The Count of Three

“Tom!”

“What?” Tom yelled.

“Tom!”

“What is it?” he yelled again, then cursed under his breath.

He ran to the window, hoping there was some other Tom around. Alas, his sister Lindsey was in the street, staring up at him. She waved, her normal way, so energetic — but she was not smiling. He waved back, slightly confused, but the ritual was the same as other times. She wanted him to get in the car.

“Let me put on some pants!” he barked, running into his bedroom.

What day was it? Wednesday? Saturday? The alarm clock by his bed read 9:17 a.m., and he had no idea what he could be — “Oh no,” he said aloud. “The recital! It’s Saturday! I was supposed to be there half an hour ago to get ready!”

He clunked down the stairs of his apartment building and hopped in Lindsey’s back seat.

Chari smiled at him from her booster seat, knowing already at the age of six that talking to her uncle in the morning was a bad idea.

“Malik,” he said, acknowledging Lindsey’s husband in the front seat.

Malik put his fist out toward Tom for a fist-bump. “Hey bro,” he said. “Better buckle up.”

Tom ran into the concert hall and sat at the piano. He brushed his knees with his palms to remove the sweat, slicked back his hair, and began to play a soft overture from Bach, just to quiet the crowd.

Lindsey would not make eye contact with him. Malik held Chari in his lap as she played with the hem of her dress.

The recital went the same as normal. Tom got up and down from his post several times to let the “Tiny Tinkers” play, alternating them with the older children, whom he’d accompany on piano as they played or sang.

“On the count of three,” he’d whisper, making eye contact with the older students, whom he had known for years. “One, two…” then he’d only mouth “three,” and they’d start their duet.

Eloise was doing abnormally well on the cello today. Her thin frame perched itself upon the regal upholstered chair with the delicacy of a feather. She wove her hand back and forth over the strings, caressing them with the bow, making the most beautiful tones in grand sweeps of majesty. She finished her piece, stood beside her cello, and bowed humbly, then returned to her seat beside her mother and father, a Mona Lisa smirk on her face.

Tom faded in and out of the room. These pieces were all so typical of a recital that he began to wander around the halls of his own mind. Before he knew it, he was sitting at the breakfast table, staring at his late father in the face while the man chewed on a piece of toast.

“Dad?”

“Did you milk the cow yet, boy?” said the apparition, his eyes never leaving the newspaper page.

“Uh… no sir.”

“Well, hop to, boy. Ain’t got all day.”

“Y-yes sir,” Tom stumbled over the words. He leaned in closer to his father’s face and stared into his eyes. When was this?

“Don’t forget to grab your coat, son,” said his father as he left the room.

“Yes, Dad,” he replied. Then, so quietly that only he could hear, he added, “I miss you.”

He threw on his Carhartt jacket, slicked his hair back and shoved a trucker hat over it, then started out the door.

“On the count of three,” he said mechanically. “One, two…”

This child was a new one. A small boy, Charlie, his thick curls pulled back in a puff of a ponytail, his shoes shiny. He sang “What a Wonderful World” as Tom played. Tom felt for a moment pulled back into the room, his eyes closed like Charlie’s, both of them just enjoying the music.

“It is a wonderful world,” said a voice. He opened his eyes and his mother stood there, roughly helping him tuck a shirt into his tuxedo pants.

“Mom, what… stop!” he said, laughing.

“Old Mama can’t help her boy no more?” she said with a chuckle. “Fine, you do it yourself and see if raggedy Tom can impress little Ruthie tonight at the prom.”

Tom stared at her. Blonde hair, green eyes, the thin scar across her cheek where the chicken scratched her when he was a boy. This was definitely the dearest woman on earth.

“What are you staring at, Tom? You’ve got to go!” she giggled, smacking him on the rear as he ran down the stairs.

“On the count of three,” he said. “One, two…”

Chari’s turn to play. She had picked up the violin at his bequest, only last year. She was the youngest violinist at Mrs. Henshaw’s music school. Mrs. Henshaw beamed at her as she stood nervously before the class. When Tom mouthed “Three,” she began without a hitch. Not all the notes were perfect, but she was as fluid as a stream.

“Get up you butthead!” shouted a voice. Tom’s eyes opened to see the Star Wars poster taped to the wall beside his childhood bed.

“Shut up,” he said, rolling over.

Suddenly he was cold and wet. Lindsey stood over him with an empty tea pitcher.

“Oh, Mom’s totally killing you after I kill you!” he shrieked.

“Both of you’ll have to catch me first!” she yelled. “You promised to drive me and Malik to see M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. Mom and Dad are both busy. And you’ve been in bed all day! It’s almost 3 p.m.! The movie’s at 3:30! Get up!”

Tom pounced on Lindsey and tickled her roughly. “I really hate you sometimes.”

“Feeling’s mutual. But that’s what I’m here for,” she laughed.

