The Calculus of Change by Jessie Hilb

Author:Jessie Hilb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Dad/Mom

The spin of the ceiling fan is rhythmic as I sit hunched over my desk, working on a song. Whoosh, whoosh-whoosh, Whoosh, whoosh-whoosh.

Beauty is love

What? Beauty is love? That’s seriously the best I’ve got?

Put the pen down, Aden. You’re ruining it.

I rest my head in my hands and resume listening to the whirl-whoosh of the ceiling fan. It sounds way better than my song at this point.

“Ade.” Whoosh, whoosh-whoosh. “Ade, hello?” My dad stands in the doorway. He clears his throat.

“Hey, Dad. What’s going on?”

He clears his throat again.

“Okay, now you’re acting weird.”

“What, why?” And then, in what sounds like a half-Russian, half-Japanese accent, which is not a reference to anything but his bizarreness, he says, “I’m not weird.”

I laugh. “Right. Obviously.”

“But I wanted to give you this,” he says, handing me a piece of paper.

“What is it?”

“Just look at it.”

I unfold the yellow lined paper and immediately recognize my mom’s handwriting. I’d know it anywhere from all the old notebooks I have stashed in the closet. The paper holds a set of lyrics.

I look at the song my dad gave me and wonder where he got it. I thought I had everything. There is no title on the page.

“You should learn it,” my dad says. “She was working on it when she . . . You know. I never got to hear how it turned out.”

“Really? Do you have the chords somewhere? All I see are the words.”

“Yeah, I know. She had some of the music figured out, but it must’ve been in her head. That’s all I have.”

“Where’d you find this, Dad? Maybe the music is there.”

“I was just going through some old stuff. That’s all there is. Promise. And now it’s yours. If you want it.”

“You were going through Mom’s stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It was after we talked the other night. You know, when you were asking about her.”

“Oh.” That conversation. I look up at him and notice the wrinkles between his eyebrows and around his mouth.

“So, you want these, right?” he says, and it’s like someone’s hit the pause button. He scrunches his eyebrows together, worried-looking. I wonder if it’s hard to give her songs away.

“Of course I do. Thanks. What’s it about?”

He grunts a wordless response.

“Again with the throat clearing, Dad?”

“I’m not sure what it’s about, Ade. Could be me. Marriage, family. Who knows? It’s yours now.”

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