The Last Song(34)

“It’s summer. You don’t have any homework.”

“I’m just saying that maybe I should build a wall around the desk in my room.”

Steve suppressed a laugh. “You might have to talk to your mom about that.”

“Or you could.”

Steve gave in to a chuckle. “You hungry yet?”

“You said we were going to go kite flying.”

“We will. I just want to know if you want lunch.”

“I think I’d rather have some ice cream.”

“I don’t think so.”

“A cookie?” Jonah sounded hopeful.

“How about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

“Okay. But then we’re going to fly the kite, right?”

“Yes.”

“All afternoon?”

“As long as you want.”

“Okay. I’ll have a sandwich. But you have to have one, too.”

Steve smiled, putting his arm on Jonah’s shoulder. “Deal.” They headed toward the kitchen.

“You know, the living room is a whole lot smaller now,” Jonah observed.

“I know.”

“And the wall is crooked.”

“I know.”

“And it doesn’t match the other walls.”

“What’s your point?”

Jonah’s face was serious. “I just want to make sure you’re not going crazy.”


It was perfect kite-flying weather. Steve sat on a dune two houses down from his own, watching the kite zigzag across the sky. Jonah, full of energy as usual, ran up and down the beach. Steve watched him with pride, amazed to recall that when he’d done the same thing as a child, neither of his parents had ever joined him.

They weren’t bad people. He knew that. They never abused him, he never went hungry, they never argued in his presence. He visited the dentist and doctor once or twice a year, there was always plenty to eat, and he always had a jacket on cold winter mornings and a nickel in his pocket so he could buy milk at school. But if his father was stoic, his mother wasn’t all that different, and he supposed that was the reason they’d stayed married as long as they had. She was originally from Romania; his father had met her while stationed in Germany. She spoke little English when they were married and never questioned the culture in which she’d been raised. She cooked and cleaned and washed the clothes; in the afternoons, she worked part-time as a seamstress. By the end of her life, she’d learned passable English, enough to navigate the bank and grocery store, but even then her accent was heavy enough that it was sometimes difficult for others to understand her.

She was also a devout Catholic, something of an oddity in Wilmington at the time. She went to services every day and prayed the rosary in the evenings, and though Steve appreciated the tradition and ceremony of mass on Sundays, the priest always struck him as a man who was both cold and arrogant, more interested in church rules than what might be best for his flock. Sometimes—many times, actually—Steve wondered how his life would have turned out had he not heard the music coming from the First Baptist Church when he was eight years old.

Forty years later, the details were fuzzy. He vaguely remembered walking in one afternoon and hearing Pastor Harris at the piano. He knew the pastor must have made him feel welcome, since he obviously went back again, and Pastor Harris eventually became his first piano teacher. In time, he began to attend—and then later ditch—the Bible study the church offered. In many ways, the Baptist church became his second home and Pastor Harris became his second father.

He remembered his mother wasn’t happy about it. When upset, she would mutter in Romanian, and for years, whenever he left for the church, he would hear unintelligible words and phrases while she made the sign of the cross and forced him to wear a scapular. In her mind, having a Baptist pastor teach him the piano was akin to playing hopscotch with the devil.

But she didn’t stop him, and that was enough. It didn’t matter to him that she didn’t attend meetings with his teachers, or that she never read to him, or that no one ever invited his family to neighborhood barbecues or parties. What mattered was that she allowed him not only to find his passion, but to pursue it, even if she distrusted the reason. And that somehow she kept his father, who ridiculed the idea of earning a living through music, from stopping it as well. And for this, he would always love her.

Jonah continued to jog back and forth, though the kite didn’t require it. Steve knew the breeze was strong enough to hold it aloft unaided. He could see the outline of a Batman symbol silhouetted between two dark cumulous clouds, the kind that suggested rain was coming. Although the summer storm wouldn’t last long—maybe an hour before the sky cleared again—Steve rose to tell Jonah that it might be a good time to call it a day. He took only a few steps before he noticed a series of faint lines in the sand that led to the dune behind his house, tracks he’d seen more than a dozen times when he was growing up. He smiled.