A Thousand Perfect Notes

by C. G. Drews

  Jan’s eyes are doubtful, but he just nods and farewells in German. Then the car pulls out of the driveway and leaves the streets of broken glass and tired houses. Jan returns to his life of music and good food and expensive watches.

  Beck walks towards the front door. He wishes he’d said more than thank you, because those two pathetic words hardly convey how much Jan has done. Beck is a good pianist. He’s a better composer. He has a future.

  He has promise.

  The house is eerily quiet when Beck opens the door. He shrugs his backpack off his shoulder and checks that the CD is inside. He scrawled a title in black Sharpie and shoved it in an envelope. It’s all he has for August. He leaves his bag at the door, because he expects he’ll have to sneak out. As if the Maestro’s going to grin and wave goodbye as he walks to August’s for her birthday tonight.

  The Maestro promised to break his hands.

  But she won’t.

  Beck won’t let her.

  He feels a sharp electric thrill of confidence as he walks down the hall. The TV buzzes softly from the lounge and he heads for it, half thinking of the possibility of taking Joey with him to August’s. She’d love the dogs. She’d love the food.

  The lounge is empty.

  Bright, perky cartoons dance on the screen and there are half-filled bowls of sultanas and biscuit crumbs where Joey would normally have had her snack.

  She never leaves food lying around.

  Beck backtracks to the kitchen. His shoes crunch crockery. He looks down.

  The floor is covered with shards of smashed plates, ground to white dust in some places. It must be every plate in the house.

  How did he not think this would happen?

  Beck’s stomach turns over. He treads carefully, plates biting into his shoes, and goes for Joey’s room. Empty. Toys are scattered across the floor, but she always lives in a mess. Doesn’t she? Does she? When was the last time Beck sat down and actually paid attention to Joey? He’s been so swallowed by his own angst.

  Don’t go to your room. Go out the door. Go to August’s. Go now.

  He pushes his hands deep in his pockets and walks towards his room.

  Somehow he knows.

  His door is open.

  ‘Joey?’ Beck says, his voice hollow.

  The Maestro sits on his bed, for once not trembling. She’s rigid, wearing her nice pressed work clothes, as if she planned to go out today. Or as if she planned to go somewhere, anywhere – as if she planned to leave.

  Joey sits on the piano stool, hunched, sniffling. Red fingerprints mark her cheek.

  How dare the Maestro—

  Beck takes two steps and he’s at Joey’s side, picking her up. Her short skinny arms go around his neck. But he doesn’t know what to say. Does he ask? Does he walk out?

  Jan’s card burns in his pocket.

  ‘You are not going to Germany?’ the Maestro asks. It’s so calm, so perfectly flat, that a shiver runs up Beck’s spine.

  He holds Joey tighter. ‘No.’

  ‘Then you will never be properly trained,’ the Maestro says. ‘The line of Keverich pianists ends with me.’

  Except Beck is a pianist. Except Beck isn’t worthless.

  ‘Yes,’ Beck says, his voice a hundred years old. ‘I guess it does.’

  She stands, unfolding like a stiff puppet with rusted iron strings. Her hands are trembling, Beck sees now. She just had them bunched so tightly in fists that her fingernails have left gouges in her palms.

  ‘So you do this to spite me?’ she says.

  Beck takes a deep breath. He unlatches Joey’s hands from around his neck and, even when she whimpers, he puts her down and says quietly, ‘Go watch TV, Jo.’

  She drags her feet to the door and then hugs the wall, not moving.

  Beck faces the Maestro. He’s nearly as tall as her. When did that happen?

  ‘Nein,’ he says, accidentally using German to placate her when he means to stand up for himself for once. Habits are hard to break. ‘I’m not going to do this any more.’ Blood pounds in his ears. ‘And you’re never going to touch Joey again. Or me.’ He feels dizzy with the effort to keep talking, to not back up as she comes closer, to not cower in case of a blow. ‘I don’t belong to you any more.’

  You don’t deserve anything from me.

  I deserve a life away from you.

