by Karen White
Her voice had tightened, and I strained my neck so I could see her face better, but she was busy pushing the curtains open farther, as if Nurse Weber had not already done so. I wanted to dig further, but she surprised me by interrupting.
“What about your parents? Did they move here from Hungary with you and your sister?”
“No,” I said, wondering if I could shock her. “My father shot himself when Bernadett and I were very small.”
I waited for her to comment, to extend her sympathy. Instead, she asked, “And your mother?”
“She died right before we came to America to join our older sister, Magda. She had the good sense to marry an American before the war.”
She sat down again, placing her hands on her bare knees below her skirt. Her fingers were long and pale—a pianist’s fingers—and her nails unvarnished. My mother would have been appalled, but I found it suited her. No perfume and no nail polish. I might have liked this girl—this woman—if I hadn’t been preparing to die.
Strumming her fingers against her knees, she said, “So what would you like to do today? Finn said you enjoyed books. Perhaps I could read? And I know you enjoy music. I have a collection of classical music on my iPod and I brought my portable speakers if you’d like to listen. We could even discuss it later. I could ask for Finn to bring in a DVD player and we could watch a movie if nothing’s on television. Or we could just talk.” She stared expectantly at me.
I almost smiled. I sensed that she had been a caretaker before, was adept at thinking of others’ needs before her own. And I also had the sense that it did not come naturally to her. She wore the role as a little girl would wear her mother’s clothes, ill fitting and not her style. I suppose I recognized this in her because I had worn a similar disguise for almost seventy years.
I allowed my head to relax against the pillow, wishing Nurse Weber would come in or Finn and Gigi would return. This Eleanor was too eager to shed her own life and wear mine.
“If we talk, then we would have to decide which topics would be off-limits,” I said.
She frowned, and I wanted to press my thumb against the crease between her brows as my mother had done to remind me about the wrinkles I was making.
“I would try not to ask about anything too personal, Miss Szarka. . . .”
“I was not referring to me. I thought perhaps that you had things you would not wish me to ask about.”
That gave her pause. But instead of backing down, she said, “You may ask me anything you like, but I don’t think that anything you have to ask me will deter me from keeping this job.”
“If you need the money that much, let me give it to you and save us both a lot of bother.”
Her eyes burned as she regarded me. “I work for my money, Miss Szarka, and I don’t need your charity. But I do need this job, so let’s try again. What would you like to do today?”
My gaze strayed to her hands, which were once again thrumming on her knees; I noticed her short nails, and I remembered what she’d said to me the last time I’d seen her, about how Chopin reminded her of her father. “Your favorite composer is Chopin?”
She nodded warily.
“Which are your favorite? The mazurkas?”
“No.” She shook her head slowly. “The nocturnes.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Melancholy and passionate. Only Chopin could evoke such disparate emotions at the same time.” My eyelids fluttered down over my eyes. I was still so weak and so tired, and I had grown weary of trying to convince this girl to go, to leave and not come back. Forcing my eyes open, I said, “I want you to play something for me. The Chopin Nocturne in C Minor. Number 21, posthumous. Do you know that one?”
She paused a moment before answering. “Yes,” she said. “It was my father’s favorite piece. I could never play it as well as he did.” She swallowed, as if to erase all the words she wanted to say.
“Some find it too sad. But I like it, and I want you to play it for me. Right now. Unless you cannot because it reminds you too much of your father, and I will understand. I suppose Finn will have to find somebody else more suitable, who will do what I ask.”
With the last of my energy I smiled before I closed my eyes again. I waited to hear the chair slide back and her footsteps treading slowly out of the room. Instead I felt her warm breath on my cheek, her words soft in my ear.
“If you want me to play the Chopin, then I will. That will mean, of course, that I’m here to stay and not on temporary approval. I don’t know why you don’t want me here, but I aim to find out. But in the meantime I will play the damned Chopin and you will eat your damned lunch and that will be the end of it.”
My eyes popped open in time to watch her stand and then slide the chair closer to the bed. Only her whitened fingers on the top edge of the chair gave away her true feelings.
“I will play while you eat, and when you’re done we’ll discuss what you’d like to do the rest of the day. You don’t have to like me and I sure as hell don’t like you very much, but that’s no reason why we can’t be civil to each other. I need the job, and you want to make Finn happy. So here we are.”
So here we are. I closed my eyes again, not because I was tired or because I wanted to block her from my sight. I closed them because she sounded so much like Bernadett that I wanted to believe that it was my sister standing so close to me, admonishing me for behaving in a manner in which our mother would not have approved.
Turning my head to the wall to hide the tears that threatened to spill from my eyes, I said, “Then go play. I want to hear Chopin.”
She stayed very still for a long while, but I would not give her the satisfaction of turning around to look at her. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry about your sister. There was once a time when I would have felt the same way if Eve had died. But I do know about grief. I miss my father today as much as I did the day he died. I suppose I always will.”
