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never questioned. He never
did. He got his wife away from his daughter, had dinner, read to his little
girl, spent time with her, pretended everything was all right. And he loved it,
loved it, when she’d hold him tight and say, I wish you
could always be here, Daddy. I like it when you’re here .
    Not realizing what his wife had
been doing.
    His ex-wife.
    “You cannot blame Madeline for
this,” his father says. “You both raised this child. You could have stopped
things.”
    Echoing his own thoughts.
    “I know,” he says. “But I didn’t.”
    Except he did. Cold turkey. His
daughter, without her music. Like a drinker without his booze.
    He closes his eyes.
    “What should I do, Dad?” he says.
“Please tell me. What should I do?”
     
    He takes Suze to doctors who all
chastise him, tell him she’s too young for enhancements, too old for genetic
modification. Then he tells them about the apps, and the doctors pull him
aside, tell him his daughter will lose her mind without her music.
    Lose her mind, like her mother.
    He can see bits of it already -
the desperation, the haunted looks. She walks into a room and shuts off any
music she can hear. She won’t watch entertainments. She won’t let anyone sing.
    She destroyed the player he
bought her, and smashed the earbuds.
    She’s five going on forty,
disillusioned and bitter.
    He can’t afford the apps, but he’ll
ruin her without them.
    A quarter of his income. More
when she can actually get the enhancements when her skull stops growing.
Different doctors give him a different timeline: ten, thirteen, twenty.
    His decision, they say. His.
    Alone.
    She’ll be in silence until then.
No music, no refuge. He does know that much about his daughter. Until her
mother left, until he discontinued the apps, his daughter lived inside her
music.
    Escaped in it.
    Became it, in a way he - a
non-musical person - can never really understand.
    But it is essential to her, one
doctor says. As essential as breathing.
    Nils shakes his head. People die when they can’t breathe , he says, hating it
when people overdramatize.
    But the doctor stares at him, and
says, in that same tone the judge used. The too-late tone, I
know .
    She’ll die? Suze will die?
    Maybe. Not physically die. But
stop. Stop being Suze. Stop being the person he loves.
    He begins to see it: She can’t
sleep, won’t smile, reverts - thumb in mouth, baby talk. She won’t let anyone
touch her, not even her grandfather - Gramps, whom she loves most of all.
    Nils can’t lose her. He can’t. He won’t .
    So he does the only thing he can:
    He moves back in with his
parents, taking over the basement. He lets the apartment go. He gives Suze the
large bedroom, him the small one. She complains only once - no window - and he
tells his father, who makes her a window seat in the den.
    What kind of thirty-five year-old
man with a good job and a daughter moves in with his parents?
    A failure, that’s what.
    But a failure who can afford
improper apps for his daughter. A failure who can spend a quarter of his income
on Sight Reading For Lounge Singers, on Music Appreciation, on Multi-coloured
Notes.
    A man who will not lose his
daughter, no matter what.
     
    Daddy found it. The music. He
says it lives in a tiny chip, one that goes behind her ear. He puts it there,
and reminds her to turn it off when she leaves the house.
    She does.
    But she can go upstairs in the
den ( I’m sorry, Gramps, so sorry I broke everything. Please
let me in the den again. I’m so sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. ) and she
sits in her corner, and she plays Gramps’s old-fashioned music machine which he
fixed after she hit it, and notes fly around her face - light blue for flutes,
red for trumpets, purple for piano, black for vocals.
    She can sit in her corner, with
Dolly, and watch the music, listen to the music, and sometimes, when she closes
her eyes, she misses Mommy.
    Just sometimes.
    But she doesn’t have to hide here
because nobody yells. And