Every Note Played(19)

“Once you need that, how will you ever leave your apartment?” He’s on the fourth floor of a 150-year-old brownstone. No elevators. No ramps.

“I won’t.”

He’ll be trapped inside this apartment, locked inside his body, a Russian nesting doll. She suddenly remembers the FOR SALE sign out front.

“So you’re moving.”

“Trying. I can’t afford a new place until this one sells. Even to rent. Keeping me alive is already an expensive project. Might not be worth the investment. Don’t expect any more alimony checks.”

“No. Of course.”

She goes silent. The checking-account balance, her meager piano-lesson income, the monthly bills. She begins doing math, mostly subtraction, equations that scare her and can’t be entirely solved right now in her head.

“How’s Grace?”

“Richard, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know any of this. I didn’t realize you would change so much so fast. You have to tell her what’s going on.”

“I know. I was going to. Many times. I just kept putting it off. Then my voice. I sound like a robot. I don’t want to call and scare her.”

“Write her an email.” Karina’s stomach cringes, and her eyes widen, embarrassed. His hands. He can’t type.

“I have speech-recognition software and toes. I can still email. But she doesn’t return my emails about school and the weather. I couldn’t stand it if I wrote her about this and she didn’t reply.”

Given what Grace knows and doesn’t know, it’s not surprising she took sides. Loyal to her mother, Grace hasn’t spoken to her father in over a year. Karina can’t help but enjoy the victory in this allegiance and has done nothing to encourage an end to his daughter’s cold war. Karina looks down at the floor, at her damp socks.

“I didn’t want to drop this bomb on her while she was at school. I thought it could wait—”

“For the coffin to get here?” Karina asks, transforming her shame to blame, an alchemy she’s long mastered.

“Until she was home for Thanksgiving. To tell her in person. And I know this is dumb, but I think I thought if I didn’t tell people I had ALS, maybe I really didn’t have it.”

Four months ago, she couldn’t tell if he had ALS by looking at him. But now, it’s unmistakable. How could he be in such crazy denial? Her heart tightens as she imagines Grace absorbing the news, this view of her father for the first time, this threat to everyone’s well-being.

“She’s not coming home for Thanksgiving. She’s got a boyfriend. Matt. His parents live in Chicago. She’s staying out there for the long weekend. We won’t see her until Christmas.”

Just over a month away. Only a few weeks. Richard looks past Karina to the wheelchair behind her. His eyes well up, and he blinks repeatedly, working hard to keep his tears contained.

“Can you tell her for me?”

She considers his request and him, sitting opposite her, so vulnerable, a fragile bird with no wings. He’s lost his arms. He’s losing his voice. He’s going to lose his legs. His life. She should pity him, this flightless, dying bird. But she doesn’t. He’s not a bird. He’s Richard. She feels her posture harden, a familiar numbness.

“No.”

Her reply is cruel, but she can find no other, and the thickening silence between them is pressing on her walled-off heart, begging her to reconsider. She crosses her arms, steeling her resolve. She feels his eyes on her as she stands.

“I have to go.”

“Okay. Before you do?”

She looks at him, trying not to see him.

“Would you scratch the top of my head? Please?”

She takes a breath, crosses the impossible distance between them, sits on the couch next to him, and scratches his head.

“Oh my God, thank you. A little harder. All over, please.”

She uses both hands. Her nails are unmanicured, but they’re hard and strong, and she rakes them all over his head, messing up his neatly combed schoolboy hairstyle. After a good scrubbing, she stops and checks on him. His eyes are closed, and a deeply satisfied closed-lipped smile is stretched across his thin face. It’s been a long time since she’s touched him, since she gave him any kind of pleasure. Without her permission, a sweet memory massages an unhardened piece of her heart.

“I have to go now. You okay?” She stands.

Richard opens his eyes. They’re glossy. He blinks, and a couple of tears escape, spilling down his face. He can’t wipe them.

“I’m okay.”

She hesitates but then grabs her raincoat, slips into her wet shoes, and leaves without another word. As she’s descending the stairs, she thinks of the many times she’s left Richard—walking away in the middle of innumerable arguments; storming out in the middle of dinner, deserting him in a restaurant, leaving him to take a cab home alone; the last time she was here, marching out of his apartment after breaking his bottle of wine; leaving the courthouse on the day the judge declared their marriage irretrievably broken, the dissolution no-fault, the divorce absolute. As she walks out the front door, fixing her hood onto her head, shoving her hands into the cozy safety of her coat pockets, she remembers walking down the courthouse steps, scared that it was she who was irretrievably broken, knowing there was plenty of fault to this failure, and daring to admit that she might be as much to blame for it all as he was.