Every Note Played(46)
But here they are instead, in the den, strangers saying good-bye. They have no time machine and no cure for ALS and no cure for this broken relationship. No supplements can fill all that was lost, no pills can be pushed through his PEG tube to make everything right between them.
She swivels her chair back and forth, back and forth, then stops, her feet planted, as if she’s decided something. It must be time for her to go. She folds her arms around her middle as if she were cold or feeling ill or protecting herself and looks directly at him.
“My whole childhood, I felt like you picked piano over me.”
It’s one thing to house shortcomings and failures within the privacy of his own thoughts; it’s another to hear the words aloud, publicly spoken by another, called out by his daughter. He feels a crashing wave of shame, and then, to his surprise, he’s washed in relief. He holds his daughter’s fierce gaze and feels so proud of her.
“I did.”
Her face reads surprised, and her eyes don’t know where to look. She wasn’t expecting agreement. It’s time to take responsibility, to accept blame, to be the grown-up, to be her father, right now or never. She’s going back to school. He might not have another chance.
He wants to say more, to let her know that while he chose piano over her, he didn’t love piano more. It was just easier for him to love piano than to show his love for her. He was good at piano. What if he wasn’t a good father? What if he was like his father? Piano was consuming, demanding his full attention, his passion, his time. He’d have time for Grace later. And later was always later. This is the biggest regret of his life.
He was a terrible father. He didn’t play a starring or even supporting role in her upbringing. At best, he was an ancillary, recurring character, and now he’s a nonunion extra with no lines. When he’s thought about his legacy, it’s always been about his body of work, the music he’s played and recorded, his piano career. He now sees his real legacy sitting opposite him, his daughter, a beautiful young woman he doesn’t know, and he’s out of time. He likely won’t meet her boyfriend, her husband, her children. He won’t see her graduate college or where she’ll live or what she’ll do. He looks at her pale green eyes, soulful like her mother’s, her long hair pulled back into a ponytail, and realizes that he’s never known her, and now he never will.
Maybe if he’d had more children as he wanted, he would’ve been a different father. Maybe he would’ve made better choices, been more involved. Karina was so capable, so totally committed to mothering Grace, he genuinely felt he wasn’t needed at home. Over time, he felt he wasn’t wanted there either. So he buried his head and dreams in his career and assumed he’d have more chances, that he and Karina would have more children. There would never be any more children. He clenches his jaw, swallows, and holds his breath, but the tears come anyway.
Grace pulls a tissue from the box on the desk, walks over to her father, and wipes the tears from his face and eyes. She returns to her seat and dabs the corners of her own eyes with the same tissue. He gives her a gentle, grateful smile. He wants to give her so much more.
“I have to go.”
“Wi-you-be ba-home-fah spa-ring-brea?”
“I was planning on going to Lake Tahoe with Matt and some friends. But, I dunno, maybe.”
“Tha-souns-fuh. You-sha-do-tha.”
“I’ll probably be here for a weekend in March. I’ll definitely be home for the summer.”
“O-kay.”
“See you then.”
“See-you-then.”
She stands, walks over to him, and with her hand on his shoulder, kisses him on the forehead.
“Bye, Dad.”
As she leaves the room, he wants to reach out and touch her, to wrap his arms around her and hug her tight, to show her with touch what he can’t seem to execute in words, but his hands are even more useless than his voice. He’s plagued with regret and the inability to articulate the apology he wants to give her because of the sweeping scope of it, because his voice production is so damn slow and there are too many and not enough words, because he’s entirely unpracticed with this kind of conversation. As she leaves the room, he thinks about the story of his own father—the one he’s carried his entire adult life, heavy and cumbersome and painful—and wonders what story Grace carries about him. When her boyfriend asks, “What’s your dad like?,” what is her answer? How heavy and cumbersome and painful is her story?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Richard and Karina are sitting side by side in the small office of Dr. George, an augmentative communications specialist. Dr. George has just spent the past few minutes giving them an overview of who he is and what he does, and he’s jazzed about all of it. He’s probably in his midthirties, pale and thin, wearing metal-rimmed glasses, and is excessively cheerful bordering on goofy, effervescing with energy as if he’s had three too many shots of espresso, but Richard suspects that this is simply how this guy rolls. His sunny demeanor is as unexpected as it is disarming, so unlike that of the many other specialists Richard sees. Not that he can blame the others. Treating ALS isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.
“So tell me what’s been going on,” says Dr. George.
“Well,” says Karina, “it’s hard to understand him when—”