Minutes later, he hopped in the car. They were driving down the freeway, and the summer wind coming in through the windows smelled like corn, cows, and countryside — like home.

A roar of applause erupted, and Tom’s eyes opened. Chari had finished her performance. She curtsied cutely while smiling, a few of her teeth missing in the front.

Mrs. Henshaw wrapped up the recital after the last student played, and said a few words, which Tom’s ears never even registered. When she looked at him questioningly and waved him over, he knew he’d missed something.

“For our beloved Tom Wilder, with the magical piano skills, we’ve taken a collection and, well… here, Tom. We love you, Tom. You’ve been consistently late for ten years, but you never disappoint!”

Tom looked down at Mrs. Henshaw’s outstretched hands. One was looking to be shaken and the other hand was holding out a gift.

He shook her hand and took the gift, but she pulled him in and kissed his cheek. The crowd exploded with whistles and yells, and even Lindsey in the front row couldn’t help smiling at him.

He didn’t remember the moments between then and the last forkful of his Indian takeout. CNN blared in the background, some doom-and-gloom prediction about the election. Jake, Tom’s chihuahua, slept quietly in the corner, his front paws twitching.

He unwrapped the gift he’d been given and stared at it blankly. “Who the heck needs a little black book? At least it’s a Moleskine,” he said.

Opening it, he immediately started to cry. Page after page was full of notes from kids over the last ten years, telling them how much he meant to them. Several had written that they loved him, and at least every third child had written “1,2,3” on their page. He was near the middle of the book when the entries stopped.

Chari’s happened to be the last. She had covered it in drawings of rainbows and violins. She drew herself and Tom as stick figures at the bottom, holding hands.

An envelope in the center contained a gift certificate for one hundred dollars to the best restaurant in town, Smith’s Roast House. “That was kind,” he said to himself.

He must have read through the book another three or four times before going to bed. What had happened to the last ten years of his life? Wasn’t he supposed to be a pianist on Broadway? But he had spent a fortune there just out of college, trying to make rent every week, missing his sister’s wedding, Chari’s birth, and narrowly escaping the big city’s clutches to make it to his own parents’ funerals.

He brought the little black book with him to bed and thumbed through it again. Three pages from the end, someone had drawn a complicated-looking circle. He stared at it, then after reading the kid’s caption, he understood. “Wish button, huh?”

On the back of the page, in the same handwriting, were these words:

“Mr. Tom, You don’t smile much. Granny says you’re grumpy and need cheering up. The face you make is the same face I make when I think about my mama going home to Jesus. She was happy, but it made me sad when she left. So I drawed you this wish button, then I prayed to Jesus to make it work. I hope it works for you. Don’t always work for me. But it makes me happy to try it.”

Tom shut the book. What he really needed was his parents back. He needed his father to tell him what to do and for his mother to make him feel good about his life. He needed them around to take care of Lindsey and Chari, to help him be a good uncle. He needed the farm back, the simple life, some money to get out of the debt he was in from his failed attempt at fame. He needed a fresh start.

He went to sleep quickly. That night he dreamt the wild kinds of dreams that make a people scratch their heads in the morning. Lindsey was as big as a house and had him clutched in her hand. Somehow, a minute later, he was on a spaceship with Malik and Chari, eating nuts and bolts. Chari asked him about the present from Mrs. Henshaw, which he produced and flipped through with her.

“Did you press the button yet?” she said as they got to that page.

“No. Do you wanna press it?”

“No, silly, it’s yours!” she said, laughing.

He pressed the button drawing and yelled playfully, “I wish for a fresh start!”

Other things happened in his dream that he couldn’t remember. He did play checkers with Jim Caviezel, though, who was dressed up as Jesus.

He woke to repeated licking on his forehead, then shooed it away. He pulled back the covers to see not Jake, but Harold, his sister’s old poodle, standing on his bed. Fumbling for his glasses, he scanned the room. Star Wars poster? PlayStation? Skateboard?

“What the —”

“Tom! You coming?”

“Huh?” he said under his breath. He walked out of the room, finding himself in his childhood home. He ran back into his room, looking for Jake, or anything familiar. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Fitter, more hair, less wrinkles. He lifted up his shirt and realized he was missing the scar from his appendectomy, too.

Beside his bed was the Moleskine from Mrs. Henshaw. He flipped it open, but the only thing in it now was a note that read, “Look in the back pocket.”

Inside it were two hundred one-hundred-dollar bills. “Twenty thousand dollars!” he yelled. Then he teared up, realizing that his credit card debt was floating around $19,700.

“What was that, boy?” yelled the voice from downstairs. He realized with a jolt of glee that it was his mother’s voice. “Seriously, Tom, I made pancakes! I’ll give you to the count of three to get down here or I’m feeding them to Harold! One, two…”

The next sound was the thumping feet of a happy young man running down rickety farmhouse stairs.