In the Key of Dale - Softcover

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Benjamin Lefebvre is the editor of several books, including The L.M. Montgomery Reader, a three-volume critical anthology that won the 2016 PROSE Award for Literature from the Association of American Publishers, and an edition of Montgomery’s rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted. In the Key of Dale is his first novel.

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Monday, February 28

Dear Pa,

I read a book once about a character who kept “writing it out” in a diary, and when I rolled over and saw that it was three in the morning and I still hadn’t fallen asleep, I figured I had nothing to lose if I started “typing it out” on my laptop. I tried a few different ways to do that, but none of them worked, so I decided to write you a letter instead.Writing to you makes sense since it’s sort of because of you that I need someone to talk to. And even though you can’t read this letter, I’m fine with that because right now I need to talk to someone who won’t talk back.

It’s been seven years since you died. I was nine then, or as I liked to say in those days, nine-and-three-quarters. I’m sixteen now, about to turn seventeen. You probably wouldn’t recognize me, or Ma, or anything about our lives if you could rise from the grave and see us. I’m not sure I’d recognize you either, in spite of photos and the memories I play in my head sometimes.

Maybe you know, or maybe you’re beyond knowing, that since last summer I’ve been perfecting six super-complicated pieces—including a Chopin étude that I seriously thought was going to cause one of my fingers to snap off—in order to get ready for my piano performance exam at the Royal Conservatory. And maybe you know already that the harder I worked, the more Ma drove me crazy. Whenever she’d complain about having to hear the same pieces over and over, I’d plug my earphones into the electric piano. Then she’d grumble that wearing earphones so much would wreck my hearing, or she’d sneak up behind me while I was trying to concentrate and startle me by putting her hands on my shoulders. At one point I moved the piano so I could sit with my back to the wall, but she was annoyed that I’d done this alone because apparently I could have hurt myself. And every time the exam came up at the dinner table, she’d look at me with a smile that was lacking in kindness—all mouth and no eyes.

But my hard work paid off, and yesterday morning Ma and I drove to the city for my exam. And I passed! OK—fine—I did really well, and the judges said nice things about my technique and my expression. One of them even took me aside and said I had a great career ahead of me, which totally made my day—I just wish Ma had heard it. As we walked out of the building and down the city streets I played that compliment over again in my head, and I was just so proud and happy. All I wanted at that moment was to continue feeling good about myself for a little while and daydream about the future.

Then Ma ruined it, with her usual two-pronged approach. First she told me she was glad all this was over so that now I could devote more time to my schoolwork. I let that one roll off me since my grades are fine, but once we were in the car and I asked her what she wanted in terms of driving-away music, she unleashed Part 2. “Honey, I want to talk about what happened the other night,” she said, followed by pointed silence.

We’d barely left the parking garage at that point, but already the air inside the car started to crackle. I adjusted my seat belt to stop it from choking me and craned my head toward the window to watch the sky. This is what she does: she brings up a topic of conversation, then waits for me to jump in.

Except this time I didn’t rise to the bait. I didn’t even sigh to show her I was annoyed. I guess I was hoping that if I didn’t react to what she’d said, my mind might not absorb it and I could continue to enjoy the good feelings from my exam. But my head kept sinking no matter how much I fought it, even as I tried to pretend I was somewhere else. I sensed that going over this with Ma wouldn’t solve anything since clearly it hadn’t the first time we’d had this conversation, and I knew fully well that that wasn’t really what she wanted to talk about.

What happened is this: Ma walked into the kitchen one evening last week when it was my turn to load up the dishwasher and overheard me singing along to a pop song—I won’t write down which one because you wouldn’t know it anyway and because I don’t want to admit to you that I knew all the words. The point is the song was a love ballad between a man and a woman, and I was singing the woman’s part, an octave lower. And Ma just wouldn’t let it go. She even followed me from room to room as I tried to get away from her. I told her the truth: that most pop duets are written for a male tenor and a female alto, and I can’t sing the tenor line because I’m a baritone—my voice is too low. Singing the alto part an octave lower put it in my range—I wasn’t trying to sing a love song with another man and I don’t see myself as a woman. And yes, I was sure.

None of this seemed to make any sense to her the first time we went through it—she knows nothing about music except whether or not she finds it pretty—so she kept staring at me with this look of expectation on her face, like a new episode of her favourite TV show was about to start. And then in the car, when I turned to look at her, she glanced away from the road and I saw that expression again.

I knew what she was fishing for, so I said nothing.

It drives Ma crazy when I stop answering her, although that’s not the only reason I do it. I’ve learned the hard way that it’s better to say nothing when you know full well that speaking is just going to make things worse. Ever since I told her my theory that Bach had written his Toccata in F-sharp minor as a way to spite future piano students from beyond the grave and she told me I was being dramatic, I’ve tried so hard not to give her any reason to say that to me again.

I selected a love duet on my iPod in which the tenor is practically a eunuch, but she shut it off before the vocal line started. So we drove in silence while I played some peppy music in my head to pass the time.

Soon the signs for Guelph came up as we headed west on the highway, and suddenly I remembered.

“Ma,” I said, sitting up straight again, “since we’re driving past Guelph, could we stop at the cemetery on the way home?”

When Ma didn’t reply, I turned in her direction and saw the look in her eyes like she was no longer seeing the road, and I felt my eyebrows skew together, but then she seemed to shake herself out of it.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “It’s been a long day—I’m really tired. Why don’t you go next weekend? You have your driver’s license now—you can borrow the car.”

“But we’re driving right by it and the anniversary of his death is today,” I said. I thought I was being logical. I mean, hey, I could have pointed out that if Ma thought she was tired she might try imagining what today had been like for the one who’d had to get up and be evaluated by a panel of judges after a year and a half of work, but I...