The White Piano (Still Life with Memories Book 2)

by Uvi Poznansky

  My father swallows his breath several times, his face turning pale, his eyes—miserable, until finally he bursts out shouting, “Listen, it’s Lenny! Can you hear me, dear? In God’s name, Natasha, it’s me—”

  Which makes me take a step forward, fumbling to find the right tone, the right words but at the same time, crying, “What? You’re talking to mom? Where—where is she? Give me, let me talk to her—”

  For a moment, his eyes seem to pop right out of their sockets, and his face reddens in embarrassment, as if he has just been caught in a covert little hideaway, committing some shocking, scandalous sin. He freezes, with the handset suspended in midair. Then slowly, and with full intention, he sets it down in its cradle, and stays there guarding the thing, which is still clasped firmly in his hand.

  “What is that? What are you doing?” I plead. “Mom is back! It has been a long time, five years I think, since I heard her voice—”

  “Yes,” he says. “It has been that: five years. But first, we need to talk—"

  "We,” I insist, “have nothing to talk about. All I know is, mom is back from her tour.” And with that I leap forward and try to snatch the thing, I yank it right out of his hold; which is when he pounces on me, and his knuckles turn bone-white around my arm, and I feel him gripping me tightly, until it hurts. I have forgotten how strong he is.

  "Listen,” says my father, between clenched teeth. “Listen to me! It is about her.”

  By now I am yowling in distress, “What? What the hell do you mean? What is it, about mom?”

  And so he releases me. “You better sit down,” he says. “It is something you need to hear.”

  For a moment I consider the pleasure I could get out of arguing with him over whether or not I should sit, and what does he know about me, about what I need, or about anything else, for that matter—but then I take control of myself and, noting that there is no chair here, in the hall, I just clear some papers off the console table, and stand there, with my back to it, leaning against its edge.

  All the while I consider what to say, and how to stay on the attack, before he can come out—as I know he will—and give me some bad news.

  And so, I charge him, “It is always secrets with you. I hate you for that."

  Which, to my surprise, he accepts. "I hate it too,” he admits. “Having to have secrets."

  “With mom,” I say, “things are simpler. You know, from time to time she would tell me something about herself. She would write to me, even.”

  “Oh yeah?” he says. “And how long ago was that?”

  I figure that the last note I received from mom was—let’s see—at least two years ago, maybe three. It amazes me now that all this time, I have given little thought, if any, to the silence between us.

  I suppose I did not feel like telling her about myself, because around that time I quit everything. I left my studies at the Facoltà di Medicina e Chirurgia in the university of Firenze, after only a couple of years. And so, I figured, the less letters from my parents—the better.

  I isolated myself, and attributed the sporadic nature of our correspondence to the frequent changes of my address, as I moved often, from one place to another across Italy.

  “And her handwriting,” says my father, pressing steadily ahead. “To you, son, was it clear?”

  Her beautiful handwriting. It is engraved in my memory. As a child, I used to study it and copy it repeatedly, beginning at age five, when she wrapped her hand over mine, and taught me how to hold a pen. Between the first and middle fingers, she said, and hold it in place like this, by the thumb.

  Mom used to draw text with the nib of a calligraphy pen. She would produce a smooth, fluent line, changing it—as if by a magic wand—from thick to thin, connecting the end of one glyph to the beginning of the another, with a stroke that was so fine, truly, fine to the point of becoming invisible, almost. It had such a consistent slant, just like that monogram, embroidered on her silk sheets.

  But then, this note—the last note she sent me—which I can see before my eyes as if it were right here, rustling in my hands, this one, I must admit, was different. It had none of these delicate pen strokes.

  On the contrary, here was an ugly mess. The words were scattered. Some of them were scratched over, as if some frenzied chickens got loose on the page. What happened? What could possibly explain this unusual sloppiness?

