Never a Hero

reason, it had never occurred to me to blame her for that fact. I’d always subscribed to her view that I’d wronged her, or at the very least, that the universe and biology had wronged her. But I’d never blamed her. Even when I’d realized that most of my stuttering seemed to hinge upon her and her reaction to it, I hadn’t ever felt she was in the wrong.
    Why was that?
    Nick and June were still talking, discussing some cousin who had come home from college pregnant, and I found myself back at Regina’s piano, idly playing as I contemplated my relationship with my mother until June bounced in and sat on the bench next to me.
    “Teach me,” she said.
    “I d-don’t know how to play.”
    “You were playing when I came in.”
    I blushed. “Just ‘Frère Jacques.’ It’s the only song I know.”
    “So?” she said, as if it were inconsequential. “Teach me.”
    I showed her the song, but sitting side by side as we were, with our good arms together, our hands were too close on the keyboard. She got up and moved to sit on my left. “Between us, we make a whole player,” she said, not as if it bothered her, but as if she found it amusing.
    We played “Frère Jacques” over and over again, until we were in sync.
    “You guys might want to consider broadening your repertoire,” Nick said from his place on the couch. “That song’s getting old really fast.”
    “You know any songs, hot shot?” she asked.
    “There’s music in the bench.”
    June and I looked at each other, intrigued. Without saying a word, we both stood up and turned to lift the lid. The inside was full of music books.
    “Intermediate, intermediate, intermediate,” June mumbled as she looked through them. “Aha! This one says beginner.”
    We closed the bench and sat back down, side by side. She opened the book to a page in the middle, and we stared down at it.
    “Damn,” she said. “Somehow, I thought beginner would be a bit easier than this.” She looked over at me. “You know how to read music?”
    “Sort of. I did two years of band in junior high.”
    “Me too!” she said. “What did you play?”
    I held up my right hand. My only hand. “Guess.”
    She put her finger on her chin, tipping her head as she thought. “Either trumpet, or percussion.”
    “Not even percussion, per se. Bass drum. On every single song.” With only one hand, I hadn’t ever been able to play the snare drum or timpani well enough to beat out the other kids. “I did get to play bells on a couple of the easy songs. But ninety percent of the time, it was bass drum. I got tired of doing nothing but hitting that big drum every first and third beat. How about you? What did you play?”
    She held up her one good hand and wiggled her fingers. “French horn.”
    Behind us, Nick snorted. “Yeah, she made this huge stink about being allowed to play. Talked my parents into buying her her own horn, then she quit after only two years.”
    “Brass instruments are gross,” she said, more to me than to him. “I gagged every time I had to clear the spit valve.” She looked back down at the book in our laps. “I know this is a C,” she said, pointing to the notes.
    “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” I recited, pointing to the treble clef.
    “The spaces in the bass clef are All Cars Eat Gas.”
    We both looked up at the piano in front of us. “So, which one’s C?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
    I slumped, feeling defeated, although I couldn’t have said why. It wasn’t as if I’d expected to pull out music and be able to play it. Still . . .
    “Hey!” June said. “We should take lessons together like this! You playing right hand, and me playing left. How hard can it be?”
    Pretty fucking hard, was my first thought. “Are you serious?”
    “Why not?”
    “That’s enough,” Nick said, standing up from his spot on the couch. “Let’s go out to dinner before you try to recruit Owen for the London Symphony Orchestra.”
    “Killjoy,” she said, but she dropped the subject.
    I hadn’t thought ahead to how it would be at the restaurant, June and I both walking in together. The hostess did a fast double take, but quickly recovered. It was the young man who showed us to our table who couldn’t seem to stop staring. June looked right at him as we sat down. Her gaze was as piercing as Nick’s often was.
    “Shark attack,” she said. She pointed at me. “Him too.”
    The kid’s eyes widened. He looked back and forth between