Harmony


When we heard the sound of crunching gravel outside, we knew it was from Uncle's truck. Simon and I leapt for the door but Mama was already there, waiting to greet him with a bowl of corn chowder full of scallion hoops swimming in a yellow pool. You always know if you see Uncle's truck because it's blue like the sky and has Venetian blinds in the windows. Uncle was once an engineer, but he's retired and now he's an inventor.

We were dying to show him the exercise bike we had gotten the week before, when the fitness club where rich people go closed down and had a sale. Minnie saw the bike first and fell in love, throwing her arms around its moon-shaped seat with the plush pushing out through a crack. Mama looked cross but bought it anyway for thirty bucks, making us promise not to ask for anything come Christmas. This was June.

Once we brought the bike home, we couldn't stop admiring it. It was beautiful and had handle bars that were graceful, swan-like. Each wheel was a fan caged in a steel grating. When Simon or Minnie were taking their turns, I would lie next to the fan, leafing through a book, feeling the breeze.

From the very beginning, Minnie insisted on making the bike look respectable, as if we owed something to this machine. The first thing she did was move it next to the only other valuable object we owned, an old Kimball piano that had come with the house. Next, she removed the pink rubber bands that held together heads of broccoli from the supermarket and hung them from the handle. Meanwhile, Simon found orange tissue paper and glued strips to the back so that flames would shoot out. I drew a '4' on loose-leaf and taped it to the front in case we were ever in a race.

Mama would watch us do all this and frown. One time she said to me, "That bike's not going anywhere no matter how hard you try," looking as if she were to blame. Another time: "Your legs aren't even long enough." But I didn't care. The gears were tough, and I pedaled with my toes, pretending I was riding through a deep peat bog, a river, a swamp, dragging wet seaweed and gnarled driftwood behind me.

After long enough, Uncle finally unloaded his lawn mower from the back of his truck and came inside. Simon and I pulled at his unbuttoned sleeves, but he hesitated, and Mama made us leave. Simon went back to slipping corn flakes through the fan's grating while Minnie was riding, which made crackling noises that reminded me of moths being sucked into a car's radiator. This annoyed Minnie, who told him to stop. He turned to me and asked, "What do you think he'll say when he sees it?"

I shrugged, knowing nothing except that Uncle was the smartest person I knew.

The last time we were this excited about getting his opinion was when we used to go scavenging for fossils from the old quarry down by the ravine. We'd bring back a pail full of fossilized shells and dump them into old coffee jars, storing them beside jars of acorns we had collected the previous autumn but which had sprouted tiny ants in the spring.

One day, one of us lifted a flat rock and uncovered a fossil shell that was the color of gold. We immediately fought over who had found it, who could hold it. I remember the way Uncle laughed when he saw the million-year-old shell for the first time, sitting snugly in the center of a pillow we had placed securely on top of the piano. "Silly kids," he had said, taking a quick glimpse, holding the glittery object in his palm. "This rock's been pyritized. Fools gold. It's as cheap as a Hershey's Kiss."

Some time after that the precious shell got lost and we forgot about it. Simon said it slipped through a deep crack and fell underneath the house, maybe to the center of the Earth, and who knows? Maybe it'll be lost for another million years before someone sees it again.

I glanced at the clock now and said to Minnie, "My turn," but she ignored me. "Come on," I said, pulling on the crook of her elbow.

She began pedaling even more furiously and said, "Another mile."

I knew what was happening. Minnie wanted to be seen by Uncle riding the bike. "Show off," I said.

By the time Uncle finally made it over, he was with Mama. She clung on to him as he stood near us. He did not move but had his hands at his waist, looking mighty, like he'd been carved from granite. Mama, with a Pall Mall dangling from her lips, seemed comfortable with her arm looped around his. I did not dare find Unclešs eyes as we all waited for him to pass judgement. Minnie especially kept her head down waiting to be noticed, and all we could hear was her breathing and the mechanical whirl of the fans.

At last Uncle said something: "Any of you play the piano?"

When nobody answered, he lifted the cover off the Kimball, blew away some dust and started fingering the keys. I had never heard anyone play that piano before, never even heard music in this house before, and the notes sounded flat at first, then wonderful as our ears adjusted. Uncle's fingers were like little birds pecking at the keys. I felt so happy I wanted to dance.

Uncle looked up at us and said, "A sonata." He played with his right hand, then lifted his left to show us it was free. "Some day, I might even learn to play harmony." At this he laughed ironically and slapped his leg. We drew closer for a better look. As notes continued to float through the air, we held our breaths so we wouldn't miss a single beat. Then suddenly everything got very quiet, and I realized that even Minnie had stopped to listen.


Sunny Wong