Every Note Played(61)

Transferring him from the bed into the chair in the morning and from the chair into bed in the evening is a massive chore that requires great strength and trained technique. Despite how slight and fragile his mass is, he’s deadweight, like a sleeping child. Karina can’t do it. Bill has been coming for two shifts since Richard lost his legs, morning and evening, using all his muscle and height and a gait belt to lift Richard’s body safely from point A to point B. The Hoyer lift, which looks like a cross between an exercise machine and a hammock swing, will make it possible for anyone to safely move him in and out of bed.

He hears the doorbell ring. Just weeks ago, this might’ve been the sound of him stepping on the call button taped to the floor by his bed, but now, it can only be the actual doorbell at the front door. He hears men’s voices and the sound of something being rolled into the living room. It must be the lift.

A few minutes later, Bill’s legs and feet appear before Richard.

“Hey, Ricardo, let’s get you out here. Karina has something for you.” Bill says this with unbridled exuberance, like a parent about to present a small child with a special gift. Oh, goody! A Hoyer lift! Just want I’ve always wanted!

Bill rights Richard’s head back into position against the headrest, and an enormous relief washes through Richard like warm water. Bill wheels him out into the living room. Richard stares at a grand piano in front of the bay windows facing the street where the couch should be. Karina is beaming.

“Wha?”

“I saved it,” says Karina.

“Is-tha-mi?”

“I couldn’t let someone else own your piano.”

He can’t believe she did this. It’s incredibly thoughtful and sweet and well-intentioned, but seeing his piano again, after he’d already said good-bye and made peace with never seeing or touching or hearing it again, turns him inside out, as if he’s just unexpectedly bumped into an ex-lover in the living room, still not over her. He’s all emotion and no words, choked up.

Karina and Bill stare at him, expectant, hoping for joy. He wants to give it to them, searching for a way. He looks at his piano, his beloved, from across the room. He can’t bear for them both to be paralyzed, still, silenced.

“Wi-you play-fo-me?”

“It’ll need to be tuned.”

“Tha-so-kay.”

Karina hesitates. She’s never played his piano. His piano was his. He smiles and sends her a long blink, his version of permission and please. She acquiesces, sits at the bench, hands poised over the keys, and pauses.

She twists around to face him. “What do you want me to play?”

He thinks, his favorites all raising their hands emphatically like eager students who know the answer. Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt. Pick me! Pick me! Too many choices crowd his head. Karina, sitting at his piano, waits for an answer. She’s waiting to play. She’s been waiting for twenty years.

“Play-me soh-jazz.”

This time, Karina smiles and slow blinks, her version of a nod, a thank-you, and the energy in her gesture is passed between them, a moment of invisible yet palpable connection. She breaks the spell, thinking now, deciding what to play, her eyes scanning upward, as if reading her own mind.

She grins. “I’ll do ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow.’ Bill, you want to sing?”

“Do happy little bluebirds fly? Hell yeah, I’m singing.”

Bill scooches next to Karina on Richard’s bench. Karina begins to play, setting the mood in a prelude before the lyrics begin. Richard expected her rendition to be loungy, predictably ragtime, upbeat and swingy, but she slows it all down instead, dwelling on the notes, adding interesting chords and embellishments, and he’s genuinely surprised. Impressed. Enjoying it. She’s into the melody now, and Bill is singing. Their rendition is restrained and romantic. It evokes a gentle sadness, a fond memory of a lost love. It’s a dreamy lullaby, easily the most beautiful song Bill has ever sung.

Richard listens to Karina play and Bill sing, and instead of feeling grief stricken or jealous that he’ll never play his piano again, he feels strangely happy. He’s setting his piano free, letting it go, sending it off on its next journey without him. Then, as Karina plays the final phrasings and his heart moves with the notes, it occurs to him that it’s not his piano he’s letting go of, setting free.

It’s Karina.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


The Hoyer lift still hasn’t been delivered, and until it gets here, Bill is the lift. He’s singing Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” while securing a gait belt around Richard’s legs, just above the ankle. It’s evening, and Bill has already brushed Richard’s teeth and washed his face. Even though Richard won’t go to sleep for another five hours, it’s time to get him from the wheelchair to the bed. Richard is Bill’s last patient of his shift, and Bill is Richard’s last hired help of the day, and Karina can’t get him out of the chair. So to bed he goes.

Bill weaves a second gait belt around Richard’s torso and secures it snug around him while Karina looks on. Bill grabs the suction wand from the rolling cart next to him, flicks the machine on, and vacuums out the saliva pooled in Richard’s mouth. Bill has learned through experience to do this prior to moving Richard, otherwise the puddle of saliva waiting in Richard’s mouth tips forward when he’s vertical, spilling out and onto Bill. His job is not for the squeamish. He then fits a soft cervical collar around Richard’s reclined neck so his head won’t flop forward. He arranges Richard’s socked, belted feet parallel on the pivot disc, a human-size lazy Susan placed at the base of his chair, adjacent to his destination, the bed. It takes a grown man and all this time and equipment to move him a few inches. Bill squats in front of Richard like an Olympic skier.