My Macrofamily⁴

One evening in January, when John had gone to buy some CDs for his computer, Mom told me she was going to have another baby. Suddenly, tears were streaming down my cheeks and I was shouting at her. I don’t even remember what I said, but it wrenched her face as if I had hit her. I do remember jerking the front door open, running down to the sidewalk and around the corner to Dad’s, where I banged on the front door with both of my fists. I also remember how cold it was because I had left my jacket behind. Mitch opened the door, while Millie and Dad were coming up behind him. They all looked astonished. Millie grabbed my hand, yanked me inside and hugged me with all of herself. She had never done that before! I felt her lips on my ear and heard her say:

“ You are going to get the flu, Fi Fi!”

Only then did I realize that I was shivering, but it wasn’t only because of the cold. All I needed to say was that Mom was pregnant again and they all understood. Dad didn’t want to send or take me back to Mom’s that evening, but I had left my schoolbooks and my flute at her house. Mitch volunteered to go get them for me, while Midge was feeling sorry for me with a suspect frown. Thanking Mitch, Dad said he would have to go himself.

He wasn’t going to Mom’s, I realized, just to get my books and my flute, but also to rearrange my schedule with her. I would be staying with him instead of her for a few days, so I had to stay longer than usual with her the next week. When he rang, both Mom and John came to the door. John had Florin in his arms because I had upset him up by yelling at Mom. She and John surprised Dad by their courtesy and by inviting him to come in and sit down. Once Dad and Mom had agreed on changing my schedule, he started to stand up, but John spoke up. He said he would do anything to convince me that he had no intention of exploiting Mom. With tears in her eyes, Mom wondered what he hadn’t already done.

“ I would never have a baby unless John wanted one too.”

John: “I thought that would convince Fi Fi.”

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When Dad came back, he told me I should reconsider my reaction to Mom’s pregnancy. He didn’t think John had done it to punish me.

“He seemed sincere to me, and don’t forget: I sell insurance!”

100% sincerity about motivation in relationships between men and women was impossible. How did I know John intended to exploit Mom and leave her when she was no longer useful to him? Even I had admitted that he liked kids, did a good job keeping house, worked hard on his writing and treated me pretty well.

“What else can you expect? Give him the benefit of a doubt, Son... You don’t want to stop seeing your mom, do you?”

I shook my head.

As soon as she saw me, she came and hugged me. Although she wasn’t especially small, she seemed so much smaller than Millie. John hugged me too, which disconcerted me, but I remembered Dad’s reassurances. I persuaded Judy to practice at Mom’s when I was staying there. She made a face and she had a habit of being right. The more Mom’s belly swelled, the more the expectant father outdid himself. His zeal embarrassed me because I didn’t share it and it seemed exaggerated to me. Anticipating Mom’s slightest need or wish should have kept him from working on his novel. The stack of paper on his desk hadn’t changed or moved and I ran my finger over the top sheet, leaving a clean streak across a light coat of dust. He hadn’t cut any text at all! How could he ever publish a thousand pages of “Fervio and Elysia”? I even wondered whether his translations were earning his share of the household budget. The more I lived with him, the more I suspected him of being a parasite. A naïve or a clever parasite? One seemed as bad as the other. Sooner or later, Mom would have to support the entire household budget, including John’s expenses. His writing would become a hobby.

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Separating the twins had ended their silly double speech and behavior. Free of Midge, Mitch became a good roommate, but losing him drove Midge to worse mischief. After the crisis I had caused by entering Mom’s bedroom, I didn’t like Midge barging into ours, especially when we were undressing. It reminded me of the twins’ promiscuity. The first time she did it, I told her to knock and wait until we told her to come in. The second time, she told me she had a right to see her brother. The third time, I replied:

“ I’m not your brother and it’s my room too.”

“ You should talk!” She gave me a crooked smile.

It was another example of kids learning things they shouldn’t know. She had probably heard Dad telling Millie in terms he thought the twins wouldn’t understand. Curiosity is a scary teacher. Taking her baths alone by then, Midge began to run from the bathroom to her room naked. She was doing it when I was in the office, coming out of my bedroom or up the stairs. Once she emerged from the bathroom just as I got to the top of the stairs. There she was, stark naked and right in front of me, so close that I couldn’t take a step without bumping into her. At first, I didn’t know what to do or say, but then I told her as contemptuously as I could:

“ Why don’t you grow up?”

A sarcastic laugh told me that she already had and off she danced to her room, shaking her little fanny at me.

‘ Why me?’ I wondered.

Maybe it was because I was the only eligible male in the house. Yet her provocation disconcerted me more than it shocked me, thus undermining my self-confidence. I didn’t want to be a tattletale, I would disappoint Dad and maybe even raise Millie’s suspicions. She might think I had encouraged Midge.

