EXCERPT2

I only wished Danny could see sound the same way I could. It was my personal wonderland, but the gate was closed to him.

Mom was the next greatest blessing in my life. Not only did she love me as a mother ought, but she perceived colors with sound, like me. On crisp summer mornings she would crawl under my comforter, and snuggle next to me. Eyes closed, we would listen to the Meadowlarks, celebrating the rising sun.
“I’ll bet you can see canary yellow, with twinges of red,” she guessed one morning, eyelids still sealed. She had missed the tangerine orange. I often perceived a broader array of colors. She said it was because I was still young, my mind open to the possibilities.
It was comforting to be understood. I could share my deepest thoughts with Mom, without being ashamed or embarrassed. She was a friend, and like a good friend, she was honest. That’s why I believed her when she said I was special, and that I had a unique gift from God.

Dad didn’t share this sentiment. As his own life became more troubled, our unique sensitivities ruffled him. I don’t know if he was jealous, that a piece of Mom didn’t belong to him, or if he really believed his wife and only daughter were strange. Being high or drunk only made him angrier. As a child I didn’t know which of his poisonous crimson remarks to swallow.
The worst was the night he called mom a “freak”. I remember it well, because it was the same night he hit her. He stormed away in a drunken stupor, angry and ashamed. I didn’t try to stop him from driving. Usually, he came home, after composing himself--mom and I would sense his return well before he arrived. But that night, as he drove further away, his presence completely dissipated, and I knew he was never coming home. I tried to comfort her, crumpled on the peeling kitchen linoleum, but she was inconsolable, heaving flaming red sobs that only I could see.
She lost her gift that night. We would no longer play the guessing game, or talk about the colors of the babbling stream, or dance with our eyes closed to Debussy in the living room. There would be no more painting lessons in her studio, above the garage. Almost all of our blissful collaborations came to an abrupt halt. Her gift was siphoned into a gaping black hole, and with it, her joy.