Every Note Played(35)
“You didn’t have any piernik or makowiec.”
“I don’t want any piernik or makowiec.”
Grace loves piernik and makowiec. So does Richard.
“Fine, then sit and keep us company. Wigilia isn’t over.”
Grace relents and sits but doesn’t add any dessert to her plate. Richard catches her stealing fast, microscopic glances at him, as if looking directly at him for more than a moment might be dangerous. It’s one thing to read about ALS on the Internet, as he assumes she’s been doing up in her room over the past two days, it’s quite another to sit across the table from it, a plate of piernik and a couple of flickering candles away, to witness it live and in the flesh, residing in her father.
“How were your finals?” Karina asks.
“Terrible.”
“Oh no, why?”
“I didn’t study because I was too busy reading about ALS.”
Richard and Karina turn to each other, stunned.
“But how—”
“You tell me Dad is back living with you, and you won’t tell me why? I texted Hannah Chu and told her how freaky this was, and she told me.”
“I’m sorry, honey—”
“So Hannah Chu and God knows who else already knew that my father had ALS, and I didn’t. Glad I’m part of this family or whatever you want to call this.”
“We didn’t want to tell you before finals for that very reason.”
“This didn’t happen overnight. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I didn’t know myself until recently,” says Karina.
She’s known since July if not before. Always deflecting blame, always right, always innocent. Richard wants to pounce on this lie, argue the facts and for once expose Karina in front of Grace, but his voice is too slow to produce to jump in, and he lets it be.
“What about you?” asks Grace, addressing her father for the first time. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
He was diagnosed just before Christmas last year. He didn’t want to ruin Grace’s holiday with his grim news. Then full denial set in. He couldn’t have even whispered, alone in his condo with no one to hear him, that he had ALS, never mind speak the three letters aloud to his only child. He continued to tour, pretending everything was fine, and didn’t reveal his diagnosis to Trevor for three more months. Shortly after, his right hand weakened further—threatening his playing, his reputation, his life—and the jig was up. Still, he didn’t announce his disease to the world. Trevor hid it behind the guise of tendinitis for a while. So at first, keeping the news from Grace wasn’t personal.
Then it was. He was afraid of giving her yet one more reason to push him away, that she might reject him so completely that they’d never have a chance to recover. Before ALS, he had no idea how to make things right between them, if it was even possible. Admittedly, he was lazy and figured they had time. And now he has ALS, and they don’t have twenty years of therapy or living to sort it all out, and he still has no idea how to make things right. He’s not off to a good start.
“I tried to, many times. It’s hard. You had finals and then the second semester of your first year of college. I didn’t want to ruin this exciting time in your life.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t.”
Born loyal to her mother, Grace has always blamed Richard for Karina’s unhappiness and the divorce. As she sits across from him, arms crossed, eyes glaring, Richard sees an additional edge to Grace’s anger, one that has probably been there for years, but that he’d never noticed until just now. Betrayal.
Every time Richard cheated on Karina, he was also cheating on Grace. He repeats this theory in his mind, chewing on it like a fresh stick of gum. It’s one thing to have missed Grace’s Saturday soccer game or Sunday dinner or an awards night at school because he had a concert in Miami. It’s another to have missed those things because he chose to linger in Miami with a woman whose name he can no longer remember. Grace spent much of her childhood without a father at home, and some of those days and nights were because of his various infidelities. So in that sense, he cheated on Grace, too.
He looks at his daughter, who has always so closely resembled her mother with her wide-set green eyes and espresso-brown hair, and sees resentment in those green eyes, defiance in her strong jaw, her mouth a weapon. He sees himself in his daughter’s face, and his heart aches. Neither of them got the father they wanted.
“So what happens next?” Grace asks.
Barring any special weekend trips or time off, Grace won’t be home again until the end of March, if she doesn’t go to Daytona Beach or Key West or wherever college kids go these days for spring break. Three more months. Any number of depressing changes could transpire in that time, changes that could necessitate a feeding tube, a BiPAP, a wheelchair, eye-gaze communication, a trach tube and invasive ventilation. Hopefully, he won’t be dead.
“I don’t know.”
Both the ultimate certainty and immediate uncertainty of Richard’s future, imaginable and unimaginable, hang in the air over Wigilia supper. No one says a word, and no one eats. The last track of the Bing Crosby Christmas album ends. The room is silent. Richard examines the uneaten meal on the table, the comfort food Grace has refused, refusing to be comforted, the twelve dishes Karina cooked from scratch by herself, recipes handed down from her parents and grandparents. He focuses on the untouched makowiec—a sweet poppy-seed cake, his favorite—and decides to take a risk.