April & Oliver (34 page)

Above them the sky teems with stars. A pale crescent moon hovers over the tree line. “If you stare for a while,” he says,
“you can actually perceive how some stars are closer to us than others. And the colors. See how red that one is?” He points.

“I don’t see the color.”

“Keep staring. You will.”

“Do you know constellations?” she asks.

“A few. That big trapezoid there is Pegasus, the legs go out to the right and the wings to the left. Pisces is just below
it. As for your zodiac sign, it doesn’t rise until next month. Taurus, that is.
The bull.
”

“Don’t look at me like that, as if you’re any less stubborn than I am,” she says. “Gemini, right? When are you planning to
let that shadowy twin of yours out from under your bed?”

“Don’t worry. He’s here.”

She grins, looking back at the stars. “How do you know the constellations?”

“Girl I dated in college.”

“Wow, why didn’t you hold on to her?”

“She was a nice person, but she had no feeling for music. I once took her to a concert of Mozart divertimentos, and she fell
asleep within the first half hour.”

“So that was it? The poor girl didn’t get another chance?”

“You don’t understand. She didn’t respond to any kind of music. Pop, jazz, classical, nothing. I didn’t think that was humanly
possible. I couldn’t even think of a song that described her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone has a type of music that matches them somehow. Take my father, for instance, predictable, soothing, ingenious. He’s
a Brandenburg concerto all over.”

“Really?” she says. “So you do this for everyone you know, match them to music?”

“I guess so.”

“How about Bernadette?”

“Gregorian chant,” he says without hesitation.

“And Al?”

“Miles Davis.”

“This is amazing. How about yourself?”

“Me? I guess I am my own songs, such as they were.”

“And me?”

“You?” He smiles mischievously.

“Let me guess. Some vaudeville tune.”

He smirks.

“Madonna, then. Something flash-in-the-pan.”

“Beethoven,” he says seriously. “The second movement from Symphony Number Seven.”

Her mouth opens in amazement. “Tell me it’s not the one I’m thinking of, that sleepy allegretto.”

“That’s the one.”

“You’re out of your mind. That’s not even close. In fact, that is probably the last song on earth that matches me.”

“I didn’t even have to think about it,” he says. “It’s always been you, since we were kids.”

“Well, that proves it, Oliver. You just don’t get me. You never have.”

“Or maybe you’re the one who doesn’t get you. Have you considered that?”

“For one thing, the tempo is too slow.”

“It’s the beat of the human heart.”

“And sad, way too sad.”

“Just the opposite. It’s about overcoming adversity.”

“It sounds like a funeral march.”

“Then you haven’t heard the right rendition. Try Hélène Grimaud’s version. It’s like listening to the surf. You fall in and
never climb out.”

“Name one thing about that song that’s like me, even one.”

He folds his hands under his head; she can see he is hearing the notes in his mind. “It’s moving, exhilarating, transcendent.
The harmony is always changing but the rhythm never does. It unfolds subtly, hypnotically, like a trance. It gives you a sense
of something that was already there, like the recognition of something you always knew. It extinguishes time. It doesn’t matter
what came before or what will come later; each note holds everything. The music unfurls in a necessary way, like the roll
of the tide. It opens out and lifts you away with it.”

She is silent for a moment, barely breathing. “That’s lovely, but you didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes I did.”

She has no idea what he is talking about. “Exhilarating? Transcendent?” she says. “Do you know about my hangnail? My eczema?
My PMS? Do you know that I curse myself every time my alarm clock goes off because I stay up too late for no reason and can’t
fall asleep except curled up with a book in the armchair, so that I wake up with the same blazing neck ache every goddamn
morning?
Triumph over adversity?
Which April are you talking about?”

“That’s the one.” He smiles with broad satisfaction, looking back at the stars.

She feels uneasy now, the allegretto running through her mind.

“These stars,” he says finally, sighing. “How can they be there every night and we don’t notice?”

“Imagine,” she says. “For centuries people have known them like the local landscape, and I can’t name a single one.”