I asked Mitch to help me lay a trap for Midge and he agreed as soon as he heard how I wanted to do it, which amused him. One afternoon when she was taking her bath, always a lengthy exersize, I listened near the door for the gurgling of the water as it drained from the tub. As soon as I heard it, I waved to Mitch ____________________________________________________________________

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waiting at the foot of the stairs. Off he ran to the living room to tell Millie that the bathtub faucet had stuck in the open position and the water was near the top. At the same time, I stole to our bedroom door and, when I heard Millie huffing and puffing up the stairs, I swung it back and forth at an angle where it squeaked. Then I walked back towards the bathroom creaking the floorboards and I even cleared my throat: “unh-hum!” As Millie came up, Midge came out naked, they faced each other and screamed, each in her voice. Midge ran back into the bathroom, slammed and bolted the door; Millie was banging on the door and bellowing; Mitch and I were standing by wondering what would happen next. Mitch had a little smile on his face, which Millie glimpsed in the corner of her eye and she slapped him:

“ You told me the tub was going to overflow!”

Now he was grinning: “If I had told you Midge was going to do a striptease... ”

Dad was coming upstairs: “A striptease?”

Millie told him what had happened.

“ Stop banging on the door. Just tell her to get dressed. I will be back in a minute.”

Millie was breathing so hard that Midge must have heard her through the door. Finally, Dad returned with his toolkit, ever so calmly inspected the lock, rummaged through his tools and chose a screwdriver, which he used to remove the plate over the lock. It took him a few minutes to pry the bolt out of the hole in the jamb. The door swung open revealing Midge wrapped in a man-sized towel covering her from her flat chest to her meager buttocks like a caricature of the actresses she had seen on soaps. The same source must have inspired the disdain with which she strutted by ignoring us. This act froze us all until Millie’s fingers pinched her ear, bending her over with the pain. She hustled her into her bedroom, slamming the door behind them, and it sounded like a death struggle between two wild animals.

Punishment only hardened the criminal. She emerged from her room wearing a polo shirt and shorts despite the season. She was showing us the purple bruises, the pink welts and the red ____________________________________________________________________

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scratches on her skinny arms and legs. The glare in her eyes, the sagging corners of her lips and even the limp in both legs displayed less pain than resentment. Her very silence threatened Mitch, Millie and especially me with revenge. Her bodily wounds healed in a week, but the others, the dangerous ones, festered in a sullen routine. One afternoon, she found me alone in the family room:

“ Waiting for your whore?”

Furious, I chased her out of the room and she laughed as she ran. Later, when Judy and I were practicing, she passed through with a sarcastic smile reminding me. Another kind of behavior that also seemed to result from the striptease incident puzzled me. For Christmas, Midge’s dad had given her a small digital camera, which she had forgotten. Now, however, she was taking pictures all the time, pictures of us and, instead of catching us in a pleasant likeness, she watched for awkward moments to push her button. She was embarrassing us with them on the television set in the living room and enjoying our annoyance. Was she just practicing so she could put her camera to worse use?

Yet nothing could have been further from my mind when I was taking a bath one afternoon. The tub was under a leaky window, so I was lying under the water to stay warm and wishing we had a shower like Dad and Millie. Suddenly, Midge came in with her camera, went to the foot of the tub, took a shot of me with her flash and ran away giggling. I hadn’t been able to bolt the door because Dad had disabled the lock. Was Midge going to show me naked in the tub on the television set? That, I thought, would only get her in trouble since she was the only member of the family who shouldn’t have seen me naked. If Millie found out, she would beat her again and drive her to worse revenge. Something else was troubling me too: I didn’t feel as resentful over Midge violating my privacy as I thought I should. Why? I didn’t like or trust her, she was homely and unpleasant, she had offended me. Yet the offense wasn’t very serious. After all, my genitals were ridiculous in comparison to the ones everybody saw in the Mapleton Museum.

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Valentine Day came a few days later and Judy sent me a wonderful valentine by e-mail attachment. She had thought of it herself and, with a little help from her father, drawn it herself. It was a realistic heart that you could see pumping blood. Unlike most valentines, it aroused genuine affection for the sender and I felt guilty not having sent her one. Although I disdained the Hallmark holiday, I appreciated her valentine and I was looking forward to thanking her when she came to practice with me that afternoon at Mom’s. I was playing scales when the phone rang and John answered it. After a few minutes, he came to the living room looking perplexed.

“ That was Miriam Bingle. She can’t believe you sent Judy the valentine she got from your e-mail account... I can’t either!”

“ I didn’t send her one! I wish I had because she sent me a nice one.”

“ Miriam said it was a photo of you in a bathtub.”

