CHAPTER 29

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    The first time I saw him, I was thteo say anything and too awestruck to touch him. He was not a freak or a devil, but perfe every way, a beautiful boy. After the long wait to meet him, I found myself overe by the sudden ge, not so much his physical presence, his arrival after being hidden away, but the ge io something more sublimely human. Tess smiled at my fusion and the look in my eyes as I beheld him.

    "You wont break him," she said.

    My son. Our child. Ten fingers, ten toes. Good creat lungs, a natural at the breast. I held him in my arms and remembered the twins in their matg yellow jumpers, my mother singing to me as she scrubbed my ba the bathtub, my father holding my hand when we climbed the bleachers at an autumn football game. Then I remembered Clara, my first mother, how I loved to crawl uhe billows of her skirts, and the st of witch hazel on my father Abrams cheek, his feathery moustache as he pressed his lips against my skin. I kissed our boy and sidered the ordinary miracle of birth, the wonder of my wife, and was grateful for the human child.

    We named him Edward, ahrived. Born two weeks before Christmas 1970, he became our darling boy, and over those first few months, the three of us settled into the house that Mom and Charlie had bought for us in the new development up in the woods. At first, I could not bear the thought of living there, but they surprised us on our sed anniversary, and with Tess pregnant and the bills mounting, I could not say no. The house was larger than we needed, especially before the baby came, and I built a small studio, moving in the old piano. I taught music to seventh graders and raudent orchestra at Mark Twain Middle School, and in the evenings and on weekends, when I didnt have to mind the baby, I worked on my music, dreaming of a position that evoked the flow of one life into another.

    For inspiration, I would sometimes unfold the photocopy of the passenger list and study the names. Abram and Clara, their sons Friedrich, Josef, and Gustav. The legendary Anna. Their ghosts appeared in fragments. A doctor listens to my heartbeat while Mother frets over his shoulder. Faces bend to me, speaking carefully in a language I ot uand. Her dark green skirt as she waltzes. Tang of apple wine, sauerbraten in the oven. Through a frosted window, I could see my brothers approach the house on a wind e and why.

    Tess came in and laid her hand on my back. "Shall we call the police? Is there anything missing?"

    I could not answer, for my heart ounding wildly and an overwhelming dread fixed me to the spot. We had not checked on our son. I sprinted up the stairs to his room. He lay asleep, knees drawn up to his chest, dreaming as if nothing had ever happened. Watg his i face, I k ohat he was blood of my blood. He almost looked like the boy I still see in my nightmares. The boy at the piano.

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