Mister Sandman by Barbara Gowdy

forgotten the words, so Marcy supplied them, sliding onto the bench beside her. So then Doris, on the plastic-covered sofa, started singing as well, in her little-girl, offkey voice, and after a few bars Sonja, who’d been lying with her head on Doris’s lap—mainly to oblige her mother to stay put—sat up and joined in, also off-key.
    In the third verse Gordon picked up the lyrics. He had been a choirboy once, a descant. He had a beautiful Bing Crosby bass now, and Doris looked at him and wondered why it was that the best things about the people you loved, the very things you loved them for, could take you off-guard like this. Gordon didn’t enjoy these visits to her mother’s. For starters, the humidity fogged his glasses. But here he was, singing, “Tell how the sparrow that twitters on yonder tree …”
    He made it through all six verses, him and Grandma Gayler. And Marcy softly garbling along and pretending to know the words by piping up at the cadences. Doris kept glancing over at Joan, amazed that she wasn’t covering her ears. When the singing ended, Doris’s eyes were awash. “Well,” she said. “Aren’t we something?”
    Grandma Gayler closed the lid. “So there,” she said and pulled herself to her feet and waddled toward the kitchen.
    “Oh, Mother,” Doris said apologetically. She jumped up to help her with the tea, but Gordon tugged her skirt. He nodded across the room.
    It was Joan. She was walking over to the piano, echoing the squishing sounds her feet made in the drenched carpet. “Hey,” Sonja said, seeing her, and Doris nudged her to be quiet. Marcy though, spun around and cried, “Joanie!” then looked at the others through her misted glasses with their blue, pointy frames.
    Doris touched a finger to her lips. Joan was climbing onto the bench now. She was so small that she still climbed onto chairs frontwards, like a toddler. When she was seated she opened the piano lid.
    “Do you want to hear me play ‘Chopsticks’?” Marcy whispered.
    Joan mooed—No—and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. She held both hands above the keys and clawed them. Marcy giggled at this parody of Grandma Gayler, then glanced guiltily at her mother. Before she had turned back round Joan was picking out “Tell Me the Stories of Jesus.”
    “Holy Geez,” Gordon murmured after the first half dozen bars.
    “Who’s that?” Grandma Gayler called.
    None of them answered. It was as if a bird had flown in and landed on someone’s finger. Grandma Gayler appeared at the kitchen door as Joan clawed her hands above the keys again and started over. This time she added chords.
    “Well bless her heart, who taught her that?”
    “Shh, Mother,” Doris said.
    “Shh,” Joan echoed but went on playing, jabbing bass notes with her left hand and swinging the rhythm.
    Marcy leaned sideways to give her room. Was this a miracle? Marcy was a bit scared.
    So was Doris. That old eeriness she hadn’t felt since the train ride back from the West Coast. Joan’s toy hands were now dancing on the keyboard, all her fingers getting in on the act. Her shoulders were nursing the rhythm like an old lounge lizard’s. They were! And now—this was too much—she was playing “In the Mood.”
    Gordon came to his feet and took a few steps toward her. Doris glanced at him. The ceiling was low and he had to stoop, his head thrust forward. His face had a bright, famished look. Doris got an impression of a papier mâché head wearing glasses, a head composed of hundreds of layers of faces wearing glasses, and the head with the famished look was the innermost and most private one and had punched its way, indecently, through all the others.
    “Gracious me,” Grandma Gayler said. She patted her heart and looked around the room, catching Sonja’s eye. “How long has she been taking lessons?”
    Sonja slowly shook her head. There was a dead composer she was trying to remember. That really famous small one with the white hair.
    Doris,