Page 60 of Hunger

I hang up the receiver.

I stand at the counter, my hand on the phone. Tammy knows. She doesn't know what she knows but she knows. The woman has been watching me for eight months and she's always known more about me than I've known about myself.

I go to my room.

I see the envelope on the desk immediately.

I cross to it. I don't pick it up at first. I stand at the desk and look at it. The plain brown paper. The neat squared edges. The printed return address of a music shop in London.

I sit at the desk.

I pick up the envelope. I turn it over in my hands. The paper is good. The seal is clean. I open it carefully.

The sheet music slides out onto the wood.

Massenet. Meditation from Thaïs. Violin and Piano. The cover is plain. The paper is good.

I lift the music in my hands. I haven't seen this piece on paper in three years. I haven't needed to; the piece is in my body. I played it yesterday from memory and the memory was complete.

But the page in my hand is a real thing. The page is the page Dr. Reeves marked up for me. The page is the page I held at my recital. The page is the page my father stood up for when I was finished playing.

He's given me back the page.

I sit at the desk. The page is in my hands. The morning gets later. The light through the window slowly brightens and then dims again as another snow front moves in. I don't move.

Eventually I cross to the violin case. I open it. I lift out the violin and the bow. I rosin the bow with the Hill Dark. I tune the instrument. I sit on the edge of the bed with the page open beside me on the blanket and I play.

I play it slow.

I make mistakes. The page is showing me things my memory had smoothed over — notations Dr. Reeves had written into the margins, a fingering she had marked at the top of the second page, themolto espressivoshe had underlined twice in the cadenza. I'd forgotten these things. The page is reminding me.

I play it again.

By the third time I'm playing it better than I played it three years ago at the recital. The cleaner notes. The steadier bow. The thing the years have taken from my body has been less than the thing the years have given to my body. I'm a better musician at twenty-three than I was at seventeen. I didn't know.

I lower the violin to my lap when I finish the fourth time.

I'm crying. I've been crying for a while without noticing. The page on the blanket is spotted in two places where the tears have fallen on it. I press the heel of my hand to my eyes and I wait for the crying to stop.

I cross to the phone in the kitchen.

I dial my mother.

She picks up on the second ring.

"Hello."

"Umma."

"???." Her voice is the voice I remember from when I was small. "I got your postcard."

"I know. I wanted to call."

"I'm so happy you're coming on Sunday."

I sit down at the kitchen table. The cord stretches across the room. I press the receiver hard against my ear.

"Umma."