"I'll do my best," Harper said. "I understand you don't want it to look like an encyclopedia entry."

Mary nodded and sipped her cognac. "Or Who's Who in the art world. I want it to be me. It should reflect who I am in every aspect, right down to the choice of font for the credits. Oh, and will you have music?"

"Yes, of course."

"Fabulous. Classical?"

"Yes, that's what I know best. And I think it suits you."

Mary looked satisfied. "Okay, then. Look, Harper, if I'm going to entertain you with my art, how about entertaining us with a bit of yours? Play something for us."

"Oh, yes," Chelsea urged, "play for us."

Harper, taken off guard, said, "I didn't bring my cello."

"You can play that, can't you?" said Mary, waving toward the baby grand.

"Yes, actually, I'd love to play that." Harper went to the landing and pulled the stool out, sitting before the magnificent instrument.

"Do you need music?" Mary asked.

"No," Harper said, uncovering the keys. "I've been practicing Beethoven's Appassionata. I can play that. Maybe the first movement."

Chelsea pulled the drapes open. Light poured in, shining 0.

almost blindingly off the luminous black surface of the piano.

She then ran over to Mary, plopping down next to her on the sofa."Appassionata," she repeated. Her eyes flashed with delight.

She placed her head in Mary's lap, looking childlike.

"Yes, a perfect selection," Mary agreed, laying a tender hand on the girl's head. What a charming tableau they created in that pose. Harper would have liked to have filmed that, but Chelsea was not to be a player in this documentary. It was strictly about the art, not about the artist's life. That was the agreement.

Harper waited for the two of them to settle into stillness before beginning the piece. As her fingers touched the keys, she heard with elation the richness and perfect tone of the instrument.

Immediately, she was alone with the music, her body melding with the keys.

Let it play itself, she reminded herself. Let your body become the music. Forget fingers, lose the sensation of touch. The music is all.

She had learned this technique while studying Zen. Yield and overcome. It was supposed to be a way of reaching enlightenment, but she had never managed to master the technique completely.

She had, however, found a means of adapting it to music.

Halfway through the piece, Harper glanced over at Mary and Chelsea to see them smiling affectionately at one another.

Harper smiled too, marveling at the power of love, basking in the power of music. As the last note subsided, she lifted her hands from the keys, euphoric.

Chelsea leapt up from the couch, applauding.

"Glorious," Mary said, also clapping.

"That was so beautiful," Chelsea said. "I wish I were musical.

I don't know how to play anything."

"You have your own talents," Mary said, looking appreciatively at Chelsea. "But I agree that an ability to make music is enviable.

It's so universally appreciated. If I weren't a painter, I think I should like to be a musician. Music is the art of movement.

It's alive in a way that paint on canvas can never be. It lives in multiple dimensions at once, in time and space, attaining a real- 0.

world depth that a master of perspective can merely imitate on a flat surface. And at the same time, it's ephemeral, passing out of existence almost as soon as it comes into it. It exists only for that moment that it strikes your eardrum. For that reason, music is more precious and more mysterious than a painting."

Harper wished that her camera was already on. She hoped that Mary would come up with something equally quotable when it was.

"I'd settle for either of those talents," Chelsea said.

"You, darling, are a wordsmith," Mary countered. "There is nothing more powerful than the written word to elucidate an idea. The writer has a level of control over her audience in a way that no other form of art can attain. A piece of music can evoke a mood, like joy, but has little influence over the finer strains of feeling in the listener, who may respond with wistfulness, for example. But a poet who leaves that kind of latitude available to the reader is just a sloppy poet."

Harper noticed that she and Chelsea were listening in the same rapt manner to Mary's observations.

"Words and music accomplish similar goals," continued Mary, "but they're almost the antithesis of one another. They spring from different parts of your psyche. You would have to be an extremely exceptional individual to be able to give life to your emotions through both language and music. However," Mary said, exuberantly, "bring together a composer and a lyricist and, well, you've got a show, haven't you?"

