Excerpt: A Modern Narnia

When we were younger, Mom was alive. When Mom was alive, things were better. Things were better because they weren't like they were now.

Peter smiled a lot more. He ran in cross-country and track. In the winter, he tried out for and always made it into a play. He had so much fun on the stage, playing these weird and complicated characters. He never really said how much fun it was, at least not to me, but you could just see it in him when he was delivering a line he really liked. Even the ones he didn't like or the ones he forgot were a part of that fun. Peter was so happy then.

Susan talked with me a lot more. She always let me wear her clothes - something most girls don't do - and kept trying to put me in things she thought I looked good in. Susan wasn't stupid, either. She knew what looked good on people and her little sister was no exception. Every time I walked out of our house with a Susan-crafted look, I looked really good. Of course, it always showed off my slowly maturing figure, which I kept telling Susan I didn't want to show off, but she'd just smile and wink and say, "You've got to tease the boys every now and again, Lu." Susan was so innocent then.

Edmund did a lot less. We always had so many things going on in our own lives, so many school activities, but Edmund only had his dance lessons and their subsequent recitals. He was always around the house, playing video games or on the Internet or doing homework or watching television or helping Mom with dinner. He was a bump on a log, mostly, but he was our bump on a log, and a helpful one at that, so Mom didn't bug him about it. Besides, Edmund loved dancing. And he was so good at it. Edmund was so relaxed then.

And, of course, to finish my support: I was different then, too. I'm not sure if I can put a name on just what I was then, though. I guess I was all of those things - happier, more innocent, more relaxed. I talked almost nonstop to people and Mom always complained that I made her phone bill so expensive. She could afford it, of course, there was never any problem with that; she just liked to make fun of me for having such a big mouth.

We used to have such fun then. On Sundays we'd all go to church together and when we got home Ed would turn on football and he and Peter would watch, with Peter making fun of the commentators. Mom, Susan, and I would have girl talks in the kitchen, helping her make complicated dinners by chopping up vegetables or getting water ready or baking cookies or brownies or even a cake for dessert.

And when Sunday night dinner was over, we'd retire to our parlor which we almost never used except for Sunday evenings. Then Mom would sit down at the piano, with me right next to her, and she would play songs for us. Peter would get out his guitar and play some countering harmony to her, something he made up off of the top of his head, and Susan would sing along when she knew the words. Sometimes Edmund, if we pleaded enough, would do interpretive dances for us, especially of the pieces that I wrote for Mom. I wasn't very good, and I'm still not, but she always seemed to like them, and so did everyone else. Sometimes she liked them so much that she asked me to play it for her so she could figure out exactly how I had intended it. I never did it as much justice as she did, but she always said she learned something new about my pieces when I played them.

So we would sit there, Mom playing, Edmund dancing, Peter strumming, Susan singing, and me thinking of how I could fix my songs to do all of that justice, to really capture that feeling of home I felt on those Sunday nights.

I still haven't been able to do it, mostly because Mom's gone and we don't have a piano. Peter's guitar sits underneath our bunk beds, untouched, dusty. Edmund never dances anymore, and Susan's too busy shoving her tongue down boys' throats to sing anything. But I keep writing my songs, keep trying to find that music that we had then.

It's Sunday night. I'm alone in Peter's and my room. Edmund's off in the city somewhere, Peter's brewing another pot of coffee for himself and working on an essay, and Susan's entertaining, if the moans I hear every few seconds have anything to say about it.

Wherever that music is, it's not here. Not now.