Every Note Played(51)

Grace. An electric ripple runs through him, decimating the tortured battlefield within, leaving him hollowed out, staring in helpless horror at his computer screen, seeing history repeated. The letters on the screen blur as he imagines a similar letter addressed to him, written by Grace.

You picked piano over me. You never came to my games. And now you have ALS, and you’ll never know me. You never loved Mom or me.

Tears roll down his face. Please don’t think that. He can’t stand the thought of this kind of letter, penned by her hand, of this legacy of pain he’s leaving her. Maybe what’s done can be undone. Maybe that’s what apology is for.

After a quick knock on his door Karina enters the room without pausing. It irritates him that she doesn’t even allow him to respond, for the possibility that he might not want her to enter. He’s still upset, his face wet with tears. He can’t wipe them away.

“It’s Tommy.” She’s holding Richard’s cell phone, faceup.

“Who?”

“Your brother,” a voice says from the phone on speaker. “Hey, Ricky, I’m sorry I’m not calling with better news. But, well . . .” Tommy’s voice thins out and disappears. He sighs and clears his throat. “Dad died last night.”

Richard stares at Karina. The puddle of agony he was just knee-deep in over Grace’s imagined letter evaporates. He waits for what replaces it. He feels nothing.

“Mikey found him early this morning. He was in his chair with the TV on. We think he died in his sleep. Probably a heart attack. . . .You there?”

“Yah.”

“I’m so sorry,” says Karina.

“Thank you. The wake is Thursday at Knight’s Funeral Home and the funeral is Friday at St. Jude’s.”

“O-kay,” says Richard.

“I know. I’m having trouble talking, too. He lived a good life. Almost eighty-three. And dying in your own home in your sleep, no hospitals or long, drawn-out disease, you can’t ask for better than that, right?”

Richard and Karina trade a silent conversation about ALS and death with their eyes before Richard realizes that Tommy is waiting for an answer.

“No.”

“Hey, I know we haven’t seen you in a long time, but you’re welcome to stay with Mikey or at Dad’s house. I’d have you here, but we literally got kids sleeping in closets and don’t have any room.”

Richard looks up at Karina. She nods. She’ll go with him to New Hampshire.

“Thaks-Tom-my. We’ll-be-there.”

“You okay, man?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. We’ll see you Thursday then.”

Tommy doesn’t know that Richard has ALS. Neither does Mikey. None of them knows. They’re about to find out.

Karina hangs up the phone and eyes Richard’s impassive-yet-already-tear-strewn face. “I’m sorry. Are you really okay?”

“Fine.” He swivels his chair toward the computer and away from her, showing her the back of his head.

He hears her leave the room without a word. He swivels the chair to be sure that she’s gone, then returns to his computer. He takes a deep breath, or at least a deep shallow breath. He points his nose at the screen, holding the position of his heavy head steady, focused on the folder labeled Letters to My Father. The folder opens. One by one, he selects each of the nine files and drags them to the trash. He studies the screen. The folder remains. The cursor darts and shimmies and his heart pounds hard in his throat as he works to select and then direct the folder to the trash bin.

There.

In an instant, his father and any possibility of apology are dead and gone.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


They’re the last to arrive at Walt’s house after the funeral. Karina and Grace hover awkwardly behind Richard in the living room, waiting for him to continue walking or sit down or do something. He just stands there, paralyzed, observing empty space. His upright piano, a fixture in his childhood home as seemingly permanent as its foundation, is gone. There is nothing in its place. Richard stands still, trying to comprehend its incomprehensible absence, feeling as if the only record of his childhood has been expunged. As he imagines his dead father erasing his past and ALS erasing his future, there is too little of him left. Time feels as if it’s collapsing in on him, and his bones are suddenly too fragile, his skin too transparent, his presence sliced too thin, and he wonders if he might cease to exist right then and there.

“Whe-did-he geh-ri-do-vit?” he asks of no one in particular, his voice barely audible even with the voice amplifier.

Karina moves to his right side, wraps her arm around his waist, and holds him by the hip, offering him stability.

His brother Tommy wanders in from the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

“Where’s the piano?” asks Karina.

“I have it. Lucy and Jessie take lessons. I hope that’s okay.”

Relief washes through Richard. He breathes, and he’s back in his body. Lucy and Jessie are his nieces, ages nine and twelve. He nods.

“Yes. Thas-per-feck.”

“They’re really good. I tell them they get it from their uncle.”

Richard smiles with his eyes and looks down at his feet, uncertain how to handle this unexpected compliment.