Greg’s son forgot the day and then did not, in a bar at twenty-two, telling a friend about a station and a kid who sat down. The friend said and? The son said he could play. The friend said huh. The story ended there. Not every atrium becomes a myth. Some become a sentence you tell once. Jonah would have preferred the sentence. Myths were tissue paper. He had crackers.
The kitchen in South Bend was small enough that the keyboard had to live under the window and the dishes had to live with the sound. Renee learned the difference between practice and banging. Practice was the same eight bars until the left hand stopped rushing. Banging was what happened when Jonah was angry about Dean or about a test or about the sneakers. She allowed the practice after school and cut the banging off at the pass, not with a speech, with a question: scales or soup. He picked scales more often than she expected. Soup was there either way. She was good at soup. Soup was the laundry shift turned into a meal. He did the bowls. The deal held for years. When he broke it, it was because of the train, and she adjusted the deal instead of breaking him.
Mrs. Ellison’s apartment had smelled like tea and the lemon oil she used on a table she did not need. She had a metronome she wound by hand. Jonah hated the metronome and improved under it. She said hate was information. Information was not an insult. He took that into the atrium without knowing he was taking it. The adults’ comments were information. Too little. Run around. Big dreams. Toy. He answered with a decision and a backpack on the tile and a wait. The wait was the metronome. He did not explain it. Explaining would have been a dream they could pat on the head. He was not there to be patted.