“It’s not too late.”

“Let’s see, that bright one there must be the North Star.”

“Actually that’s Vega, part of the constellation Lyra.”

“Ah, Orpheus’s lyre?”

“So, you were paying attention in Miss Winky’s English class.”

“How could I forget? His music moved everything, animate and inanimate. Even rivers turned their paths to follow him. Poor
Eurydice. If only he hadn’t looked back.”

“Overcome by joy is how the story goes, but I never thought that made sense. It must have been a moment of doubt. He had to
see if she was really there. If only he trusted the power of his playing, he might’ve gotten her out.”

“You have to feel for him, though,” she says. “He tried.”

“No, he should have stayed focused. He ought to have felt her there.”

She glances over at him. “Maybe she wasn’t meant to be saved,” April says.

“It was himself he failed to save,” he says, his eyes fixed on the stars. “She wasn’t just his wife, she was his soul.”

She studies him.

He clears his throat. “I’m speaking metaphorically of course.”

She considers this for a moment. “How did he lose her to begin with?”

“Something catastrophic happened he had no control over. She was stung by a viper and died.”

“Tough break,” she says.

He stares upward. They settle into silence. For a moment, April thinks she can actually feel the earth turning. It’s so quiet.
A few crickets hum beneath the leaves, holdouts against frost. Feathers flutter in an overhead branch.

“April,” he says. “Tell me how it ended with Quincy.”

“I don’t want to talk about that. It’s so beautiful here. I don’t want to talk at all.”

“Come on,” he says. “If you don’t tell me now, you never will.”

She sighs. “Only if I can ask you something when I’m done.”

“Fine.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“Okay.” She draws a breath. “After your mother died, I had nothing to do with Quincy, but I kept working there the rest of
that summer, which was a mistake. Even though he stayed away like I asked, it was very uncomfortable for me. Then one night
he had a fight with his girlfriend. Stupid me, I didn’t even know he had one.”

“Go on.”

“The girlfriend, the woman he ended up marrying, was close to his age. They must have been seeing each other for a while because
she basically told him to shit or get off the pot, she wanted a ring. They almost came to blows. I heard them in the parking
lot. She slammed her door and told him it was over. When she was gone, Quincy came back into the bar. I was down in the stockroom,
hoping he would forget I was there, but he came looking for me. I’d never seen him like that, the rage so bright you could
almost see it, white and hot. I knew there would be no talking to him so I tried to run for it. He tackled me on the stairs.”

She hears Oliver swallow. “And?”

She folds her arms across her chest. “After it was over it took me a long time to get to my feet. He had his back to me, lighting
a cigarette. Once I got my bearings, I went up behind him and clocked him in the side of the head with my fist. I don’t know
what I did to his face, but I’m pretty sure I broke my finger,” she says, holding it up to the sky, flexing it. “I’ve never
been able to completely straighten it since.”

Oliver reaches up, laces his fingers between hers, and brings her hand to his chest. “Where was I?” he says, his voice raw.

“I walked to your studio. I thought if only I could hear you play, everything would be okay, but you weren’t there. Then I
remembered that you were leaving for college the next day. I’d known that, of course, but I’d forgotten. I guess I wasn’t
thinking straight. Anyway, I knew where the key was hidden and let myself in. I just sat down against the piano for a while
until I felt ready to go. When I finally got to my apartment, Daisy was still up, teary-eyed because you’d just left. I missed
you by twenty minutes.”

He squeezes her hand. “And the next day?”

“I knew we were supposed to meet, but I figured as soon as you saw me you would know something happened. Seeing you would
have been as bad as looking in the mirror. I wasn’t ready for either.” She shivers, taking back her hand.

“
He’s
the one who ought to feel shame,” Oliver says, getting up on one elbow. “You see that, don’t you?”

“Until that night, even though I knew the things we did were wrong, I always thought he felt something for me, not love, of
course, but a kind of need that was as close to love as I was going to get.”

Oliver drops his head in a gesture of defeat.

