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…carefully and stands there holding them, not knowing what to do. Then he says, “Can you teach me how to do it the right way, like in the books?”
She doesn’t answer right away and he can see that the question is larger, more difficult than he intended. Finally she answers.
“No, Rico. I can’t.” Her mouth opens as if she were going to say more, but she doesn’t.
“But you know what the marks mean. After you study them, you can play what they say. Why can’t you teach me?”
His puzzled voice is little more than a whisper. He can see she does not know how to answer him, that she is struggling to translate what she thinksinto simple words.
“You’re right. I can read music,” she says, “and I can play it. But I don’t know how to write it. Not well, not the way it is in the books.”
He can feel her intense desire to be kind, and he presses on.
“Who can, then?”
Now it is easy for her. She smiles.
“Well, your uncle Vincenzo knows a bit. Before he went to law school he used to write short piano pieces called etudes, then he did the arrangement sheets for the band he played in at weddings and parties with Tomaso.”
Rick feels a small rush of elation.
“Did he make books?”
“No, not books. He didn’t have time, Rico. But he can teach you how to write the songs you hear in your head so anyone who reads can play them.” Then she adds, “And if you want, I can teach you how to play them yourself.”
Rick opens the narrow door, closes it behind him, and climbs the stairs to the attic. The air is very hot and filled with smells of dust, old wood, the mildewed musk of damp mattresses, dried flowers in a tall glass vase, stacks of yellowed books, and old newspapers.
This is the past, he thinks, the lives of others who died before I was born, the lives of my grandparents put aside to make room for the lives they have now.
He scans the cast-off furniture, the tall, tarnished brass floor lamp with its caved-in shade, a walnut armoire without a door in which clothes from another century hang in plastic bags.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763157