The Glass Harmonica, page 35
“Thank you,” she mouthed. He winked at her.
• • •
THEY sat around the dinner table and talked, Sarah, the twins, Gene Berrick, Mal Oskar, long after the housekeeper had served, cleared away, and gone off to her own home. Sarah was completely recovered, her eyes cool again, her hair perfectly smooth. Erin kept stealing glances at her. She had never seen her mother smile as much as she had that evening, particularly whenever she looked at Charlie. If Sarah was not exactly effusive, she was certainly amiable, and the conversation stretched on while the candles in the poinsettia centerpiece burned low.
“So, Dr. Berrick,” Sarah said, “I’d like to see Charlie’s scans—to see the progression. I’m not at all sure I understand how you accomplished this.”
Gene leaned forward. In the candlelight his skin was chocolate, his pale eyes startling. Erin looked at his hand resting on the table, the long fine fingers, and she could barely restrain herself from touching it. Gene said, “I didn’t accomplish it, not really.”
“Yes, you did,” Charlie exclaimed. “It couldn’t have happened without you.”
“Well, no, but I meant that I didn’t do it alone. It was when Erin joined us—” They had made a tacit agreement not to tell Sarah about the setback of Charlie’s hands, the loss of his vision. “When Erin brought the glass harmonica to the clinic, Charlie’s scans began improving immediately.”
“Why should that be?” Sarah Rushton asked.
“A very good question.” Gene traced a pattern on the white tablecloth as he spoke. “Of course, the brain’s responses to stimuli are idiosyncratic. And we’re still learning how the brain compensates for damage. But in Charlie’s case, I think the use of music helped to order the neurological impulses—rather like the Parkinson’s patients who can walk only while listening to music. And for Charlie, of course, the glass harmonica was the perfect music. Because he knew the compositions, because the patterns were expected—and it may be that there are properties to the sound of the glasses that affect the electrical impulses of the nervous system. We’re going to do some work on that, do some experimenting with other patients, and also try recordings as opposed to live music. I’d like to develop a concrete therapeutic model.”
Erin put her hand to her mouth to hide her smile. They could analyze all they liked. But there was an element to Charlie’s healing they would never understand. ’Tis like that, my little instrument. For some things, science had no explanation.
Sarah bestowed a respectful smile on Gene. “I assume you’ll publish now, Dr. Berrick?”
Gene leaned back in his chair and looked at Charlie. “I don’t know,” he said. “Charlie’s work shouldn’t be compromised—”
“Gene,” Charlie said firmly. “Of course you’ll publish! We’ll just be open about all of it. What difference does it make where the idea for augmented sensory music came from? Everyone knows I was in a wheelchair. It makes a great story.”
Gene shrugged. “We’ll see. But only in the journals. No popular press.”
“No, of course not,” Sarah said “But your university will want to publish your results.”
Mal cleared his throat. “Uh, no popular press? What about Charlie? The netcasters are begging for interviews, after San Francisco and San Antonio. This could mean a lot of work, for both Charlie and Erin.”
Charlie laughed, and gave Erin a thumbs-up. “Hear that, little girl? Fame at last.”
WHEN everyone else had gone to bed, Erin and Gene bundled up in wool coats and warm boots, and went out to walk the snowy streets and look at the Christmas lights strung in trees and shrubs and windows. Gene held Erin’s hand in the deep pocket of his coat as they strolled together.
They passed a lighted window where several people, adults and children, gathered around a Christmas tree. Laughter filtered out into the cold, along with the syrupy strains of Christmas carols.
“Scenes like that used to break my heart,” Gene said softly, squeezing Erin’s hand. “Home, family, parents, friends. It seemed as unreachable as a house on the moon.”
Erin said, “Looks like a Rockwell painting.”
“I want it,” Gene said.
“What, a Rockwell painting?” Erin teased.
“No.” He looked down at her, his features grave, his eyes sparkling with the colors of the Christmas lights. “A home, a family. All that old stuff that I never had.”
“You know, I didn’t have it either, Gene.”
He stopped walking and faced her. Their breath made ephemeral clouds around them. In the cold air, every sound was magnified, the creak of trees under their weight of snow, the convivial sounds of the Christmas gathering.
“Erin, in a way you did have it. I understand it wasn’t perfect, and that you think your mother let you down. But she cares for you, and she provides for you.”