I started to run over to Dad’s and punish Midge. I didn’t know how, but my fists usually took over in such circumstances. Fortunately, John grabbed me and talked me out of it. He persuaded me to sit down and tell him the whole story, then we could discuss what to do about it. Once I had told him, he called Mrs. Bingle back explaining what had happened and I could tell by her voice over the phone that she was relieved. Then he called Millie and I could tell by hers that she was furious. He was still listening to her when Judy appeared with tears in her eyes, jumped up on the sofa beside me and hugged me. With her left arm around my neck, I saw she wasn’t wearing the ring I gave her. John said “Goodbye!”, hung up and told us that Millie was going to take care of Midge, so there was no point in my getting involved. John wondered how Midge could have sent e-mail from my account. All she had to do, I explained, was to start Dad’s computer up before I came home from school, upload the photo from her camera and send it with a message to Judy, whose address she could find in my address book. Judy, who had disappeared, returned out of breath with her piccolo in her hands ____________________________________________________________________

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and her ring on her finger. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing as if that obscene valentine had never been sent. John impressed everybody by the way he handled the crisis, as I told Mom when she came home from work. From her medical viewpoint, a valentine of my genitals didn’t seem so disgraceful:

“ After all, they are healthy, aren’t they?”

John laughed and Dad did too when I told him. I couldn’t understand why they thought it was funny. Millie didn’t think it was and she whipped Midge with one of Dad’s leather belts. Mitch told me he could hear Midge screaming. Dad wondered if Millie hadn’t overstepped the boundary between punishment and revenge.

She took Midge to a psychologist who specialized in trouble-making girls. A thorough interview convinced the psychologist that Midge had no psychosis, but merely a tendency to deviant behavior. Although sexual curiosity in children often alarmed their parents, it did little harm if understood and controlled. It occurred in more of them than usually recognized and the exploitation of sex in advertising stimulated it. Disciplinary repression tended to drive them to revolt against what they saw as injustice. For Midge, the psychologist recommended the Marshfield School, which boarded girls like Midge no less than three weeks and no more than three months for intensive responsibility training. It submitted them to a strict but healthy discipline and kept them occupied with physical and mental work. A high ratio of teachers and counselors to girls ensured close and constant attention. Each girl had frequent one-on-one interviews with them to determine the cause and extent of the trouble for which her parents had sent her to the school as well as progress in overcoming it. School policy encouraged a constructive attitude and conduct, and emphasized discipline over punishment. It prohibited grades and ranking, banned games and competition, discouraged exaggerated friendly and unfriendly relations between girls. While they slept in a dormitory and dined with the staff, they had comfortable accommodations and good food. They took turns helping in the kitchen, doing the cleaning, the laundry, ____________________________________________________________________

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all the housekeeping work. The staff treated them with courtesy and consideration, and they encouraged them to treat each other the same way. At the end of every week, every girl met with a counselor, a teacher and her parents to discuss her progress and, if warranted, her departure. The rarity of outbursts at these meetings contributed to the evidence of the school’s success. Midge made an exception to this rule at the end of her first week by demanding permission to leave against the opinion of the teacher, the counselor, her dad and Millie. She made another one four weeks later when she insisted on staying despite their opinion that she was ready to leave. By the end of the fifth week, however, she said she had decided to leave as if their opinion didn’t matter. Millie reminded her that it did.

I hardly recognized her. Instead of her habitual frown, she had a blank expression on her face. No malicious smiles and sarcastic remarks, but rather indifference and aloofness. Answering briefly and saying little, keeping to herself and minding her own business, staying in her room with the door closed. Yet the first chance she had, she came to the office where I was working on the computer and waited quietly beside me until I reached a stopping place. She apologized for entering the bathroom when I was taking a bath, taking a picture of me in the tub, converting it into a valentine and sending it to Judy on my e-mail account. She also promised not to run around naked any more. She said all of this as if she had rehearsed it and without any sign of emotion. No embarrassment, no shame, no self-consciousness, not even any unease. If she really regretted what she had done, it must have been because of the reactions inconvenient to her. What could I say? I thanked her for telling me and looked forward to friendlier relations with her, but I couldn’t have sounded confident.

We found her present attitude more disagreeable than her previous one. Before the Marshfield School, we had expected bad humor, sarcasm and provocation. How easy it had been to laugh, scoff at her, ignore her! Now, she was ignoring us and, for all

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we knew, laughing and scoffing at us. We had the unpleasant feeling that she was observing and condemning us for thoughts and acts that seemed innocent and reasonable to us. One of us would start to say something, glance at her and then rephrase it, change the subject or fall silent. One evening, Dad and Mitch were watching the NCAA tournament and making exclamations so often heard that I could concentrate on the book I was reading. From time to time, Millie glanced over her glasses while tightening loose buttons and sewing others back on. Midge entered without looking at anybody, sat down well away from everybody and stared at the screen without seeing it. Everybody took his turn glancing at her, but she just sat there without saying or doing anything.

Millie: “Is Fragra asleep?”

Midge nodded without looking at her.

Turning away from the screen, Mitch looked at her: “Why don’t you... ”

She pretended not to hear him.

Impatient gesture: “dry up and blow away?”

She paid no attention. Millie had told me that she was having trouble catching up on her studies.

Raising my eyes from my book: “Midge, would you like for me... ”

She pretended not to notice me, so I returned to my book. Then Dad glanced at her and focused on the screen again.

