London Harmony: The Pike (11 page)

Geraldine was a young pop singer who reminded me so much of Taylor Swift.  I looked at her and shook my head slowly, had I ever been that young?

There seemed to be a few artists here and there in the lobby, it must be a busy recording day for the studio.  I smiled, mom was so stubborn, when was she going to spring for an auxiliary studio or at least add another sound room here?

Jimmy was shuffling papers like a madman at the reception counter as he spoke to the general manager, Nick.  As we stepped up, I noted that Nick's perpetually swoopy reverse mullet hairdo, which was his signature, was frosted with age, and it only made him look distinguished.

Jimmy's stressed face broke into a genuine smile as he saw us, and Nick turned to follow his gaze and smiled too.  He said, “It's Trouble and the band.  When did you get in town?”

I leaned in and kissed the man on the cheek.  “Hey Nick, just now as it so happens.  They in?”  I leaned in as Jimmy did and kissed his cheek too.  “Brat.”

He responded in kind through his smile, “Wretch.”

As Nick nodded, I quickly introduced Natasha to them.  If they took exception to the amount of time my future sister in law took while examining every detail about them, they didn't show it.  I'm sure they had already heard that she was face blind, and needed different visual cues to recognize people than the rest of us used.

Fran prompted, “Care to share with the class or do we just go hunting?”

Jimmy chuckled and answered for Nick, “Where do you think they are?”

I nodded at that and said, “Right.” Then I looked at the troops.  “Follow me.”

Nick asked as we headed for the connecting door between the studio and the music school where mom had first learned to sing and play the guitar all those years ago. “You be by your folk's place tonight?”

I nodded. “We'll be there a couple days.  We still have lots of people left to visit in Seattle.  You and Tam drop by for coffee?”

I hadn't seen Tammy for over a year now, she and Nick had been out of town at her parent's last Christmas.  Mom had hired her as my nanny when I was born, and I grew up not realizing that I didn't have three moms.  Nick had married Tams back when I was too young to even remember.

Nick nodded and waved us off as he returned to his discussion with Jimmy.  I swear if they didn't have Jimmy to keep everything straight around here, Harmony Trax would burn down around them.  He was sort of the analog to Zilrita over at London Harmony.  Mom and Nick even made him a minor partner.

We headed into the hall of the little music school and waved back at the main desk where Tina was looking at the schedule book with a woman and her little boy who had a violin case in his hands.  Tina smiled and waved back.

We made an about face and headed to the closed door at the far end of the hall.  The floor vibrated slightly from that direction, and we could hear muffled music coming from the supposedly soundproof room.

I smiled fondly, knowing what to expect.  I started to turn to Natasha, but Small Fry beat me to it as she said in as serious a tone as I have ever heard her use with her girlfriend, “What you are about to see and hear, you can't ever share with anyone.  This is something extremely private for the two of them and it is reserved for family only.”

She paused letting that sink in as Tash nodded once in understanding, she had just included her in 'family'.  Then she added, “You may want to cover your ears before we step in.”

She squinted her eyes in confusion as I smirked and swung the door open, dragging Nessie through the door with me into the wall of sound so loud I could feel my bones vibrating.  The girls followed and Fran shut the door.

We all just stood there transfixed, watching my moms as they sat at the piano that dominated the sound room.  I closed my eyes and listened to the cascade of notes from the piano that you could feel more than hear as my mom played.  Nobody knew that my deaf mother, Anabella West, could create such hauntingly beautiful music.

She had this innate ability to fit notes together in that cascade that just resonated together like nothing I have heard outside of this room.  It just added to the flawless harmonization of their voices together.  My other mom was a rock legend, and her rich alto voice was unmistakable and easily recognizable on the first note.

But when those two women sang together, the harmony and melodies they could pull off just radiated nothing but the love they had for each other.  Their fire and passion for each other has never dimmed over the years and has remained as fierce as my first memories of them.

Mom may be deaf, but when she sang, you would swear her voice was something sent by the angels.  I turned to look over at Tash, who was just standing there in stunned awe of what she was witnessing, mouth agape.

I wiped a tear from my cheek as they finished.  Damn, it always gets me misty listening to them profess their love for each other that way.  I walked past them, eliciting surprised squeaks of excitement from them.  I grinned at them as I turned off the antique reel to reel recorder.  I didn't look back at them or acknowledge them as I dutifully took the tape from the recorder, put their names on the box with the date and went over to the cabinets along the walls.  They had to expand them twice over the years.

I took out my keys and twisted the little locket hanging from the keychain, which they had given me when I was a little girl, the key blade slid out of it, and I unlocked the right-most cabinet and slipped the recording beside hundreds of other tapes of music the world will never hear.  The music my parents made together.

I re-locked the cabinet before exhaling and turning around with a beaming smile on my face as mom rushed to me signing, “What a pleasant surprise Squirt.”  She hugged me fiercely then glanced back to see the others then repeated herself verbally.  She is a big proponent of not communicating with someone if not everyone could understand.

I hugged my mother too when she horned in on the hugging action, then said as I signed, “It's ok mom, Small Fry has been teaching her to sign.”

She nodded and said, “Grand.”

Fran signed as she said, “Mandy, Ana... ummm, mom... you met Tasha at the funeral.”

Mom grinned and nodded, signing as she said, “Of course, it is so good to see you again.”

I took a really good look at my moms, all this talk about my age got me to really take in everything about them. Mother was timeless, like all of her album covers, though I could see laugh lines and little wrinkles from smiling all the time at the corners of her eyes.  She wasn't vain like you would think a rocker would be, she seemed to embrace the shocks of grey that were finding their way into her dark mane of hair.  I had to smile a little, I looked eerily similar to her on her early album covers.