Erin felt a twinge of shame. “I know that, I guess. I’ve never seen her as happy as she was tonight, actually. I didn’t know she had that much emotion in her.”
“Everyone does,” he said.
“Even you?” she said, leaning close to him, teasing again.
For answer, he bent and kissed her, a long, sweet, yearning kiss that left her breathless and wanting. “Especially me,” he said. “Marry me, Erin.”
She pulled back abruptly and stared at him. “What did you say?”
His face went very still. “I think you heard me.”
“Well, Gene, I—I guess I did, but I—”
He turned his eyes back to the lighted window, the colorful scene inside. “Sorry,” he said in a level voice. “I thought—maybe I’ve said the wrong thing.”
“Gene—darling Gene—it’s just so old-fashioned, so—” Erin giggled. “It’s so bloody grown-up!”
He looked down at her again, and his lips curved. She threw her arms around his waist and stood very close to him, looking up into his dear dark face, his crystal gray eyes. “Say it again,” she whispered.
He held her face between his hands and said, “Marry me, Erin Rushton. Grown-up, old-fashioned, institutional marriage. Marry me.”
“You know what you’re getting into?” she asked breathlessly. “Musician’s life, concert tours, hotel suites?”
“That’s why we have airplanes,” he murmured. “Do you know about emergency calls, hospital rounds, clinic hours? Marry me.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, through the frosty cloud between them. “Oh, yes, Gene Berrick. I think I will.”
THE day after Christmas, Erin took Gene to see the ancient armonica at the Old State House. They stood gazing at the artifacts in their climate-controlled glass cabinet, the faded blue long-skirted coat and brocade waistcoat, the assemblage of china and flatware and old portraits. The cups of the little armonica were dull and lifeless, their luster dulled by the passing of two and a half centuries. Its iron spindle was stained with rust.
On the facing wall, looms and spinning wheels and assorted Colonial sewing implements were arranged. They leaned close to a deep glass frame to examine items from the Franklin home in Philadelphia. There was a 1785 mezzotint of Deborah Franklin, hanging between a faded and faceless rag doll and a child’s silver spoon and cup, now black with age. There was also a bit of embroidered cloth that looked like a linen handkerchief, pressed flat under its own bit of glass.
Erin stared at the little yellowed square. Its edges were brown and crumbling, which made her feel sad for some obscure reason. The embroidery was in some language she didn’t recognize. She had an idea it might be Gaelic, or Celtic, but she didn’t know. She wished she could touch it. “What is that, do you suppose?” she asked. “That bit of cloth?”
Gene shook his head. “Don’t know. Do you want me to find a docent and ask?”
Erin bit her lip, then gave a small laugh. “Oh, no, it’s nothing. Don’t bother.” But she gazed at it for several moments before she was ready to leave it and walk on.
They made only a cursory tour of the rest of the museum before they went back out into the cold air. As they waited for the car to come around, Gene squeezed Erin’s arm. “When are you going to tell Sarah?”
“You mean, about you and me?”
“Yes. Aren’t you going to talk to her before we leave? Or do you want me to do it?”
“No, no, I don’t want you to do it. I don’t know, I just—I guess I just want to keep it to myself for a while. Well, me and Charlie, that is.”
The car pulled up, and the driver opened the door for them to get in. Quietly, Gene said, “You know, Erin, I’d like to get to know your mother.”
“After the things she said to you? About you?”
He shrugged. “We’ve all made our mistakes. And I think your mother wants to know you better—to understand you. You’re very alike, you two.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “Jeez,” she said wryly. “Me and the ice queen.”
He said, “Give her a chance. Let her get close to you.”
“You mean, the way you finally let me get close to you?”
He looked down at her, his fine lips curving, his eyes bright. He bent and kissed her. “Were you trying to get close to me?” he said.
“You know I was!”
He chuckled and put one long arm around her, drawing her close. “It was complicated,” he said. “Charlie, and the augmented sensory music, and then your—well, your—”
She poked him in the side with her finger. “Go ahead, say it. My ghost.”
“Your wraith,” he said, smiling. “I like that much better.”
“Yeah, I do too.”
“Well, your wraith, then. That made you—almost—my patient, as well. It was an ethics thing.”
Erin sighed. “She’s gone, you know. I knew she would be, I knew it in London.”
“Are you sorry?”
