The Three Rules of Everyday Magic by Amanda Rawson Hill

Author:Amanda Rawson Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
Published: 2018-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

After dinner, Grammy sits at the table with a plate of peanut-butter cookies and doesn’t move. I finish drying a plate and say, “What’s wrong, Grammy?”

She sighs. “It just doesn’t seem right to have peanut-butter cookies without making some music.”

I put the plate away. “I thought you never wanted to do that again. Remember?”

“What?” gasps Grammy. “I love making music. Don’t you remember all those times I played with my Tony? I love it.”

“But you said …” I stop. Grammy doesn’t remember yelling at Dad and telling him she’s sick of playing the piano and hates singing with him. She doesn’t remember how he was already so sad by that point that he hardly smiled, or how after that, he never smiled.

A hard, tiny piece of anger that I’d been carrying around with me finally melts away. Because I understand now. She wasn’t the real Grammy when she said those mean things. She was already forgetting. Her anger was to cover up her embarrassment.

I want to tell her that I forgive her, but if I say that, I’ll have to remind her about what happened a year ago, and I don’t want to do that. When your brain can’t hold all its memories, you should only keep the good ones. Instead I ask, “Do you want to play the piano right now?”

“Oh, Kate.” She picks up a peanut-butter cookie. “I’m not sure my hands remember how.”

“I’ll help.” I turn around and Mom is standing in the kitchen doorway. She’s holding the songbook with the cover falling off. “I know it’s not the same having me play. But it doesn’t feel right without music, does it?”

Mom sits next to Grammy at the piano. She curls her fingers over the keys. “You want to try, Pat?”

“No, dear. I’m good.”

Mom doesn’t ask me to sing with her. She just starts playing an old Beatles song. I tense up as she finishes the intro, nervous to hear the music without Dad or me singing along. Worried how it will make Mom feel. How it will make me feel. But in the space where there’s supposed to be words and singing, a different sound fills the room.

Whistling.

Grammy is whistling the tune instead of singing. “My eyes are so bad I can’t read the dang words anymore,” she says between the first and second verse.

Part of me wants to join in, mix my guitar and voice with the piano and whistling like the butter, sugar, and eggs in Grammy’s recipe. A couple times, I even take a deep breath and open my mouth. But nothing comes out because the thought of singing makes my throat ache, and I don’t want to ruin the moment with tears. The music still wraps around me like a blanket, though. I curl up on the leather recliner and just listen without feeling guilty that I can’t sing along.

By the end of the night, the plate of cookies is empty, the house is full of music … and I finally know the magic is real.

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