Life with the Day family acquired a reassuring pattern. My father would leave for work before any of us stirred from our sleep, and that golden waking hour between his departure and my march to school was a comfort. My mother at the stove, stirring oatmeal or frying breakfast in a pan; the twins exploring the kitchen on unsteady feet. The picture windows framed and kept away the outside world. The Days' home had long ago been a working farm, and though agriculture had been abandoned, vestiges remained. An old barn, red paint souring to a dark mauve, now served as a garage. The split-rail fence that fronted the property was falling apart stick by stick. The field, an acre or so that had flushed green with corn, lay fallow, a tangle of brambles that Dad only bothered to mow once each October. The Days were the first to abandon farming in the area, and their distant neighbors joined them over the years, selling off homesteads and acreage to developers. But when I was a child, it was still a quiet, lonesome place.
　　The trick of growing up is to remember to grow. The mental part of becoming Henry Day demanded full attention to every detail of his life, but no amount of preparation for the changing can account for the swath of the subject's family history—memories of bygone birthday parties and other intimacies—that one must pretend to remember. History is easy enough to fake; stick around anyone long enough and one can catch up to any plot. But other accidents and flaws expose the risks of assuming another's identity. Fortunately we seldom had company, for the old house was isolated on a small bit of farmland out in the country.
　　Near my first Christmas, while my mother attended to the crying twins upstairs and I idled by the fireplace, a knock came at the front door. On the porch stood a man with his fedora in hand, the smell of a recent cigar mixing with the faintly medicinal aroma of hair oil. He grinned as if he recognized me at once, although I had not seen him before.
　　"Henry Day," he said. "As I live and breathe."
　　I stood fixed to the threshold, searching my memory for an errant clue as to who this man might be. He clicked his heels together and bowed slightly at the waist, then strode past me into the foyer, glancing furtively up the stairs. "Is your mother in? Is she decent?"
　　Hardly anyone came to visit in the middle of the day, except occasionally the farmers' wives nearby or mothers of my schoolmates, driving out from town with a fresh cake and new gossip. When we had spied on Henry, there was no man other than his father or the milkman who came to the house.
　　He tossed his hat on the sideboard and turned to face me again. "How long's it been, Henry? Your mama's birthday, maybe? You don't look like you've grown a whisker. Your daddy not feeding you?"
　　I stared at the stranger and did not know what to say.
　　"Run up the stairs and tell your mama I'm here for a visit. Go on now, son."
　　"Who shall I say is calling?"
　　"Why, your Uncle Charlie, a-course."
　　"But I don't have any uncles."
　　The man laughed; then his brow furrowed and his mouth became a severe line. "Are you okay, Henry boy?" He bent down to look me in the eye. "Now, I'm not actually your uncle, son, but your mama's oldest friend. A friend of the family, you might say."
　　My mother saved me by coming down the stairway unbidden, and the moment she saw the stranger, she threw her arms into the air and rushed to embrace him. I took advantage of their reunion to slip away.
　　A close call, but not as bad as the scare a few weeks later. In those first few years, I still had all my changeling powers and could hear like a fox. Prom any room in the house, I could eavesdrop on my parents during their unguarded conversations, and overheard Dad's suspicions during one such pillow talk.
　　"Have you noticed anything odd about the boy lately?"
　　She slips into bed beside him. "Odd?"
　　"There's the singing around the house."
　　"He's a lovely voice."
　　"And those fingers."
　　I looked at my hands, and in comparison with other children's, my fingers were exceedingly long and out of proportion.
　　"I think he'll be a pianist. Billy, we ought to have him at lessons."
　　"And toes."
　　I curled up my toes in my bed upstairs.
　　"And he seems to have grown not an inch or put on not a pound all winter long."
　　"He needs some sun is all."
　　The old man rolls over toward her. "He's a queer lad, is all I know."
　　"Billy ... stop."
　　I resolved that night to become a true boy and begin paying closer attention to how I might be considered normal. Once such a mistake had been made, nothing could be done. I couldn't very well shorten my fingers and toes and invite further skepticism, but I could stretch the rest of me a bit each night and keep up with all the other children. I also made it a point to avoid Dad as much as possible.
　　The idea of the piano intrigued me as a way to ingratiate myself with my mother. When she wasn't listening to crooners on the radio, she might dial in the classics, particularly on a Sunday. Bach sent my head spinning with buried reveries, conjuring an echo from the distant past. But I had to figure away to mention my interest without Mom realizing that her private conversations could be heard no matter how quiet or intimate. Fortunately, the twins supplied the answer. At Christmas, my distant grandparents sent them a toy piano. No bigger than a bread basket, it produced but a tinny octave of notes, and from New Year's Day the keys gathered a dusty coat. I rescued the toy and sat in the nursery, playing nearly recognizable tunes from distant memory. My sisters, as usual, were enchanted, and they sat like two entranced yogis as I tested my memory on the piano's limited range. Dust rag in hand, my mother wandered by and stood in the doorway, listening intently. From the corner of my eye, I watched her watching me, and when I ended with a flourish, her applause was not completely unexpected.
