May 1955

“You mean the green note?”

Miss Talone hit a key on the piano with a firm finger. “C-sharp—above middle C.”

Brenda Canavan played the D scale backwards and forwards. “Like that?”

Miss Talone nodded. “Good, just like G, but with C-sharp added.” She smiled. “Or, the green note, as you called it.”

Brenda tinkered with the scale, hitting C-sharp with extra pressure. She kicked her legs out as she did, her Mary Jane’s almost reaching the underside of the piano keyboard. She liked the green—it was different than any green she was used to, not like grass or a Coke bottle or the little stones in her mother’s fancy earrings. It appeared in the air in front of her, a delicate blob that faded as the note decayed. There were other colors that came and went as she played the scale, all floating within a wavy wall of brown, like the wood paneling in her dad’s office. As she focused on the notes and their colors, the background faded.

Miss Talone gave her a funny look. “Does the color—calling it green—does that help you remember?”

Remember? Brenda plunked the key again. “It’s just green.”

*****

Miss Talone mentioned “the color thing,” as she called it, to Mrs. Canavan.

“She says C# is green. And other notes are red or blue or whatever.” Her tone was skeptical.

“Really?” Mrs. Canavan thought of the little xylophone in the toy drawer. Its bars were all different colors. “She’s very imaginative.”

Miss Talone’s expression was one of poorly disguised pity. “See you next time.”

Mrs. Canavan began to have an uneasy feeling about all this imagination later in the summer when her husband’s sister was visiting. A ball rolled up to where they were sitting on the lawn, their old-fashioned glasses perched in wire cup holders stuck in the grass. Aunt Florence picked up the ball and handed it to Brenda. Mr. Canavan called out.

“Say thank you to Aunt Florence.”

Brenda’s nose wrinkled. “Thanks, Auntie Broccoli.”

She ran away, throwing the ball to her big brother, Jack.

“It’s that perfume you wear,” Mr. Canavan teased.

Florence was too old to care if an eight-year-old was mocking her. She inhaled her Chesterfield and pointed at Brenda playing on the seesaw.

“You need to watch her.”

Mrs. Canavan scrunched around in her chair. “Is she falling off . . .?”

Florence shook her head. “I’m just saying.”

Later, Mrs. Canavan sat Brenda down in the dining room, away from everyone. Brenda stared at her shoes.

“Brenda Ann, look at me.”

Brenda’s eyes came up to her mother, squatting in front of her.

“It’s not nice to call people names.”

“I didn’t.”

“You called Aunt Florence,” Mrs. Canavan felt silly saying it, “Auntie Broccoli.”

Brenda’s eyes went back to her shoes. Mrs. Canavan persisted.

“Why did you do that?” Why broccoli, is what she wanted to say.

Brenda’s legs were kicking up and down. A tear came from one eye. Her mother took her hands.

“It’s alright, Brenda. It’s just not nice.”

Brenda’s head came up. Her eyes were determined.

“I smelled it.”

Her mother’s grip tightened. “It’s not nice to say people smell.”

“No.” Brenda fidgeted. “Not Auntie Florence. It was her name.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I hear her name, I smell broccoli.”

Mrs. Canavan stood up. Florence was at the doorway.

“Tell Aunt Florence you’re sorry.”

Brenda looked at her aunt. “I’m sorry, Auntie Florence.”

“Oh, it’s alright.”

Mrs. Canavan waved her hand. “Now run along.”

Brenda hopped down and sped away. Florence gave her sister-in-law a bemused look.

“I told you, you’ve got a live one there.”

*****

Miss Talone agreed that it was time for someone else to give it a try when Brenda played “Old Kentucky Home” backwards at the end of a frustrating lesson. She clutched her red John Thompson books against her chest, her mouth spread in an accusing smile.

“I’ve taken it as far as I can.”

Mrs. Canavan let Miss Talone out the screen door, Brenda peeping out from behind her.

Dr. Hermann’s approach was a far cry from Miss Talone’s five-finger-exercise regime. It was hardly a lesson at all. He was a friend of a friend of Mr. Canavan’s, a professor at Settlement Music School in Philadelphia. Mrs. Canavan was confused when he said he taught woodwinds. Dr. Hermann handed her his homburg and gave her an ethereal look that relaxed her immediately. When she called Brenda in, Dr. Hermann bowed, then swept his hand toward the piano.

“Shall we?”

Brenda went to the bench and began plonking notes at random. Dr. Hermann came behind her and Mrs. Canavan felt a hypnotic urge to leave them to it. She drifted through the hallway every few minutes, listening to their exchanges. Sometimes Dr. Hermann was playing, sprightly and clear. He said something and Brenda giggled. After half an hour, Mrs. Canavan sat in a chair at the far end of the living room. The two were playing together. There was no sheet music.

The music came to a lilting end, Dr. Hermann playing the last notes with a flourish, raising his hand to announce the song’s finish. Brenda clapped. Dr. Hermann stood and smiled.

