Birthright

single window, a rock-hard bed and her own churning thoughts.
    She dropped down on the bed, opened the shoe box. She didn’t want to read another letter. She was compelled to read another letter.
    This time she plucked one at random.
Happy birthday, Jessica. You’re five years old today.
    Are you happy? Are you healthy? Do you, in some primal part of your heart, know me?
    It’s such a beautiful day here. There’s just that faintest hint of fall in the air. The poplar trees are beginning to go yellow, and the bush in front of Grandma’s house is fire-red already.
    Both your grandmothers came by this morning. They know, of course they know, that this is a difficult day for me. Nanny and Pop are talking about moving down to Florida. Next year maybe, or the year after. They’re tired of the winters. I wonder why some people want summer all year round.
    Grandma and Nanny thought they were helping when they came over, chattering and full of plans for the day. They wanted to take me out. We’d go to the outlets, they said. The outlets over in West Virginia, and we’d start our Christmas shopping. We’d have lunch.
    I was angry. Couldn’t they see I didn’t want to go out? I didn’t want company or laughter or outlet malls. I wanted to be alone. I hurt their feelings, but I didn’t care.
    I don’t want to care.
    There are times all I want to do is scream. Toscream and scream and never, never stop. Because today you’re five years old, and I can’t find you.
    I baked you a cake. An angel food cake and I drizzled it with pink icing. It’s so pretty. I put five white candles on the cake, and I lit them and sang happy birthday to you.
    I wanted you to know that, to know that I baked you a cake and put candles on it for you.
    I can’t tell your daddy about it. He gets upset with me, and we fight. Or worse he says nothing at all. But you and I will know.
    When Doug came home from school, I cut him a slice of it. He looked so solemn and sad as he sat at the table and ate it. I wish I could make him understand that I baked you a cake because none of us can forget you.
    But he’s just a little boy.
    I haven’t let you go, Jessie. I haven’t let you go.
    I love you,
    Mama
    As she folded the letter again, Callie imagined Suzanne lighting candles, singing “Happy Birthday” in an empty house to the ghost of her little girl.
    And she remembered the tears on her father’s cheeks that afternoon.
    Love, she thought as she put the box away, was so often thorny with pain. It was a wonder the human race continued to seek it.
    But maybe loneliness was worse.
    She couldn’t stand to be alone now. She’d go crazy if she stayed alone in that room for much longer. She had her hand on the door when she stopped herself, when she realized where she’d been going.
    To Jake, she thought. Next door to Jake. For what? To crowd out the pain with sex? To block off the loneliness with shoptalk? To pick a fight?
    Any of the above would do the job.
    But she didn’t want to go running to him. She pressed her forehead on the door. She had no right to go running to him.
    Instead, she opened her cello case. She rosined her bow, settled into the spindly chair. She thought Brahms, and just as she laid the bow on strings, she reconsidered.
    She slanted a look at the wall between her room and Jake’s.
    Just because she couldn’t go running to him, did that mean she couldn’t make him come running to her?
    What was one more cop-out, in the big scheme?
    Even the idea of it cheered her up enough to have her smiling, perhaps a bit wickedly as she struck the first notes.
    It took only thirty seconds for him to pound a fist on the adjoining wall. Grinning now, she continued to play.
    He continued to pound.
    A few seconds after the pounding on the wall stopped, she heard his door slam, then the pounding started on hers.
    Taking her time, she set her bow aside, braced her instrument on the chair and went to answer.
    He looked so damn sexy when he was pissed.
    “Cut it out.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Cut it out,” he repeated and gave her a little shove. “I mean it.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And watch who you’re shoving.” She shoved him back, harder.
    “You know I hate when you play that.”
    “I can play my cello if I want to play my cello. It’s barely ten o’clock. It’s not bothering anyone.”
    “I don’t care what time it is, and you can play until dawn, just not that. ”
    “Oh, now you’re a music