  Back then I decided to gloss over it, thinking that on her tour, mom must have scribbled this note hastily, while rocking, perhaps, in a car of some clunky old train, or taking off in a small airplane, fighting stormy weather on the way to her next performance.

  “Well, son?” he says. “Have you ever wondered about that note?”

  I glare at him without saying a word.

  So he takes a step closer, which makes me lean back.

  “You know,” he says, “she wasted ten sheets of paper, maybe more, to write this thing to you. She labored so hard and so long over it, until finally it was written, and then she threw the pen away, to the other side of the room, saying she was too tired to try this again.”

  “Now how do you know all that?” I challenge him.

  “Because,” he says, “I was there.”

  Which catches me off-balance, and I cry, “No! You are lying to me! You and mom, you had already separated by then. And she, she was traveling! It was you who told me so! And you knew, didn’t you, that I would believe you, because... Because for her sake, I wanted it to be true! You said she was touring, taking her performance all over the world, and appearing in glitz and glory, in the best concert halls, and to rave reviews, too! New York, Moscow, Tokyo... How, then, could you possibly be there, in the same place with her—”

  “No,” he says darkly. “You are not listening to me. Now, it is hard enough to tell the truth—and even harder to tell it when you have already decided to block it out.”

  “Here I am, listening,” I say, waving both hands in the air, and bowing to him, mockingly. “See, here? I am listening now.”

  “I was there, Ben, sitting by her bedside, even as she was writing to you. That’s how I know. And,” he adds, “I came prepared. I brought a stack of papers with me, and an envelope, you see, with your address already typed in, so I would not have to bring a stack of envelopes as well; which saved her the trouble, so she would not have to copy that, too.”

  He tries to read gratitude in my eyes—but I know that he cannot find it, because there is nothing there but a burning accusation.

  “Then you lied to me, both of you!” I cry. “You made an idiot, a complete fool out of me! There was no tour? No travel around the world, no concerts, even? And what about the reviews?”

  My father bites his lip, and with each one of the questions I shoot at him, his teeth leave deeper marks; which brings out the rage in me, and I point a finger at him, and pass my judgement. “You!” I bellow. “You always hide things from me.”

  “Well, no. Not always,” he corrects me. “Did I not tell you, just last night in fact, that she was brought to the hospital, to visit me? That she sat there, beside me? That she touched my arm—”

  “Aw, I thought you were just seeing things.”

  “No, son. No. Now, we are talking reality.”

  “Reality?” I laugh, with an acid tone. “What is that, really?”

  “Your mom,” says my father, “never left town. Now, that is reality. And,” he adds, “she never bothered to take her grand piano out of here. Have you never asked yourself, Why is it still here?”

  After a moment of confusion, I demand, “So then, where is she?”

  And glancing at me cautiously, without committing to specifics, he offers, “It is a nice place, Ben, a pleasant one, really.”

  “What is the name of it?”

  “Sunrise Assisted Living.”

  “What? Assisted Living?” I scream. “You fucking bastard! How dare you put mom in a place like that?”

  All of a sudden—even as I curse him—I remember how mo
m contemplated such a place for uncle Shmeel who, at the ripe age of ninety, was still living by himself. She felt a bit uneasy about the whole thing, I mean, having to decide the fate of the old man, who in the end would blame her, with great bitterness, for the loss of what he cherished most: his independence.

  She sifted through a list of these so-called homes, muttering that they were designed for people in the last stretch of life; which is why the name Infinity Home was so insidious, and the name Our Sweet Home was, at best, misleading—as was the name Sunrise.

  “Sunrise?” I say deridingly. “That place is for old people. Not for Mom!”

  “Indeed,” says my father. “She was only thirty-nine when I noticed it for the first time. I remember: she gave me a look as though she did not understand what I had just said. Then I noticed that from time to time, she had trouble saying the names of her students. She seemed unsure about names. A year later, she could not remember the word Piano. Can you imagine that, Ben?”

  I shrug, “Anyone can forget a word here and there.”

