Free The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

rose to his feet, a real smile plastered on his mug. I nearly fainted. I wanted more.
    The glory of the experience rested in the simple fact that my musical talent was a human one. There were no pianos in the woods. And as my magic slowly diminished, my artistry increased. I felt more and more removed from those who had taken me for a hundred years, and my sole hope and prayer was that they would leave me alone. From the night of the first performance, it was as if I were split in two: half of me continuing on with Mr. Martin and his emphasis on the canon of classics, pounding out the old composers until I could hammer like Thor or make the keys whisper under the gentlest pressure. The other half expanded my repertoire, thinking about what audiences might like to hear, like the ballads crooned on the radio adored by my mother. I loved both the fugues from
The Well-Tempered Clavier
and “Heart and Soul,” and they flowed seamlessly, but being adept at popular song allowed me to accept odd jobs when offered, playing at school dances and birthday parties. Mr. Martin objected at first to the bastardization of my talent, but I gave him a sob story about needing money for lessons. He cut his fee by a quarter on the spot. With the money we saved, the cash I earned, and my mother’s increasingly lucrative egg and chicken business, we were able to buy a used upright piano for the house in time for my twelfth birthday.
    “What’s this?” my father asked when he came home the day the piano arrived, its beautiful machinery housed in a rosewood case.
    “It’s a piano,” my mother replied.
    “I can see that. How did it get here?”
    “Piano movers.”
    He slid a cigarette from the packet and lit it in one swift move. “Ruthie, I know someone brought it here. How come it
is
here?”
    “For Henry. So he can practice.”
    “We can’t afford a piano.”
    “We bought it. Me and Henry.”
    “With the money from my playing,” I added.
    “And the chickens and eggs.”
    “You bought it?”
    “On Mr. Martin’s advice. For Henry’s birthday.”
    “Well, then. Happy birthday,” he said on his way out of the room.
    I played every chance I could get. Over the next few years, I spent hours each day at the keys, enthralled by the mathematics of the notes. The music seized me like a river current pushing my conscious self deeper into my core, as if there were no other sound in the world but one. I grew my legs an inch longer than necessary that first summer in order to better reach the pedals on the upright. Around the house, school, and town, I practiced spreading my fingers as far apart as they would go. The pads of my fingertips became smooth and feather-sensitive. My shoulders bowed down and forward. I dreamt in wave after wave of scales. The more adept my skill and understanding grew, the more I realized the power of musical phrasing in everyday life. The trick involves getting people to listen to the weak beats and seemingly insignificant silences between notes, the absence of tones between tones. By phrasing the matter with a ruthlessly precise logic, one can play—or say—anything. Music taught me great self-control.
    My father could not stand to hear me practice, perhaps because he realized the mastery I had attained. He would leave the room, retreat into the farthest corners of the house, or find any excuse to go outside. A few weeks after Mom and I bought the piano, he came home with our first television set, and a week later a man came out and installed an antenna on the roof. In the evenings, my father would watch
You Bet Your Life
or
The Jackie Gleason Show
, ordering me to keep it down. More and more, however, he simply left altogether.
    “I’m going for a drive.” He already had his hat on.
    “You’re not going drinking, I hope.”
    “I may stop in for one with the boys.”
    “Don’t be too late.”
    Well after midnight, he’d stagger in, singing or muttering to himself, swearing when he stepped on one of