Packing

She asked me to pack the cello as if I were someone who knew how.

It was already sold. There was a man's name on a piece of paper, a town, a number she had crossed out and written again. The money had arrived. She showed me the little confirmation on her phone, then put the phone away before I could see how much.

I had cleared the kitchen table. Under the good blanket I had spread newspaper, although nothing in this job was likely to spill. Doing too much had the advantage of keeping my hands occupied.

She carried the case in sideways. The handle caught her cuff. I reached across to free it and she pulled it loose herself, so for a moment I was holding a little piece of air beside her wrist.

“Tea?”

“After, maybe.”

The middle catch still needed lifting before it would close. I had meant to mend it for years. Its familiar fault struck me as a reason the instrument ought to stay.

When she opened the lid, the kitchen acquired that dry, enclosed smell of cloth and rosin. She sniffed.

“God.”

I waited for the rest of what she would say. There wasn't any.

She had stopped playing three years before. For the first year I asked what she was working on. For the second I asked whether there was room in her flat to practise. Last winter I bought her a mute. She thanked me; I took the thanks upstairs and stored it with everything else.

Now there were crumbs in the little compartment where the rosin used to be. She picked them out with a wet finger.

“I had biscuits in there.”

“I can see that.”

She looked at me.

“I can see that,” I said again, more quietly, though this did not improve the sentence.

We lifted the cello onto the blanket. She held the neck and I held the lower body. Her hands knew where to go. I nearly pointed this out.

There was a pale place in the varnish where her knee used to rest. I remembered the room we rented for her lessons, the pipes knocking behind the wall, my own wet coat over both our chairs. I used to bring work and never do it. Through the door I could hear a passage being attempted, then the teacher's voice, then the passage again. Sometimes, before the second attempt, I would hold my breath.

There had been afternoons when she ran out laughing. I wanted those afternoons admitted into the room as well. No one had denied them.

“You could leave it here,” I said.

“It's sold.”

“I could pay him back.”

She put down the cloth she had been folding.

Outside, someone was trying to start a car. Each time the engine failed, we could hear a dog farther away.

“Please don't make me do all this again,” she said.

I turned the parcel tape in my hands until I found the edge. Then I lost it.

“All right.”

She picked up the cloth.

The buyer had sent instructions. We followed them badly at first, with the two of us reading over one another's shoulders. I wanted to hold the page because I had my glasses. She wanted to hold it because she had spoken to him. Finally she put it flat between us and weighted one corner with a mug.

He had written that his son was very excited.

I read that sentence twice. I began to picture a boy waiting in the unnamed room inside the address, a stand, a chair of the proper height. Then I folded the corner of the paper over the sentence. The mug rocked. My daughter steadied it without looking up.

We worked. Once she told me to stop pulling. Once I asked her to support the weight. We needed a smaller piece of packing, and she tore a large one with her teeth, which made me laugh before I could decide whether to. She spat a scrap into her palm.

“Elegant,” I said.

“Yes.”

When everything was back in the case, she rubbed the mark the handle had made on her wrist.

“Will it be enough?” I asked.

“For the deposit.”

“And after that?”

She closed the first catch.

“I don't know.”

I had lent money before. I had also asked, months later, about jobs, courses, the hours she was keeping. I could distinguish those conversations in my own mind. I did not know whether she could.

“I've got some,” I said.

She kept her hand on the second catch.

“I know.”

I wanted to explain the new terms. I wanted her to hear that this offer was different. She pressed the catch down, and I held the case so it wouldn't slip off the table.

The courier came early. We were still getting it into the outer box when he rang. She went to the door; I found another roll of tape. From the kitchen I could hear her giving instructions in a voice I knew less well than the one she used with me. She sounded tired and perfectly capable of speaking to a stranger.

I took one end of the box and the courier took the other. At the step, my daughter said, “Careful.” We all stopped, then went on.

After the van had gone, she said she couldn't stay for tea.

I gave her the biscuits anyway, the packet, without a plate. She put them in her bag. Then she went back into the kitchen for her phone.

I stood by the open door, holding it, although it would have stayed open by itself.