“ Like a ghost in the room!”

A few minutes later, she stood up and left. We all looked at each other and Mitch shrugged his shoulders. Sooner or later, I thought, Midge would do something that would upset all of us.

Coming home to Dad’s from school, I found Mitch there alone.

“ Where’s Midge?”

“ Running around with her friends.”

“ What kind of friends?”

“ They think they are smarter than us.”

“ Smart aleck?”

He nodded: “They get it from her.”

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“ Both boys and girls?”

“ Yeah! You ought to see them!”

“ What are they up to?”

“ No good.”

“ Selling drugs?”

Mitch laughed: “Who knows?”

He told Millie my joke, but she didn’t laugh. Instead, she started checking up on Midge, questioning her teacher and the principal. Although Midge worried them too, she hadn’t so far done anything worse than lead a gang of kids who didn’t like school. She was setting an example for them by making fun of her teacher, skipping school, etc.

“ Skipping school?”

Millie was furious. She decided to devote more of her time to observation and discipline of her daughter.

Judy and I had learned to play our new instruments well enough together to resume our concerts. We had our first opportunity at school. The music teacher, who had heard of our progress from Mrs. Adams, invited us to perform at a school assembly. With rehearsals by Mrs. Adams, we only needed a few weeks to prepare for a concert that would appeal to children between six and eleven. Midge asked me if Judy and I were going to play at a school assembly. What was she up to? Confirming it nonetheless, I told her our program, although she made a show of her indifference. Millie gave her a withering look, which didn’t wither her. The next time I practiced with Judy, I warned her that Midge and her friends might try to distract us when we performed at Elmhurst. We would have to concentrate on our music just as we did at Dad’s, where nobody bothered to hold his tongue.

When Judy and I came out on the stage of the auditorium, we saw Midge sitting in the middle of the front row, flanked by kids who had the same blank expression on their faces. The others in the auditorium, which was packed, were chattering excitedly. While we were playing, I noticed that nearly all of our audience, except the front row, were listening and most were enjoying our ____________________________________________________________________

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performance. We had begun the last movement in the Lucello Suite, which came at the end of our program, when a girl at the end of the front row stood up and left by the door on her side. She neither looked ill nor apparently had any other excuse. No sooner had the door closed behind her than a boy at the other end stood and left by the one on his side. One by one, the others on the front row stood and left, some by the door on their side and some by the door on their side in back. Walking up the aisle particularly distracted our audience, whose reactions ranged from amusement to irritation. It angered the teachers, the music teacher and the principal, but what could they do? Any intervention by them would only cause a worse disturbance. Judy and I were playing as if nothing were wrong, but the crooked smile on Midge’s face was trying my patience. She stood and left shortly before we finished, walking slowly up the aisle on the side where the music teacher and the principal were sitting. You should have seen their faces! The final measures in the fourth movement enabled us to get the attention of the audience back, who applauded enthusiastically after we had finished. Instead of announcing the encore we had prepared, I asked the principal if we had enough time to play the fourth movement of the Lucello Suite over again.

“ Yes!” she replied with a dragon’s hiss. “If we didn’t have it, I would take it.”

But she and a few other teachers left to look for the culprits. By then, of course, they had disappeared. We played the music better the second time and the audience, who admired our determination, gave us even more enthusiastic applause. Midge had done us a favor.

I wasn’t going to tell Millie and I asked Mitch not to either. She would find out soon enough. Sure enough, she came home from work looking for Midge as if she were going to eat her alive. The principal must have called Dad too, because he came home early enough to warn her against giving Midge another beating. I can guess what he told her:

“ Making the same mistake twice is dumb.”

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What was the smart way to handle Midge? The Marshfield way: keep her busy with physical and mental labor, and away from troublemaking friends. Send her to a private school that applies such discipline. Friends of Millie’s at the DMV recommended St. Polly’s, a school and orphanage run by Catholic sisters, who admitted day students to make ends meet. The discipline resembled Marshfield’s and Millie, who was neither Catholic nor anything else, counted on the sisters for moral indoctination. She thought her daughter would shed Catholicism along with the school dress when she graduated.

But Midge had a knack for making lesser evils greater. She was in the fourth grade at St. Polly’s in the fall. The sisters unwittingly inculcated in her an insidious hypocrisy that escaped us for a while. We only noticed her porcelain face, which hid her thoughts and feelings. She continued to ignore us, even at meals, until we questioned her one evening:

Millie: “How do you like St. Polly’s?”

“ Like it?”

Mitch: “You don’t like anything!”

Shrug.

Dad: “What is it exactly that you don’t like?”

“ The orphans.”

Millie: “Why?”

“ They are crude.”

Me: “Don’t you feel sorry for them?”

“ No.”

Mitch: “Maybe they think you are a snob.”

“ So what?”

Millie: “What else don’t you like?”

“ The food. It’s awful.”

Me: “No French fries, no cokes... ”

“ Stinky cabbage, fish on Friday... ”

She made a face and we laughed.

