The fire sputters and needs quick fuel, and so I decide to take the opportunity to burn the decades-old files and papers and other expired and useless documents packed in the oak drawer units that line one wall of the family room. I’ve been secretly eager to get rid of such stuff as canceled checks and mortgage and bank statements, and I’m perversely pleased to find that I’ve kept it all so orderly, which makes the disposal somehow worry-free and simple. I haven’t yet changed into regular clothes, and though my robe is damp in the seat from my swim trunks, I no longer feel chilled in the room. Soon enough the fire is burning fiercely with the sheaves of papers, as too much goes in at once, the flames nearly dying out from the smothering; but then in a combustive rush they begin leaping up and out, to lick the underside of the marble mantel. I’m oddly unconcerned. There is a purity in the startling heat, its crave and intent, and I don’t stop feeding in papers until I come to the folders of the most current documents, which I luckily notice before mistakenly tossing them in. I set them down on the carpet and pull the protective screen before the fire, and I go into the kitchen, where my breakfast is waiting.
I also nearly throw some old photographs into the flames, though not accidentally. This is always a difficult thing to do, even with pictures of no great consequence, which these are. There are scores of them, in rubber-banded shoe boxes, tucked at the backs of the file drawers — insurance shots of the store and its stock and equipment, and then many others of the house and its furnishings, the projects of steady construction of the patio and pool, the hothouse, the reroofing of the garage, and then the various cars and major tools and equipment I’ve owned through the years. I suppose it is the catalog of my life, my being’s fill of good fortune, though what an estate appraiser might accidentally find and think nothing of discarding.
I was never one to keep albums and framed personal pictures, and it was only during the time Sunny lived with me that I used my camera for those reasons. I believe that among the photographs I received from Mrs. Hickey, there’s one of Sunny at the piano, from her first year with me, when she needed a telephone book atop the bench to sit in the right position. Strangely enough, there isn’t, among the boxes I found, a picture of the piano itself, a Baldwin baby grand. The box that Mrs. Hickey gave me I stowed upstairs, not in my room but in the hall table drawer, just outside the empty bedroom. I haven’t looked at the photographs yet, but I can conjure some of them from my memory, images of the two of us, here and there, posing amid the chaos of renovations.
Sunny, I’m afraid, always hated the house. In those days the place wasn’t as composed as it is now, and it seemed every door and molding and cabinet needed replacing, the lights flickering and burning brown, the plumbing fitful and spastic, the old structure nothing more than that, just simply old, and sliding swiftly into a final, dishonorable state. I had bought it on the confidence of the agent (not Liv Crawford, but someone very much like her), who assured me it was a solid investment, and also because my store was just beginning to do a steady business, the nearby county hospital having finally opened, and the land cleared and foundation laid for the large retirement home on Quaker’s Ridge. I paid $45,000 for it, perhaps too much then. Inside, the house was dark and spacious and poorly heated, just the type of creaky, murmuring structure they make up at amusement parks to amuse and frighten guests.
I remember first walking Sunny into the foyer, with all that dark wood paneling that was still up on the walls and ceiling, smelling from the inside of rot and dust, the lights fading now and then, and she actually began to titter and cry. I didn’t know what to do for her, as she seemed not to want me to touch her, and for some moments I stood apart from her while she wept, this shivering little girl of seven. She had learned some English at the orphanage, so I asked her not to worry or be afraid, that I would do my best to make a pleasant home, and that she should be happy to be in the United States and have a father now and maybe a mother someday soon. She kept crying but she looked at me and I saw her for the first time, the helpless black of her eyes, and I could do little else but bend down and hold her until she stopped.
And so after her arrival, it seemed that my every spare moment away from the store was devoted to fixing the house, at first attempting the renovations myself, and then calling in tradesmen, and finally, after disappointments with slow, shoddy work and the high expense, again taking on the projects solo. And there were many projects, too numerous to remember, but one that stands out is the smallest of them, the time I had to change the mirror and vanity in her bathroom upstairs.
I was cleaning the house as always that Sunday morning, vacuuming and dusting and disinfecting the kitchen and bathrooms. Sunny was nearly ten years old, and though she was more than capable of helping, I didn’t think it was right to have her do such things. The house was still a terrible mess, and because I felt there was so much improving to do, it was clear I shouldn’t include my daughter in the mundane drudgeries. My wish, as I had always explained to her, was that she study hard and practice her piano and read as many books as she could bear, and of course, when there was free time, play with her friends from school. A child’s days are too short, and my sense then was that I should let her focus on activities that would most directly benefit her.
And so, besides the major ongoing renovations, I took up general maintenance of the house with the usual care and thoroughness, but as it happened every week something seemed to stall my efforts. Everything would go smoothly until a cabinet door wouldn’t catch, or a hinge began to squeak, or a drain was too slow, and then a vise-like tightness came over me. That time in Sunny’s bathroom, trying to rub out a persistent cloudy stain in the vanity, I somehow cracked the mirror, and my fingers began bleeding from the edges of the spidery glass. I must have kept rubbing and blotting, for it was only some moments later that I realized Sunny was watching from the doorway, her splintered reflection looking up at me.
Her round face, pretty and dark in complexion, was serene and quiet.
“Have you already finished practicing your Chopin?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t hear you. What were you playing?”
“Nocturnes,” she said, staring at my hand. “The ones you like. From Opus Nine and Thirty-two.”
“I must have been vacuuming,” I said, wrapping a rag about my fingers. “Would you play some of them again?”
“Okay. But can I help you now?”
“No, dear,” I said to her, trying to stay the throbbing in my hand, my arm. “Why don’t you play some more? Your teacher wishes that you practice more than you do. You must push yourself. It may be difficult for you to see, but even great talent is easily wasted.”
“Yes.”
“Sunny?”
“Yes,” she said, folding the lacy hem of her green dress for Sunday school, where I would take her in the afternoon.
“Please leave the living room doors open, so the music can travel. And, Sunny?”
“Yes.”
“You should do what we talked about last week. About addressing me.”
“Yes, Poppa,” she said, saying the word softly but clearly.
She went downstairs, and I stood before the broken mirror, waiting for the first notes to rise up the stairs. She began playing Opus 32, 1, a piece she was preparing for an upcoming recital, and one I especially liked. The composition calmed me. Aside from the lyrical, impassioned musings, there are unlikely pauses in the piece, near-silences that make it seem as if the performer has suddenly decided to cease, cannot go on, even has disappeared. These silences are really quite magical and haunting. And just at the moment it seems the pianist has stopped, the lovely notes resume.