“That’s all for today.”

Brenda ran from the room. Dr. Hermann’s smile persisted as Mrs. Canavan approached.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Dr. Hermann picked up his homburg from an end table and gestured toward the door. They went out on the front walk.

“Such a charming girl.”

Mrs. Canavan twisted her toe on a flagstone. He seemed to her more like a psychiatrist than a music teacher.

“Yes, but is she . . . talented?”

“Perfect pitch.”  Dr. Hermann touched his grey moustache.

“That’s good, right?”

“Oh, yes. Of course, then there are the colors.”

“Did she talk about that?” Mrs. Canavan wondered if it would have been better if she hadn’t mentioned that beforehand.

“Among other things.” He ran a finger along the brim of his hat. “She sees the scales.”

It seemed a trivial statement to Mrs. Canavan. “Well, Miss Talone taught her how to read.”

“No, I mean she . . .” He looked inside his hat like it might hold an answer. “She sees them in her mind . . . all together, in a sort of circle.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Canavan felt the conversation moving away from her paltry musical knowledge.

“It’s the circle of fifths. Everyone learns it—we teach it at Settlement. It’s been taught for three hundred years. It’s a way to understand harmony and modulation.” He held his hat out. “If you take it backwards, it’s the circle of fourths, which the porkpie hat crowd seem to like more.”

Mrs. Canavan tried to pull the talk back to her level. “Well, she is precocious.”

“Of course.” He went back to tugging his moustache. “She showed me her exercise books. I can assure you Miss Talone did not teach her that. She barely got through the major scales.”

“So she’s a prodigy?” Mrs. Canavan wasn’t sure she wanted one, but she was willing to accept the burden if necessary.

“Musically gifted, certainly. But it’s . . . it’s something besides, or beyond that, I think. Have you heard of synesthesia?”

“No.” Mrs. Canavan feared it was a disease.

“It’s . . . I mean, I’m not a medical professional, but it has to do with crossing of the senses. So, hearing colors, or in her case, seeing notes as specific colors . . . same with numbers for some people or smelling or tasting certain words.”

“Like broccoli.” The incident fell into her brain with a thud.

“Broccoli?”

“Never mind. But what does it mean for her?”

He put his homburg on. “She will have an interesting life.”

“What about music, the piano?”

“That? Let’s take it as it goes.” He flicked his finger against the homburg’s brim and looked up at the trees. “I love these peaceful suburbs.”

*****

November 1955

The doctor’s office was in a house. It was dark and brown. There was a smell of alcohol and bodies. Small lamps sat on tables around the room, providing scant light. Rain hit the windowpane opposite the chair where Brenda sat. It was a big chair, with green leather on the seat and seat back, and studs on the ends of the armrests. A toddler was rooting through the frayed set of Golden Books.

Mrs. Canavan talked to the nurse who sat behind a small desk. She was a nurse because she had that white thing, like a hat, with blue lines on it. It made her face different. They were talking about shots and sick things Brenda might have had—measles, mumps.

“No, no chicken pox yet.”

The doctor made Brenda take off her dress and sit up on a high table with a paper sheet on it. Her mother sat in the corner, telling the doctor about the colors and sounds, and the word that Dr. Hermann had used. She had trouble remembering it.

“Synes—something.”

The doctor had more smells than his waiting room. Maybe he was where they all came from? Brenda wasn’t sure she liked the odors, but she did like him. He put the wide Popsicle stick on her tongue and looked in her ears with the cold metal thing.

The doctor asked her questions.

“What color is this?”

He twanged a funny fork. There was a very regular vibration. It was a blue C, a bobbing sphere inside a yellowish halo, though a shade less blue than what she heard on her piano, more like Dr. Hermann’s. She had gone to his studio for a few of her visits—that’s what he called them. “Visits—let’s not call them lessons.” His piano was different. She told Dr. Hermann about it, that the C was a different blue. They had a long chat about notes and something called frequency, and how it all kept changing over the years.

She didn’t talk about any of this with Dr. Ashbee. He was nice, but she thought maybe it was better if she didn’t.

Back in the car, Brenda watched the raindrops jostling each other on the window.

“Am I sick, Mommy?”

Her mother snorted. “Psychologist. That’s all we need.”

“Am I?”

They stopped at a red light. Brenda liked traffic lights, especially the yellow. It was barely there, and it was fun to watch for it.

“No, dear.”

“Good.” Brenda had been worried that it was one of those things that kids got, and she’d have to wear a metal leg brace like that boy at school.

*****

May 1957

Dr. Hermann stayed the same but she was growing. She could remember sitting with him on the bench playing exercises, but now he sat on a chair beside her and that meant she was older. She had worn a dress then and that was like the little girls she saw in the practice rooms at Settlement. Much littler than her.

