Confusion Is Nothing New Read online

  “Why would anybody throw away a perfectly good piano?”

  “They are not perfectly good,” says Sister. “Most of them aren’t even good.”

  “Ellie,” Mr. Leary calls to me. He’s standing beside a tall bookshelf filled with old magazines and stacks of compact discs. He flips through the pile, finds what he’s looking for, then turns and hands a CD to me. “Here’s that recording. It’s probably your mom’s first professional credit.”

  The CD case is made out of heavy paper and decorated like a hand-drawn chessboard. Three names fill a white square labeled EXTRA VOICES. I read them out loud. “Seamus Brady, Ranking Richard, and Wilma Korkenderfer.” I look up at Mr. Leary. “Wilma and Seamus got married. They’re the ones that started CYNDI LAUPER’S NOT DEAD!”

  “I don’t remember Seamus Brady,” Mr. Leary confesses.

  “You must not have fired him,” says Charlotte, who has crossed the barn to join us. She glances at the CD in my hand. “What kind of name is Ranking?”

  Mr. Leary shakes his head. “It’s a Jamaican nickname. It means ‘well respected,’ but that kid was no more Jamaican than I am. He kept trying to convince me to give everything a reggae beat. Ranking Richard was very annoying, but he was a pretty good singer and a talented horn player too. To tell the truth, I should have listened to that boy. Ska music was the next big thing about a year later.”

  “Whatever happened to Mr. Ranking?” says Charlotte.

  Sister Stephanie exchanges a quick glance with her brother. “One day I will tell you all about Ranking Richard,” she promises. “But not today.”

  “Mr. Leary,” I ask, “why did you leave Wilma’s name on the credits if she’s not actually on the CD?”

  Mr. Leary shrugs. “Music is a tough business. I thought having a credit might help her one day.”

  “That was a good deed,” Charlotte tells him.

  “It wasn’t much,” says Mr. Leary. “It didn’t cost me anything.”

  “See,” I say to Sister Stephanie, who is struggling to pin the hat part of the flying nun costume back on her head. “Good deeds don’t have to cost anything.”

  Sister lifts the big white cowl, which has tilted forward and covered her face. “Good deeds don’t have to come with rewards either.”

  “I didn’t expect any rewards,” I protest.

  “I know that. Now apply those same zero expectations to costs, and I promise you’ll have a much happier life.” She whips the flying nun hat off and flings it onto a nearby chair. “I really hate that thing.”

  Mr. Leary laughs. “My sister isn’t the Buddha quite yet.”

  “Show me a Buddha in a wimple,” says Sister, “and I’ll show you somebody who’s still a long way from nirvana.”

  I tuck the CD into my bag with the Virgin Mary, then wander over to the wall to take a closer look at the pianos. They’re all dented and worn. Several are missing keys. One has a hole in its side that might have been created by a sledgehammer or maybe a shotgun blast. Compared to these, my Lester belongs in Carnegie Hall. I take a seat at one piano that’s got a brick holding up a back corner. I play a couple of quick scales along with a few major chords. Imagine a dying cow singing beached whale song while kicking a set of broken wind chimes. That’s what this piano sounds like.

  “Is that awesome or what?” Mr. Leary asks me.

  “I think it’s more what than awesome,” I say.

  Mr. Leary pulls a chair up to the piano right next to mine. “Every good piano sounds roughly the same,” he tells me. “But no two old pianos ever sound alike. Each one finds its own distinct voice. And when you play them together—”

  He starts plunking out “The Celebrated Chop Waltz,” better known as “Chopsticks,” so I join in.

  “It’s like a choir of frogs and crickets,” he continues. “You wouldn’t think bugs and amphibians could sound good, but they do.”

  Sister Stephanie takes a third piano and starts to play along.

  “You play?” I ask her.

  She gives a little smile. “I can hold my own.”

  We start slowly, but before I know it, the simple waltz, originally written by a sixteen-year-old girl in nineteenth-century Britain, has become a full-on, rocking piano duel between Mr. Leary, Sister, and me. We trade fancy runs and syncopated rhythms and show-off variations. My friends clap and cheer. Daniel provides a Wolf Pack howl. “Aroooo!”

