May 26th 2022
Chapter 146
Our Joy For Clarity
The house was quiet, the kind of quiet where even the tiniest buzz of an appliance, even in another room, could be heard crystal clear. Birds were chirping outside; she heard those, too. She heard a car… no, a truck… passing by the lane, and unless she was just really reaching, she might have been hearing Turtle the horse, way off at the Sandersons' up the road. It was too quiet.
It wasn't as though she couldn't exist in silence, she could, but well… she was home, and her home usually rang with the sounds of four small children, and with those girls around, they could also count on any of their five dogs to add to this sort of background cacophony. Even if everyone was not shouting or laughing somewhere, they'd be there, and they would fill some of that silence, so it didn't feel so… absolute. But while the dogs were all here, the sound of their sleeping breaths part of that blanketing quiet, they were the only ones here with her. Pappy Joe and Patty had come down to watch the triplets today, and they had taken the three of them out, the better to let Maya have the house to herself. Peace and quiet, they'd said… Too quiet…
Sure, she understood the merit of granting her these means of relaxing, but… it was doing the exact opposite for her. It was making her restless, like she could only have a real shot at relaxing if there were others near her. Without them, she'd be left with this feeling like she was supposed to be doing something and she wasn't doing it. She was highly aware of how ridiculous this was, but here she was, no way around it…
It was maddening. She'd been trying to keep herself reasonably occupied. Napping was impossible in this state. Television was doing nothing for her, and same for her book. Even grabbing pencil and paper was no use. Her inspiration, for the first time in a good while, refused to drive her hand into creating something… anything… That might have been the most frustrating one yet. The Hex? Let's try the Hex… She went and found the keys and headed out the kitchen door.
Already stepping out of the house felt kind of good, to her relief. She breathed the air, stood there for a few moments so she might take it in, one hand high over and one low under her belly, her eyes closed… Yeah, this right here, this was what she needed. She could just sit here for a while. Although… The keys were jangling in her hand, the studio just ahead… With a decisive nod, she went and unlocked the door, stepping inside only long enough to get a hold of her father's old guitar before coming back out and moving to sit with the instrument.
It wouldn't exactly be the easiest thing, not at her current size, but then this wasn't a show. She wasn't out here playing for any audience other than herself and her unborn child.
"Hey, how about it, you want to work with me on this one? Here, listen…" she spoke as she lightly started to play. At least this melody did not depend too much on her abilities as available on this day. She'd been working at this song already for a few days, as requested to her by Neil Tolliver.
Maya had written several songs for the Marvelers over time, and while not all of them could be expected to be breakaway hits, a couple of them had been. It was enough to set the band firmly among that handful of artists she could count as regulars, right up there with Ree Forster. Every once in a while, she'd be asked to attend some event or another that would require for her to travel out of Texas, and if it was at all manageable, she would do it. She had gotten to a point by now where everyone in that side of her life and her work seemed to understand her priorities, and she'd have to admit that she was sometimes surprised by how accommodating they could be. Oh, it wasn't everyone, no, but she'd learned to get used to those a long time ago, and it barely registered enough to give it much of a thought anymore. Family was first, then school, then the rest, but it wasn't so far of a step down as to suggest that her musical career didn't matter to her. No, if that had been the case, she would have given it up a long time ago. Instead, she somehow managed to balance it with everything else, without any of it being left to suffer from her being stretched too thin.
Then again… she might think, recalling how she'd ended up on this early leave. But today, she sat here, outside her home, softly playing, and she could feel the baby move around, almost as though yearning for the world beyond. This babe, like its older sisters, seemed to have its own response to music. Oh, it had been harder to figure out where everyone stood when it had been the triplets, but even with three of them in there at once, maybe with hindsight working in her favor, she could recall and pick apart her daughters' moods. Calm Lucy, and restless Remy, and Kacey some happy medium of the other two… She'd definitely become familiar with Marianne when she'd been in her belly, though in her case it could be said that they'd given her very little choice, what with how she'd been on tour with Ree throughout several weeks of that pregnancy. By now, it was sort of like 'well, of course.'
