Sight Reading Read Free

between being helped and being ignored.
    The pompiers regarded Rascal gravely, conferring in hushed conversation too rapid for Hazel to follow. This particular French trait—the somber tone of expertise that everyone, no matter their age or employ, brought to their chosen professions—was one of Hazel’s favorites. Earnest consultations of grocers and hairdressers, debates between merchants and patrons regarding potential purchases, long conferences that even other customers joined in when Hazel asked for advice at the wine shop. She could make Nicholas laugh just by mimicking that pouting frown of concentration, the careful weighing of options before delivering, unsmiling, a verdict: “ Ah, oui, monsieur, celle-là vous va bien” when, dressing to attend a performance or premiere, Nicholas asked which tie he ought to wear.
    Jessie was now squatting on her heels, arranging and rearranging twigs under a craggy lavender bush, while the two serious pompiers brought over an extremely tall ladder and propped it against the house. Rascal gave a distressed meow, as if conscious that all this fuss was about him and he had better make it worth their while. Why did these predicaments always present themselves when Nicholas was away? When Hazel had to fend for herself, in some foreign tongue not quite at her disposal? A fuse blew, or a suspicious person was wandering the vicinity. One time a pipe had burst. These things only happened when Hazel was alone. . . . But in just two days, she reminded herself, they would be on their way back to the States. She was ready, so very ready, to set up a real home, to find comfort and ease where until now there had been only hassle. Already she had begun in her mind sewing velour pillows for the niche of a sunny bay window. There were sure to be bay windows in Boston.
    â€œ C’est votre téléphone qui sonne ?” Madame Duvalier asked, her groomed eyebrows raised just the slightest bit. There it was again, the loud clattering of the telephone in Hazel’s flat. Hopefully it was Nicholas; she hadn’t heard from him in a good three days. We’ll watch the little one, the jolly pompier told her, and Hazel went hurrying back, certain she wouldn’t make it before the caller gave up. But the telephone was still ringing when she grabbed the receiver.
    â€œHazel.” Her mother always spoke in a flat, perfunctory way, but this time there was a waver in her voice. “Your father. He’s in the ICU.” Hazel felt her heart plummet as her mother said, “You can come home, can’t you?”
    Of course she could. I’ll be there, she said, just as soon as I can.
    HER PARENTS WERE NOT MUSICIANS. They seemed surprised, mystified, even, by how quickly Remy took to her violin, which at first was a little thing of ugly orange-colored wood, shiny and hardly larger than a toy. Her future was decided on a single day, in a few brief minutes, which in retrospect seemed to her a disturbingly abrupt way to make such an important decision. She and the rest of the third graders were led into the stuffy auditorium, where Mrs. Sylvester, the music teacher, awaited with an array of battered orchestral instruments. The students were to sample the ones that intrigued them and make a selection, and by the following week each would have his or her very own, on loan from the school.
    Remy had already made up her mind to play the flute. She had watched April Englensen onstage with the woodwinds in the Christmas concert tapping her foot jauntily along with Mrs. Sylvester’s baton, looking more poised and confident than all the other sixth graders. In April’s hands the flute looked light and sparkly, a glamorous accessory as much as an instrument. But when Remy tried to blow into the flute that day in third grade, no sound came out. She tried altering the shape of her mouth, but the flute barely yielded a whisper.
    Mrs. Sylvester put her plump arm