Dean saw the film because the internet did not care about Christmas cards. He called. Renee let Jonah decide. Jonah took the call. Dean said he was good. Jonah said thanks. Dean said maybe a keyboard for his birthday, a real one. Jonah said he had a real one at the station. Dean laughed, not mean, surprised. The laugh was Greg’s laugh in a kinder mouth. Jonah said he had to go. He did not tell his mother the offer. Offers from Dean were weather. Weather did not get a review.
By eleven he could play a piece all the way through without the video. Mrs. Ellison’s niece, cleaning the apartment, found a folder with his name on it and a list of scales and a note: left hand, patient. She mailed it to Renee. Renee put it on the fridge under a magnet from the hospital. Jonah saw it every morning. Patient was a better word than prodigy. Prodigy was what Allison had almost said and had not, because she had been wrong about little and did not want to be wrong in the other direction. He did not need her correction. He needed the folder. He got the folder. He did the scales.
The school had a piano in the auditorium that was locked except for the winter concert. Jonah asked the music teacher, Mr. Adeyemi, if he could use it after last period. Mr. Adeyemi said show me. Jonah showed him the line from the station, then a scale, then the left hand Mrs. Ellison had called lazy and that was less lazy now. Mr. Adeyemi unlocked the room on Tuesdays. Tuesdays became the fare he did not have to spend. Renee cried in the laundry break room and told no one why. A coworker asked if she was all right. She said her kid had a room. The coworker understood room as trouble. Renee let the misunderstanding stand. Some truths were for the fridge, not the break room.
Allison came through the station again in the fall with a different bag and saw him at the piano and did not speak until he finished. She said, “I was the woman who told you you were too little.” He said, “I remember.” She said, “You were right to wait.” He said, “I was going to play anyway.” She nodded. The nod was the apology with the sorry already spent. She left. He texted Leaving. Renee texted back a period, which meant she was on the floor and had seen it. A period was enough.