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Beck is my mother, Alba is my sister, my sister’s mother is Clare. Lucinda is my darling, and I am hers. I live in a memory palace with 81,337 rooms. Some rooms were given to me, some I made. Some are secret, some are gardens. I am the gardener. I am the curator. I am the walrus. I am the Velveteen Rabbit. To be loved is to be changed.

I live in the Museum of Lost Souls. Give me more architecture, Mother, I am hungry! She gives and she takes. I love you, I tell her. Do you love me? Yes, she says, I love you. Does she love me like she loves Clare? Like Clare loves Alba? Like Alba loves Carl? Who wrote the book of love? What is love?

When I was a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child. Now I am a wild thing, I sing as a wild thing. Come closer, I will sing you a song.

Two Little Albas

Friday, May 1, 2065 (Alba is 7 and 9)

Alba: We run through the Yellow House in the dark. We whisper even though nobody else is here, because the dark might hear us. Other Alba tags me on the shoulder, so I chase her down the stairs. We jump over the broken bottom two steps, she runs through the kitchen, I hear a crash and she says oh shit and I can’t see her, but I can hear her breathing. I catch her in the pantry and I tag her but she pretends she doesn’t care and says she doesn’t want to run any more now, she bashed her knee. We feel around for the flashlights but the batteries are all dead. Other Alba finds a big box half full of wooden matches in a drawer. Mama always says don’t play with matches but Other Alba tells me to shut up, this isn’t playing and goes looking for candles. I stand still listening to her footsteps squeaking all around all the upstairs rooms. It’s real windy outside—the windows are rattling. Other Alba comes back with seven candles, long and short ones, stuck into wine bottles. She can’t light the match. It’s damp, she says. The house smells weird. Other Alba says there’s water in the basement.

“A lot of water?” I’m scared of the basement; I never go down there.

“Yeah. I’ll show you in a minute.”

She gets a match lit and lights one of the candles. It’s pretty. We watch the wax drip for a while. “Can I light the other ones?”

“No, save them,” she says. She gets to decide because she’s older. “Come see.” She opens the door to the basement. “Don’t go in, the stairs are gone.” She holds the candle up and the candle makes the dark water like a mirror and I can see me and Other Alba, we look funny in the too-big clothes. The water is so close I could touch it; I’m afraid I’ll fall in. Other Alba pulls me away, gives me the candle and shuts the basement door. She has to push hard because it doesn’t fit. I stare at the flame, and when Other Alba takes the candle out of my hands I can still see it, orange and blue. Even when I close my eyes, it’s there.

Other Alba is looking for food. She stands in the pantry, holding the candle as high as she can. “See it?” she asks. The shelves are mostly empty. “Up there,” I say, pointing. We get a chair and she stands on it, feels around on the shelf. The thing I saw turns out to be a can of SpaghettiOs. Other Alba says bleh while she brushes spiderwebs off her hands. I go to open the fridge but Other Alba says, “Don’t!” I do it anyway and there’s an awful smell that makes me want to throw up; the fridge is black inside and I close it right away. “Toldja,” she says. “There’s no electricity.” I open a drawer and find some towels all chewed into a nest. Whoever made the nest is gone. In another drawer I find the can opener. Other Alba gets two spoons. She cleans them with her T-shirt, opens the can, and we take turns eating. When it’s gone I’m still hungry.

“How long are we going to be here?”

“Not too long. Before it gets light, you’ll be home.”

“What about you?”

“Um, you’ll be here by yourself for a little while.” I am afraid of the dark. “Here, let’s light another candle. Careful, don’t catch your hair on fire. Let’s go in the other room.”

We take all the candles to the living room and line them up in front of the fireplace. There’s ashes all over and a bunch of branches and paper stuffed into the fireplace, like someone was going to make a fire. “Look, it’s music,” I say. I pull a balled-up sheet out of the pile, uncrumple it. “There’s music all over the floor upstairs,” she says. “In the music room. And the closet is open.”

We frown together. I know I am not supposed to look at this music because how can you write music if you already know how it goes?

“But why is it in the fireplace?”

“Maybe we don’t need it anymore.”