Her footsteps retreated, but I remained staring at the wall, wondering what she had meant by “once,” and feeling an odd hope that she really would come back.
CHAPTER 11
Eleanor
I didn’t see any of my surroundings as I walked toward the piano room. I stopped at the threshold and stared into the dark room and at the large black shape of the piano in the center. I flipped on the overhead chandelier, its glow reflected in the ebony sheen of the piano’s top board.
I pictured the old woman lying in her bed, waiting to hear Chopin played in this dim room where only dust motes lived, performed by a girl who’d played only show tunes for nearly two decades. Helena had thought this would be my breaking point, the moment when I’d throw up my hands and go away. I knew very little about her or her reasons, but she apparently knew even less about me.
I slid onto the bench and stared down at the closed fall board, my fingers resting on top, unable to lift it. I thought of our old house near the marsh, of the music sung by the birds and insects, and the bright light that had poured inside to rest on my father and me as we sat side by side on the piano bench.
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to remember what it had felt like to have him next to me, but all I felt was my aloneness in an unused, dark room. My eyes flickered open, and my gaze settled on the heavy drapes that either obscured the outside light or hid things inside. The question was not mine to answer, but as I stared at the thick material on the windows, I knew what had to be done.
I stood and quickly moved to the first window, pulling aside what seemed like yards of fabric to find a cord. I tugged on it, and when nothing happened, I tugged on it harder. With a slight puff of air, the cord snapped, then sagged into my hand. I tossed it behind the drape, then shoved aside one half of the window treatment and then the other.
Small clouds of dust rolled over me and into the room, making me sneeze, but I was too intent on my mission to stop. I walked quickly over to the seco
nd window and repeated the process—without breaking the cord—then stood back to admire my handiwork.
Despite the storm clouds outside and the rain pattering against the glass, the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows settled on the room with a filmy veil, lifting the shadows and illuminating the blank rectangles on the walls. From where I stood, they formed a pattern, the shape of a face with two eyes, a nose, and an unsmiling mouth. In the gloom of the day, the wall almost seemed to wear an expression of expectation.
Without thinking twice, I returned to the piano and hoisted the huge top board, struggling from the weight as I supported it with one hand while I tried to maneuver the top board prop into place. When I felt it was secure, I stepped back and stared. I seemed to be waiting either for it to begin playing by itself or for it to disintegrate into a cloud of dust like an old corpse being exposed to the sun for the first time in a thousand years.
I had no idea how much time had passed since I’d left the old woman’s room, but it must have been enough to make her believe that I had left after all. I slid onto the bench again, taking my time to adjust the height and the distance between the keyboard and me. I opened the fall board and stared down at the neat rows of black and white keys before allowing my fingers to rest on top of them. I imagined I could hear their music seep up through my fingers to my veins, resonating in the place in my chest where I’d locked everything away and forgotten where I’d left the key. I pictured it as one of Dah Georgie’s secret keepers, the lid bulging, the side reverberating with the music that waited inside.
My right hand found the first note at the beginning of the nocturne, then began to mimic the stroll-like tempo. Andante sostenuto. I hadn’t played it since I was fourteen, yet I saw each stanza of music in my head, heard each note in my heart. I imagined that if I lived to be one hundred without playing it, I could still sit down at a piano and perform it from memory.
But it was more than knowing the notes. It was more about reconciling an old woman’s desire to intimidate me and my own reluctance to conjure ghosts. The Eleanor whose father had wept when she played Chopin was gone forever in the way a shoreline disappears after a hurricane. The shape might still exist beneath the water, but it was gone just the same.
I spread my left hand in an octave over two E-flats, getting ready to play a Scott Joplin rag just to jar the ears of the woman who I was sure was listening intently. I paused, remembering her parting words. Then go play. I want to hear Chopin. The second time she’d asked me to play Chopin she hadn’t specified which Chopin piece she wanted to hear.
With a silly grin on my face, I began playing Chopin’s Polonaise in A Major, better known as his “Military” Polonaise. Hearing this piece instead of the nocturne would be the same as stepping outside during a rainstorm and finding syrup dripping from the sky.
The piece wasn’t too challenging, what I used to call finger acrobatics on the keyboard, but it took all of my attention, as there were lots of racing octaves in both hands and a quick allegro con brio tempo. I was so attuned to the music that I was barely aware of Finn calling my name until he’d reached the side of the piano and tried it again.
“Eleanor.”
I stopped in midphrase, my hands held aloft over the keyboard until I realized what I was doing and quickly placed them in my lap. He’d changed clothes and was wearing his casual uniform of khaki pants and knit golf shirt. I looked up at him expectantly.
“Aunt Helena has asked me to get you to stop and play something else. She said you’d know what she was talking about.”
I frowned, pretending I didn’t understand. “She asked me to play Chopin, and that was one of his polonaises.”
“Yes, and Gigi and I liked it very much, but Aunt Helena says that it sounded like a child banging on the keys with a wooden bat. Nurse Weber had to give her something for her headache.”
