Every Note Played

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know.”

  “You happy now?”

  “No.”

  “That’s why you came here. To see me humiliated like this.”

  “No.”

  “I can’t play anymore, not well enough, and I won’t be able to ever again. That’s why my tour was canceled, Karina. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “No.”

  She stares into his eyes, and standing squarely in the windows of his rage is pure terror.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I thought it was the right thing to do.”

  “Look at you, suddenly a model Catholic, concerned about right and wrong. With all due respect, my dear, you wouldn’t know right from wrong if it fucked you up the ass.”

  She shakes her head, sickened by him, disgusted with herself for not knowing better. She stands. “I didn’t come here to be abused by you.”

  “Oh, there you go, carting out that word. No one’s abusing you. Stop using that word. You’ve brainwashed Grace. This is why she won’t talk to me.”

  “Don’t blame me for that. If she’s not talking to you, maybe it’s because you’re a prick.”

  “Or maybe it’s because her mother is a vindictive bitch.”

  Karina takes the bottle he couldn’t open by the neck and smashes it against the edge of the counter. She drops the broken bottleneck and steps away from the expanding puddle of wine on the floor.

  “That one smells like cherries,” she says, her voice shaking.

  “Leave. Right now.”

  “I’m sorry I ever came here.”

  She slams the door behind her and runs down the three flights as if she were being chased. She had such good intentions. How did that go so wrong?

  How did it all go so wrong?

  Rage and grief assault her from all sides, and her legs suddenly feel loosened and drained, powerless to continue. She sits on the top step of the front stoop, facing the beautiful view—the joggers on Comm Ave., the pigeons in the park, the spires of Trinity Church, and the blue glass of the Hancock—not caring who sees or hears her, and sobs.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Richard sits down at his piano for the first time in three weeks, since August 17, the day his right index finger gave up the fight, the last of his right-handed fingers to fall deaf to his wishes. He’d been testing it daily. On August 16, he could tap his right index finger ever so slightly. He clung to this accomplishment, pathetically celebrating this movement that required massive mental and physical effort and that looked more like a feeble tremor than a tap. He placed his entire life’s hope on that finger, which eight months ago could dance across the keys of the most complex, athletic pieces without missing a beat, striking each note with just the right amount of force.

  FORTISSIMO!

  Diminuendo.

  His index finger, every finger of his right hand, a finely calibrated instrument. If he made a single mistake while rehearsing, if one of his fingers lacked confidence, strength, or memory and stumbled, he’d stop instantly and start the piece over from the beginning. There was never room for error. No excuse for his fingers.

  Eight months ago, his right hand held five of the finest fingers in the world. Today, his entire right arm and hand are paralyzed. Dead to him, as if they already belong to a corpse.

  He picks up his lifeless hand with his left and places it on the keys, setting his right thumb onto middle C, pinkie on G. He feels the cool sleekness of the keys, and the touch is sensual, seductive. The keys want to be caressed, the relationship ready and available to him, but he can’t respond, and this is suddenly the cruelest moment of his life.

  He stares in horror at his dead hand on the beautiful keys. It’s not simply that his hand is motionless that makes it appear dead. There’s no curl to his fingers. His entire hand is too straight, too flat, devoid of tone, personality, possibility. It’s atrophied, flaccid, impotent. It appears fake, like a Halloween costume, a Hollywood prop, a wax prosthetic. It can’t belong to him.

  The air in the room thickens, too solid to breathe, and he can’t seem to remember how to inhale. A wave of panic slips through him. He places his left fingers on the keys, arm extended, wrist up, fingers curled, loving the keys they touch, and he inhales sharply. He heaves air through his lungs as if running for his life while his desperate eyes search the keys and his two hands for what to do. What the hell can he do?

  He begins to play Brahms I, actual notes with only his left hand, the right-hand notes with his mind’s ear. He played this fifty-minute concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood last summer. Eighty-seven pages memorized and played as near to perfection as anyone ever has. Some nights the music is well played and applauded, and other nights, the music is transcendent. He lives for those transcendent nights.