  ‘Is that so?’ the Maestro says, coolly. ‘Yet here you are under my roof, wearing clothes I have bought you. Dummes Kind.’ Stupid child. ‘This is your piano that I spent every cent I owned on.’

  But Beck didn’t ask for that. He was too young to even understand her nerve damage after her stroke, how it could have been helped with therapy, medication – but instead she bought a piano. Not his choice. Hers.

  She keeps coming towards him and finally he steps back, pressed against the piano and the wall. The piano that built him, that destroyed him.

  ‘I’m not playing any more,’ Beck says as the piano digs into his back.

  He should take Joey and leave, go to August’s, get help – call the police. He wants to. Does he? This is his mother. She just – she just wanted him to be great. She’s messed up and wrong and cruel as a knife, but she wants him to be great.

  No. She wants him to be her.

  ‘You will play the piano,’ the Maestro says, her voice a symphony of darkness. ‘You will play.’

  ‘No.’

  Beck stops cowering. He pulls himself tall, so he’s nose-to-nose with her. He looks like her, he realises, when he doesn’t back down or tremble – wild hair, height, steel bones and eyes that long for something out of reach.

  Joey’s voice is a hiccupping sob. ‘Don’t hurt him, Mummy.’

  But the Maestro doesn’t listen.

  Does she ever listen?

  ‘You will play,’ she says, her voice spiralling down a cold, callous hole.

  He can barely get the words out. ‘I don’t – I don’t want to live like this.’

  Because he wants to live.

  It happens fast, a storm that’s brewed for days, a rusted nail about to give, a piano string too old, too frayed.

  The punch catches Beck on the side of his head and sends him stumbling backwards into the piano. The keys howl. He does not.

  Joey lets out a bubbling sob.

  He wishes she didn’t have to see this. He wishes Joey didn’t have to think this is normal.

  He straightens and pain throbs through his skull and there are marks on his hands where the piano keys bit. But he’s barely upright before she shoves him again, her curses in thick German.

  ‘Stop.’ Is it a plea? Is it a demand?

  When is he going to be more than a trembling semiquaver?

  ‘Stop, Mutter. You can’t – I’m not—’

  ‘HÖR AUF ZU REDEN.’ Stop talking.

  She hits him again and he isn’t ready for it, he still believes she’ll stop and say sorry and promise she won’t do it again. Every time she hits him, his stupid head thinks it’ll be the last time. She can’t mean this.

  When is he going to realise she’s built on regret and smouldering hate?

  ‘The piano is your legacy,’ she screams.

  ‘No it’s not.’ Beck shields his face with his arm. ‘It’s yours. It’s your dream, not mine.’ He tries to back away, but he’s between a wall and the piano.

  He’s always been stuck here.

  She hits out hard, fast, and blood trickles down his split cheek and it’s stupid, he knows it’s stupid, but all he can think of is how he can’t turn up to August’s like this again. She’ll never get her song.

  She’ll think he didn’t have the courage to come.

  Which is true, isn’t it? He’s pathetic.

  Stupid.

  Worthless.

  Schwachkopf. Moron.

  ‘You break my heart,’ the Maestro says, her voice cracked, crying. ‘You are nothing when you should’ve been everything. Without the piano, there is nothing left of me. Nothing. You fail
ed me. You failed everyone.’ Her voice twists into a wail.

  It’s true. She’s right. Beck fails school, life, Joey, August, Jan, the piano.

  Fail – fail – fail.

  ‘Beck! Beck!’ Joey screams. She’s a shadow behind the Maestro, trying to grab her mother’s arm.

  The Maestro’s fingers twist into Beck’s hair. ‘You are my mistake, Beethoven.’ She slams him into the piano.

  His head connects with wood and paint and polish and for a second he sees nothing. It’s like floating on the sea in a cardboard box. He’s only dimly aware of Joey screaming. Of the Maestro smashing his head again. Of blood filling his ears. His eyes. Blood everywhere.

  His eyes clear and he sees the piano, floating in a zigzag, smeared with his blood.

  His voice is distorted, like he’s yelling through a tunnel. ‘Joey, call the police.’