  But he would not let me deny it.

  “No,” he insists. “Not a woman with her musical gifts! The way she used to play, Natasha could have become world famous, one of the greatest concert pianists! How, how could that happen? Ben, how could your mom forget Piano?”

  At a loss for a better answer, I suggest, “Maybe she was under stress?”

  “She was terrified,” he says. “At first, they prescribed antidepressants. Then she took antibiotics for six months, to treat what doctors thought might be Lyme disease. The neurologist suggested an MRI scan, a scan of the brain. But then, when the results came in, they said that at this point, there was no way to tell whether there was anything wrong, or whether Natasha’s brain had always looked that way.”

  Now I feel I cannot absorb, cannot take much more of this—but there is no stopping him. The sentences keep pouring out, as if a dam has broken in him.

  “The most difficult aspect,” says my father, “was that we used to be a team—but now I had to start making the decisions on my own. All except one: she was determined to divorce me, which was my fault—but her mistake, because unfortunately, she deteriorated so much faster after that.”

  “Stop right there,” I tell him. “It makes no sense to me! Why would she want to leave you right then, at the turning point of her life, when you could be there, by her side, fighting to hold her back, away from the brink?”

  “This,” says my father, “is something I, too, do not understand. Up to that point Natasha has changed, quietly, and grown so much stronger than me, to the point that, no matter how hard I tried, there was no pleasing her. Then she got word, somehow, about my moment of weakness: my fling, this little, one-night thing—that was all it was, back then—with Anita.”

  I look at him as if to say, Who cares about your moment of weakness? So far it has lasted ten years.

  He looks away, saying, “Your mom, she was mad at me. She flared up in anger. It was painful. More painful than I had expected. Was she too proud to forgive me? Did she expect me to fight harder for her, so that she may take me back someday? There was no way to know. My God, she let me feel I was done, I was no longer needed.”

  “But, dad,” I say, “did she believe she could face it alone, whatever it was? Was she willing to risk everything, and for what? For no better reason than pride?”

  “God,” he says. “I wish I knew.”

  “Enough,” I say. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “That’s just the thing, Ben. Natasha kept quiet, all these years, and so did I, for her sake. Gradually, her memory problems got worse and yet, no one knew: not our friends, not even her students, because she was so afraid, afraid to lose them. Teaching, for her, became more than a livelihood: it was the last token of her independence.”

  “You should have told me, dad.”

  “Well, how could I? There was no one here to whom I could talk.”

  “So, since then, has mom been diagnosed?”

  “Well, son, it took a long time,” he says, in a tired tone of voice, “Four years after she had left me, that was when they found out, at long last. And you, Ben, you were in Europe then, off to your medical studies, or something, with a light suitcase, and a heart heavy with anger, who knows why.”

  I want to say, Because I had to go, to be some place else. Because I had no family, with you cheating and mom throwing her wedding ring away. That’s why. But without waiting for an explanation, my father moves on to say, “I just could not do it, could not bring myself to open up, to tell you about it.”

  Suddenly his voice trembles, and he wraps his arms around me, which makes me unsure if this is to lean on me—or perhaps, to protect me.

  “Ben,” he says, “this disease, unfortunately, it can strike in the prime of life. Natasha was forty-six when, after years of knowing that something was going terribly wrong, and not being able to put a finger on it, they finally diagnosed her.”

  “And,” I hesitate to ask, “does it have a name?”

  There is a sound by the entrance door, then a knock, once, twice, three times—but neither one of us moves. There is a somber expression on his face. His gaze is locked into mine, and something passes between us which I cannot express in words.

  Meanwhile, between one knock and another there is a smaller sound: the click of the clock. Under the glass crystal, the black hand moves around the dial, from one minute mark to the next. It advances with a measured beat, the beat of loss, life, fear—until at long last, my father takes a long breath, and allows himself to say, “The doctors, they call it Early onset Familial Alzheimer’s disease.”

