The Truth of Me

For Bob

      
Dedication

      
Epigraph

  
1. All About Me

  
2. The Quirky Quartet

  
3. Maddy

  
4. Small Truths

  
5. Alpha

  
6. A Walk with Ellie

  
7. Up the Hill and into the Woods

  
8. The Breathing of Animals

  
9. Cranky Tom

10. Friends

11. Shooting Stars

12. The Truth of Me

      
About the Author

      
Back Ad

      
Also by Patricia MacLachlan

      
Credits

      
Copyright

      
About the Publisher

This is a true story. The truest story ever.

You may not believe it. Your loss.

But it's true.

I have a witness.

M
y name is Robert. There are many Roberts before me—a family of Roberts. There are my uncles, my great-uncles, a grandfather and a great-grandfather, and on and on. I think of all those Roberts when I go to the ballpark and see a line of men waiting to go to the bathroom.
All those Roberts
.

I am an only child.

My parents call me Robert, and when they do, I feel like a child dressed up in grown-up clothing. I'd rather be called Rex or Bud or Duke.

Once I asked them if they would please have another child.

My mother said, “Why would we want another child? We have you.”

How dumb is that.

They did get me a dog from the shelter: a brown hound mix named Eleanor—Ellie for short. Ellie surprised us all by being obedient. She does everything we ask. Someone trained Ellie very well and then let her go. That makes me sad. Why would anyone do that?

Ellie is my best friend. Actually, Jack and Lizzie from my class are good friends, too. But they have gone to summer camp, off to swim in icy lake waters on cold mornings, to go on long hikes and forget their water bottles, to make lanyard bracelets that will unravel. They would rather go to Maddy's house with me.

So Ellie and my grandmother Maddy are my two best friends for the summer. Most kids are best friends with their dogs. Not all kids are best friends with their grandmothers. But I am.

My parents are musicians. My mother, I think, likes her violin better than she likes me. At least she spends more time with her violin than with me. But that is the way of musicians, Maddy tells me.

“That's my fault, Robbie. I gave her a quarter-size fiddle when she was seven years old to keep her from telling me what to do all the time,” says Maddy.

My father (yep, named Robert) is a composer and violist. He has four pianos. There's a very big Steinway that I played under when I was little—I used to hide my glasses of milk there because I didn't like milk. The milk curdled and was cleaned up by the housekeeper much later. She never told my mother. Maybe she didn't like milk either. My father has two baby grand pianos, too, and a spinet—and a keyboard for traveling. Maddy says he is “overequipped.”

Maddy calls me Robbie, which I like. And she makes my parents nervous because of the stories she tells.

I make my parents nervous, too. Which is another reason I love my grandmother.

In school we had to write a description about an actual event we witnessed. This is what I wrote about my mother auditioning a second violinist to play in her string quartet.

AUDITION OVER

My teacher, Miss Cross, laughed a lot when she read it. But she didn't think it was true. Often my teachers don't think what I write is true.

Maddy read “Audition Over” and laughed, too. But she knew it was true. She is my mother's mother, and she knows.

My parents don't exactly trust Maddy. That is, they don't trust all that she says. They whisper and murmur about her, wondering if she's going “over the edge,” as my mother puts it. Once my mother called Maddy's doctor, Henry, to tell him what she thought. I know all this because I know pretty much everything.

I know Maddy says she has lots of animal friends in the woods. I know she says she once shared corn bread with a bear, the two of them sitting on a log.

But I also know something my mother and father don't know.

Maddy has powers all her own. Powers that other people don't have.

Jack and Lizzie know this, too. They have met Maddy.

“Maddy has gifts,” says Lizzie.

“Do you mean magic?” I ask.

“No. Gifts,” says Lizzie. “That's different. Remember when she was here and the birds came down from the trees to see her?”

“And a fox came?” says Jack. “It came right up to her? The animals seem to know that she is safe.”

“They want to be close to her,” says Lizzie. “That's her gift. They trust her.”

I don't care if Maddy tells stories.

Lizzie and Jack don't care if she tells stories.

But my parents care.

And my parents are very nervous.

T
here is, at last, a new second violinist for my mother's string quartet. He is an unlikely choice, to look at him. He wears boots and cutoff jeans and has several tattoos on his arm, including one that says
PLAY, BABY, PLAY
! His name is David Chance, an interesting name since he takes a big “chance” playing with my mother. And though I can tell my mother does not approve of his clothes, her eyebrows rise with happy surprise when he begins to play.

My father is playing viola today. Marybeth, the wild-haired cellist, is going to have a baby, though you can't tell behind her cello.

My mother is annoyed with Marybeth for having a baby, I can tell. It means my mother will have to find another cellist. I think it is Marybeth's business if she wants to have a strange-looking, wild-haired baby of her own.

They are an odd bunch, I think. They are called the Allegro Quartet when they play concerts. I call them the Quirky Quartet.

The reason for the new second violinist is that the first one died in the middle of a concert, falling forward slowly into his Mozart music. That disturbed my mother's sense of how things should be. They had to stop the concert, attend to him, carry him offstage, and cancel the concert.

Today they are playing the same Mozart. They come to the soft, sweet place where the second violinist died. I suppose it is better to die in a nice, slow melody rather than a snappy one.

I almost wrote about this event for my teacher, but, for sure, Miss Cross wouldn't have believed it to be true.

They are rehearsing today in our living room before they go off on summer tour and I get to stay with Maddy. Ellie is half in love with David Chance, leaning against his leg, looking up at him as he plays.

David reaches down and scratches Ellie behind an ear, and my mother frowns. David knows she is frowning. He winks at me. He smiles brightly at my mother and plays so beautifully that she can't frown anymore.

They play and stop to talk about a note that they all hold together. Then they play again. Ellie lies down on David's foot with a sigh. She rolls over on her back. Soon, when the music reaches a crescendo, Ellie will “pass gas,” as my mother puts it; and they will have to pick up their music and stands and flee to the porch to play.

Until then, Mozart and sunlight fill the room.

It is evening. A moon hangs above the meadow outside the kitchen.

My mother is on the phone.

“Yes, he's packed, Mother. We'll drive him over tomorrow. We'll be in a hurry, so we can't stop to visit.”

There is a pause.

“Robert? Pick up the phone. Maddy wants to ask you a question.”

She watches as I pick up the hallway phone. She doesn't hang up. I can hear her breathing.

“Robbie? Are you bringing Ellie?” asks Maddy.

“Yes,” I say. “Is that all right?”

I move back in the hallway and look at my mother, still listening on the phone. She sees me but doesn't hang up.

“Is she friendly with other animals?” asks Maddy.

“Very,” I say. “She likes all dogs, and cats, and some rabbits that come around. Except for squirrels,” I add. “She chases squirrels.”

“We'll have to work on that,” says Maddy.

Work on that?

Still my mother listens.

“I'll call you back,” I say, suddenly angry.

I hang up the phone and go into the kitchen, where my mother still holds the phone. I walk up to her and take the phone out of her hand and hang it up.

“You forgot to hang up,” I say to her.

She frowns at me, but I am used to that.

My father calls to her from the other room.

“Judith? Are you taking a case of bows?”

She turns and leaves without saying anything.

I pick up the phone and dial Maddy's number.