Accidental Notes: A Novel

Chapter 3

Harmony

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Dad hums along to his “Nostalgia” playlist, not quite under his breath. He hasn’t said a thing since silently scolding my plans, which I’ve tucked back into my bag. As the dense forest gives way to the outskirts of the town, Dad speaks again. “I have some errands to run. Maybe you can come with me. Pick out some of your favorite food. What do you say, Munchkin?”

It’s probably a good idea to go with him. If he’s going to insist on calling me Munchkin, he’ll probably pick out the things I liked to eat at ten. I’m not proud of the things I liked to eat at ten.

So I follow him into WinCo for groceries and stand beside the cart, trying to keep pace but almost always walking too fast for him. Dad steers us toward the sugary cereals I liked when I was a kid. “Don’t keep these around too often, but with you here maybe it’s time for some Crunch Berries.”

His eyes glint like he’s making fun of himself for wanting to eat it, but I haven’t had cereal for breakfast since we moved. “Actually, this is more what I eat these days,” I say as I grab some acai bowls instead.

“You sound like a California stereotype.” Dad nudges my shoulder and chuckles, but it hurts like an insult.

I don’t know what to say. “It’s what I’ve had for breakfast for years.”

“It’s fine. Throw them in,” he says, but I can tell something isn’t fine.

Every few aisles, someone stops us. A man with a big smile claps Dad on the arm. “Eric! How are you holding up without Nancy?”?”

My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Millering, smiles softly at Dad. I’m not sure she notices me. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mother. She’ll certainly be missed.”

A younger Black woman with braids flowing down her back smiles sadly at us. “A staple in our community. And… who is this?”

“Certainly that can’t be little Adaya Hope?!” a woman with a graying bun and sunspots on her face says a few aisles later.

I’ve had enough of being talked about like I’m not there. “Well, it is,” I say, standing tall.

“The last time I saw you, must have been, what? Five years ago at the recital, wasn’t it, Eric? Nancy invited our whole book club.”

I’d had no idea. I nudge Dad. “She did that for me?”

“She was proud of all her students.”

“Honey, she wouldn’t stop talking about you. How delighted she was to have another prodigy in the family.”

Dad coughs. His fingers grip the cart a little tighter. “You’ve had a long day, Munchkin. We should finish up.”

We grab anything I ask for, and things I don’t, like a gingerbread house kit and some dinners that cook straight from frozen. I help him bag the groceries and we head outside. In the hour or so it took to shop, the sun has disappeared completely, leaving behind the canvas of a clear night sky. Dad drives through town to the outskirts on the far side of Bend, while the sky captivates every ounce of my attention.

It doesn’t sound right, not exactly, but I’d forgotten about stars. Living outside L.A. means the only stars I usually see are the ones on Hollywood Boulevard.

As night takes over, more and more stars appear on the horizon. I thought the nighttime sky I sometimes dreamed about was a trick of my imagination, remembering something as more magical than it was. But somehow, in a small miracle, it isn’t. I’m so focused on the sight, I hardly notice how far we’ve come until Dad says we’re there. When I look around instead of up, I’m confused.

We’re parked in front of a house with faded wood siding and a roof that slants down sharply toward us at an angle so steep I’m afraid it might slide off the house altogether and swallow me. “I thought I’d be staying with you.”

Dad’s address is a trendy apartment downtown. I looked it up on Google Maps the year he sent me a birthday card. This house, Grandma’s house, lives on the edges of my memories. Wednesdays and Fridays for an hour after school. Sunday night dinners together.

I thought Dad and I would get to start over somewhere new, not spend two weeks in my grandmother’s shadow. It’s not like I believe in ghosts, not exactly, but people leave things behind.

“You will be staying with me. Here.” He shrugs and grabs my suitcase from the cab, then goes inside without ceremony.

Walking inside the heavy black door makes me feel like I’ve finally entered Dad’s time machine. Grandma Nancy’s perfume permeates the air, musty and sweet like dried roses, pulling me back into fourth grade. The lumpy floral couch I’m sure saw the ’80s sits in the middle of the forest-green carpet, facing a wall-mounted HDTV that’s definitely new. But I remember that couch, where I would read to Grandma, where she’d let me watch Bubble Guppies when Mom only let me watch Daniel Tiger.

The wall directly opposite the door is hardly visible behind all the bookshelves. Unlike my own overflowing bookshelves, my grandmother’s are full of trinkets. Precious Moments, Anne Geddes pictures, family portraits in varying degrees of tackiness. Glass birds. Shot glasses. I asked her about all of them, once, and she told me she liked having a way to see her memory outside of herself as she got older. Places she’d visited, people she’s loved.

Then I asked about the blank space on the middle shelf, when all the rest were crowded to overflowing. She’d just looked sidelong at my dad and shook her head. I look now, and that empty spot is still there, gathering dust.

I’m so focused on the room itself that at first I don’t notice a low hum of people talking from the back near the kitchen.

Dad nudges me. “Go on, then. Say hi. Everyone is here.”

“What about the groceries? Do you need help bringing them in?”