Then there was my adoptive Mom, who was just simply stunning, the years have been extremely good to her, and she seemed almost more refined and elegant every year.  She didn't hide the silver strands that were now starting to highlight her rich red hair as well.  Her blue eyes were so deep that you could see every emotion she had before she expressed them.  They were the sort of eyes that people write songs about, and mother had done just that with ‘Oceans of Blue.’

I explained, “We reorganized our schedule a bit so we could spend a couple days down here with family.”

Mother gave me a familiar smirk, the same one I saw in the mirror sometimes and said, “We've missed you too.”

Was I that transparent?  Or maybe she just implanted little synapse mining nanites in me when I was born, you know to transmit...

Mom interrupted my inner conspiracy by chuckling and saying, “I know that look, both of you get it when your inner monologue slips into overdrive.”

See?  It's both of them.  Nanites I say!  I exhaled in mock resignation and grinned, admitting, “Fine, I missed you two.”

We were able to jailbreak them from the grasp of the sound room and headed home, to the little two story house I grew up in.  It reminded me of a little cottage that sat just across the street from the small park Lizzie, and I played in as kids.

It always seemed half empty to me without Liz and I living here anymore, and I realized that my moms must feel the same way.  Especially the way they lit up whenever we visited.

I wanted a child of my own so bad, but I knew that if I did, then one day, I would have this same half empty feeling in my own home when they grew up and moved out.

I gave my moms hugs as they brought us coffee in the living room.

Mom tilted her head, her red locks spilling over one shoulder as she squinted slightly at me, examining me as she signed, “What was that for?”

I shrugged and said, “I just thought you might need it.”

She smiled at me and pulled me in for another quick hug and signed almost wistfully, “Sometimes... I do.”

We spent the afternoon just catching up on goings on here and in London since our last visit.  None of us brought up the loss of Mrs. Z, the wound was still too recent.  Mom surprised me with an admission.

She said and signed between sips of coffee.  “I'm retiring from politics.  Not from championing causes for my children, but politics.  I'm away from home...”  She paused and looked at mother when she said that, indicating that she was the home she spoke of.  “Far too much and I have less and less time to spend here each year.  I've done almost as much as I can to effect change in DC short of running for the oval office.”

She sighed and smiled at mother again. “Almost three decades is enough.  It is time to bring the fight back home, where it all began.”

Wow.  I blinked, in shock.  She was legendary in DC for championing the rights for almost every minority group out there, with a heavy emphasis on children and their impact on the future of the country.  As a kid, I didn't understand why mom was gone as much as she was at home, but I learned fast what she was doing and how very important it was.

I also saw that mom and I, and later Lizzy, were the number one priority for her, followed by her mission.  She had helped institute so many changes for the betterment of the country, a legacy unmatched.  I had no doubt that after she retired, she would still be an influential driving force on policies and future laws.  She'd still continue her fight, just at... I looked at mother... home.

I couldn't stop my smile as I blurted and signed, “That's great mom!”

Mother beamed at her, and I knew she thought it was twice as great to her.  I couldn't imagine how I would handle going months without seeing Nessie, and mother had to do that every year for decades with mom, giving her one hundred percent of her support.

Something most people learn really fast about mother is that she finds it very hard to trust someone until they prove themselves to her, and it is even harder for her to let someone in.  And the most irrefutable fact is that she was so completely behind, and completely supported the woman that was known to the press as the Irresistible Force, and so completely in love with her, that it was the stuff of legends.

Now it seems that her days of patiently waiting to have her bride all to herself were finally over.

I shook my head when Vannie squeezed my hand and looked questioningly into my eyes.  I shrugged.  Maybe I was reading too much into this, or projecting my own feelings on the subject and internalizing.  Either way, both my mothers looked so happy about the news.

Mom signed, “I wanted you to know before I announced I would not seek reelection.  Liz already knows.  We spoke with her last night.”

The conversation switched topics and landed eventually on the inevitable topic that we all had such passion for, music.  When mother asked if I had my eyes on any prospects that she could steal away from London Harmony for Harmony Trax.  I paused and then nodded.

Nessie warned, “Zoey said no, lady.”

I gave her a wicked grin and answered my mom while giving my girl a 'so there' look.  “As a matter of fact.  I found a couple in Seattle that work as well as one as Minuette.  The emotion in their ad libbed music is palpable.”

They knew the secret of Minuette that she was not a single artist, but a duet of types, one the melody the other the voice.  I know it is supposed to be a secret outside of London Harmony, but... come on, they are my mothers.

Fran nodded. “It reminds me a lot of Abigail Addison's stuff but with a fun bounce.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her, she had made the same associations as I had, she had her sister's ear for music and what had potential.  She had even helped recruit an artist or two as Vannie has been grooming her for a scouting position to add to her duties with her SmartCanvas audio project.

Vannie held up a cautioning finger and warned me again, “Again, Zoey warned you off.  The girl suffers acute anxiety.”

Mom smirked at the look on my face.  “Ladybug is very protective of those she claims as hers Squirt.  Just like some stubborn daughter I know.”

“Hey!  I resemble that remark.”

Everyone laughed.

Mother sat back and leaned against mom and signed without verbalizing, “Well shit.  You think our little girl is going to listen, Bella?”

Mom laughed, it was so musical, like wind chimes tinkling in a light breeze, as she shook her head and replied, her hands graceful as ever, “Not for a second M.”