Every Note Played(34)
He and Karina agonized over how much to tell Grace before she came home for Christmas break. Karina didn’t want to risk distracting her from her studies and cause her to bomb her finals, but Richard didn’t want her to come home to his ALS with absolutely no warning. There was no good choice here. They compromised. Since Karina’s voice doesn’t sound like Siri on a bender, she called Grace and gave her a hint of what she’d be coming home to.
Just wanted to let you know, your dad is living here back at the house. . . . No, we’re not getting back together. He needed some help, so he’s staying here for a while. . . . I’m not crazy. . . . It’s fine. We’ll talk about it when you get home.
He keeps replaying the shock on Grace’s face at the first sight of him. It was more than the simple discomfort of seeing her divorced, estranged father living back at the house. That would’ve been mind spinning enough. It was his ALS—his slumped, hanging, lifeless arms; his slurry, monotone voice; his emaciated frame. He’s had a year to get used to this creeping metamorphosis. He adjusts to each incremental loss, each distortion along the way, and so when he looks in the mirror or hears the sound of his voice, he usually notices only the most recent change. He registers the difference from ninety-nine to one hundred and adapts to it. He doesn’t have to start from zero with every new symptom, every pound or consonant lost. He mostly still sees and hears himself. Every week, a new normal.
But Grace hadn’t seen him since before he was diagnosed. He watched her absorb the entire transformation, from zero to one hundred, in less than a second, and the stunned impact on her face made him breathless, horrified to be the source of it. She averted her eyes and forced a soft hello. Stiff and mute, she endured their carefully planned introduction to ALS 101. Then, without a word, she withdrew to her room.
Karina announces that supper is ready. Richard emerges from his room, and Grace materializes, hovering at the edge of the dining room like a nervous rabbit about to dart. Karina calls her into the kitchen. Alone in the dining room, Richard sits at the head of the table, where he sat for holidays and dinner parties for thirteen years, but instead of feeling familiar, it feels strange, unsettling, wrong. The dining room is exactly as he remembers—same oak table and ivory slip-covered chairs, same crystal chandelier, same silver and china, same mint-and-copper-colored abstract oil painting on the wall. Everything is the same.
But he couldn’t be more different. He’s an ex-husband, an ALS patient, a former concert pianist. In this chair, he’s an interloper, an uninvited guest, a walk-on assuming a starring role. As is Polish tradition, Karina has included an additional place setting for an unexpected visitor, someone who might be lost in the night and needing a meal. Richard stands and changes seats. There. Far more suitable.
Karina and Grace shuttle in and out of the dining room, making several trips, transporting plates and platters and bowls and serving spoons while Richard sits and watches like a powerless king. The table fills up with colors and smells and memories. Barszcz—a tangy bright red beetroot soup. Uszka—little ear-shaped pastas filled with sautéed wild mushrooms. Pierogi, braised sauerkraut, herring in sour cream. Twelve dishes in all. A splendid feast before him.
Returning from her last trip to the kitchen, Karina pauses, noting without objection that Richard has changed seats, then places a vanilla ice-cream milk shake smack in the middle of his plate. She sits, recites a quick prayer, blessing them for the upcoming year, then breaks off a piece of bread from a loaf instead of using a traditional wafer and passes the loaf to Grace. Grace does not pass the loaf to Richard. Karina and Grace begin eating this decadent meal, and Richard sips his shake.
Although he’s still capable of eating certain soft foods such as mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese, and he could certainly handle the soup and pasta on the table tonight, he can’t stand being fed. He’s tried it, gone along with the song and dance a few times with various home health aides. He wore the bib and opened wide. It made him feel helpless, emasculated, infantile. He quickly put a stop to it, trading beloved flavors and textures and favorite foods that require forks and spoons for the rather limited menu of drinkable soups, smoothies, and shakes. He’s losing control of his muscles, his independence, his life. While he still can, he’s going to feed himself.
So he sips his vanilla shake while watching Grace and Karina eat Wigilia supper in front of him, annoyed that Karina didn’t think to offer him the beetroot soup in a glass with a straw. He’s too stubborn, too stupidly offended, to ask. Instead, he keys into the sights and sounds of them eating—the clinking of the silverware against the china, Karina slurping the soup off her spoon, steaming bowls being passed, Grace chewing with her mouth open. The entire sensory experience—every festive, forbidden molecule of it—disgusts him. Even Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” is a personal affront.
No one is talking. Naturally chatty, Grace hasn’t offered a single word. Silence has always been the cloak she wears to conceal her anger or fear. She’s shoveling one forkful after another into her mouth, clearing her plate as if she were in a race, gunning for first prize. She’s done before Bing Crosby finishes his song. She pushes back her chair, stacks her soup bowl onto her plate, and stands, on her way to the kitchen.
“Hold on there,” says Karina. “You’re not excused from the table.”
“Why not? I’m done.”