  That evening on the lawn, the entire orchestra was more than simply a cover band for Brahms. They were an open conduit, breathing life into the music, and he felt that ecstatic, energetic connection between his soul, the souls of the other musicians, the souls of the audience on the lawn, and the soul of the notes. He’s never been able to adequately describe the equation or the experience of this alchemy. Using language to convey the magic of Brahms would be like using a wooden classroom ruler to measure the speed of light.

  While playing solely with his left hand, he closes his eyes to lose sight of his immovable corpse hand, and this cut-and-paste, mind-body performance is satisfying to him for a bit. But then he’s rocking his torso back and forth, an unshakable habit criticized by many of his teachers as being either distracting or indulgent, and accidently knocks his right hand off its position on the keys. His entire dead arm dangles from his shoulder like a dropped anchor, heavy and painful, likely dislocated again.

  He uses it. The pain in Brahms I, the gravitas, the longing, the loss, the battle in the stormy first movement, like walking into war. The haunting solo played by his left hand. The lonely memory of the melody playing in his mind. The agony in his shoulder. The loss of his right hand.

  He dares to wonder what part of himself he’ll lose next. His gut and his mind agree.

  Your other hand.

  He wails aloud and strikes the keys harder with his left hand while he still can. He loses the sound of the melody in his memory and can now hear only what is real, vibrations produced by hammers and felt and strings and vocal cords, and the absence of the right-handed notes feels like a death, a loss of true love, the bitter end of a relationship, a divorce.

  It feels just like his divorce. He lifts his left hand high above the keys and hesitates, stopping the piece just before the crescendo of the first movement, his heart pounding in his shoulder and in the sudden silence, the unfinished song, his interrupted life. He curls his left hand into a fist and pounds the keys as hard as he can as if in a street fight as he weeps, betrayed and heartbroken all over again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It’s Family Weekend at the University of Chicago. Grace insisted that it wasn’t necessary for Karina to come. Karina already knew what the campus looked like, Grace argued. They’d bought sweatshirts and T-shirts and bumper stickers and coffee mugs from the campus store last year. Karina sees Grace’s dorm room and roommate and gets caught up every Sunday when Grace FaceTimes her. Karina thought Grace seemed a little too invested in her opposition to the visit, as if protecting her privacy or independence or some big secret. But Karina could not be dissuaded. The airfare was reasonable, and she was missing her daughter.

  They’re at Common Grounds, a homey hipster campus coffee shop, and the big secret is sitting next to Grace, one hand on his triple-shot latte, the other on Grace’s thigh. Matt has overly styled brown hair, a shadow of a beard, and blue eyes that become amused whenever he talks. He’s clearly crazy about Grace. And although she’s trying to play it cool in front of her mother, Grace is crazy about him, too.

  “So Grace says you’re an amazing pianist,” says Matt.

  Karina holds her p
umpkin-spice latte midway between her lips and the table, suddenly unsure of which way she was going with it. She’s caught surprised, moved that Grace would describe her this way. Brag even. Richard is the amazing pianist, not her. Or maybe Matt simply has them confused. Or he’s kissing up to his girlfriend’s mother.

  She sets her cup on the table. “No, that’s her father. I’m just a piano teacher.”

  “She’s amazing,” says Grace, assertively correcting her mother. “But she gave up her career to stay home with me. This is why I’m never getting pregnant. I’m not wasting my education on raising some kid.”

  “Some bratty kid,” says Matt, smiling.

  Grace playfully shoves his arm, squeezing his biceps before letting go. Karina sips her latte and licks the foam from her lips as she watches them. They’re definitely having sex.