  ‘NEIN,’ the Maestro screams. ‘You are being punished! Or are you such a baby you cannot take it?’

  He’s being murdered.

  He just has to hit back. Hit back. Hit back.

  And be just like the Maestro?

  He won’t.

  He refuses.

  But he’s struggling to know which way is up, where he is whoheiswhatisgoingon …

  A small body presses against his legs as he sags against the piano. She’s between him and the Maestro.

  ‘Don’t, Mummy,’ she says.

  The Maestro backhands her.

  It tosses Joey’s little body halfway across the room and she cracks into the wall with a sickening thud. She lies still. She can’t be still. Is Beck screaming? He has to get to her, but the world is upside down and dripping blood.

  He tries to get up but the Maestro hits him again and this time, when his head hits the piano, a sharp ringing splits his ears. He doesn’t get up.

  But his swollen lips move – in a whisper? Or a shout?

  ‘You can’t hurt your baby, Mutter. That’s Joey. You can’t hurt your baby Joey.’ And he says it over and over

  and over and over

  and she doesn’t hit him again.

  When he cracks his swollen eyelids open, the Maestro is on her knees, pulling Joey’s crumpled body into her arms and sobbing. Huge sobs. They shake her to the core of her bones.

  Beck pulls himself to his feet and staggers out of the room. He’s made out of cement and each step weighs a hundred kilos. He finds the phone in the kitchen and nearly drops it before he can get the number in. It takes him five tries to follow the line of wobbling digits on the card from his pocket.

  Is the phone dead? He can’t hear the dial tone.

  Until faintly, like a tiny pinpoint of light, he hears someone pick up.

  ‘I changed my mind,’ he says, his voice thick. ‘But Joey has to come.’

  Did his uncle reply? Did he even dial the right number?

  The phone tips from his hands and Beck sinks to the floor and cradles his throbbing head. It beats like a song. The song says goodbye.

  They ask him to say his name. Again and again. He can’t make his tongue answer.

  They shine a light in his eyes and say something about an ambulance. A stretcher? His mother? His head? Stay awake? Or go to sleep?

  His mouth is still full of blood but he manages to say, ‘I can’t hear you.’

  He gestures to his bloodied ears.

  ‘I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you.’ Does he scream or whisper?

  He tells them his name, through swollen lips.

  ‘Beethoven Keverich.’

  Technically Beck isn’t allowed to go anywhere alone – safety reasons. Just until he gets used to his limitations.

  But they are at his house, Jan and he, picking up anything he wants to take. Which is exactly nothing. His clothing is little more than rags, so Jan said they’ll buy some before the flight this weekend. And he’ll need advice for Joey’s clothes because he’s never bought for a little girl. He’ll ask her favourite colour when they pick her up from the hospital this evening.

  As for this house? Packing keepsakes? Is there anything special he wants to save?

  Beck has nothing.

  So he just walks out.

  To August’s house, obviously. Where else would he go? But how long has it been since he even talked to her? Over a week with his hospital stay? There’s so much to say and he doesn’t know where to begin. Does he start with hello?

  Or goodbye?

  Does he tell her he’s leaving? For ever. As soon as they pick up Joey with the pink cast on her broken arm, they’ll be on a one-way plane flight, her, Jan and him. Does he say he never has to see the Maestro again if he doesn’t want? How she’s signed over her children’s custody to her brother. How Jan is still pressing charges against her. How Beck will have to testify and he can’t think about that right now. He can’t face it. Maybe he can’t even do it.

  Jan says they’ll decide later.

  Now is for leaving.

  He could tell August how the Maestro kissed his forehead, even though he flinched away from her, and, cold and precise, she said, ‘Ich liebe dich.’ I love you. And then she left the hospital and never looked back at all the things she had broken.

  Does he wait till August asks about the yellow bruises on his face, the bandage on his left ear, or the stitches in his cheek? He should. No lies, this time.

  While Jan tiptoed gingerly around the smashed house, Beck avoided his room with the bloodied piano and broken keys. He never has to play again, if he chooses.