  Then he passes by me on his way to open the door; which gives me a moment to think of mom.

  I picture her staring at the black-and-white image of her brain, not quite understanding what they are telling her.

  The doctors, they point out the overall loss of brain tissue, the enlargement of the ventricles, the abnormal clusters between nerve cells, some of which are already dying, shrouded eerily by a net of frayed, twisted strands. They tell her about the shriveling of the cortex, which controls brain functions such as remembering and planning.

  And that is the moment when in a flash, mom can see clearly, in all shades of gray blooming there, on that image, how it happens, how her past and her future are slowly, irreversibly being wiped away—until she is a woman, forgotten.

  So when aunt Hadassa pops her head through the door, and marches in followed by her sisters, and each one in turn brushes a finger across the console table to check for dust, I push by them with barely a nod. And before my father can say a word I bolt out, and hurl myself down the stairs.

  I can hear him behind me, calling, “Ben! Ben!” And I know he is doing his best to limp, somehow, down the stairs, to try to catch up to me, because in his mind, this is an unfinished conversation. But by then, I am already running at full speed down the street, running away, far away from it all.

  Where Was There

  Chapter 6

  It is evening already, and a light breeze starts coming up from the Pacific Ocean, where the faraway, ruffled surface can be seen, mirrored—by some trick of twilight—in row after row of splashy store windows. And one intersection after another, a gust of wind blows, ever so gently, across my path. I wish it would lash its tail. I wish it would turn vicious. A storm would have been perfect, really.

  Since noon—more precisely, since that conversation with my father, from which I was fortunate enough to break away—I have spent hours running in circles, trying not to think about what I have learned from him, and about having to face her, because maybe it is not mom I would be facing, but her illness.

  I have been bouncing back and forth between Abbot Kinney and Wilshire, losing myself in a web of streets. Some places, especially those close to Santa Monica bay, seem vaguely familiar. I figure I must have visited them a long time ago, as a child. My hands still keep the memory, the touch of wet sand, and the sequen
ce of scooping it, packing it tightly into a bucket, turning it upside down, away from the wave rolling in, then lifting the bucket away to see a castle take shape. But on the whole, gazing at this town now from a higher elevation, I feel detached.

  A foreigner, that’s me: unwanted and unwelcome in a strange, foreign place.

  Car horns can be heard honking as I dart across the street. From time to time a police car cruises by my side and I can sense a quick, curious glance, which I ignore. I have no idea where the hell I am going; which makes attacking the streets with such anger, such blind, aimless haste a bit confusing, because of being unable to tell whether I have arrived—or whether I am still at the outset of a new ramble.

  Between one footfall and another I am not here, I am not there: neither at the end of a journey, nor at the beginning.

  Forced to slow down I push my way through the thick of a crowd, some of which are walking about without a care in the world other than nibbling on candy bars, sipping expensive coffee out of paper cups, chatting loudly about nothing in particular, and checking out the jewelry stores, boutiques, nail salons and massage parlors, all of which abound here, in this affluent neighborhood near Montana; while others, the outcasts among us, are beginning to shrink away, fading stealthily into dark corners, to prepare themselves for the coming of the night.

  These others are lonesome, faceless figures. Right there, where the shadows of one streetlamp crisscross the shadows of another, a panhandler is unfolding his torn piece of cardboard on the pavement, stiffly laying his limbs on it. In the alley, some distance away, another layabout is arranging a foul-smelling, brown blanket on some rotting sofa, with the stuffing ripped out of it, which someone has discarded next to the trash cans. In a minute he will be not just covered—but entirely erased from view.

  My pace has picked up again. I am running furiously, as if chased by ghosts. By now I find myself not only drifting, not only lost, and not only short of cash, which I have left back there, in my bedroom—but above all, short of breath; all of which are better, in my opinion, than turning around to find my way back home. I am utterly driven to go astray.