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When they get stuff on their fingers, they wipe it off on their skirts. They show you their underwear the way they sit and their clothes look like gunny sacks.”

Millie: “They don’t have mothers to teach them everything I taught you. There aren’t enough sisters to do that. They can’t afford to buy them clothes as nice as yours. You and the other day students are probably a good influence on them.”

Exasperated shrug and sigh. “How would you like to hear some of the words they use?”

Millie: “I wouldn’t like it.”

Mitch: “Shucks! Heck! Doggone!”

I laughed and Dad smiled, but Millie and Midge didn’t think it was funny, each for her own reason.

Dad: “Do you have a good teacher?”

“ Farty Forty!”

Millie ran and slapped Midge so hard that her hand knocked out of the way her arms, which she had thrown up to protect herself. She cringed and screamed. Millie looked at her as if to assess the damage, then sat down.

Dad, as if nothing had happened: “Forty? Is that how old she is?”

“ No. It’s her name: Sister Fortitude.”

Millie: “Is she a good teacher?”

“ She married Jesus because nobody else would have her.”

Dad smiled and Millie avoided a smile.

Millie: “You don’t need sex appeal to teach little girls.”

“ Wouldn’t it help if she were a real woman?”

Mitch: “How about you? Are you a real woman?”

Nasty look.

Me: “You didn’t say how old she is.”

“ She’s so old Mitch can’t count that high.”

Millie sighed: “When are you going to tell us whether she’s a good teacher? Have you learned anything?”

“ Right much, but what’s it good for? If you leave the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Father and all that crap out, what have you got?”

Millie: “Don’t say that word!”

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“What word?”

Millie: “You know which one!”

Dad: “How about arithmetic?”

“ That’s what she does best. She won’t let us use calculators, so we have to do it in our heads.”

Dad nodded approvingly.

Me: “How about English?”

“ She’s good at writing too. She gives us our compositions back the next day with red marks and comments all over them. She explains what we did wrong and how we could improve. She’s better at that than anybody I had at Elmhurst.”

Me: “What does she give you to read?”

Another face. “A page or two and I’m daydreaming. Everybody and everything is so goddamed holy that I could use the pages for toilet paper.” Mille started to go after her, but she had already run away. Dad shook his head at Millie.

Religion wasn’t rubbing off on Midge. She was learning the fringe at St. Polly’s and not the core. How arrogance could masquerade as reverence. Think or do any evil you wish as long as you dress it up in pious clothes. Midge wanted us to believe that she merely took pleasure in exposing hypocrisy. In reality, she was concealing a motivation that should have alarmed us. We thought she was just a headstrong little girl, who resented any limitation on her freedom to do as she pleased. I interpreted the pranks she had played on me as attempts to punish what she saw as injustice. Hardly did I realize that I was the object of her desire and not just an obstacle, that Judy was the obstacle and not just a hostage. I, my dads and moms all assumed that I was more mature at twelve than Judy and Midge at nine. On the fundamental issue of sex, we couldn’t have been more mistaken. Now that I have lost them both, I remember them as my good and evil angels.

Then, however, I only understood that Midge might try to revenge the humiliations I had inflicted on her. Luring her, for ____________________________________________________________________

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instance, into exposing herself to her mother instead of me must have wounded her pride. But how could she punish me? Although Dad agreed that she couldn’t do me any serious harm, how about Judy? It took me a few days to assimilate that threat. By then, I was staying with Mom, who looked bigger every time I saw her. She took me over to the Bingles, to whom I tried to explain why I thought Midge might want to harm their daughter. Since they didn’t know her, they couldn’t imagine why or how, but they agreed to some precautions. Judy, who did know her, took me more seriously.

Judy and I were receiving so many invitations to perform that our parents and Mrs. Adams persuaded us to limit ourselves to one a week. People were beginning to offer us compensation, but we declined, much to our parents’ relief. We gave a half-hour concert on Channel Eight with a simulcast by WMAM, which brought an avalanche of e-mail from kids and grownups. Judy received an offer of marriage, which she declined, not because she was too young but rather because she already had “another commitment.” People were calling me “the other commitment.” Bishkin complimented us on our music, but warned that we owed much of our success to our youthful charm. As a couple, we resembled a big brother and a little sister because of the difference in our height, the harmony of our motion and the cues we gave each other as we played. Everybody admired the energy and flexibility of Judy’s slender little body; the shape and complexion of her arms; her fingers dancing on the keys of her piccolo. Her green and gold ring fascinated audiences, for many of the calls, messages and letters we got mentioned it. A film director wanted to make one of us, but Mom and the Bingles declined and, although Dad hesitated, he eventually agreed with them. Disappointed at first, Judy and I lost interest in the project when we realized how little time it would leave us to practice.