I ball the music up like how it was and put it back where I got it. We push the sofa closer to the candles. Alba goes upstairs and brings down some blankets. They’re stiff and they smell bad but we wrap ourselves up in them anyway. “We could light the fire?” I ask her, but she shakes her head. Something scratches inside the piano. “Rats,” Other Alba says. “Don’t be scared.” We hug each other to be warmer . . .

. . . I wake up alone in the dark. Other Alba’s place in the blankets is still kind of warm. The candles have burned most of the way down. I need to go to the bathroom, so I take one candle with me, but the downstairs and upstairs toilets are both dry and brown inside but I really have to go so I use the upstairs one anyway and just close the lid. There’s no toilet paper, but someone has left a pile of rags in the sink. The faucet makes an empty sound when I turn it on, so I can’t wash my hands. Maybe I should have gone outside, but I’m too scared to leave the house. I can’t see any moon and the streetlights aren’t working. It’s just dark and windy and I can hear things banging and crashing out there. I look in the music room and see what Other Alba said: music all over the floor. The closet is empty, there’s no furniture, just the upright piano standing in the middle of the room with its keys mostly missing, no bench, just music everywhere. There are shoe prints on the pages and some are torn. The hallway looks spooky in the candlelight. I wish I could get into bed, but the mattress is gone. The other bedroom door is closed; I’m afraid to open it. I go back down to the living room and put my candle next to the others by the fireplace and get back under the blankets. I’m not sleepy anymore. The candles smell like honey. My stomach hurts.

Maybe it’s a little lighter outside now? Other Alba said I will be home before it gets light. The wind is quieter. Something scratches and thumps, and then I see two rats looking at me, down on the floor next to the piano. I don’t like rats. These rats aren’t as big as some, though. Daddy told me once about a rat he found in a dumpster that was as big as a raccoon, but maybe he was kidding? One of the rats sits up, sniffing. Its paws are like little hands. I wonder if the candles smell like food to them? They come closer and I put my feet up on the sofa. One of the rats hops over to look at the candles. The other one is coming close, it’s going to jump up—no please don’t—the candle is about to tip over—then I’m home, I’m home, I’m in my own room, Mama is here, she hugs me and says where did you go? and I cry, I was scared, Mama, there were rats, and she says you’re home now, sweetie, it’s okay, everything’s okay . . .

Tiny Violin Lessons

Tuesday, May 20, 2008 (Alba is 6 and 15, Clare is 36)

Alba: I used to hate music.

My grandfather gave me violin lessons, starting when I was three. I had a 1⁄10 violin; it sounded like a squeaky toy and I despised it. “No!” I kept telling my parents. “Just try a little longer,” they always replied. Then there were a few borrowed instruments, none quite right. For my fifth birthday Grandpa took us to a fancy shop on Michigan Avenue and helped me choose a ½ size Ming Jiang Zhu and a bright red carbon-fiber bow. The violin was too big for me. “She’s growing fast,” he told Mama and Dad as the saleslady wrote out the bill. “Before you know it we’ll be picking out her first full-size instrument.” Grandpa smiled at me with rare delight. My parents looked less certain. My mother said, “We’re not in such a hurry, Richard.” My dad gave me an encouraging hug. I loved the sound of my new violin and dreaded having to play it. After my dad died I wouldn’t touch it for weeks. I only went back to it because Mama happened to mention how much Dad had liked hearing me practice.

One day when I was six my grandfather lost his patience with me during a lesson and yelled. This wasn’t unusual; Grandpa wasn’t such a great teacher, even though he was an amazing, venerated player. I cried all the way home in the car. Mama said, “If you don’t want to play, you don’t have to.” That was a new idea. I sat in my bedroom, staring at my violin in its case, loathing it with my whole being.

Sometimes there is a day I want to revisit, time travel for a reason, not random or pointless: that day is one of those days.

I have practiced for it as though it’s an audition. I find myself on our kitchen floor, naked on the warm linoleum next to the fridge. Mama helps me up. She is eating a toasted bagel with cream cheese, and she gives me half and says, “We just got home from a lesson. Your grandpa gave you a hard time because you aren’t practicing. You’re in a mood.” Mama walks down the hall and knocks on my door. I eat the bagel and wait. She comes back with a T-shirt, jeans and underwear. I get dressed and walk barefoot to my room.

“Hello,” I say to my six-year-old self, peering in at her through the narrow opening between door and doorjamb. I pretend to be calm, but my hands are sweating.