“Excuse me?” I was too stunned to get much air behind my words, and they came out more like a squeak. I might have been a little out of practice, but I certainly didn’t sound as bad as she said.
As if anticipating my next words, Finn held up his hand. “I didn’t say I agreed at all. In fact, my first impression remains. She just wants you to play something else. Something she said she specifically asked for.”
My back stiffened. “She knows why I can’t play it. She’s only asking so that I’ll go away.”
His eyes seemed guarded. “I don’t know why she’s chosen to be so antagonistic toward you, but at least she’s expressing some emotion—something we haven’t seen since we brought her home. But you’re good for her, and I know that we need you here.”
It wasn’t clear whom he meant by “we.” I studied him carefully, seeing him for the first time as a parent who’d come close to losing a child, a child who was in her fourth year of remission—which was probably also only the fourth in a million years of worry. Grief wore many cloaks, but when I looked at Helena Szarka, I saw something more.
“You said you were the one who discovered your aunts, that Bernadett was already dead and Helena was starving to death.” I frowned, trying to make the picture make sense. “Why didn’t Helena call for help?”
In the murky light, his face seemed carved from stone, all marble and shadow. “She didn’t want to go on without her sister.”
The thumb and middle finger of my right hand began a slow half-step ascent up the keyboard, the notes ominous and lonely in the murky light. “Did she tell you that?”
He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “She won’t speak of it.”
My fingers stalled on the keys as I recalled the stark bedroom upstairs with a door that was supposed to remain closed. “When was the last time you heard Bernadett play?”
He thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. I visited about once a week, and Bernadett would usually play for us after dinner.” He began to pace between the windows, his brows furrowed. He did this at the office, too, when he was deep in thought, and his assistant, Kay, would always mutter a complaint about the antique rug. He paused for a moment to study the open drapes, as if noticing the light from the windows for the first time.
He turned and looked at me. “It was Christmas. I remember because we sang carols with Gigi and a few neighbors. I couldn’t visit again until near the end of January because of several business trips. It was past Epiphany, and the tree and decorations were all up—which was unusual for the aunts. And when Gigi asked Bernadett to play, Bernadett said she couldn’t play anymore. The piano was all closed up, and Gigi thought that was why. It’s funny that I hadn’t thought of this before, but I don’t recall her playing again after Christmas.”
His eyes were guarded. “Why do you ask?”
My hands rested on the quiet keys, mute appendages that had somehow lost their voice. “I stopped playing when my father died.” I paused, unsure of what I wanted to say. Finally, I said, “It just made me wonder.”
A loud thumping sounded from somewhere in the house. Startled, I looked up at Finn, who didn’t seem very surprised at all. A tightness had formed around his jaw.
“I’m guessing Aunt Helena coerced the nurse into letting her have her cane.”
“And she’s banging it on the floor?”
“Or the wall.” His jaw tightened even more. “I think she’s ready to hear something else.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Does Gigi know chopsticks? We could do a duet.”
His mouth twitched. “I don’t think that’s what Helena’s waiting for.”
“I know.” I touched the fall board, ready to close it, but stopped. “Do you remember where Bernadett kept her music?”
“All over, really. Some of it’s in the piano bench. But she also had piles tucked away in many of her sweetgrass baskets around the house.”
I stood and moved behind the bench, then opened the lid. Three neat stacks of music sat inside, placed as precisely as
chalkboard erasers on the first day of school. Being careful not to disturb the piles too much, I thumbed through the sheet music and books, recognizing many of them as old friends: Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. At the bottom of the third pile was a piece of sheet music consisting of a paper cover and several loose pages inside. The word “Csárdás” was emblazoned on the front. Nothing was written in English, and I could see that the pages were very old, the right-hand corners brittle or missing in places, and I could picture long fingers turning over the page so as not to miss a note.
“Looks like an old favorite,” I said, holding it up for Finn to see.
He took it from me and looked at it closely. “I know this. It’s the Csárdás,” he said, pronouncing it char-dash. “A traditional Hungarian folk song—a courting song. I remember Bernadett playing it quite a bit when I was a boy, insisting I learn to dance to it.”
I bit my lip, the image of him as a little boy folk dancing too ludicrous even for my imagination. “And did you?” I managed to ask without laughing.
He looked affronted. “Yes, actually. I was quite good at it, according to both aunts. I do have Hungarian blood, you know.”
Even after I’d learned that his aunts were Hungarian, I’d pictured him more like a Magyar warlord than a folk dancer. Perhaps it was possible to be both. I reached for the music, then closed the bench to sit on it again before propping the music up on the stand in front of me.
Leaning closer, I said, “Wow. This looks hard.” The tempo started slowly but changed drastically throughout the six-page piece, with parts of the music nearly black with the lines from the thirty-second notes racing up and down the treble and bass clefs. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck as I stared at the music, the notes already singing inside my head.
“It’s usually played on violin, but the piano version was pretty good from what I remember. It’s a fast piece,” Finn said, leaning over my shoulder to study the music.