With baby number five… Based purely on what she felt in her belly when she played, when she sang… This one was undoubtedly… curious. That was the word she kept thinking about when she felt how it responded to her music. Like there it was, going about its day, growing away, not a care in the world, and then something would happen, and they'd feel it, hear it… In her mind, Maya would picture a little fish, swimming up to just under the surface and floating peacefully there, listening, swimming around as the presence of those sounds made it so excited but, being under the surface as it was, unable to understand what it was and where it came from… It only made Maya want to play and sing all the time.
She didn't work on the song, not so much. She played at the melody she'd already been working through, didn't really change it or tweak it. She played, and if she felt movement of any kind, she smiled and went on playing. The more she sat there like that, the more difficult it became to ignore certain things, and chief among those… She knew that it wasn't the quiet that bothered her, not exactly. More than anything, what troubled her was what she was able to consider in that moment of peace. She would be reminded of how afraid she'd been… still was.
It wasn't new, was it? In each of her pregnancies she'd had some cause for concern, whether big or small. She'd had that near fall with Marianne, and even if that had been little more than a big fear and some pain in her arm, to her it still counted. Then with the triplets, well… The closer she'd gotten to having them, the more she'd been left to wonder if they would all get to come out alright, and then the delivery, oh… Now she'd had this fainting spell. She'd been fine since then, and even so she couldn't help but wonder, and be afraid… So yes, she would play her guitar, and she would sing, because she loved to feel how it made the baby move. But maybe more than that, she played and sang because feeling that movement was reassuring. There it was, and all was well.
"Mama!" a little voice called, and she smiled for knowing it well.
"Hey, kit," she smiled as she looked over to find Remy ahead of the pack, dashing her way toward her as she and her sisters had been guided through from the kitchen by Patty. They were back, all of them, and the silent spell was broken.
Small as they were, barely aware of anything different going on with their mother other than that her belly had been getting bigger and bigger from their little sibling, they could not be kept from rushing at her all at once, nor would they be prevented from doing so. Maya barely had time to set her guitar aside that they were all there around her seat. Lucy was as ever magnetically pulled to feel for 'Baby,' tipping her head to rest against her mother's belly, and Maya lightly rubbed at her back, letting her be as she looked to the twins.
"I missed you, did you miss me?" she asked, and they nodded.
"Yeah! Yeah!" Kacey chirped.
"You had a good time with Pappy Joe and Patty though, huh?" Maya asked them. More nods. "You weren't running around too much, were you?" she teased, only to feel the urge to chuckle for the way Remy's face grew uncertain, tinged with guilt. "Now, what did you do, kitty kit?" she asked, leaving not a drop of reprimand in her voice. There was only so much to be done at her age, was there? "Good thing you're back then, before you went and wore the two of them out," she whispered before looking over to the kitchen door. Lucas' grandparents were back inside, both of them looking glad to be back, too. Keeping an eye on the three of them was quite the task for anyone sometimes, but those two weren't getting any younger…
"Mama, ooh ooh?" Remy pointed at the guitar. That was her way of asking for music, her sisters' as well.
"You want me to play?" Maya asked, and they all nodded. "It's going to be nap time though," she reminded them. "I can play but only upstairs, after you all lie down, okay?"
It was a scramble to the stairs before long, each girl taken up by one of the adults until they could end up on their parents' bed. There, they were settled in, with the promise that Maya would join them, after she'd fulfilled her end of the bargain by playing them to sleep. It was hard not to lose track and start to laugh, seeing how much the music swiftly eased them down, even as they all fought to stay awake and keep listening. Eventually, they were down and out, so the guitar was put down once more and Maya carefully lay down with her daughters, putting her arm around all three of them. This time around, Kacey was nearest, and she cuddled right up close when she felt her mother near.
Maya needed a bit more time than they'd done before she fell asleep. She watched them, all squeezed in close together, off somewhere dreaming… She was going to stop worrying so much, she would. The longer she'd spend lost in some 'what if,' the more she'd end up missing out on things with these little butts right here, or their sisters, all before their little sibling came into the world.
"You alright out there, bun?" Maya whispered when she saw that Lucy was awake again. She didn't look over, but she nodded. She was much more focused on Artie, lying next to her, and the ability to pet him from where she lay. The dog seemed to enjoy this exchange very much. "Alright, well, so long as you're good," Maya smiled. "Go on back to sleep, go on…" she encouraged, cupping the side of her face. As devoted as she was to the dog, Lucy drifted back into her dreams.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
