Free The Mozart Season by Virginia Euwer Wolff Page A

Deirdre?”
    She stared at me the way she’d been staring at the earring in her hand.
    â€œDaddy won’t be mad. Promise.”
    â€œHow can you say that when men are so unpredictable?” she asked.
    â€œHe’s my father,” I said.
    She walked over to the metronome and turned it on at a slow tempo. Then she walked around the room, staying far away from Daddy’s cello. The metronome was ticking, she was walking, almost like dancing, very slowly, but not exactly with the metronome’s rhythm. “I love coming here. To Portland. Your house. It’s so peaceful,” she said. Then she picked up the glass of milk, drank what was left in it, said good night to me and walked out, pulling the back of her long white nightgown to her when she closed the door. I turned off the metronome and the light and lay down under the down sleeping bag. I knew I should be writing a word or two on my clipboard. I didn’t know what the words were, though.

4
    I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered Daddy’s cello. I turned on the light and wrote him a note on the clipboard paper: Talk to me before you do anything else in the morning. I went upstairs in the dark and slipped the note under my parents’ bedroom door. The whole house was quiet; I could see the windows and chairs and things just standing there in their shapes, like something waiting to begin.
    Mommy came into the music room early in the morning to water the plants. Daddy came along with her. I was just waking up and thinking about practicing. I’d signed up for the 7:00 A.M. practice slot, but I was worried about waking Deirdre.
    â€œWhat’s this note about, honey?” Daddy said. He stood at the end of the sofa in front of my feet. Mommy was humming around the Swedish ivy with her watering spritzer.
    I looked at him. “Deirdre’s all upset.” I sat up.
    Mommy stopped spritzing and Daddy gave her a look—just a look, no real expression on his face—as if he were listening to her, except that she wasn’t talking.
    â€œWell, last night she came to talk to me, she couldn’t go to sleep, she was wearing this gorgeous, long white nightgown—and she accidentally dropped one of her earrings and it fell through the f-hole in your cello.”
    Daddy kind of smiled. “The things that have fallen through f-holes could fill a small museum,” he said.
    â€œAnd then she had a sort of fit. She—she said she’d ruined things, and she always does this.… I couldn’t even talk to her.” Looking back on it, I realized I’d actually been afraid.
    Daddy looked at me and then over at Mommy. “Fleur, you decide.”
    Mommy stood with the spritzing can in her hand. “Decide what?”
    He kept looking at her. “Decide what’s to be done about Deirdre. What time was all this, Allegra?”
    â€œKind of midnight,” I said.
    Mommy took a big breath and said, “What’s going to be done is get her fed, get her to rehearsal, make sure she takes a nap, give her all the love and safety we can, get her to the Commons, and hear her sing. That shouldn’t be so difficult for reasonable human beings to accomplish.”
    â€œMommy, do you know she throws up before she sings?”
    â€œYes, sweetheart, I know,” Mommy said. “Do you want breakfast?”
    I watched my mother. She picked up a bug from a begonia leaf and closed her hand lightly over it, carried it to the French doors and opened one of them with the hand that was holding the watering can, and sent the bug out into the air. “What a lovely morning,” she said to the yard. “Is it all right if I leave the door partly open? The air smells beautiful,” she said.
    If she left the door open, more bugs would come in, and if she saw them she’d pick them up and put them outdoors again. When they’re bees, she talks to them, nudging them toward an open