We continued to learn and perform, improving our technique, increasing our repertory and building our reputation. Thanksgiving and Christmas, winter and  ____________________________________________________________________

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spring passed happily and without incident. The more we prospered, the more Midge grimaced and grumbled, but she played no more pranks on us. Ignoring her became more and more a habit. I joined Millie, Mitch and Dad in making fun of her. Although she had organized a gang of disgruntled orphans at St. Polly’s, the sisters, who had her disciples to themselves in the evening, were soothing the resentment she inspired during the day. We all but forgot her as summer vacation approached. At seven, Judy was a year too young for Camp Feu de Bois and I, at twelve, for the Concordia Youth Orchestra, yet both offered to make an exception. Though tempted, we followed Mrs. Adam’s advice to dedicate ourselves full-time to learning and performing together. The trend to summer festivals resulted in invitations to perform in places where mountains, lakes or rivers attracted vacationers or others such as college campuses and retirement homes. Disappointed, the directors of the camp and the orchestra invited us anyway to give a concert at the camp and play a concerto with the orchestra. Alexei Borodovsky, the composer-in-residence at the ZU Music School, was composing a flute and piccolo concerto for us. The simulcast of our concert on Channel Eight and WMAM had given him “a brainstorm” according to translation by the press. He kept the graduate student in Russian, who drove him down to Mapleton, busy translating his enthusiasms into English. “Uncle Alex” illustrated his delightful English by humming a tune in so high a key that his eyes bulged. The audition he gave Judy and me enabled him to try some of his ideas out on us. His exuberance inspired such energy in our execution that we were trembling with excitement. The next morning, we confided in each other that we hadn’t slept a wink that night.

By July, the Contra-Putine, a title Bishkin had borrowed from Dad, was ready to introduce his Concerto for Flute and Piccolo to us and the Youth Orchestra. Judy and her mom occupied a room in the campus hotel at ZU; John and I, another one across the hall. Uncle Alex worked us all day long every day except Sunday and even Sunday afternoon. John and Miriam Bingle were declining invitations to breakfasts, lunches, dinners, receptions, ____________________________________________________________________

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etc. from everybody from music lovers to the mayor of Concordia. Judy and I really needed rest and sleep in the evening. Worried by our fatigue, they asked Uncle Alex to ease up on us a little. Alarmed, he promised, but hearing his own music erased his memory. Judy and I sympathized with him: once you started playing it, you couldn’t stop and you wanted to get it right. He treated us so affectionately that we didn’t even realize how thirsty, hungry and tired we were. On the other hand, Mandrop Kakxis, the conductor, treated us as if we were fellow adults and professionals. A tall, gaunt man with haunting eyes in sagging circles, he led the Youth Orchestra in summer and the Mammoth Philharmonic in winter. His severity enhanced the warmth of his rare smile. One of the flutists in the Youth Orchestra had only seen it once before he bestowed it on us. During breaks, members of the orchestra talked to us, kidded us and played themes back and forth with us. The point was to vary them to comic effect, which Judy did so well she had us all laughing.

We premiered Uncle Alex’s Concerto in the ZU Auditorium in early August. Some came from as far away as Mammoth and many from Mapelton, including the Bingles and both of my families. Seats had been reserved for them on the front row, where Millie and Dad sat on either side of Midge with Rex and Maggie at one end. When Judy and I walked out on the stage followed by Maestro Kakxis, the contrast between her size and mine mingled laughter with the applause, which thundered. As I looked around between bows, I saw a sea of faces and no empty seats. Judy and I had never faced a challenge like that, but it drove us to do or die. I knew we would do as soon as we began to play. Every time our eyes met, we inspired in each other the degree of self-confidence that usually takes ten years of experience. I wonder if either of us could have met the challenge of playing a concerto alone. Although we were perfoming, the music swept us along and what an exhilerating ride! Maestro Kakxis’ eyes were launching every attack so precisely that the harmony between the orchestra and us even impressed Bishkin,

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as he admitted in his review of the performance. During the finale, I regretted that we would be finishing so soon. Once we had and I had lowered my flute, I felt drenched with sweat that I hadn’t even felt during the performance. Suddenly, the audience was clapping, standing up, shouting “bravos!” Even Midge’s mouth was open. Offstage, after our initial bows, Judy took Uncle Alex’s hand and led him out on the stage as Maestro Kakxis and I followed. This time even Midge was on her feet clapping and laughing.