  The action on my keyboard is mushy and dense, so I’m hitting every note with all my strength. Finally, one key actually pops off the piano and clatters to the ground. This makes Mr. Leary laugh so hard that he simply comes to a stop. “I give up!” he cries. “I give!”

  I look at Sister Stephanie, who raises an eyebrow, then nods toward my hands. I look down and see a red streak across a couple of keys. I must have cut a finger on the jagged edge left behind by the broken note. I remember the sign on Sister’s office wall. “Somebody may beat me,” I say, “but they are going to have to bleed to do it.”

  Sister shakes her head and takes her hands away from the piano keys. “You win.”

  “Feroce! Furioso! Fortissimo!” says Mr. Leary, who is still laughing. Feroce, furioso, and fortissimo are piano terms that instruct a musician to play ferociously, furiously, and very, very loud. “You know, you play the same way your mother sang,” he adds.

  “No,” I say a little breathlessly. “I didn’t know.”

  He gives me a big smile. “Now you do.”

  When I get home, I find Dad in the kitchen stabbing a hole in a wall with an old chef’s knife. “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I’m looking for the wooden part behind the plaster.”

  “The stud?”

  “Whatever. It needs to hold up a shelf.”

  “You’re making a shelf?” Despite his ability to make magic with saucepots and frying pans, Dad is not handy when it comes to home repair.

  He finds a pencil and makes a little mark on the wall. “It’s not going to make itself.”

  “Wait till tomorrow,” I say. “We can work on it together.”

  “Now you want to do something together?”

  It’s possible Dad is still angry that I left him alone for Halloween.

  “You’re the cook, not the carpenter.” Thanks to several million how-to videos on YouTube, I’m usually the one in charge of fix-it projects and repair jobs. “Let me help.”

  Dad grabs a hammer off the kitchen table. “Carpenters make things. Cooks make things. I’ve got this, Ellie.”

  I take the hammer out of Dad’s hands. “Birds make eggs, but you wouldn’t ask a parakeet to cook an omelet.”

  “I bet I could teach a crow to grill a burger,” he tells me.

  “I’ll grill you a burger if you let me do the shelf.”

  “I don’t need a burger,” Dad says. “I need pizza. Actually, I need a pizza truck. I found out yesterday that Trinity College is going to offer pizza on wheels in the spring.”

  I don’t understand at first. “Did they steal your idea?”

  Dad shakes his head. “I told my boss about Pizza Alato! about a year ago. He liked it a lot. We’ve been working to make it part of Trinity’s food service program. We learned yesterday that everything’s been approved. Starting next year, Pizza Alato! is going to be at Trinity football games, reunion weekends, homecoming, and special events all over campus.”

  “Wow!” I drop into a kitchen chair. “That’s amazing!”

  Dad takes a seat across from me. “Not only that, I can suggest that they sell the business to me in a few years. I was hoping to tell you all about it when we handed out trick-or-treat candy together.”

  “Oh.”

  He points at the wall where the shelf will go. “I want to make some storage space for the pizza stuff.”

  “Please let me help you with that,” I say again.

  Dad stares at the wall, then turns back to me. “Okay.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dad points at my Good Witch costume.
“Glinda?”

  “Locasta.”

  “Very nice.”

  “We went to Mr. Leary’s house.”

  “Billy Leary?” asks Dad.

  “He’s Sister Stephanie’s brother.”

  “I know that.”

  “He’s our music teacher now.”

  “He used to be a big rock and roll star,” says Dad.

  “He says not so big.” I reach into the trick-or-treat bag I left on the floor. I pull out the CD from Mr. Leary and hand it to my father. “He gave me this.”

  Dad takes it.

  “Wilma Korkenderfer’s name is on it,” I tell him.

  Dad examines the disc, then slides it back across the table. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  Dad shrugs. “Okay.”

  “That’s all you have to say about it?”

  “What do you want me to say, Ellie?”