　　In the fleeting time between homework and dinner, I picked out a tune of sorts, and gradually revealed my native talent, but she needed more encouragement than that. My scheme was casual and simple. I let drop the fact that a half-dozen of the kids in school took music lessons, when, in truth, there may have been one or two. On car trips, I pretended that the panel below my window was a keyboard and fingered measures until my father ordered me to cut that out. I made a point of whistling the first few bars of something familiar, like Beethoven's Ninth, when helping Mom dry the dishes. I did not beg, but bided my time, until she came to believe the idea as her own. My gambit played out when, on the Saturday before Henry's eighth birthday, my parents drove me into the city to see a man about piano lessons.
　　We left the twin toddlers with the neighbors, and the three of us sat up front in my father's coupe, embarking early that spring morning in our Sunday clothes. We drove past the town where I went to school, where we shopped and went to Mass, and onto the highway into the city. Shiny cars zipped along the asphalt as we picked up speed, joining a ribbon of pure energy flowing in both directions. We went faster than I'd ever gone in my life, and I had not been to the city in nearly one hundred years. Billy drove the '49 De Soto like an old friend, one hand on the wheel, his free arm thrown across the seat behind my mother and me. The old conquistador stared at us from the steering wheel's hub, and as Dad made a turn, the explorer's eyes seemed to follow us.
　　On our approach to the city, the factories on the outskirts appeared first, great smokestacks exhaling streams of dark clouds, furnaces within glowing with hearts of fire. A bend in the road—then all at once, a view of buildings stretched to heaven. The downtown's sheer size left me breathless, and the closer we came, the greater it loomed, until suddenly we were in the car-choked streets. The shadows deepened and darkened. At a cross street, a trolley scraped along, its pole shooting sparks to the wires above. Its doors opened like a bellows, and out poured a crowd of people in their spring coats and hats; they stood on a concrete island in the street, waiting for the light to change. In the department store windows, reflections of shoppers and traffic cops mingled with displays of new goods: women's dresses and men's suits on mannequins, which fooled me initially, appearing alive and posing perfectly still.
　　"I don't know why you feel the need to come all the way downtown for this. You know I don't like coming into the city. I'll never find parking."
　　Mom's right arm shot out. "There's a space, aren't we lucky?"
　　Riding up in the elevator, my father reached inside his coat pocket for a Camel, and as the doors opened on the fifth floor, he lit up. We were a few minutes early, and while they debated over whether or not to go in, I walked to the door and entered. Mr. Martin may not have been a fairy, but he was very fey. Tall and thin, his white hair long in a shaggy boy's cut, he wore a worn plum-colored suit. Christopher Robin all grown up and gone to genteel seed. Behind him stood the most beautiful machine I had ever seen. Lacquered to a high black finish, the grand piano drew all of the vitality of the room toward its propped-open lid. Those keys held in their serenity the possibility of every beautiful sound. I was too dumbstruck to answer his inquiry the first time.
　　"May I help you, young man?"
　　"I'm Henry Day, and I'm here to learn everything you know."
　　"My dear young man," he replied, sighing, "I'm afraid that's impossible."
　　I walked to the piano and sat at the bench. The sight of the keys unlocked a distant memory of a stern German instructor ordering me to increase the tempo. I stretched my fingers as far apart as possible, testing my span, and laid them upon the ivory without eliciting an accidental tone. Mr. Martin glided behind me, overlooking my shoulder, studying my hands. "Have you played before?"
　　"Once upon a time ..."
　　"Find me middle C, Mr. Day."
　　And without thinking, I did, pressing the single key with the side of my left thumb.
　　My mother and father entered the room, announcing themselves with a polite ahem. Mr. Martin wheeled around and strode over to greet them. As they shook hands and made introductions, I played scales from the middle outward. Tones from the piano triggered powerful synapses, resurrecting scores that I knew by heart. A voice in my head demanded heissblütig, heissblütig—more passion, more feeling.
　　"You said he was a beginner."
　　"He is," my mother replied. "I don't think he's ever even seen a real piano."
　　"This boy is a natural."
　　For fun, I plinked out "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," the way I would play it for my sisters. I was careful to use only one finger, as if the grand were but a toy.
