The Mozart Season by Virginia Euwer Wolff Page A

and they told each other about the dead people and the instruments and they fell in love.
    Deirdre stopped braiding and looked up from the floor at Mommy. They looked at each other for a long time, a look of trying to figure something out. Deirdre had her big long skirt hunched up above her knees and she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. She got a peach from the platter and spread napkins all over her lap. “You’ve got it all, Fleur. House, symphony job, kids, flowers. Parking places. A husband who’s not a jerk.”
    â€œWell, it’s hard work sometimes,” Mommy said. “I mean, what’s a jerk? Everybody’s a jerk sometimes.” I wondered if she was thinking about Daddy calling Deirdre the Queen of the Night. But he was right, in a way: this was the second late night in a row that Deirdre was sitting in the music room where I was supposed to be asleep.
    Suddenly Deirdre screamed: “YYEEAAAGGGHHEEE!” Like that. Everybody jumped. She had her hands over her head the same way she’d had them the night before. Mommy flew down off the piano bench and I felt my arms fly up and out, and we were both making surprised noises and Deirdre’s hair was hanging down the front of her face and she was moaning the way she’d done the night before.
    Somehow, Mommy got inside Deirdre’s hair and put her arms around her and held her. She just held her and rocked her. She was on her knees, holding Deirdre and rocking her back and forth, and I stared at them. I couldn’t see any faces, just hair and shoulders and arms. And Deirdre was making that moaning-sighing sound.
    â€œIt’s done, it’s over,” Mommy kept saying. She was almost humming it. I stared at them. They were like a dance, just there on the floor, rocking, with their faces in each other’s hair. You could have set a metronome by them, rocking back and forth. I didn’t know if I should leave the room, or sit there, or what. I ate some grapes.
    They stayed like that for a long time. Deirdre gradually stopped making the strange sound, and Mommy still kept holding her and rocking her and sort of humming. I looked at the braided rug fringe. In a few minutes they stopped hugging and pulled back and looked at each other for a long time. Mommy said, “Want to go to bed now?” in a very soft voice. Deirdre nodded her head. She picked up her shoes and Mommy leaned over and kissed me good night on my forehead and they went out and closed the door. I took the fruit stuff back to the kitchen and put it in the refrigerator and went to bed on the sofa.
    I watched the leafy shadows on the wall while I tried to fall asleep. I couldn’t get rid of the sight of my mother and Deirdre hugging on the floor and rocking back and forth. Forward and back. Forward and back. A steady rhythm. Not even scary. In fact, the opposite. My mother humming and the sound of both of them breathing.
    Of course I wanted to know what it was about. But at the same time I didn’t. It was like a secret ritual, where they both knew exactly what to do.
    *   *   *
    At breakfast, everybody had closed faces about the night before. They were reading the review of the concert in The Oregonian. Daddy was repeating, “Ms. Moreau’s melt-in-the-mouth vowels” and Deirdre and Mommy were laughing. I read the review. It said, “Deirdre Moreau exerted formidable control and enchanting lyricism.… She wrapped herself around the Saint-Saëns with a bold intimacy that made one humbly grateful to have ears.… She is a genius.”
    I wasn’t sure about the “bold intimacy” part, but it had something to do with the music coming up from inside, and it also had something to do with Mr. Kaplan and Mozart and closing the gap. I said it over several times in my mind. It was connected with what Mr. Kaplan said about danger, but I didn’t know how.
    Deirdre smiled at me. “We