Accidental Notes: A Novel

Chapter 10

Silent Night

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The stairs are blocked. One of my cousins is holding her son, whose head is angled awkwardly toward the banister. The garland they’d wrapped around the staircase is tangled in the boy’s hair, leaving him impossibly tied to the staircase.

“Need help?” I ask. But I don’t wait for an answer. It’s clear he does, and Meghan seems out of ideas. I squat down to look the four-year-old in the eyes and press my hands against his cheeks. “You need to stop wiggling if you want to get free. Yanking your head around is only going to make it worse. Hold still, so I can see how it’s tangled.”

With a big breath, one that feels too heavy for a kid so small, he nods. I lean over the railing and start to tease through his hair, finding the place where it knotted around the garland. Then I carefully unwind it, wiggling my fingers back and forth until he’s free.

“Thanks,” Liam says, the word half a breath before he’s clambering down the stairs again.

“Liam!” his mom calls after him, then shakes her head like it’s futile. “Thanks, Adaya. Really.”

“It’s no problem. He was tangled in the garland the way my necklaces would get tangled as a kid. I like finding the problem and working out the solution.”

Technically, the only time my necklaces got stuck in a knot was when I shoved them all into a Ziploc bag the day we moved. When I tried to unpack them in California, I yanked and yanked and yanked, until every one of them was caught inside this twisted pile I didn’t think I’d ever untangle. Working through it slowly was all that kept me from breaking down in those first few weeks after we moved.

I don’t wear necklaces anymore.

Liam comes running back to where his mom and I were standing, but it’s my hand he takes, pressing a book of Christmas lead sheets into it. “Sloane and I want to sing Christmas songs. Come play for us, Daya!”

He runs away before I answer, so I turn to his mom. “He’s joking, right? No one could seriously want me to play piano right now. Not after… everything.”

Meghan smiles at me. “He’s taken with you. Of course he wants you to play.”

In Dad’s family, piano playing is the hobby. Some families practically require supporting the 49ers, or playing soccer, or being good at chess. Anyone related to Grandma Nancy can play a piano. It was not only assumed but expected. Once our fingers were big enough to press down on thirds, Grandma would set us down at the piano bench, teach us how to sit up straight, and start our lessons.

I could read music before I could read words. Grandma Nancy reveled in teaching me. Said I was a natural, the best since — but she never finished the sentence. “In a generation,” she’d add whenever I pestered her to know who my competition was, like I knew what “generation” meant at six. But how easily I took to piano doesn’t negate the fact that the rest of my family has at least a passing knowledge of music.

“Don’t you play?” I ask Meghan. “Even Liam should be able to play a little by now.”

“Not like you do. Whenever your mom uploads your recital pieces, Liam begs to watch them for weeks.”

It isn’t about the funeral, then, but who I was before.

“I’m not used to lead sheets. I’d love to come sing along, but I’m not sure I can play.” I don’t want to talk about the funeral. And Meghan doesn’t know about the audition.

She smiles at me in a way that makes me acutely aware how much closer in age I am to Liam than to her. When she speaks, her voice is soft and motherly. “You don’t have to perform for us. Some preschoolers want to sing, and they want you at the piano when they do it. Maybe it would be good to sit down and enjoy playing when the stakes are lower. Those kids won’t care if you mess up every single note. They’ll be off-key anyway. They just want to spend time with you.”

I want to spend time with them, too. Like Riley, these kids give me a justification to have fun. “All right, then. Hey, Liam! Sloane! Race you to the piano!”

They win, but I meant for them to. I recognize everyone that gathers around the piano. Dad’s sister, my aunt Patricia, sits in the middle of the couch across from the piano. Her posture is as proper as her mom’s was, even with Meghan’s toddler asleep on her lap. One hand absently strokes the child’s hair as she talks with Uncle Jeff beside her. He’s twice divorced, one child from each wife. Though he leans toward Aunt Patricia, he keeps one twinkling eye on the piano, where Slone and Liam are already poised, waiting for me.

When I arrive, Liam’s face lights up and Sloane wraps her body against me. “Thanks for playing for us,” she says as I slip the now-empty storage containers to the floor. The keys of this piano are more familiar to me than any I’ve played in California since. But a book of lead sheets? I hardly know what to do with it.

Since Mr. G took a job at the high school, I’ve been instructed by a woman named Constance Smith, who reminds me to focus on the notes. She teaches me to play what’s there. To read what’s on the page and perform it perfectly. She thinks like I do. Grandma didn’t work that way, and neither do lead sheets, which tell me the chords but not the notes, not the pattern, not the dynamics. With lead sheets, you’re supposed to make it up as you go. In theory, I know enough music theory to make this easy. But I usually end up overthinking everything, getting frustrated at every mistake.

Liam wants me to, though, so I can try. I rifle through the book and ask the kids what they want to sing.

“Twelve Days of Christmas!” shouts Sloane.

“Absolutely not,” counters her dad.

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!” says Everly, Heather’s oldest.

I rifle through the table of contents. “Don’t have it.”

“Thank God,” Kyle says, not quite under his breath.

“Can we do Silent Night?” Liam asks. “I learned that one at my preschool and I’m really good at singing it.”

These kids are going to melt me. “You can be the leader. Do you think you can teach everyone else what you learned?”

“Definitely,” he says confidently, but poorly articulated. “We practiced it so much, Daya. Fifty a hundred times.”

“That’s a lot of practice.” The chords are simple, and I know the song at least as well as Liam does. I should be able to do this. This lead sheet even gives me a melody I can pluck out with my right hand. I take a breath. Melody with one hand. Simple chords and rhythm with the other. I can do this. I can absolutely do this.

“Can we start now? My teacher never took this long for the first note.”

“Sorry, buddy,” I say, and wrap my arm around him briefly. He leans in to my hug.

I play a chord in my left hand, the next, and another, running through the whole progression as an introduction. “Are you ready?” I whisper. Liam nods emphatically. I press down the notes with my right hand and, as Meghan predicted, Liam begins to sing in a completely different key.

The tightness in my muscles is unavoidable. But I can’t correct him. I don’t see why I should. He’s pouring his heart into these notes.

“Round John version, margarine child,” he croons.

I make a mistake because I’m giggling. When the song ends, the room explodes into clapping I know for a fact isn’t for me. Liam beams. He stands up on the bench beside me and turns toward his family in a deep bow. The applause gets even louder. I cheer, too.

His family pours out his attention on him while I fade into the background completely. An accompanist to a singer. That’s what Mr. Gutierrez wants me to audition to become. Background to someone else’s spotlight. I kind of like it.

I sit by the window while snow blankets the yard.

Meghan comes up to me and leans against the window. “See? I knew it would be good for you to play for them. When you laughed your way into a mistake, you didn’t freeze. You kept going. They loved it.”

“Huh,” I say. “I didn’t even notice.”

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