Every Note Played(56)

The top sheet on the shelf is Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” One of Karina’s students was mutilating this composition in a lesson last week. When Richard was eleven, “Für Elise” was his favorite piece to play. He hesitates, then sits down at the bench. As his eyes travel the notes, he hears the music in his mind’s ear, and he is eleven again. He’s playing for his mother, and when he finishes, she kisses him on the head and tells him it’s the most beautiful song she’s ever heard.

He reads the notes to this simple, overplayed, yet lovely piece, and without trying, he feels it in his body—in his beating heart, in his unmoving fingers that still fondly remember, in his tapping foot. This is music.

He aches to touch the keys. While he can feel the imagined music playing in his body, the experience of participating in its creation and hearing it live resonates in his soul. He tries to remember the last time he played, the feelings coursing through his body and soul as he lived the notes of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, and he gets only a faded sense of it. He can’t grab on to it. The memory is but a passing ghost. Tears flood his eyes, and he leaves Karina’s piano before he’s reduced to sobbing.

He follows the light into the kitchen. A bowl of lemons is centered on the square table. One of the lemons has gone moldy. He wants to pluck it out and throw it in the trash. He thinks about calling Grace down from her bedroom and asking her to remove the bad lemon but, assuming his diminished voice couldn’t reach her anyway, decides not to bother.

He walks over to the pizza box on the counter, the lid tilted slightly open. He peeks inside. Three pieces left. He inhales the smells of peppers and onions and dough and with a tortured sadness remembers the sensory pleasure of eating, like a lover he’ll never kiss again, a piano he’ll never play again. He imagines the chewiness of the toppings and cheese, the crunchy bite of the crust, the hot temperature of the tangy sauce and salty cheese in his mouth, the rapid responsive action of his grand piano, his hands in Maxine’s thick black hair, his mouth on hers.

Almost dizzy with desire, he notices that he doesn’t imagine Karina’s hair or lips. He tries to remember the last time they kissed, the last time he held her, the last time he got hard thinking about her. He can’t find it. His memories of touching her, wanting her, loving her, feel like yellowed, unlabeled snapshots in someone else’s scrapbook. Too much time has passed.

It’s 9:03.

Stepping away from the pizza box, he approaches Grace’s coffee mug from this morning, next to the sink. He bends over, leans his face into the mug, and inhales whatever he can draw out of the sticky, bittersweet hoop of desiccated coffee at the bottom. He exhales. Nirvana. And pure hell. Desperate, he extends his tongue into the mug, hoping to lick the dry ring, but his tongue isn’t long enough and the mug is too deep. He gives up.

The phone numbers for Caring Health, his neurologist, and Bill’s cell are written on a piece of paper and held by a magnet to the refrigerator. Next to this is a photograph of Grace and Karina at Grace’s high school graduation. They’re both wearing black, both beaming. Grace has her mother’s smile.

There are no other photographs. No other smiling children on what used to be his refrigerator. The son he always wanted. A sister for Grace. All those years trying to get Karina pregnant, believing in her doctor’s appointments, jerking off into plastic cups, hoping. None of it was real. Maybe this is why he can’t remember loving her.

All that time wasted.

It’s 9:06.

With nothing more to explore, he’s walking back to the den when he’s struck with the sudden, out-of-body, slow-motion realization that he’s falling. He went to step right, but his leg never responded. Something in the interplay between neurons and muscles broke off. Something didn’t fire or listen or land. Something let go, unplugged, and the command to walk fizzled out, the connection severed. In the split second before he hits the floor, he’s aware that he cannot break his fall and thinks to turn his head, but not soon enough. His chin and nose take the brunt of the impact.

Warm blood drains down his right nostril. He can taste its metallic saltiness in his mouth. He registers the pain, throbbing and sharp, mostly at the bridge of his nose, between his eyes. Internally, he scans his limbs, trying to discern if anything is broken. He can’t seem to find his right leg. A realization sinks in like liquid concrete funneling into his body, transforming him into immovable stone. Nothing is broken, but he’s not getting up. His right leg is gone, consumed by ALS. As he lies facedown on the kitchen floor, he knows he’ll never walk again.

He tries to yell for Grace, but he can barely get enough air into his lungs in this position to breathe, never mind produce loud sound. He lifts his head and tries again.

“Graaa.”

He lowers his head, resting his right cheek on the cold tile floor. A puddle of drool mingled with blood pools beneath his chin. He’s not sure he has the strength to lift his head again. He finds the only part of his body still available to him. His left foot. He lifts and drops it over and over, banging his wool-slippered foot against the floor like a foreboding, muffled drumbeat.

Several minutes pass. Tired, he stops tapping his foot. Panic wants him now. It forms a fist in his stomach, its claw reaching for his throat. He won’t be able to breathe if panic takes him. Grace. She comes down every night at ten for his last feeding and to hook him up to the BiPAP machine. What time is it? It won’t be long now. He has to fight against the panic and keep breathing.