Chelsea laughed at that, glancing from Mary to Harper, her eyes shining. Her enthusiasm was blithe and unpretentious.

Mary responded to Chelsea's delight with a serene and natural smile. Apparently they had quite a bit to offer one another, Harper thought. Despite the cynical gossip about Mary taking advantage of a child, this relationship could be viewed with a lack of skepticism if a person would allow it, and that's how Harper was inclined to view it. She wasn't a skeptic. If it looked like love, then it probably was, and who was she to question that?

0.

Chapter 13.

JUNE 21.

Wilona greeted Harper with a crushing hug in the doorway of her house. "How was the drive?" she asked.

"Long. I could sure use something wet and cold."

Wilona served her iced tea. From the kitchen window, Harper could see several birdhouses hanging from tree branches and a copper birdbath occupied by two blissful sparrows. On the shelf outside the window, a nuthatch pecked at loose seed.

Gorgeous framed photos of birds, trees and old fence posts lined the hallways of Wilona's house.

The last time Harper had been here, it had been December, a year and a half ago. The pine branches had been heavy with snow, a fire had crackled in the living room and she had settled heavily into this retreat like a bear into its winter den. She had come with the excuse of making a documentary. But, four months after losing Chelsea, she was in need of a refuge more 0.

than a project. Between interview sessions and filming Wilona in the snow with her camera, they talked about abstractions like happiness and personal fulfillment. Or Harper sat quietly with a book and a cup of hot chocolate, lost in her own thoughts. There was opportunity here for quiet introspection. During that week, Wilona's healing presence had enveloped her like a cloud. By the end of the visit, she had felt more fit for the world.

Today the landscape around the house was painted in noisier hues, but the atmosphere within was the same. It was an extension of Wilona herself, a mantle of warmth spreading out to envelop the house, its contents and anyone inside. Harper felt safe and welcome here.

As she took the first swallow from her glass, a boy appeared in the kitchen doorway, as if he had materialized out of thin air.

He had made no sound. He was slight, maybe eleven or twelve, with a close-cropped Afro. His face was turned to Harper, but his eyes looked past her.

"Andrew," Wilona said, seeing him there. "Come here, baby."

He walked toward her and let himself be engulfed by her arms. Then she turned him to face Harper and said, "Harper, this is my grandson, Andrew. This is the lady I told you about. Her name is Harper. She'll be visiting us for a few days."

The boy extended his hand and said, "How do you do?"

He still didn't seem to see her. Harper suddenly realized that he was blind. She stepped toward him and took his hand, shaking it firmly. "Nice to meet you, Andrew."

"Now you go change your clothes for dinner," Wilona told him. "Your shirt has grape jelly stains all over it."

Andrew hurried out of the kitchen.

"Grandson?" Harper asked, bewildered. "I didn't even know you had a son. Daughter?"

"Daughter."

"Really? I made a documentary about your life, and it never came up that you had a daughter and a grandson."

"The documentary wasn't about my life. It was about my 0.

work."

Harper heard what Wilona said, but it was still not making sense to her.

"My daughter is at a religious retreat in the Colorado Rockies," Wilona continued. "It's just an excuse to escape her responsibilities, as far as I'm concerned. I've had Andrew a few times before, but I think this time it's for good."

"Is that okay with you?" Harper asked.

Wilona nodded. "Better than okay. I love that little guy. And he deserves as good as he can get."

"But you've always been such a free spirit," Harper said.

"Coming and going as you please, traveling all over the world, pursuing your art."

"'Free spirit'?" Wilona repeated, obviously amused. "Harper, I've always had things that came before my art. For me, photography was an escape, but only in the sense that it allowed me to flee in my imagination, not for real. My life has always been grounded in the here and now. When I was fourteen, my mother developed a slow-growing brain cancer that took away her hearing and the use of her legs, caused horrible seizures and eventually killed her when I was nineteen. For all those years, she was helpless and I had to do everything for her, which, believe me, wasn't pretty. Then I got pregnant with my daughter and spent the next eighteen years raising her as a single mother. She's bipolar and has never been able to support herself for more than a few months at a time, so even as an adult, she's needed a lot of help. Then there was Andrew. That girl couldn't even look after herself, so you can imagine what our lives were like when she ended up having a baby. Even if he hadn't been blind, he would have been too much for her, although when she's on her meds she functions okay."

