The Color of Sound: Chapters 15–Epilogue

I play in blacks and whites, and in all the gray shades in between. I play every color of the spectrum in its time, turning the images from achromatic to technicolor with each note.

But I’m also with Dahlia, marching proudly through the streets of Munkacs, unafraid to be herself, to play her music out loud, before she knew how much danger she was in. I’m following her as we play in tandem, and then in harmony, and then in cascading rounds.

Despite all the contests I’ve won and all the awards and accolades, I never actually played music this well until now.

There was a long, long pause. A fermata, on repeat.

“Jewish tradition states that a part of the soul remains in the body until burial. So the shomeret is there to comfort her while she’s...” Mom trails off, as if searching for the word.
“In limbo?” I ask. It makes me think of an unresolved chord in music, waiting for the dissonance to resolve into the tonic.
She smiles sadly. “Yes. Limbo is a good way to describe it. Unfinished business.”

This symphony is a variation on a theme, and, of course, the theme is the song from Hungary.

I would play the song in this green key, and then transpose to something blue, then a purple key, and so on, until I’d played grief in every iteration the ear can hear.

I would play the song in this green key, and then transpose to something blue, then a purple key, and so on, until I’d played grief in every iteration the ear can hear.

She told me how someone is at the house now, covering all our mirrors with black cloth so we’re not tempted to think of frivolous things like how we look during this time of intense sadness.

It’s tough to accumulate dirt on the back side of the shovel, but I manage.

The smattering of dirt lands in a perfect arpeggio, the first major chord I’ve heard all day.

Her face looks different. She’s smiling, a kind of smile I haven’t seen on her all summer. Or maybe since before I stopped playing the violin. “Rosie? Can you come with me?”
I look behind me, as if there might be another person, let alone another Rosie, there. “What for?” I ask, full of thin mustard-colored waves of trepidation.

After Julianne and her mom leave to drive to New Jersey to see her cousins, the shiva crowd thins to just a few people from the synagogue.

I feel like this olive branch she’s extending deserves something from me in return, so I gather up my courage and say, “Mom, I played the violin for Grandma before she died.”

The brown mustiness of the shed, the door’s silver squeak, the pink auras in the skylight are all just as they were last summer. Inside, it’s still, and I feel the emptiness shimmer like an overture. It’s gold and soft, and I see that the sheet music I left is gone.