“No!” She laughed, and then added, “Well, maybe a little. Because it was sad, knowing she was gone—but then, maybe she was never there at all.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “It was all in your little glass-vibrated head.”
She drew back and looked up at him, eyes wide in mock surprise. “Why, Dr. Berrick!” she cried. “What was that, a joke?”
He gave a modest shrug. “Lost my head for a moment. I won’t make it a habit.”
She laughed and kissed him soundly on his cheek.
WHEN Gene’s paper on augmented binaural beats appeared in JAMA, the little clinic was inundated with calls, and Gene was besieged with offers from research hospitals and experimental clinics all over the world. Charlie had more offers of commissions than he could fulfill, making Mal beam with satisfaction whenever he called. Erin was bursting with pride, so much so that Charlie started calling her Your Highness and Madame, until she threatened to knock his cane out of his hand.
In truth, he hardly needed the cane any longer. She hardly knew him these days. He walked as quickly as she did, straight-backed and proud. His shoulders had grown broad, his arms and legs filling with muscle. He was several inches taller than she, something she hadn’t really noticed before. He was almost through with his next augmented composition, Noir, but he wouldn’t allow her to start on the score until Gene had checked his program levels. It was to be a dark, unusual work, scored for glass harmonica, oboe, bassoon, percussion, and low strings. When Erin asked him about it, he wiggled his eyebrows and said, “Wait, just wait.”
She was happy enough to wait. She and Gene were busy developing a program of glass harmonica music and augmented binaural beats at various levels to be used in conjunction with physical therapy. The little boy, Joey, would be their first subject.
Gene and Erin married in the spring of 2019. Sarah insisted they come home to Boston for the wedding, and she shopped with Erin for a very grown-up dress, white silk with narrow pleats dropping from the neckline, and transparent gauze sleeves. Gene was strikingly handsome in a dove-gray tux. Mal, with tears in his eyes throughout the ceremony, stood up for Erin. Sarah, elegant in black chiffon, was utterly composed. And Charlie, grinning and proud, stood beside Gene. He stood by himself, without his cane, and handed over the ring at the proper time with a glow of pride, as if he had engineered the whole thing himself. And in a way, of course, he had.
Sarah gave the newlyweds a beautiful reception, champagne and sushi and edible flowers on a great white cake. A string quartet played, and as Erin danced in her new husband’s arms, she felt one, last fey tingle in her forehead. Later, when she and Gene went outside for a breath of cool evening air, she felt that other, that revenant, at her shoulder, for the space of three heartbeats. It breathed against her cheek, and swirled away into the dark garden, leaving behind it the faintest whiff of bay rum.
Erin smiled after it. Of course, it might not really have been there. It could have been only her imagination. It might have been no more than a bit of breeze kissing a happy bride’s cheek. And now it was gone.
TOBENJAMINFRANKLIN, ESQ., LL.D.
Aided by thee, Urania’s heav’nly art,
With finer raptures charms the feeling heart;
Th’Harmonica shall join the sacred choir,
Fresh transports kindle, and new joys inspire.
Hark! The soft warblings, sounding smooth and clear,
Strike with celestial ravishment the ear,
Conveying inward, as they sweetly roll,
A tide of melting music to the soul;
And sure, if aught of mortal moving strain
Can touch with joy the high angelic train,
’Tis this enchanting instrument of thine,
Which speaks in accents more than half divine!
—John Dunlap, 1772, Philadelphia
Author’s Note
A number of historical figures participate in the eighteenth-century portion of this story: Benjamin Franklin; King George III and his Queen, Charlotte; Marianne Davies, an early player of the armonica who died in an asylum of a malady of the nerves said to be brought on by the vibrations of glass music; the slave Peter, who traveled to England with Benjamin Franklin and his son William; Margaret Stevenson, Franklin’s landlady, and her daughter, Polly, who was his student and devoted correspondent; Mary Tickell, Polly’s aunt, who required that Polly live with her in Essex in order to claim her inheritance; and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his sister Nannerl, who arrived in London late in April, 1764, having been made very ill by the crossing of the Channel.
Eilish Eam, so far as we know, is fictional. It is true, however, that human bones were discovered beneath the Craven Street house during its renovation.
Louise can be reached by E-mail at LMarley@aol.com. Visit her website at www.sff.net/people/lmarley.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com
Louise Marley, The Glass Harmonica
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