"I had no idea," Harper said, stunned. "What about all those talks we had about what's important in life? Why didn't it come up?""But you remember, don't you, that we were mainly talking about you and Chelsea? You needed to talk about that. Besides, I don't like to dwell on my problems. I don't want to seem to be complaining. It's more fun to talk about photography, and you, of course, have always been most interested in my life as an artist, so that's what I try to be for you. But I've never been a free spirit and that's okay with me. I'll continue my work. I've always found a way to do that. Andrew can come along. You'll see that he's a pleasure to be around. He's a joyful child."

Harper felt a little battered. In the course of a few minutes, her entire view of Wilona's life had been upended. Wilona hadn't changed, obviously. Harper's view of her had just been wrong, wrong in the most fundamental way. She had imagined Wilona as carefree, concerning herself with no one's needs but her own.

In Harper's view, the art had been the single focus, the thing that defined Wilona. She was a photographer. Now it was obvious that the focus had been too narrow. What does this mean? Harper wondered, feeling disoriented.

When dinner was ready, the three of them ate in the kitchen, birds twittering through the open window. Wilona pulled the crust off her bread and left it on the sill for the birds. Andrew, listening, named each bird as it sang-sparrow, blue jay.

"I hear a woodpecker," he said at the end of the meal.

"Really?" Wilona asked, cocking her head to listen. "I don't hear it."

"Do you hear it, Harper?" Andrew asked.

Harper strained to listen. "Yes, I do. Very faint. Your hearing is remarkable."

"That's true," Wilona said. "And my hearing is getting worse and worse. Andrew is becoming my ears."

"And you're my eyes," he said, grinning.

"That's right," she agreed.

"Do you like to listen to music, Andrew?" Harper asked.

"Yes!"

"Music is a big part of his life," Wilona said.

"Oh, do you play an instrument?"

He shook his head.

"I wish I could teach him," Wilona said, "but I know nothing about it. This fall I'm going to enroll him in a class, though. If there's space available."

After dinner, Andrew showed Harper his CD collection and MP3 player and they listened to some of his music. He had memorized an extraordinary number of songs and could sing them perfectly in tune. His musical tastes were varied but were clearly influenced by his grandmother, as evidenced by a preponderance of old-school rhythm and blues. On her way from Andrew's room back to the living room, Harper paused to admire a photo of a cardinal. Andrew stood beside her and said, "This is my favorite."

Startled, Harper asked, "The photograph?"

"Yes. I like the way the shadows from the leaves change the color on the bird's feathers."

Harper turned to catch Wilona's eye. She was sitting in a rocking chair, rocking just a couple of inches to and fro. She grinned. "I describe them to him," she explained. "He has a finely detailed mind image, a more detailed image than you probably have."

Harper looked back at the photo, trying to imagine what Andrew's mind image of it was like. Up until this moment, she had thought it sad that Andrew had never seen one of his grandmother's stunning photos. Harper wouldn't have been surprised if Andrew had turned to her then and said, "You still have much to learn, Grasshopper."

Quite frequently, Harper closed her eyes while playing music, but she'd never thought about why. She supposed it was to allow herself to see the music as Andrew did, as he saw the photograph, without any visual interference. It wasn't easy to do because even when you closed your eyes, you tended to see images of piano keys or notes. To see the music itself required a more concentrated blocking of the visual. Harper had learned to do that, over time.

She could see the music itself when she worked at it-waves of colors, gliding, flowing, marching, bouncing.

"That cardinal is going into my next book," Wilona said.

"Oh, I meant to ask you about that." Harper sat on the sofa next to Wilona's chair. "How is it coming?"

"All of the photos have been chosen. We're working on page layout and narrative. I'm hoping to see it in print by winter. I wanted to talk to you anyway, Harper, about this one."