The Stolen Child(23)
woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties in a gray coat on a gray street corner; the raven-haired librarian
who came every Tuesday morning to buy a dozen eggs. Ponytailed girls jumping rope. Girls with
charming accents. Girls in bobby socks and poodle skirts. In the sixth grade, Tess Wodehouse trying to
hide her braces behind her smiles. Blondie in the funny pages; Cyd Charisse; Paulette Goddard; Marilyn
Monroe. Anyone curved. Allure goes beyond appearances to the way they grace the world. Some
women propel themselves by means of an internal gyroscope. Others glide through life as if on ice
skates. Some women convey their tortured lives through their eyes; others encircle you in the music of
their laughter. The way they become their clothes. Redheads, blondes, brunettes. I loved them all.
Women who flirt with you: where'd you get such long eyelashes? From the milkman. Girls too shy to say
a word.
The best girls, however, were those who liked music. At virtually every performance, I could pick
out from the crowd those who were listening, as opposed to the terminally bored or merely disinterested.
The girls who stared back unnerved me, but at least they were listening, as were the ones with their eyes
closed, chins cocked, intent on my playing. Others in the audience would be cleaning their teeth with
their nails, digging in their ears with their pinkies, cracking their knuckles, yawning without covering their
mouths, checking out the other girls (or boys), or checking their watches. After the perfor-mances, many
in the audience invariably came up to have a few words, shake my hand, or stand near me. These
post-performance encounters were most rewarding and I was delighted to receive compliments and
answer questions for as long as I could while unmasking the enthusiasms of the women and girls.
Unfortunately, the concerts and recitals were few and far between, and the public demand for my
performances of classical music at parties and shows diminished as I neared puberty. Many aficionados
had been interested in a ten-year-old prodigy, but the novelty died when I was all elbows and acne as a
teenager. And to be honest, I was sick of the Hanon and Czerny exercises and the same insipid Chopin
etude that my teacher fussed over year after year. Changing yet again, I found my old powers ebbed as
my hormones raged. As if overnight, I had gone from wanting to be just a boy to wanting to be a grown
man. Midway through my freshman year in high school, following months of soul-searching and sullen
fighting with my mother, it hit me that there was a way to combine my passion for music and my interest
in girls: I would form my own band.
• C H A P T E R 8 •
"I have something for you." The last bitter days of winter imprisoned the whole band. A
snowstorm and freezing temperatures made travel outside of camp impossible. Most of us spent night
and day under cover in a drowse caused by the combination of cold and hunger. Speck stood above
me, smiling, a surprise hidden behind her back. A breeze blew her long black hair across her face, and
with an impatient hand, she brushed it aside like a curtain.
"Wake up, sleepyhead, and see what I found."
Keeping the deerskin wrapped tight against the cold, I stood. She thrust out a single envelope, its
whiteness in relief against her chapped hands. I took it from her and opened the envelope, sliding out a
greeting card with a picture of a big red heart on its front. Absentmindedly, I let the envelope slip to the
ground, and she quickly bent to pick it up.
"Look, Aniday," she said, her stiff fingers working along the seams to carefully tear the seal. "If you
would think to open it up, you could have two sides of paper—nothing but a stamp and address on the
front, and on the back, you have a blank sheet." She took the card from me. "See, you can draw on the
front and back of this, and inside, too, go around this writing here." Speck bounced on her toes in the
snow, perhaps as much out of joy as to ward off the chill. I was speechless. She was usually hard as a
stone, as if unable to bear interaction with the rest of us.
"You're welcome. You could be more grateful. I trudged through the snow to bring that back while
you and all these lummoxes were nice and cozy, sleeping the winter away."
"How can I thank you?"
"Warm me up." She came to my side, and I opened the deerskin rug for her to snuggle in, and she
wrapped herself around me, waking me alert with her icy hands and limbs. We slid in near the slumber
party under the heap of blankets and fell into a deep sleep. I awoke the next morning with my head
pressed against her chest. Speck had one arm around me, and in her other hand she clutched the card.
When she woke up, she blinked open her emerald eyes to welcome morning. Her first request was that I