Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [83]
As I’m gathering up my lunch garbage, a little kid toddles up to my bench. Her mother calls to her, tells her to come back. She stops, swaying a bit on her legs, like she’s still getting used to them.
She looks at me, her eyes big and solemn, then takes a few wary steps in my direction and thrusts her fist out at me. She’s clutching something in it.
“Hey there,” I say to her. “What have you got?”
She uncurls her fingers one by one, until I can see it, lying flat on her fat little palm.
A feather, small and brown. From a sparrow.
40
“I heard from Dr. Becker today,” Dad says.
I stop what I’m doing, which is Photoshopping a nose ring onto Beethoven, and look up.
“What did he say?”
“That your mother’s doing a bit better. She’s tolerating the new drugs. She’s eating and she’s participating in group therapy.”
“Did he say if we can talk to her yet?”
“He said give it another day or two.”
“Okay,” I say agreeably.
Sure. Why not? In fact, I’ll give it two—Saturday and Sunday. But on Monday I’ll be at the hospital. And then Dr. Becker will need every security guard in the place to keep me from talking to her.
“How are you doing on your outline, Andi?” he asks. “Are you making progress?”
“Yeah, I am. I’ve got a first draft. It still needs work, but it’s a start. And I’ve got a good chunk of the intro,” I say, smiling.
“That’s great,” he says, smiling back.
“Yeah,” I say. “How’s the testing going?”
“Quite well, actually. We’re hoping for results by Monday.”
“Cool,” I say, smiling even harder. It makes my face hurt.
“There’s going to be a dinner on Wednesday. At the Élysée Palace. You could come. If you wanted to,” Dad says.
“Wow. Yeah. The only thing is, I’ve got a plane ticket for a flight on Sunday night. Remember?”
“Oh. Right. Are you going to be finished with your outline by then?”
“I am.”
“And it’s going to be good?”
“I think it is.”
He nods, turns his attention back to his laptop. I do the same. Dad got home early tonight. We ate some takeout Thai food with Lili. Afterward, she went to work in her studio, and Dad and I took over the dining room table. Now he’s sitting at one end and I’m at the other. We’ve both been working quietly for hours. Not fighting. Which is good. All I have to do is get through tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday without another big blowup.
I finish with the nose ring and decide to give Ludwig some green hair, too. It suits him. He’ll make a good visual in the intro. I’ve already extracted the measures I needed from the Allegretto of his seventh symphony and mashed them up with a chunk of the Stones’ “Paint It Black” to give an example of my premise. It nicely illustrates an A minor-E7/C-G7 parallel harmony. I also recorded myself on my cell phone’s camera, explaining how Malherbeau’s use of A minor in several of his earlier works likely influenced the Allegretto. I sent the clip to my e-mail and imported it to PowerPoint. The quality’s lacking a bit, but it’ll do to show Dad. When I get home, I’ll redo it on St. Anselm’s video equipment.
I finish with Ludwig and log off. I’m beat. I’ve been working like mad ever since I talked Yves Bonnard into letting me back into the library. Begged him to let me in, actually, promising on my life that I’d be mindful of others and nondisruptive. I photographed Malherbeau’s papers all afternoon, came home, and started on my outline as soon as I finished dinner. I banged out a rough draft by eight, then worked on the introduction.
I think I’m actually going to do this. I’m going to be done with both my outline and intro by tomorrow night—in plenty of time for Dad to read it and sign off.
I tell him goodnight now, scoop up my stuff, and head to my room. As soon as I get there, I dump my bag out on my bed and paw through everything, searching for Virgil’s CD. I’ve been wanting to listen to it