T H E
F O O T N O T E
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So much so, because it was very like playing the piano.
He didn't understand what was happening at first, tipped the hour glass over and watched the sand leak through his fingers: spent the morning running out side, the sweet smell of alpine air. The breath would hitch in his throat like a dozen love birds trapped inside his chest. His father said he talked too much.
Came back in to find that Minerva had gone.
That was eight years ago.
The change was there, and although he was only five at the time, he could not help but notice the similarities. His mama had gone through the trends- best to be clinical- spent more time away from the rational lines between the spines of the books and more between the rose hedges. He changed her like the boy was changing Minerva. Eight o'clock would find her dressed and curled like a cat, eating breakfast in the lounge.
He pushed open the door cautiously.
"What are we having?" he asked.
"Fruit du fraisier." she said, licking the cream off her fingers. He remembered thinking that strawberries were so romantic.
Like Mama, a change he could not stand came a few years later. She talked a lot more, her voice lilting as if always on the verge of slipping into a smile. She talked about colours instead of shades, fragments instead of lines. What the boy had to say about shades: oh it wasn't grey at all.
She laughed like a bell.
It curved her eyes upwards, forever embracing whoever came into her reach: less so was it meant for him. The violin matched the curves of her profile, and he remembered thinking that violins were so romantic. But then again, it was only because there were just eighty eight keys, and Grieg was a duet, they played Grieg because nothing ever matched until the very end and yet it was meant to be together-
She took to taking the boy to cafes around Nice, little shops by the sea, despite his constant reminders.
"I never cared much for desserts, Minerva."
"Humour me." She said, biting into a strawberry. He smiled, and she mirrored it.
He decided that what he hated most about the change was her laughter. She was always laughing, the sound spilled out of the piano when she wasn't there, she was in Ireland for a week. It glowed like the promise of Christmas, for three years it hung and she seemed transfixed by all of it. When she came bursting into his bedroom that evening, sleeves flying-
"Bobo! Bobo! Mon Dieu, he's back!"
-he knew he had lost Minerva.
"I'm sorry about the incident." Said the boy. A smiled tugged at the corner of his mouth. Beau shrugged his shoulders and turned away. He didn't want to have to look upwards.
"It was rather all a misunderstanding."
"I don't remember."
It was like playing after an embrace, faint from a sweet memory of five years. His fingers felt the contact- it was almost hypersensitive- each key too light, too thin, his movements too quick for the sound to register. He felt compelled to do so: this was the music she played when he wasn't allowed to disturb her, and if he sat there quietly enough, she would finish with a 'Hah!', come out of the ballroom and envelope him in a shroud of citrus perfume.
"I have it all planned out. The calculations work. Of course they work."
She twisted a strand of curls between two fingers, satisfaction radiating. He nodded because he knew what to do.
Instead, now she laughed- it hurt his ears, her permanently happy mask. Her friend had turned her into a bizarre charade, arms linked, their proximity like the cadence of two fourths and an octave, it hurt his hands as if they were in fire, so romantic, so romantic-
That was eight years ago.
She walked through the double doors, and he could see the lights of the Bentley swerving around the oval and down the driveway. It refracted off the glass in the hallway like a thousand voices drifting.
She noticed his stare. The abandoned piano. There was a trend here, points and lines on a graph. The click was as clear as a sigh dropped on the parquet floor. Her eyes widened.
"Who-"
Bang.
"Chocolate." He said.
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A/N:. Perspective of Beau Paradizo on Minerva and Artemis. I always wondered how the recursion of Minerva and his mother would have an effect on him.