A second performance was scheduled for the Mapleton Auditorium, which boasted twice the seating capacity of the ZU Auditorium. The last available seats sold the day after the concert in Concordia and no wonder because of the reviews! Instead of damning with faint praise, Bishkin praised us with faint damnation. He founded the latter on the evidence that the talent of child prodgies sometimes faded when they grew up. On the day before our second performance, Judy and I met with the orchestra, Maestro Kakxis and Uncle Alex for a practice session in the Mapleton Auditorium. We needed to accustom ourselves to the accoustics, different from those in Concordia. It was an older auditorium with many columns and statues, which obstructed the view from some of the seats, but also the sound, which had the effect of enriching it. During a break, I was talking to the flutists and the piccolo player in the orchestra, while Judy left and disappeared backstage. Since everybody knew where she was going, nobody paid any attention. But she hadn’t returned when Maestro Kakxis called us back on stage. I told him about Judy and he sent his assistant to get her. After a few more minutes, she hadn’t returned, so I hurried backstage. At the women’s restroom, I pushed the door open and looked inside. The assistant was in the middle of the washroom talking excitedly on her cellphone. Judy was sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, holding a bloody left hand with her right, rocking back and forth and moaning a dreadful little moan. Pain distorted her face. I sat down beside her, threw my arm around her, she snuggled up to me and I could feel her trembling. Blood had bespattered ____________________________________________________________________

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her clothes and a trail of drops led across the floor to one of the washbasins on the opposite side. The assistant untied a handkerchief around her upper left arm for a while and blood oozed from under Judy’s right hand. A man came with a first-aide kit, squatted beside her and asked gently:

“ Let me see it... Please! I can’t do anything unless you let me see it.”

“ Let him see it, Judy,” I whispered in her ear. She opened her right hand and the ring finger on her left hand hung limply and loosely from a break under the ring, which had been smashed into the flesh.

Consternation. First Judy’s parents and then the medics tried to separate us, but Judy held on to me struggling and kicking, so they gave up. We were all afraid she would break her finger off completely. One of the medics started to sedate her, but she avoided his needle and he was afraid it might snap. I picked her up, carried her to the ambulence and, inside, laid her down on the bed. How little she weighed! All the way to the hospital and even to the room where they put her, she held on to me with her good arm and I held her tight with mine. Only when I asked her to let the nurse sedate her did she let go. After some probing to find one of her tiny veins, the needle slipped into it, she ignored the pinch and soon she was unconscious. The attendant, the nurse and the intern were trying to persuade me to leave, but it took me a few minutes to tear myself away. I will never forget that inert little body with that big dressing at the end of the arm. Her family and both of mine, including Midge, even Maggie and Rex, were waiting in the lounge, all with their eyes on me. Uncle Alex rushed up with tears in his and hugged me into his enormous belly. I was standing there in an unsteady trance as the others give me their hug, a kiss on the cheek or a pat on the back. I even got a tender look and a peck on the cheek from Midge, who seemed almost sincere. That was when I first began to wonder who had smashed Judy’s finger and why. I kept telling myself it couldn’t have been Midge.

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A sad older detective named Johnson appeared followed by an eager younger one and he asked me if was Felix Campbell. They took me to a small room intended for conversations between a doctor, his patient and the patient’s next of kin. Johnson asked me to tell them what I had witnessed and done. Once I had finished, he questioned me tactfully but persistently about who I thought might have smashed Judy’s finger. They must have seen the hesitation in my face: on one hand, the only possible suspect I could imagine was Midge; on the other, I couldn’t admit even to myself that she might have done it. How could she have gone from disturbing a concert to mutilating a child musician? Judy’s testimony appeared the next morning in The Vigilant. She had been in a cubicle in the restroom, when someone entered the one next to hers. As she was leaving her cubicle, that person had come up behind her and thrown a sack over her head. Then she had grabbed her around the waste, pinning her arms to her sides. Judy had torn the sack off, wrenched her arms loose and bit the upper arm of her assailant, who must have been a little girl like her. Another one had picked the sack up and jerked it back down over her head. Judy hadn’t been able to see either of their faces. The two of them dragged her to a wash basin and slapped her left hand down on the counter. Then she had felt a heavy blow on her ringfinger and excruciating pain. Struggling to yank the sack off her head, she heard the two assailants leaving the restroom. A hard blow with something heavy and flat had driven her ring into the flesh of her finger and crushed the bone. The x-rays showed that, if possible, restoration and rehabilitation would be difficult and take years rather than months. The injury jeopardized the career of a musical prodigy who would have performed that evening in the Auditorium. Arnold Peabody, the piccolo player of the Mammoth Philharmonic had offered to substitute for Judy, so the concert could still take place. Yet I, the Bingles, Uncle Alex and Maestro Kakxis all agreed that playing the concerto without Judy would only show her that we didn’t need her. We all signed an e-mail message to Mr. Peabody thanking him and explaining our decision.

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I had gotten up early that morning to read The Vigilant. While I was reading about Judy, Mitch, whom I had woken up, came down, then Dad, who had heard him, then Millie, awakened by Dad. I was reading the article to them and they were making comments, when I came to Judy biting the upper arm of her assailant.

Millie, grimly: “Midge was wearing long sleeves at supper.”

We all looked at each other. That August was as hot as the others.

Millie stood up: “Everybody come with me. I need witnesses.”

