terrible smashup with the rough log walls and thick glass that separated us. She had to be going at least thirty miles an hour, and I was sure the impact would kill her.
I found my voice again and cried out just as Caitlin veered away from the lodge with a showy turn to her right, spraying an avalanche of snow at the window that pelted against the panes like a handful of gravel and blotted out my ability to see her. An instant later the spotty white curtain slid off the glass all at once, streaking it with water, and there was Caitlin standing before me, leaning on her ski poles in a studied, casual pose. She met my eyes and gave me a huge, impudent grin.
I swore and shook my fist at her and ran outside, screaming. I ordered her out of her ski boots and marched her back inside and up to our room past a crowd of amused strangers. Arthur and I then took turns yelling at her for nearly an hour, and afterwards she was confined to the lodge for the rest of the vacation, where she had to endure the torture of watching Paul and Jeremy cavort about on the bunny slope without her.
It felt like the right thing to do because of how she had frightened us, but in hindsight I think we were dead wrong to punish her like that. All I allowed her to see was my anger, and she deserved better.
I should also have told her how proud I was. Granted, it was a stupid stunt that almost got her maimed or worse, but she wasmagnificent on those skis, and I wish I had reacted differently. Children sometimes take idiotic risks, but they ought to be forgiven anyway, to honor the sheer audacity required to attempt such things. I wish now I had rewarded her in some way for her courage, or at least applauded her briefly before confining her to her quarters.
My God, she was fearless that day. She was strong, and fast, and as graceful as a hawk plummeting out of the sky, and I’ll never forget it, especially because she’s since lost most of those qualities, and I miss seeing them in her.
But I digress.
Getting back to what I was saying before: my daughter has multiple skills—teaching, writing, painting, cooking, athletics. She’s terrifyingly smart, and she used to be brave, and if she’s not exactly kind, she’s at least capable of mercy on occasion.
But none of that has ever mattered to her.
What Caitlin has always wanted more than anything else is to be a musician. Her heart and soul are stuffed with an almost indecent love of music—especially the meaty, sprawling piano concertos from the Romantic period—and ever since she was a small child, she’s dreamed of one day being able to play Tschaikovsky and Brahms and Chopin. When she’s not teaching, she’s glued to classical music stations on the radio, and she’s a walking library of obscure musicological facts about every composer from Binchois to Stravinsky.
Unfortunately, she’s also the only person in our family with no musical aptitude whatsoever.
I suppose I shouldn’t say
no
musical aptitude; she slogged her way through some semi-difficult repertoire on her flute in high school, and she also managed to play, eventually, one or two medium-level sonatas on the piano that were nearly recognizable as Beethoven and Schubert by the time she performed them. But when your parents are Arthur Donovan and Hester Parker, and your brothers are Paul and Jeremy Donovan, if you aren’t a virtuoso, too, you stick out like a gangrenous thumb.
And she’s never forgiven Arthur and me for that. She wanted ourtalent, and to this very day she seems to believe we somehow deliberately deprived her of it when we conceived her, for no reason but to spite her. Jeremy and Paul, in contrast, have never been the targets of her jealousy; I daresay when you detest your parents as much as she does, you have no rage to spare for something as trivial as sibling rivalry.
C HAPTER 5
“N o, no, no, Miranda.” I lean down and push her right hand out of the way to make room for mine on the keyboard.
I found my voice again and cried out just as Caitlin veered away from the lodge with a showy turn to her right, spraying an avalanche of snow at the window that pelted against the panes like a handful of gravel and blotted out my ability to see her. An instant later the spotty white curtain slid off the glass all at once, streaking it with water, and there was Caitlin standing before me, leaning on her ski poles in a studied, casual pose. She met my eyes and gave me a huge, impudent grin.
I swore and shook my fist at her and ran outside, screaming. I ordered her out of her ski boots and marched her back inside and up to our room past a crowd of amused strangers. Arthur and I then took turns yelling at her for nearly an hour, and afterwards she was confined to the lodge for the rest of the vacation, where she had to endure the torture of watching Paul and Jeremy cavort about on the bunny slope without her.
It felt like the right thing to do because of how she had frightened us, but in hindsight I think we were dead wrong to punish her like that. All I allowed her to see was my anger, and she deserved better.
I should also have told her how proud I was. Granted, it was a stupid stunt that almost got her maimed or worse, but she wasmagnificent on those skis, and I wish I had reacted differently. Children sometimes take idiotic risks, but they ought to be forgiven anyway, to honor the sheer audacity required to attempt such things. I wish now I had rewarded her in some way for her courage, or at least applauded her briefly before confining her to her quarters.
My God, she was fearless that day. She was strong, and fast, and as graceful as a hawk plummeting out of the sky, and I’ll never forget it, especially because she’s since lost most of those qualities, and I miss seeing them in her.
But I digress.
Getting back to what I was saying before: my daughter has multiple skills—teaching, writing, painting, cooking, athletics. She’s terrifyingly smart, and she used to be brave, and if she’s not exactly kind, she’s at least capable of mercy on occasion.
But none of that has ever mattered to her.
What Caitlin has always wanted more than anything else is to be a musician. Her heart and soul are stuffed with an almost indecent love of music—especially the meaty, sprawling piano concertos from the Romantic period—and ever since she was a small child, she’s dreamed of one day being able to play Tschaikovsky and Brahms and Chopin. When she’s not teaching, she’s glued to classical music stations on the radio, and she’s a walking library of obscure musicological facts about every composer from Binchois to Stravinsky.
Unfortunately, she’s also the only person in our family with no musical aptitude whatsoever.
I suppose I shouldn’t say
no
musical aptitude; she slogged her way through some semi-difficult repertoire on her flute in high school, and she also managed to play, eventually, one or two medium-level sonatas on the piano that were nearly recognizable as Beethoven and Schubert by the time she performed them. But when your parents are Arthur Donovan and Hester Parker, and your brothers are Paul and Jeremy Donovan, if you aren’t a virtuoso, too, you stick out like a gangrenous thumb.
And she’s never forgiven Arthur and me for that. She wanted ourtalent, and to this very day she seems to believe we somehow deliberately deprived her of it when we conceived her, for no reason but to spite her. Jeremy and Paul, in contrast, have never been the targets of her jealousy; I daresay when you detest your parents as much as she does, you have no rage to spare for something as trivial as sibling rivalry.
C HAPTER 5
“N o, no, no, Miranda.” I lean down and push her right hand out of the way to make room for mine on the keyboard.
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