  But his music hasn’t stopped. He’s already scribbling new songs on the back of a hospital menu, his fingers dancing with notes on hallway walls as he walks because apparently composing is part of him and not likely to go away.

  He walks slowly down his street – for the last time? – and tries not to jolt his aching limbs too much. His face feels tight beneath the stitches. That’ll make her sad. After all this time, he still hasn’t learnt to smile. Between his motley face and his new clothes, she won’t even recognise him. Jeans that fit? A lined jacket? Shoes so new they squeak on shined floors? He’s never felt so rich.

  August’s house looks the same – a relief. He nearly expects the world to be different since his life has changed so much. The only new addition is several chickens in the front yard that scatter as he walks to the front door. This time he won’t lurk in her yard like some demented creeper. He’ll knock. And if she’s not home, he’ll go and never come back.

  He knocks.

  The dogs are probably going crazy inside.

  The door opens and two feet, with bare, blackened soles and rainbow anklets, appear with a blast of cinnamon and flour. Her face is dusted with white and smudges of chocolate decorate her arms. Her lips are caught between a smile and a frown, but she doesn’t hesitate. August throws her arms around his neck and presses her face into his collar. Her body shudders beneath him. What does he do? Maybe – just –

  He returns the hug, holds her tight, rain hugging sunshine, and he remembers that she does care about him. She said so that night, when they ate the stars and she kissed him.

  She opens her mouth, but he puts a finger to her lips. He wishes he could mentally transfer everything he wanted to say.

  But that would be cheating.

  Instead he says, ‘Hi,’ and pretends he’s not crying.

  She pretends she’s not crying too.

  He pulls the CD out of his back pocket and hesitates before he hands it to her. Can’t take it back now. He accidentally wrote something precious into that song and sharing it is baring his soul. But he’s OK with that.

  This is August.

  In thick Sharpie he’s written:

  FOR AUGUST: ALL THE THINGS I DIDN’T SAY.

  She pulls him inside.

  The dogs are all over him – her parents aren’t home – and the house gives him a welcome hug of baking cinnamon biscuits and woodsmoke from their fire. August licks icing off her wrist as she scampers for her room, CD clutched desperately to her ches
t. Beck pauses to pat a dog, or nine.

  He follows August slowly, half because he’s drinking in her house for the last time and half because he doesn’t want to see her face as she listens.

  She sits cross-legged on her bed, battered laptop open before her as the song loads. She turns it up as loud as it can go and three of her cats leave the room. Beck is mildly offended.

  Beck can feel the bass through the floorboards. Did he really play it that loud? He remembers the white piano and the blue room and Jan’s excitement over discovering this is what Beck’s good at. This is what he’s made for.

  It doesn’t matter if it’s nearly freezing outside, August’s smile is lime and summer.

  She’s crying.

  ‘That bad, huh?’ he says.

  She shoves his arm, always as physical and violent as a kitten.

  Her lips open and don’t pause and he can’t get in a word edgewise until he leans across the bed and covers her mouth with his for the briefest heartbeat of a second. Then he scoots so he sits beside her, their thighs touching, and he tilts his right ear towards her.

  He has to stop pretending. He has to talk normally. He can’t let the tremor into his voice. This is August and he doesn’t have to pretend, but he’d like her last memory of him to be a creator of dancing notes not a crying boy.

  ‘If you talk really loud to my right side,’ he says, husky, ‘I’ll be able to hear.’

  At least the Maestro didn’t break his hands.

  The Maestro took his hearing. Not all of it. And a specialist says there are options to look into and Jan promises they will in Germany. And for now? Beck doesn’t even mind that much. He’s not missing anything. He has a ridiculous amount of music in his head now that it’s all he can hear.

  ‘… no … how can … Beck …’ is all he gets from August.

  He tells her to slow down, lean in, speak clearly. She has to stop crying for that, so she takes a second to swallow and straighten her shoulders and tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

  ‘The song says it all,’ Beck says, his voice a garble to him but hopefully clear for her. ‘Everything I ever thought about you. And more.’ Like what you mean to me. ‘And a bit of an apology. I missed your birthday.’