We followed her upstairs and into Midge and Fragra’s room. Midge was turning away from us to pretend that she was asleep. Millie grabbed her by her near arm and sat her up. Fear and anger distorted Midge’s face. Millie reached for her other arm, Midge twisted away from her, Millie slapped her and Midge raised that arm to ward the blow off. We all saw two convex rows of little bruises on her upper arm. Millie shooed us out of the room so she could get Midge dressed. Dad went down to the basement and came back up with his hammer wrapped in a rag. As Midge came downstairs followed by Millie, he showed it to her. She collapsed and rolled down the last steps to the floor. Millie slapped her back to consciousness, took her to her car with the hammer and drove to the central police station. Even more sadly than before, Johnson assured her that Midge would be treated as gently as her age required. A judge released her on bail pending trial in juvenal court.

That same morning, Judy’s parents drove her to MU Hospital in Mammoth, where a distinguished hand surgeon and his team began to treat her. Such a tiny finger couldn’t have mobilized such resources very often. By then, the ring had been cut loose and found its way into my pocket. What a miserable little hunk of crushed metal and broken glass! I vowed to replace it with one in gold with a diamond and an emerald. John and I shared a room in the same hotel as the Bingles and, in the lobby, we ran into

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Uncle Alex, who was staying there too. He was going to compose a suite for Judy, so various ensembles from the Youth Orchestra could play it for her in her room. He had already made the arrangements. That’s how The Get-Well Suite originated. Unfortunately, these mini-concerts made a contrasting impression on her. They made her happy as she listened because she loved the music. Who doesn’t? But they made her sad after the musicians had left, because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to play any more herself. I knew that, if I played for her, it would upset her because she couldn’t play with me. I was visiting her every day in the convalescent center where she was staying between operations and therapy sessions. We talked, listened to the radio and CDs, read, watched TV and DVDs, took walks. She was always holding my left hand in her right. How small, warm and affectionate it felt! It would shake when something excited her. I tried to overcome her sadness, but I never succeeded.

The surgeon had told Judy and her parents that he and his associates needed two weeks to restore and rehabilitate her finger enough so she could go home. By then, he would also be able to tell them whether they thought she could eventually recover its previous strength and flexibility. Although he had only invited her and her parents, she insisted on bringing me and she held my hand as if she were afraid somebody might take me away. Better at surgery than talking to his patients and their families, the surgeon faced the additional difficulty of encouraging a little girl who desperately needed her finger. He did his best and encouraged her to do hers, but he had to admit that he didn’t think her finger would completely recover. She squeezed my hand so hard it hurt, it was shaking and I could see her chin trembling in the corner of my eye. Since John drove me back to Mapleton after that interview, I heard the rest of the story on Channel Eight that evening. During a final therapy session that afternoon, Judy excused herself to go to the bathroom. She hadn’t returned after five minutes, so the therapist went looking for her and found her lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom of a stairwell.

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When Dad told me, I heard a scream that I didn’t even recognize as my own. Suddenly, I was scrambling upstairs and I went through Midge’s door as if it weren’t there. Dad found me slugging her against the wall. He threw his arms around me, pinning mine to my sides, while Midge slumped to the floor, sobbing and heaving. Millie rushed her off to her dad’s and asked him to let her stay with him for the time being. Johnson coaxed Midge into exposing her accomplice, an orphan at St. Polly’s named Stella, but they accused each other of striking the blow that crushed Judy’s finger. During the trial, the sisters’ lawyer accused Midge of that as well as leading the assault and corrupting Stella. Under cross-examination, however, the mother superior of St. Polly’s had to admit that Stella had given the sisters a lot of trouble. The lawyer hired by Midge’s dad tried to shift most of the blame to Stella, while the one who represented Millie and the Bingles admitted Midge’s primary guilt, but pleaded in favor of a lenience that would encourage her rehabilitation. The prosecutor explained her crime by resentment over what Midge saw as my alienation of her brother’s and mother’s affection for her. Judy who lavished such affection on me was the convenient victim of her revenge. I almost stood up and shouted:

‘ Midge was jealous of Judy!’

Yet none of the lawyers objected to the prosecutor’s interpretation. Nobody thought a nine-year old girl might covet an twelve-year old boy. The prosecutor also claimed that the music we were playing, which Midge hated, had contributed to Mitch and Millie’s alienation from her. The ring attracted her attention to the finger helping to play that music, so smashing that finger seemed like justice to her. I would have rectified this argument by declaring that Midge hated the music we were playing because it united us and excluded her. Unfortunately, none of the questions that the prosecutor and the lawyers asked me while I was on the stand justified such testimony. We all denied that Millie, Mitch and I had neglected Midge; on the contrary, Midge had avoided us despite our attempts and ____________________________________________________________________

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especially Millie’s to overcome her isolation. The sisters’ lawyer claimed that Midge had mutilated the victim, while Stella had merely helped to restrain her. Midge had paid Stella $37.23. The prosecutor warned the court against conflation of indigence with innocence. Stella had been subject to the influence of Catholic nuns. In summing up, he recommended two years for Midge and six months for Stella. Unconvinced, the judge sentenced Midge to one year and Stella to three months in the Purvis Juvenal Center in Upper Creek.

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