  Karina and Grace are close, but they don’t discuss such things, a trait seemingly passed down from Karina’s mother, like her green eyes and proclivity for waking before dawn no matter how exhausted she was. Karina had exactly one conversation with her mother about sex. She was twelve and forgets the wording of what she asked, but she remembers her mother’s response as she washed dishes at the sink, her back to Karina: “Sex is how babies are made. It’s a sacred act between husbands and wives. Now go bring the towels in off the line.” End of story, forever.

  Karina got little more from the nuns and her friends. She remembers feeling horrified and embarrassed when Zofia told her that Natalia was giving boys blow jobs under the bleachers in the gymnasium, mostly because Karina wasn’t quite sure what a blow job was and didn’t have the courage to ask. Whatever it was, she knew for sure that Natalia was going to hell for it.

  When Karina was sixteen, her boisterous and beautiful friend, Martyna, was sent away to live with an aunt. She returned nine months later, her disposition subdued, her eyes averting others, pointing to her shoes. Everyone in town gossiped about her. Martyna was damaged goods. No one would ever marry her now. Such a shame.

  Karina had imagined the baby Martyna left behind, a daughter or son she would never know, and the spinster’s life ahead of her. Right then, she’d made a promise to herself. She would not end up ruined like Martyna or imprisoned like her mother, chained to the kitchen, cooking and cleaning day and night for decades, raising five children. Karina would not lose control of her life.

  When Grace was a freshman in high school, they had “the talk.” Karina was determined to make it more informative than the “wisdom” her mother had imparted to her and consciously didn’t include any Catholic shame or misogynistic mythology. No sex before marriage, no birth control—those aren’t God’s rules, honey. Those rules were made by men. They were in the car, on their way to one of Grace’s soccer games, more side by side than face-to-face, but a big improvement over Karina’s mother’s back side. Karina’s speech included information about condoms and the pill, STDs and pregnancy, intimacy and love.

  Sex isn’t a sin But you have to protect yourself. Birth control is the woman’s responsibility. She winces now as the words play in her mind, just as she did when she said them aloud to Grace in the car, reliving the guilt. Using birth control isn’t a sin. She did what she had to do.

  Thou shalt not lie.

  Lying is a sin.

  If Grace remembered one thing from that conversation, Karina always hoped it was the admonition Whatever you do, don’t get pregnant. She’s sure she repeated it several times, and although she could only glance at the side of Grace’s face while driving, Karina could sense Grace’s embarrassment and eye rolling.

  She looks at Grace straight on now, and her face is self-assured and radiant. She’s in control of her life. Karina’s glad to see the message was received, but she didn’t mean ever. Did she somehow communicate that as well?

  “Well, I am pretty awesome. So it was all worth it, right, Mom?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Do you teach at a school?” asks Matt.

  “No, at home. In my living room.”

  “Oh.”

  “Really, she’s at least as good as my dad, but he gets all the glory.”

  “Have you talked with your father?” asks Karina.

  “Not recently. Why?”

  Karina hasn’t heard anything about Richard since that horrible day in July when she went to see him. Although he couldn’t open the wine bottle, she’s still not convinced he really has ALS. He probably has something like carpal tunnel or tendinitis, injuries common to every pianist at some point, pesky but ultimately benign. If Richard really has ALS, he’d tell his only daughter, wouldn’t he?

  “I think he’s supposed to play here in Chicago next month.”

  “I don’t know anything about it.” Grace shrugs her right shoulder. “Why are you still keeping track of where he’s going to be? You need to get your own life, Mom.”

  Karina feels her cheeks flush. Grace’s quick comment is too sharp, an insulting slap, and it feels cruel, especially in front of Matt, someone who doesn’t know Karina’s complicated history. But she believes Grace’s insensitivity was unintentional and swallows the urge to defend herself. She and Grace have had many heart-to-hearts about this over the past year. Now that Grace is in college, Karina could move. She could live in New York or New Orleans or Paris. She could give up teaching and play again. She could reinvent her life. Or at least track down the one she abandoned. She could do anything. Or at least something.

  “Where’s your musical talent?” Matt asks Grace.

