A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi (classic literature books txt) 📕

two years ago, and I still have trouble getting up in the morning. Your music moves me. It expresses the joy and the pain of love.’” Dicey glanced up to see if Miriam was listening, then continued. “‘You probably didn’t expect all this attention, and perhaps you didn’t even want it. Still, I hope you’ll speak out as well as play. Speak for all of us who’ve lost someone and don’t have the courage to speak for ourselves.’” She looked up. “Don’t you see, Miriam? You’re making a difference.”

The words moved Miriam more than she wanted to admit, but she shook her head. “It’s lovely, Dicey, but it doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything.” Dicey stood on the step above her, earnest as a high priestess. “Not everything can be controlled. You, of all people, should understand that you do not squander life! You embrace it! Even when it doesn’t look the way you think it’s supposed to look.”

“Social media is not life!” Miriam wove her fingers into her hair, praying for patience. “Look. I’ve been where you are. Trust me, I know not everything can be controlled. But I have the right to guard what little I have left.”

“You’ve never been where I am,” Dicey said. Her brown face looked pale. “You never had to contemplate doing this”—she rested her hands on her stomach—“alone!”

“You wanna bet?”

Dicey’s mouth hung open, her next sentence stopped, half formed.

Miriam turned away and started down the stairs. She could feel the whole gloppy mess bubbling up. Maybe if she went fast enough, she could outrun it. The wind whipped her face, but it wasn’t loud enough to bury the sound of Dicey calling her name, wheezing as she followed.

Then Dicey shrieked. Miriam wheeled, cursing her own selfishness. The younger woman hadn’t fallen, but she was folded over the red railing that bisected the stairs, clinging to it as she tried to catch her breath.

Miriam ran back up and caught hold of her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, honey.” She fumbled in Dicey’s bag for a bottle of water and handed it to her.

Dicey coughed hard, as if trying to expel her very lungs. She spit the results in the shaggy grass adjacent to the stairs. Miriam winced and looked away.

Dicey gripped her arm. “What did you mean, ‘you wanna bet’?”

Miriam swallowed. She felt very aware of the ground on which she stood: a veritable mountain, built one basketful of dirt at a time. Like the mountain of lies she’d built her adult life on.

“I wasn’t married when I got pregnant either,” she said. “I was terrified. I know exactly how it feels to think you’re going to be doing it on your own.”

A wind gust peppered them with dust. Dicey turned her face away until it passed. “Miriam, that makes no sense. Everything you ever said about Teo, he’s not the kind of guy who’d—”

“Teo wasn’t the twins’ biological father.”

The words disappeared into the great open space, swirling upward on the wind, as if taken by the ghosts of all the Native Americans who’d lived and worked and died in the shadow of this giant terraced mound.

Dicey gaped at her. “Then who …” She stopped, then said hesitantly, “Gus?”

Miriam nodded.

She could see Dicey spinning out the implications of this revelation. “Wow. No wonder you’ve been so freaked out about him.”

Miriam had lived with the weight of this secret for so long, she felt off-balance without it. She gripped the railing, focusing on the edges of peeling paint to ground herself.

Voices approached, a man and woman walking hand in hand. They fell silent, nodding and smiling at Miriam and Dicey as they passed.

Dicey waited until they were out of earshot. “So Teo … knew?”

“Of course.”

“What about the kids?”

Miriam’s throat closed up. “No,” she said softly. “I was too scared.”

The moment lengthened, the sun warming the top of her head. She’d been angry so much the past year—the inside of her chest like a volcano under pressure, waiting to blow. But shame was different. Shame felt cold. Cold and hard, and capable of binding her heart so tightly, she struggled to breathe.

“Wow,” Dicey said. “You really do understand what I’m going through, don’t you?” She made a face and shrugged. “Some of it anyway.”

They stood awkwardly, looking at each other, not sure what to say. Miriam had never told anyone: not Becky, not her family, not her kids. From day one, she and Teo had conspired to keep it secret. Yet it seemed right, somehow, to tell this young woman who stood now where she’d once been. Maybe now, Dicey would let her help. Who could say? Maybe Dicey could help her.

Her phone rang again. She slipped it out of her back pocket, her finger moving toward “Silence,” but when she saw who it was, she knew she couldn’t ignore it. “It’s my mom,” she said apologetically.

“I’ll … um …” Dicey pointed down the stairs. “I’ll just wait for you at the car.” She headed on down the windswept stairs and left Miriam alone.

When Miriam was little, she loved spending time with her mom.

Maybe it was because her parents worked, and she spent so much time under Jo’s supervision, but she craved her mother’s attention and approval. Mom gave her little jobs to do, like dusting, which morphed into bigger jobs as she proved herself capable. Eventually, Mom taught her to cook the family recipes handed down through generations of Polish women: pierogi and cabbage rolls and paczki.

She learned not to talk about music; Mom’s eyes always glazed over. Mom liked it better when she talked about what she was learning in math or science. Sometimes they’d stop working so Miriam could write things out on paper and teach them to her mother.

Mom’s antipathy toward music never made sense to Miriam. Mom had a beautiful voice. She’d pull out two ironing boards and let Miriam help her wash, starch, and iron the altar linens for church. They’d sing and sing: old Latin hymns, Glory