Her memories open.
I've done this many times now. I know how to do it. I've learned the shape of moving through a stranger's mind, the way to find the threads that lead where I need them to lead.
I've never been ready for what's in this woman.
The first memory is the simplest one. Jenny at three years old, in a yellow dress, sitting on the kitchen floor with a wooden spoon and a metal mixing bowl. She's hitting the bowl with the spoon and laughing. The woman across from me — younger then, her hair black, her face unlined — is sitting on the floor with her and laughing too. The sound of the spoon on the bowl is small and clear and it fills the kitchen and the mother in the memory thinks:she's musical.
I push gently. The memories shift.
Jenny at five, holding a tiny violin. A quarter-size. The bow is too long for her arm and she's fumbling with it. A man with a doctor's careful hands kneels in front of her and shows her how to hold it. He's gentle. He's patient. He says,Like this, Jenny-ya. Lift the elbow. Like this.And Jenny lifts the elbow.
Jenny at seven, playing a short piece at a recital hall. She's wearing a dress with a sash. The mother is in the audience. The father is in the audience. The father's face is the face of a man watching something he loves doing the thing she was made to do.
Jenny at nine, practicing in her bedroom, the door open, the sound of the violin coming down the hallway. The mother walking past, stopping, leaning her head against the doorframe to listen. The father's study door at the end of the hall is open too. He's listening. He always listens.
Jenny at twelve. A larger violin now. A real teacher. The mother driving her to lessons after school three days a week. The mother sitting in the car in the parking lot for an hour each time, reading or doing crosswords, glad to wait.
Jenny at fifteen, fighting with the father for the first time. The fight is about a summer music camp. She wants to go. The father wants her to take an AP Biology class instead. The fight is short and the father wins. Jenny doesn't go to the camp. The mother sits in the kitchen afterward with her hands on a cup of tea and doesn't drink it.
Jenny at sixteen. Another fight. Then another. The father has begun to talk about medicine. He's begun to talk about it as though it's been decided. The mother begins to notice that Jenny has stopped saying what she wants. The mother begins to notice that Jenny has begun to talk like her father.
Jenny at seventeen.
The senior recital.
The memory unfolds.
The auditorium is small but full. The piano is on the stage and the accompanist is at the piano. Jenny walks out from the wings in a dark dress that her mother bought for her at a department store three months ago. Her hair is pinned up. Her face is calm.
She lifts the violin to her shoulder. She nods to the accompanist.
The first notes come.
The Meditation from Thaïs. Massenet. The mother knows it because the father loves it. The father has played it on the record player in the living room a thousand times. The first time Jenny heard it she was four years old and she sat on the carpet in front of the speaker and didn't move for the entire piece. The mother has the photograph somewhere. Jenny on the carpet, looking up at the speaker. The father had taken the picture.
Jenny plays it now on the stage. She plays it like someone who has given herself entirely to it. The melody rises in the auditorium and the mother in the seat is crying without making a sound and the father beside her is gripping her hand so hard it hurts and his face is wet.
When it's over the audience is quiet for a long second. Then the applause comes. It doesn't stop. Jenny stands on the stage and she's glowing and she looks for her father in the audience and finds him and her smile breaks open the way it used to when she was small.
The father stands up. He's the first one in the audience to stand.
I pull back from the memory for a moment.
I'm still on the kitchen floor of her parents' house in Dundee. The woman is breathing slowly under my hand. Her wrist is loose in my grip. The kitchen is warm and quiet.
I push deeper.
The next memory is the spring of her senior year. The acceptance letters arrive in February and March. Three conservatories. Two state schools with pre-med tracks. The father takes the conservatory letters and puts them in a drawer in his study. He doesn't tell Jenny they have come.
The mother knows. The mother watches him do it and says nothing. The mother has spent twenty years not contradictingher husband in front of their daughter and she doesn't start now. She'll regret this for the rest of her life. She regrets it as I'm sitting on her kitchen floor.
The day Jenny tells them she's chosen the University of Nebraska. The father is so happy he cries. The mother smiles at her daughter and her daughter smiles back and the conservatory letters are still in the drawer in the study and neither of them mentions them.
Jenny at nineteen, home for Christmas. Different. Tired. Thinner. The mother sees the violin case in her room and notices it hasn't been opened in months. The mother doesn't ask why.
Jenny at twenty, home for spring break. Worse. She comes down to breakfast late. She doesn't laugh at her father's jokes. She doesn't bring the violin home.
The phone call. Jenny's voice on the line.I can't do this anymore.The father in the kitchen with his hand over his eyes. The mother taking the phone from him and saying —Come home, sweetheart. Come home. We'll talk.Jenny saying —I'm not going to be a doctor.The father in the background —Don't you dare. Don't you dare quit. Not after everything—