Everything After(51)

“Just watch it,” he said. “Please. For me.”

She wiped her fingers on a paper napkin and took his phone, pressing play on the video. And she saw herself. She saw herself as he saw her. She looked smaller than she imagined, on that stage, playing the bar’s upright piano. Her hair shone copper in the spotlight, where it glinted off the peaks of her braid. Then she started to play, her body rocking with the music, her hands strong against the keys. The music sounded bold, powerful. And then she started to sing. And her own voice almost brought tears to her eyes. She was mournful, passionate, hopeful. Rob was right. She hadn’t known, hadn’t realized.

She looked up and felt a tear slide down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. “I guess I’m not so bad,” she said.

“Queenie,” he answered. “You’re transcendent.”

Before Emily realized what he was doing, he’d pushed his paper plate across the table and slid in next to her in the booth. She moved over to make room, but they were still only millimeters apart.

“We could be huge,” he said. “The Sonny and Cher of our generation. The Johnny and June Carter Cash.”

She smiled, remembering those words from years before. “Could we still?” she asked.

“You’re only thirty-three,” he said. “After we broke up, I never thought I’d write a song that hit the Billboard charts, but here we are. Anything’s possible, Queenie.”

Emily stopped to consider it, really consider it. What would that be like? Leaving her life in New York, her patients? Living apart from Ezra? Traveling the country, maybe the world, playing with Rob? Being recognized at pizza joints? She’d be living out the dream they’d had when she was twenty. But not the dream she and Ezra shared. The one they’d been building these past years.

Rob was watching her think. “You don’t have to answer now,” he said. “It’s a big decision. But think about it. They’re sending me to Mexico next. Then Miami. Top hotels, everything comped . . . if you were there, too, I bet we could book even bigger venues, reach even more fans.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said, but she wasn’t sure if she meant it.

Rob slipped his arm around her shoulders, and Emily let herself lean against him, marveling, as she always did, at the analgesic property of human touch. She felt calmer, less anxious, more hopeful. New paths had suddenly opened up for her, paths she’d long ago thought had been blocked off and closed down. She didn’t know if she wanted to travel down them, but knowing that they were there felt good somehow. Like the world was more open than she’d thought it was.

“I’ve been listening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony recently,” Rob said.

“The Fate Symphony,” Emily answered, its name popping into her mind from the Music Humanities class they’d both had to take in college. Part of the core curriculum.

“The Fate Symphony,” Rob echoed. “And you know the motif—”

“Ba-ba-ba bum.” Emily sang the opening bars softly.

“Right. Short-short-short long,” Rob sang back, replacing her sounds with words. “It’s amazing to me how he keeps that motif going, throughout. The melody’s not the same, but in all the movements, it’s there. Short-short-short long.”

Emily nodded, remembering the second movement as one they’d focused on in class.

“I was thinking about my life—my career—as a symphony the other day. And I think you’re the motif. The first movement was in college, when we played together, when we made magic on the stage. And then when I was composing scores, even though you weren’t there, you were. I kept thinking, ‘How would Queenie harmonize here? What would she do on the keys?’”

“You did?” Emily asked, too surprised to say anything else.

“I did,” Rob affirmed. “And now we’re in the third movement, the scherzo, and you inspired the song that put me on the map. I want you here with me, in the third movement.”

She looked at him, his eyes were intense, looking right at her.

“And then we can write the fourth movement together,” he said.

“Of your career?” she asked, sliding into psychologist mode, clarifying, making sure she knew what the subtext was.

“Of anything,” Rob answered. “My career or . . . anything.”

Emily thought about Rob’s analogy, about what the motif of her own symphony would be. It wouldn’t be him, she was sure of that. But it wouldn’t be Ezra, either. It would be, she decided, loss. The loss of her mother, of her first child, of Rob, of music, of her dad, in a way. Loss was what propelled her to follow the path she did, to become a therapist, to connect with Ezra. But now two of the things she’d lost were being returned to her. What did that mean for her fourth movement?





xxxi



Ezra and I got married! Last week! I felt like I should let you know. Or do you somehow already know? Your grandfather’s wife had too much chardonnay and told me that my mom was watching me, looking down on the moment, and I rolled my eyes and walked away from her. Because how does she know? How does anyone know what happens afterward? What happened to your grandmother? What happened to you?

I wonder sometimes if souls really can be reborn, like Ari suggested when you were inside me. Were you reborn as someone else’s child? Will you come back to me if Ezra and I have a baby together? Or is it over for you? Has your story been told, the ending complete? And that’s it?