  “I—” I stop. “I have no idea.”

  “Guess what,” he says. “Neither do I.”

  I take the CD and drop it back into the bag. “It doesn’t matter. She didn’t sing on any of the songs.”

  “Too bad,” Dad says.

  “Do you want to know why?”

  “Not really,” he tells me.

  “Would you listen to the CD if she was on it?”

  Dad actually considers the question. “Maybe. Korky had a great voice.” Dad points at the wood and the tools spread on the floor. “You promise you’ll help me with this tomorrow?”

  “Are you going to change the subject every time I try to talk about her?”

  “I’m not working in the morning, so we can do it first thing.”

  “Fine,” I say. “We’ll put up your shelf, and then I’m going to spend the afternoon with my friends. They’re helping me learn about my mother.”

  Dad reacts as if he’s been punched in the face. “No.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” Dad says. “She didn’t come back when she was alive. She didn’t call back when she was dying. She doesn’t get a triumphant return because she’s dead.”

  “Wait,” I say. “You knew she was dying?”

  “Ellie,” says Dad in an exasperated voice. “I called Seamus when the box arrived.”

  “You know about Seamus?”

  Dad rolls his eyes. “We all grew up together. We all went to high school together. They have a website, for God’s sake. It wasn’t too hard to track them down.”

  “Did you talk to—”

  Dad shakes his head. “Korky was sleeping when I called. I told Seamus not to wake her, but I left a message that I wanted to talk about that box. She never called back. She’d started treatments, and Seamus warned me that they made her very tired. He also told me she was absolutely certain she was going to beat it. Of course she was certain. Korky was always absolutely certain about everything. She probably meant to call back once she got a clean bill of health so she could let me know how she’d won again. Or else she planned to call during her final minutes so we could all play out some kind of dramatic scene filled with apologies and forgiveness. I bet she worked on her last words for weeks. But you know what?”

  “What?” I say.

  “You can’t rehearse the future, and you can’t rearrange the past.” Dad stands. “Korky’s the one who walked out. She could have come back anytime. She didn’t. End of story.”

  I think back to Anya rearranging pictures and scenes on her wall. “I’m really sorry,” I tell my father, “but that’s not how stories work.”

  Dad stares at me for a long moment. Without speaking, he finally turns and leaves.

  “Apparently, Korky isn’t the only one who liked a dramatic scene!” I holler after him.

  I get no reply.

  I reach into the orange trick-or-treat bag, pull out Our Lady of Guadalupe, and set her in the middle of the kitchen table where I’m sure Dad will notice. Maybe she can talk some sense into him.

  It’s barely half past seven when the kabang! of a dropped hammer plus a loud “Dammit!” from downstairs ends my dreams of sleeping late on Saturday. When Dad agreed to build the shelf in the morning, I assumed we’d begin at a more reasonable time. On the other hand, this probably feels reasonable to the man who usually leaves the house before the sun comes up.

  “I’ll be right down!” I shout.

  I find a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and a baseball cap. I don’t see my shoes, so I slip into a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. In the bathroom, I brush my teeth and wash my face as fast as I can, then head downstairs. When I get to the kitchen, Dad’s not there but Our Lady of Guadalupe stands on a brand-new, surprisingly strong-looking shelf looking over the room.

  “Dad?” I holler.

  No answer.

  “Anybody home?” I yell.

  Still nothing.

  I can’t believe he would have left the house without telling me. I open the door that connects the kitchen to the garage. Dad’s car is gone. I turn to the statue of Guadalupe. “So that’s how it’s going to be?” I ask out loud.

  Mary doesn’t answer, so I go back to my room and trade my slippers for a pair of sneakers. While I tie my laces, I glance around my bedroom with everything in its place and a place for everything. Only a week ago, my whole life felt this orderly. Then Wilma Korkenderfer arrived and everything went to pieces. How do people live like this? I think of Anya and her jumbled pile of books and movies and pandemonium. Maybe I need to visit her and ask for a list of chaos survival techniques.