Dad shakes his head and turns back to the door.

As I walk, I name as many of my relatives as I can from memory. Meghan is the one with a four-year-old boy on her shoulders as she dances through the living room. Kyle and his partner Micah sit in armchairs in the family room, balancing plates heaping with food. A baby sleeps inside a bouncer between them on the floor. Aunt Patricia looks the same as I remember, with wild gray hair that falls in frizz more than curls past her shoulders. She wears an inappropriate Christmas sweater over faded jeans and smiles slightly when she sees me.

By the time I make it to the kitchen, most everyone I’ve seen is already carrying plates. Uncle Jeff leans over an indoor grill, steak searing with a jealous hiss. His gray hair rings a balding spot that seems to have expanded since I saw him last. “Hi, Uncle Jeff,” I say.

He looks up, eyes laced with red. “Adaya! You made it! First round is over, but the second batch should be up soon.”

“Thanks.” Between Uncle Jeff cooking and Dad putting away groceries, I’ll only be in the way. But before I can leave, a golden retriever, probably about a year old, presses its nose against me and curls between my legs like a cat. Dad drops his bag too hard onto the counter and reaches down to pet it. “Harmony! Now she’s a lovely sight, isn’t she?”

As if Harmony knows it, she jumps up and licks my face unceremoniously. I look up at Dad while I reach one hand out to pet her. “When did you get a dog?”

He laughs. “She belongs to the neighbors.”

“Then why’s she here?” I ask, even though I don’t mind.

There’s mischief in Dad’s eyes that adds to my smile. This is the man I missed — the man I was forgetting how to miss. I’m so glad he’s still here. “She knows the way. Oh, and when I stay here, I usually make steak.”

How often was he staying here? “Steak you share with her.” It must be a key word, because she looks at my dad with a plea in her eyes. He grabs a fatty piece from Uncle Jeff and tosses it to Harmony, who catches it with ease.

I should put away my backpack and suitcase before round two of dinner gets served to the neighbor’s dog instead of me, so I pet Harmony one last time and turn toward the family room.

From this angle, it’s impossible to miss Grandma’s old upright piano tucked against the wall. It’s a reddish-brown Yamaha, probably nearing 60 years old, but well maintained. At least when I was ten, the keys all struck well and stayed in tune, and the only evidence of three generations of use were the scratches along the piano bench.

“Too many boys pushing too many cars along the seat,” she’d once said to me when she caught me tracing the lines.

“Why did you let them play cars here if the piano is special to you?” I’d asked. I was eight.

She pulled me into a hug that absolutely enveloped me. I let myself sink into the softness of her body. “Because my family being here is more important than the scratches they leave behind them,” she said.

Putting things away can wait. This is more important. I take a breath as I sit down, suddenly nervous. I didn’t think I remembered Grandma as well as I do. I didn’t think I missed her this much. But being here illuminates the empty space beside me she would have filled. I run my hands over the keys without playing. The ivory is familiar beneath my fingertips. Warm and inviting as it asks me gently for a song.

No matter how hard I tried in the days between Dad’s text and now, I can’t seem to memorize the piece he wants me to play. “Heaven Can Wait” will flow through my fingers as long as the notes are in front of me, but take away the music and I’m completely lost after the first few measures. The song is in my suitcase, along with “Sunset Boulevard” for my audition, and I pull it out.

I listen for a moment and decide everyone’s busy enough. They shouldn’t mind the piano in the background of their conversations. It was always true in this house. I settle my right hand over the upper part of the piano, my left stretching to reach an octave. As I prepare, my posture immediately straightens, wrists curve, and breathing settles.

The music plays in my head, but before I can press a single note, the bench sags with the weight of someone else. For a split second, I forget it cannot be Grandma. That it never will be again.

“I’m not surprised you’re here,” Dad says. “This piano’s been my solace the past few weeks.”

“I’m sorry you lost her, Dad. I know how much she meant to you.” It’s selfish of me to think, especially right now, but I wonder if he remembers how his mother promised this piano to me. It was the last thing she told me the day before we moved. Mom only gave us two days’ warning, and on the day of my last piano lesson, Grandma Nancy wrapped her arm around me, skin soft but fragile, like crepe paper. “You’re looking at that piano like it’s your best friend, Adaya,” she whispered to me.

That was mostly because it was. My friends in Bend were few and far between, and I lost the trust of the one person I thought understood me. That memory was still raw, and I covered it up so I couldn’t pick at it until it bled.

“It’s yours, you know,” she’d said when I didn’t answer her. “When I’m gone, this piano belongs to you. Can’t you feel it in the way it sings your songs the brightest?”

I nodded, face heavy with the weight of leaving her and it behind. I didn’t want to think about me being gone to California, let alone think about her being gone for good. I still don’t want to think about her being gone for good.

Dad’s arm around my shoulders now only makes me miss her more.

“You got the groceries put away?” I ask. “I was going to practice for the funeral tomorrow.”

“Oh. Well then,” he says. Then he’s gone, like leaving is easier than saying goodbye.

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