the book and sees the faded words, handwritten in blue ink: 11 Calle del Forno, Venezia. “That’s an address in Venice.”

  “Maybe the composer’s address?”

  “That would certainly be a starting point for our search. We should compile a list of everyone who’s lived at that address since 1921.” She turns her attention back to the two pages of music on her stand. “Incendio. Fire. I wonder what kind of fire the title refers to.” She picks up her instrument, and before I can stop her, she starts to play. As the first notes ring from her violin, I feel a rising sense of panic. My hands begin to tingle, an electrical current that builds with each note, until it seems my nerves are screaming. I’m about to snatch the bow away from her when she abruptly stops playing and stares at the music.