She hadn’t moved when he did. Still on her side looking out the window. He couldn’t see her now. His eyes lost on the ceiling, nothing there but the dark of a water stain. She said, “You’re bound up tighter than a secret. Just so you know, we’re not going to get anywhere like that.” Then she went right on. “I hated school. It was a fight to make me stay there long’s I did. The only part I liked was the recitals and commencement pageants and the plays. I was always the one to find a reason for some little spectacle. For parents or just for classmates, it didn’t matter to me. George Washington’s birthday. Lexington and Concord Bridge. Ethan Allen. I’d figure something out for it. Plus the dramatic society. I’d stayed I’d of done good with that. She found me a voice teacher. I wanted to take lessons on a piano but I’d as quick gotten an elephant as a piano. So I ended up with just my voice. Which the way it worked out was good luck from bad.”

“Be a pickle, we was trying to haul along a piano right now.”

“Exactly. She was a horrid little old woman with a mustache. Hungarian or Polack, something like that. She made me stand on a stool. Told me it would keep my back straight. Taught me how to breathe, how to sing. Stood there before me with a pencil lifted in one hand, beating time while I did the same exercise over and over. She’d poke me in the chest with the stub end of the pencil when I was getting tired and say, ‘Lazy girl, lazy girl.’ I didn’t like her but I liked what she taught me. It was enough to keep me going back. I didn’t need prodding from my mother, although she kept it up. I think she’d figured out before I did that it was the only thing would save me, would maybe make me a life better than hers. She knew I didn’t have patience for most things. I’ve always been that way, hate to wait for a thing. She had a cancer. In her parts. For how long I don’t know. The time I learned about it, it was all through her. She didn’t tell me until she had to.”

She was quiet then. After a time he asked, “How long ago was that?”

“Three years.”

“That’s a long time.”

“I’ve done all right. I’ve got a talent.”