  I stand and glance out my window at Daniel’s house. There’s no sign of movement. Mrs. Field’s car is gone. I’m sure she’s already at work. Daniel could still be asleep, but he’s usually an early riser, so I decide to head across the street. Before I turn away from the window, however, a small green sedan turns into our neighborhood. It passes below my window and heads all the way into the dead end. In the cul-de-sac, the car makes a U-turn and starts coming back down the block. For some reason, it comes to a stop at the end of our driveway. The glare from the morning sun prevents me from seeing inside, but it seems as if the driver might be examining my mailbox.

  Just then, Daniel, wearing lobster-print pajama bottoms and an oversize sweatshirt that says ALWAYS ORGANIC FRUIT, bursts out of his front door. He races toward the street, yelling and waving what appears to be a large green zucchini. Before Daniel reaches the curb, the car pulls away.

  I have no idea what that was about, but at least I know Daniel’s awake.

  I head across the street and find Daniel waiting just inside his front door. “Get in here!” he yells.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Hurry up!” He grabs my shoulder and nearly pulls me off my feet before he slams the door shut.

  Daniel’s house is built according to the exact same plan as mine, but it really couldn’t be more different. A huge TV hangs on the wall of a very messy living room that’s filled with a couple of mismatched couches and several overstuffed chairs. In the kitchen down the hall, the only appliances Mrs. Field uses regularly are the coffeepot, the refrigerator, and the microwave. Upstairs, Daniel’s bedroom holds nothing but a mattress on the floor and bookshelves made from wood planks and cement blocks. Still, this place is as much a home to me as my own house. I drop into one of the chairs. “What’s the emergency?”

  “Mr. DeGroot was here!” he says.

  That gets my attention. “What?”

  “He was cruising down our street.”

  “Was that him in the green car?”

  Daniel nods. “He stopped in front of your house. I chased him away.”

  I glance at a coffee table, where there’s a long green squash that’s as thick as my arm. “With a zucchini?”

  Daniel plops onto an empty couch. “I didn’t have time to find a glockenspiel.”

  “What was he looking for?” I wonder.

  “He was looking for you!” Daniel exclaims. “He wants revenge!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”


  “It’s not ridiculous when the angry man who got fired because of you parks outside your house,” says Daniel.

  “He didn’t actually do anything,” I point out.

  Daniel picks up the zucchini and waves it threateningly. “Thanks to this.”

  “Unless Mr. DeGroot has a serious gourd allergy, I don’t know why he’d run away from a zucchini.”

  “We should tell somebody,” says Daniel.

  “What would we tell them? That our old music teacher drove down our street?”

  “What about the day we were looking for the piccolo?” says Daniel. “He showed up then too.”

  “We were at school. He worked there.”

  “He’d just been fired.”

  “He probably had to clean out his desk.”

  “Is your father home?” Daniel asks me.

  “He’s not home,” I say, “and you’re overreacting.”

  Daniel leans back on the couch and tosses the zucchini straight into the air. The big squash tumbles end over end and then falls straight back into his hands. “Maybe we should call the police.”

  “You watch too much Law and Order.”

  Daniel throws the zuke again. This time he gives it a little too much zip. It hits the ceiling, ricochets off a wall, and nearly knocks me in the head.

  “You’re way more dangerous than Mr. DeGroot,” I say.

  Daniel sits up. “At least call Sister Stephanie.”

  “You’re not that dangerous,” I tell him.

  “Just let her know that we think Mr. DeGroot might be stalking us.”

  “But I don’t think that,” I point out.

  “You can say you think it’s nothing but that I disagree. Also, if we disappear, she should look for our bodies in the cemetery.”

  “Why the cemetery?” I ask.

  Daniel retrieves the zucchini, which now has a big dent in it. He places it back on the coffee table. “Can you think of a better place to hide a dead body?”

  “Good point,” I admit. “Plus, we’re going to cut across the cemetery on our way to Anya’s, so that’s where he’ll probably catch us and kill us.”

  “Not funny,” says Daniel. “When are we going to Anya’s?”

  “How about now?”