Every Note Played(16)
While she never planned on being a mother, she loved Grace fiercely from the moment she was born and couldn’t imagine choosing the kind of life Richard was living—gone for weeks at a time, devoting his days and weeks and years so singularly to his career. Even when he was home, he’d practice for eight to ten hours a day. He was there but not there.
She couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from Grace, of missing any milestone. She wanted to witness her daughter discovering the world—the magic of seeing her first rainbow, the feel of a dog’s fur and tongue, the silky sweet taste of vanilla ice cream. Karina wanted to be the person Grace saw when she awoke from her naps, who hugged her when she cried, who kissed her a hundred times a day. She couldn’t abandon this enormous, precious love, this gift. She loved Grace more than piano.
And if she chose Grace over piano because she loved her daughter more, then Richard must not have loved Grace at all. This is the script she wrote and read to herself for years. He must be some kind of selfish monster to not love his own daughter, and she hated him for it. She built this case against him, black-and-white and indefensible. But now, looking back, she admits to herself that her conclusion was too extreme and not necessarily true. Love isn’t measured by the number of hours a person logs. For the first time, she wonders if his affairs started before or after she began hating him.
At some point, she can’t locate exactly when, she abandoned any possibility of a career in jazz piano. The goal became too implausible, childish, foolish. She thinks about it now as she walks, the vague dream of that intended life she never lived, and it feels like a comet she’d once seen long ago blazing across the night sky, witnessed for the briefest breathtaking moment and then gone for another hundred years.
While Karina was raising Grace and resenting Richard, Elise beat breast cancer, joined the faculty at Berklee College of Music, divorced her husband, and started dating her radiologist. They married and four years ago moved from Boston to the suburbs, directly across the street from Karina. Kindred spirits reunited. Karina still marvels at this serendipity, and her Catholic mind can’t help but wonder if God led Elise here for a reason.
As they walk past Oak Hill Cemetery, the date returns to Karina’s consciousness. Today is November 1, All Saints’ Day, a national holiday in Poland. As a child, she would spend the entire day at the cemetery with her family. Everyone did this. Having lived in the United States her entire adult life, this tradition now seems a bit morbid and creepy, even in comparison to Halloween, but she always liked it. She remembers the white votive candles placed on the raised gravestones, dots of light sprinkled around her as far as she could see like stars spread across the universe.
She remembers her family gathered, her parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins telling stories of those who’d passed away. She savored the stability she felt listening to those stories, in being connected to that history, a single bead strung on an infinitely long, uniquely beautiful necklace. She loved hearing how her grandparents on both sides met, courted, married, had children. She remembers studying their names etched on the gravestones, imagining the lives she barely and never knew, and that double-edged feeling of importance and insignificance, of fate and random chance this still generates, that every moment of those four lives had to unfold exactly as it did or she wouldn’t be here.
They reach the dirt path along the reservoir and begin the three-mile loop. Here they’ll begin chatting, as if they’re finally out of earshot of their neighbors, their words safe among the trees, the Canada geese in the water, an occasional jogger, dog and dog walker.
“How was school this week?” This is always Karina’s first question, inviting the conversation that both inspires and tortures her, like a recovering addict asking for a sip of wine.
“Good. I’m loving that new student I told you about, Claire. She’s got such a great ear, and she’s so totally open to listening and failing. You’ve got to come hear her play. There’s a class show in two weeks.”
“Okay.”
“And we’re planning the student trip to New Orleans. You should come this year.”
“Maybe.”
Karina won’t go to either. Elise invites her to all kinds of shows and classes and guest lectures and every year to the New Orleans trip, and Karina declines it all. Her excuse used to be Grace. She couldn’t go because Richard was out of town, and she was needed at home. Now that she’s divorced and her excuse is at the University of Chicago, she has to come up with some other reason. She’ll be too tired the evening of the class show. And maybe she’ll plan a visit to see Grace the same week Elise and her students are in New Orleans. The thought of being immersed in the jazz scene in New Orleans, that magical hodgepodge of Delta-blues guitar riffs, brassy ragtime horns, and sultry French Gypsy music is too painful for Karina to stomach. Every girl loves a wedding unless the groom is the lost love of her life.
“And maybe one of these days, you’ll come play with us, please.”
“Someday.”
Elise plays bass in a contemporary improvisation band called the Dish Pans with faculty from Berklee, New England Conservatory, and Longy, mostly in bohemian restaurants and hipster bars that have a rotating roster of live music. Someday is always Karina’s reply, and she’d like to believe that it’s true. While she plays and teaches piano almost every day, she’s restricted herself to the classical music of Chopin, Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart. The dots are already on the page, and she plays them with the obsequious reverence of a Catholic priest reading from the Bible or an actor quoting Shakespeare.