　　"He taught himself that," Mom said. "On a tiny piano that you might find in a fairy orchestra. And he can sing, too, sing like a bird."
　　Dad shot me a quick sideways glance. Too busy sizing up my mother, Mr. Martin did not notice the wordless exchange. My mother rattled on about all of my talents, but nobody listened. In measures too slow and far apart, I practiced my Chopin, so disguised that even old Martin did not discover the melody.
　　"Mr. Day, Mrs. Day, I agree to take on your son. My minimum requirement, however, is for eight weeks of lessons at a time, Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays. I can teach this boy." Then he mentioned, in a voice barely above a whisper, his fee. My father lit another Camel and walked toward the window.
　　"But for your son"—he addressed my mother now—"for Henry, a born musician if I ever heard one, for him, I will require only half the tuition, but you must commit to sixteen weeks. Four months. We will know how far we can go."
　　I picked out a rudimentary "Happy Birthday." My father finished his smoke and tapped me on the shoulder, indicating we were to leave. He walked over to Mom and grabbed her lightly by the fleshy part of her arm above the elbow.
　　"I'll call you Monday," he said, "at three-thirty. We'll think it over."
　　Mr. Martin bowed slightly and looked me straight in the eye. "You have a gift, young man."
　　As we drove home, I watched the city recede in the mirror and disappear. Mom chattered incessantly, dreaming the future, planning our lives. Billy, hands locked on the wheel, concentrated on the road and said nothing.
　　"I'll buy some laying hens, that's what I'll do. Remember when you used to say you wanted to turn our place back into a real farm? I'll start a brood of chickens, and we'll sell the eggs, and that will pay the bill, surely. And imagine, we'll have fresh eggs ourselves every morning, too. And Henry can take the school bus to the streetcar, and the streetcar into town. You could drive him to the streetcar Saturdays?"
　　"I could do chores to earn the fare."
　　"You see, Billy, how much he wants to learn? He has a gift, that Mr. Martin said. And he's so refined. Did you ever see such a thing in your life as that piano? He must shine it every day."
　　My father rolled down his window about an inch to let in a roar of fresh air.
　　"Did you hear him play 'Happy Birthday to You,' like he's been at it forever? It's what he wants; it's what I want. Sweetheart."
　　"When would he practice, Ruth? Even I know you have to play every day, and I might be able to afford piano lessons, but I certainly can't afford a piano in the house."
　　"There's a piano at school," I said. "Nobody uses it. I'm sure if I asked, they'd let me stay after...."
　　"What about your homework and those chores you said you would do? I don't want to see your grades slipping."
　　"Nine times nine is eighty-one. Separate is spelled S-E-P-A-R-A-T-E. Oppenheimer gave us the bomb, which took care of the Japs. The Holy Trinity is the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, and it is a holy mystery that no one can figure out."
　　"All right, Einstein. You can try it, but for eight weeks. Just to be sure. And your mother will have to raise the egg money, and you have to help care for the chickens. They teach you that in that school of yours?"
　　Ruth studied his face, a rare look of love and wonder in her gaze. Both grinned a private, sheepish half-smile, the meaning of which eluded me. Sitting between them, I basked in the warmth of the moment, lacking any guilt over the fact that I was not their child. We drove on, the happiest of happy little families.
　　As we crossed a high bridge over the river not far from our house, a commotion flashed along the riverbank far below. To my horror, I saw a line of changelings walking through a clearing in single file, blending in with the budding trees and bushes, then vanishing in a blink. Those strange children moved like deer. My parents were oblivious, but at the thought of those creatures down there, I flushed and broke into a sweat, which as quickly turned to a chill. That they still existed alarmed me, for I had nearly forgotten them. That they could expose my past made me ill, and I was about to beg my father to pull off the road. But he lit up another cigarette and opened his window wider, and the fresh air alleviated my nausea, if not my fear.
　　Mom broke the spell. "Didn't Mr. Martin ask us to commit to four months?"
　　"I'll call him Monday and work out a deal. Let's try two months, actually, at first. See if the boy likes it."
　　For the next eight years, I took piano lessons, and it was the happiest time of all my lives. If I came in early to school, the nuns were glad to let me practice at the upright in the lunchroom. Later on, they let me into the church to learn the organ, and I was the youngest substitute organist the parish ever had. Life became orderly, and the discipline a joy. Each morning, my hand went under the warm bellies of the chickens, collecting eggs, and each afternoon, my fingers upon the keyboard, perfecting my technique. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, the trip into the city proved a tonic, away from farm and family and into civilization. No longer something wild, but a creature of culture, on my way to becoming a virtuoso once again.