  “I’m, like, the best karaoke singer ever.”

  “The best worst. You sure you weren’t adopted?”

  “I look just like her.”

  “Or maybe you were dropped on your head?”

  “That would explain my taste in men.”

  This time Matt shoves Grace’s arm, and Grace giggles. Men, not boys. When did her little girl become a young woman?

  It occurs to her that Grace is the same age Karina was when she met Richard. They were in Sherman Leiper’s Technique class together. She knew nothing about Richard except that he seemed awkward and intensely driven. She could feel him staring at her in class, too shy to talk, for almost an entire semester. Then one day, he did.

  They were at a keg party at one of the dorms. Emboldened by beer, he introduced himself. One beer turned into many, catalyzing their attraction, but not until she heard him play piano did she fall for him. They were alone in a practice room, and he played Schumann’s Fantasie in C Major, op. 17. He was so connected to the piece that he seemed to become unconscious of her presence. His playing was powerful yet gentle, assured, masterful. And the composition is so utterly romantic, still one of her favorites. By the time he played the final note, she was in love.

  They had sex morning and night, more often than she brushed her teeth. She spent her days memorizing Bach and Mozart and her nights memorizing the shape of him, the first and last notes of every day played on each other’s body. They were passionate, insatiable for piano and each other. Nothing else existed. She’d never been happier.

  She knows this is her history, the early chapters in the biography of her life, yet she feels utterly disconnected from it. She remembers that first year with Richard, yet these memories, these snapshots of body parts tangled up in bedsheets, feel as if they must belong to someone else, a character in a book she read long ago.

  The thought of Richard even kissing her now is revolting, that she ever desired him crazy, that they were married surreal. Yet it all happened.

  She watches Grace listening to Matt, smiling, flirting, enamored, and wonders what their narrative will be. She hopes her daughter fares better in love and marriage than she did. Don’t repeat the mistakes I made.

  Could Karina have seen the red flags through the thick haze of lust at twenty? Was there any way to predict all that would unfold? Possibly. Richard was always a bit of a narcissist, a fragile egomaniac, a selfish prick. She naïvely thought these were the character traits of any tal
ented, ambitious man. The price of admission. She respected his dedication to piano and admired his confidence. Looking back, she can see that his dedication was desperation, his confidence was arrogance, that he was always a house of cards.

  Still, in the beginning, their relationship was intoxicating and held the promise of a great love story. In the end, it was dog shit. Till death do us part. That’s a man-made rule, too. An unreasonable one, she thinks. Everything begins and ends. Every day and night, every concerto, every relationship, every life. Everything ends eventually. She wishes she and Richard had ended better.

  The playlist in the coffee shop, which had been a steady stream of pop songs—Ed Sheeran and Rihanna and Taylor Swift—switches abruptly to Thelonious Monk.

  “Mom, listen. You used to play something like this when I was little. Remember?”

  Karina stares at Grace with her mouth open, shocked. Grace had to have been three or four. “Yes. I can’t believe you do.”

  “What kind of music do you play now?” asks Matt.

  “Classical. Mostly Chopin, Mozart, Bach.”

  “Oh, nice.”

  “How come you don’t play this?” asks Grace.

  A million reasons.

  “I don’t know.”

  Grace looks up and away, at nothing in particular, and listens. The song is “ ’Round Midnight,” a late-night loungy ballad that makes Karina feel as if she should have her hands around a gin and tonic instead of a pumpkin-spice latte. She imagines the keys under her fingers as she plays along with her mind’s ear, the motor plan unfolded like an old family recipe, still legible after so many years. She feels the notes vibrating in her heart, and she’s swept up in an intense longing, approaching something close to sorrow. Regret. She listens to Monk playing jazz, and her heart fills with regret.

  A smile enlivens Grace’s face, and her eyes brighten. “I love it, don’t you?”

  Karina’s cheeks flush pink again. She nods.

  “I do.”