Emily looked down at the piano and then flexed her fingers. She hadn’t touched a piano in nearly thirteen years. But she found her fingers playing imaginary keys all the time—scales on her knees while riding the subway, chords along with the radio while waiting for takeout, whole theme songs while she was watching TV. Was it like riding a bike? Like swimming? Or would she sit down on that bench and fail spectacularly?
“I’ll try a song,” she said, her heart speeding up in anticipation or fear or another emotion she wasn’t quite able to name.
The pianist finished “Blue Skies” and slid to his left on the piano bench. Emily gathered up the skirt of her gown and sat next to him.
“Do you need music?” he asked.
Emily shook her head. She took a deep breath and laid her hands lightly on the keys. The piano was beautiful. The keys were smooth and gleaming. It felt familiar, like putting on a favorite sweatshirt on the first cool night of summer.
“Does it have to be jazz?” Emily asked the pianist, putting her hands in position to start the “Maple Leaf Rag,” though not sure if she’d be able to remember enough to get through the whole song.
“Play whatever you want,” he said.
With his permission to play anything, Emily moved her hands into a different position. She’d listened to the song so many times at this point that she knew it in her heart, in her bones, in her fingers. Plus it was so similar to the song she once played with him. The one he sang about her. His queen.
She closed her eyes and began to play—“Crystal Castle.” Her hands felt a little stiff, a little weak. The power she used to have in them, the strength, had lessened. Her fingers weren’t moving quickly, either. She slowed down the song’s pace, slid her foot onto the damper pedal, and then added harmony, the way she used to when she sang with him. Her right hand was playing both their vocal parts, or what she imagined her part would be in this new song. Her left was taking care of the guitar chords he strummed while he played.
With her eyes closed, Emily felt like she was inhabiting a world where music was all that existed. She became the music in a way she couldn’t explain. The sound was her and she was the sound, the rhythm, the vibrations. Everything she’d been feeling over the past few days came out through her fingers: the love, the despair, the guilt, the sorrow, the hope, the frustration, the pain. She got to the end of the song before she opened her eyes again, feeling as if the raging storm inside her had calmed.
When the world came back into focus, the pianist was standing next to the bench, a smile dancing across his lips, and there was a crowd around the piano—Ezra was there, and so were his parents, and a handful of his friends.
“I knew you could play,” the pianist said to her. “But I didn’t know you could play like that. Brava.”
As Emily smiled at him and thanked him for convincing her to give it a try, she heard Hala ask Ezra, “How long has Emily been playing?” And Popper Hopkins, the chief pediatric surgeon, was saying, “I thought she was a therapist—does your wife play professionally?” And then Ezra’s father was turning to him and saying, “Why have you been keeping Emily’s talent from us? She’s fantastic. Why haven’t you bought her a piano?”
Emily looked up and saw Ezra’s face turning red. “I’m going to take the woman of the hour to the bar for a drink,” he said to them all, not answering anyone’s questions.
“Do you want to keep playing?” the pianist asked.
Ezra was coming toward her; Emily shook her head.
“Emily?” he asked, when he got to the piano bench. He was looking at her as if he wasn’t sure who she was. “Why didn’t I know you could play piano?” His voice was light, but she could tell it was an effort for him to make it sound that way.
Emily cocked her head at him, the music still tingling through her body, pulsing calmness with every beat of her heart. “Of course you did,” she said. “When we first met and you talked about your college a cappella group, you asked me if I was into music, I told you I used to sing and play piano, and then broke my hand and stopped. That’s why my fingers hurt right before it rains.”
He took a drink from the highball in his hand, not saying anything.
“I fell out of a tree house, remember?” Emily said, standing up.
He stayed silent for a moment longer, and took another drink.
“How old were you,” he asked slowly, after he swallowed, “when you fell out of that tree house?”