She wore jeans and sometimes overalls, which she liked a lot. They were green corduroy and had straps that you pulled over your shoulders and then hook things that went over metal buttons on the front. Mom let her wear those almost every day, and Dr. Hermann didn’t mind when she wore them for the recital. All the other girls wore skirts or dresses, and the boys wore long pants and shirts with buttons up the front.

They had rooms to practice where you could close the door. A lady with a clipboard came into the room where they all waited and called your name then you went in. The piano in there was little. The keys were short and the sound was different, though the notes were the same, their colors surrounded by a milky glow. Dr. Hermann called it a spinning piano. She’d use the old baby, as Dr. Hermann said, at the recital. To her, that was the real thing, so after plunking a few notes, she put her music up on the stand and read through the piece, her hands moving over the keys, but not pressing them down all the way.

She finally gave up and left the room. The clipboard lady looked at her like she had done something wrong, and it made her feel bad, but she went back to her chair and sat down. The girl across from her was about her age and was looking at a sheet of music, singing under her breath, the same few bars over and over. There was one note that sounded out of key to Brenda, and the girl struggled around it, frowning, then reaching into her school bag and taking out a plastic pitch pipe.

She began hitting the note on the pipe, then singing it, coming close but never quite getting it, an F# that had a speckled yellow color. When she sang, the note came out against a pale red backdrop, familiar to Brenda from other singers, but the tone from the pipe appeared against a scrim of brown, an ugly brown to her, like soggy cardboard. The girl kept hitting the note, a little louder as she tried to match its tone, and Brenda could see tears forming in the girl’s eyes and her cheeks growing red.

“Brenda!”

The clipboard lady was at the door. Brenda followed her out and waited while the boy before her bowed in the front of the recital room. There were rows of folding chairs and men with hats on their knees and women in dresses clapping. She tried to forget the thing with the pitch pipe and looked at her oxfords as she walked to the piano. Her parents were in the second row, and there was quiet applause as the lady introduced the piece.

She played it, but the memory of the unpleasant images from the pitch pipe and the girl’s distress would not go away. Halfway through, her eyes filled with tears and she couldn’t read the music clearly. The nice assistant who was turning the pages looked at Brenda, her eyebrows pinching together in the middle, and Brenda hoped that she didn’t cry too. She didn’t need the music; it was all in her head.

She finished and took her bow, tears running down her cheeks. When she looked at her parents, she forced a smile, but she couldn’t stop the tears.

Afterward, her parents came to the room to get her. She was okay now. Her mother hugged her.

“Oh, Brenda, you’re so brave! In front of all those people!”

Her father was talking to Dr. Hermann. They had that look grownups had when you did something wrong, but they knew you couldn’t really be blamed.

Usually, she told her mother about the strange things, but this time she decided it was just for her.

*****

Not long after that, her parents asked if she wanted to continue the piano lessons.

Her mother looked worried. “Dr. Hermann thinks you’re very talented, but we worry that . . . it’s too much pressure.”

So she stopped. It was summer and who wanted to spend all that time practicing anyway? She played catch in the side yard with her brother, jumped from a lawn chair into their tiny inflatable pool, taught the littler neighborhood kids how to make mud pies from the red clay you got if you dug down deep. When it got too hot, they went inside and watched cartoons and The Three Stooges.

She did not touch the piano for months until one day the following spring when her brother went to the park to play baseball. Left alone, Brenda wandered into the living room and sat at the piano. She played some of her old exercises, and that was kind of fun. One of the keys was stuck; it felt soft when she hit it and made a small sound, eliciting only a pale, watery smudge, a dull color in the air. She kept pecking at it then stood on tiptoe and moved the pictures from the top of the console and opened it up. She knew that you could do that because she had seen the piano tuner working in there.

The inside was confusing. She pressed the tardy key, and something moved but still only a small sound came. She hit another key—it was hard to do that and see inside at the same time, but she knelt on the bench and stretched up and did it—and could see a little thing hit a string. Then she pushed down the bad key and it made the right noise, but a little muffled.

“Brenda!”

Her mother stood in the entryway to the room, wiping her hands on her apron.

“What are you doing?”

Brenda closed the console lid and stepped down.

“One of the keys doesn’t work.”

Her mother bustled over and replaced the pictures.

“You could have broken something.”

Brenda sat on the bench and waited until her mother left the room, then made up a little song that went all around the bad key.

*****

A couple of days later it was the weekend, and her dad was dressed in his working- around-the-house clothes. She waited until he was reading the newspaper and eating lunch. Her mother was in the basement doing laundry.

“Dad, can you help me with something?”

They went out to the piano. Brenda hit the bad key.

“See?”

Her dad folded his arms. “Guess we better call the piano tuner.”

Brenda put her hand on the console lid. “Can’t we just fix it?”

Her father looked at her for a few seconds, then took the pictures off the lid and opened it. He had that look he got when he was working on the lawnmower.

“Don’t think I’ve ever looked in here before.”

She loved her dad.