The stars are dimmer now. A faint suggestion of light spreads over the eastern horizon. “I never went back there to work,
but a few weeks later he came by the new bar where I’d found a job and apologized. It wasn’t a real apology. He was scared
I would tell my father. I told him to get out before I called the cops.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know, Oliver. I just didn’t want to deal with it.” She sighs. One star near the horizon outshines the others.
Venus?
she wonders.
Or Mars?

Oliver slides onto his back again, limbs spread out, staring up at the fading universe. His voice comes out small and tight.
“I’d like to drive to his house right now and kill him.”

She rolls onto her stomach, up on her elbows to look at him. “It was a long time ago, Oliver. I don’t think about it anymore,
so neither should you.”

He gazes at her, cupping his hand around the side of her face. His mouth opens but he says nothing.

“Oliver,” she whispers. “I put myself in that situation. There was nothing you could have done.”

He draws her head down to his chest. She curls up, leaning against him, hearing the percussion of his heart. She thinks of
the allegretto. She can hear it in her mind.

After a while she says, “My turn, right?”

“What?”

“I get to ask something.”

“Go ahead,” he says.

“You know what it is,” she says.

She hears him breathe. For a long moment he says nothing. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he says. “One day I just stopped.”

“Which day? How?”

He rakes his fingers through her hair, staring up at the draining night. Just when she thinks he is not going to answer, his
voice comes out hoarsely. “That day.”

She lifts her head but he won’t look at her. “I did go to the studio that night before I went to see Daisy. I played something
that had come to mind that day. It was dark and intense, not like anything I’d composed before. I don’t know how it came to
me. When I finished, I realized I was crying. I had no idea why. There was a pain in my chest that was so strong, I could
hardly breathe. I had to get out of there. I never wrote the song down. I went directly to Daisy’s because I wanted to forget
everything, the whole summer, my mother’s death. You.” He brings his hand to his face, covering his eyes. “That’s when it
happened, wasn’t it, while I was in my studio.”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Of course you were feeling strong things; you were leaving the next day for college.”

“No, it was more than that.”

She closes her eyes, listening to the drum of his heart.

“That was the last time I played,” he says. “After that, all I had to do was look at a piano to know it was gone.”

She gathers his shirt in her fist. After few minutes, she sits up and so does he. She is unbelievably cold and stiff. She
sees the same in him. They stare out to where the sky is a blend of salmon, apricot, and peach. A single fluid drop of light
appears on the horizon, brilliant and gold.

“Do you feel it?” April says. “We’re moving.”

He glances at her.

“No,” she says. “Don’t look at me, look at the sun. See? It’s still; we’re rolling toward it. Do you feel it now?”

He stares. The drop of light bleeds quickly, growing larger until the entire orb appears clinging to the horizon by a single
golden thread. Then, releasing the liquid light back to its source, the cord snaps and the earth turns freely, drifting steadily
downward.

“I feel it,” he says.

They continue to watch as the rock beneath them drifts forward, falling toward the light. The horizon drops steadily three,
four, and then five lengths beneath the stationary sun.

“We’d better go,” she says finally, “before we get clobbered by rush hour.”

The sky is brighter now. He gives her a contemplative look. Frail, newborn light glows on the contour of his unshaven face.
“I guess you’re right,” he says reluctantly.

As they start down the hill, the breeze picks up, scattering dry leaves at their feet. April’s hair blows in all directions.
They walk all the way down without talking. Once inside the car, everything goes abruptly quiet. Oliver stares down at his
keys, not starting the engine.

“I have one more question,” she says.

His eyebrows arch. He looks at her curiously, almost hopefully.

“You don’t really believe what you said about my father, do you?”

He frowns suddenly and starts the ignition.

“Well?”

“If you’d read my mother’s journal, you’d see why I think it’s possible.”

“I just don’t get it, Oliver. Why would you believe something like that?”

“Of course I don’t want to believe it, but I have to be realistic, too.”

“Look, I know my dad did some pretty despicable things, but he did love your father. He wouldn’t have gone that far.”