“We’re gonna be stars,” he said, his voice trembling. “You’re my Cher, my June Carter Cash. You’re my queen.”
“I can’t be anymore,” I told him. I was trying to keep my voice in check, but I couldn’t. It was wobbling worse than his was. “I’m broken. I’m . . .” I searched for an analogy he would understand. I reached for the Astros, his favorite team. “I’m a pitcher who’s lost her ability to throw.”
“But you can still catch,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’m not a catcher. If Roger Clemens couldn’t pitch anymore, they wouldn’t make him a catcher. They wouldn’t ask him to play outfield. You’re asking me to play outfield. You can get a better outfielder, someone who loves it.”
We stood together in silence, tears quietly flowing down our cheeks.
“I tried,” I said. “I really tried.”
He wiped his nose on the bottom of his T-shirt. “You can keep trying,” he said.
I flexed my fingers. “I can’t,” I said. “It’s too much. I can’t. I wish I could. And it’s not just that. There’s school, too. It’s too fast. It’s too soon. There’s too much pressure. I messed up too much.”
I wrapped my arms around my torso, trying to hold myself together, trying to keep myself upright.
“I wish it were different,” he said.
“Me too,” I said. “I wish it were like before.”
We were both sobbing now. I wanted to hug him, I wanted to comfort him. And I could tell he wanted to do the same for me. His hands were pressed awkwardly against his sides, the garbage bag at his feet.
“I’ll always love you, too,” he choked out.
We stared at each other, neither one of us wanting to be the one who turned away. I knew it had to be me, though. So I did.
He didn’t stop me. He didn’t fight it anymore. It seemed like, as hard as this was for both of us, he knew it was the right thing, too. For a while, the two of us being together was perfect. And then it wasn’t.
In ending my relationship with your dad, I ended my career as a musician, and I threw away the future we had been imagining together. But after a long while, I found another part of myself.
I wonder sometimes if there’s a way to have both. But if there is, I haven’t found it.
24
As the fund-raiser continued, Emily kept drifting closer and closer to the pianist. She watched his fingers from behind. She watched how his body moved to the rhythm of the music. She’d played like that, too. In “Queen of All the Keys,” the song Rob had written about her, there was a line about how she danced while she played, her hips swaying, her whole body moving to the music.
Not far from the piano was a high-top table with one chair next to it. Someone must’ve taken the other one to add to a group nearby. After a while, Emily got herself another glass of wine, slid onto that chair, and enjoyed the songs. She saw Ezra across the room, chatting with some other doctors, and wondered what it was that he hadn’t told her about his day, but then she lost herself in John Coltrane and Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Jimmy Heath. All of Ezra’s favorites.
After the pianist played “Gingerbread Boy” and nailed the piano solo in the middle, Emily unclasped her purse and walked over to drop a $20 bill in the brandy glass he was using as a tip jar.
The man, who looked like he was maybe ten or so years older than Emily, smiled at her as he finished the tune, his fingers moving without him paying attention to them anymore. “You’re my best audience tonight,” he said. “I saw you fingering along with me. You play?”
Emily looked down at the Steinway. “I used to,” she told him.
The pianist transitioned from “Gingerbread Boy” into “Blue Skies.” “You’re looking at this piano the way I looked at a bottle of vodka before I got sober,” he said to her. “Good news for you is that a piano won’t rot your liver.”
Emily laughed.
“You wanna play?” he asked. “I’m due for a break anyway. They were going to pipe some music in for fifteen minutes, but I’d be happy to let you take over instead.”
“I couldn’t,” Emily said, even though she wanted to sit down on that piano bench so badly she could feel the desire pulsing through her body, traveling from her heart to her wrists to her fingertips.
“I saw how your fingers move,” the pianist said. “I’m pretty sure you could. How ’bout I slide over and you give one song a go? If I’m wrong and you can’t really play, I’ll just take over again and finish up with one more song before my break.”