The Unfinished Sonata

by K. D. McCrite

  Olivia stood. “I want to marry Peter!” she shrieked. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, and you know that!”

  He got to his feet also. “And all I have ever wanted was to have my music and to be with Olivia. Nothing else will do.”

  “Peter,” his mother said softly, “think about what you just said.”

  He looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

  “You just said that all you wanted was to have your music and be with Olivia.”

  “Yes. And I meant it.”

  Everyone was silent.

  “Honey,” his mother said, “do you realize you put your music first?”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Sloan chimed in. “Music before Olivia.”

  For a moment their words were nothing more than a jumble of foolish prattle that hummed irrationally in his brain. He looked from face to face to face, and lastly settled on Olivia’s. Her wide eyes searched his, questioning, pleading, until the impact of what he had said reached his sense of reason.

  “I love them both,” he stammered, “music and Olivia, Olivia and music. I love them and want them both.”

  “But you put music before Olivia,” his father said, “and whether you realize it or not, that is how your priorities lie.”

  “Exactly!” Mr. Sloan put in. “That is why we cannot allow you children to marry so young. Peter, you must follow your chosen career. You’ve worked for it. Your parents have sacrificed to give you the needed education.” He walked to his daughter, resting his hands on her shoulders as he looked into her eyes. “Olivia, darling, you must be certain you are content to come second in Peter’s life because, believe me, it will always be so. An artist’s work will always come first. If it doesn’t, his life falls into unhappiness at best and a shambles at worst. We want what is best for you—what will make you happy. Give yourself time to consider all this.”

  Olivia stood, frozen in place, staring at her father. “You’re wrong, Papa,” she said. At last she turned and met Peter’s eyes. She swallowed hard and whispered, “You would give up your music for me, wouldn’t you, if you had to?”

  He stared at Olivia, hardly believing the words that came from her—the person who knew him better than anyone. How could she ask such a thing?

  “Olivia … I could no more give up music than I could give up you!”

  “But if you had to, would you?”

  “But I don’t have to, so why would you ask?”

  “Peter!” Her eyes searched his, and then filled with tears. “Peter!”

  “Why would you ask me such a thing?” he asked, his own voice tortured with confusion and hurt.

  She gasped as though needing air. She ran from the room, from the interference of the adults in her life—and she ran from him.

  The day after high school graduation, Olivia left home without protest to enter Miss Jane Masters Advanced Academy for Young Women. She went away, leaving a cool kiss on Peter’s cheek and without shedding a tear. In the weeks before she left, Peter had tried to mend their fractured relationship. He visited, he brought gifts, he wrote notes, but she was like someone he’d never seen before. She was polite, reserved and completely detached as if she had lost all feeling for him—but when he chanced to look deeply into her eyes, he knew she still loved him.

  He also knew all it would take to win her back was to declare he would give up his music for her. Peter felt, deep in his soul, if he ever spoke those words aloud they somehow would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If he gave up music for Olivia, then what could he offer her? Music was all he had, and without it, he was nothing. He began to write his longing into a sonata for her, pouring his heart into the sweet, solemn notes.

  In the fall, Peter went to the Bracken Institute of Music in Minneapolis. He studied music history and theory, composition, instrument construction and maintenance. The list of classes he hoped to take seemed like a golden street to him, leading him onward. His heart ached for Olivia, but throwing himself headlong into study kept him busy—body, mind, and soul. In those rare, spare moments he found, he worked on the sonata he had started at home, the one Olivia’s absence had stirred in him. He wrote to her often. Sometimes she replied with a brief note. Other times, he heard nothing in response. Peter was determined to win her back the moment he was out of school.

  Minneapolis was several hundred miles from Halstead, Michigan. He made the journey back only once that first year, at Christmas. Olivia had gone to London with two of her friends from Miss Jane Masters Academy, and he felt his heart bleed.

  In his second year at Bracken, he spent an early summer weekend at one of the lakes with a friend. They rented a small, primitive cabin and spent those few days fishing, swimming, and talking about music. Peter took a solitary walk early one evening along the shoreline. He came across a scruffy, bearded man sitting next to the lake’s edge, a small fire crackling beside him with a coffeepot in the coals. The smell of scorched coffee was unpleasant, and Peter started to hurry past when he noticed the old fellow whittling a block of wood. A closer look proved the man was not whittling, but was actually carving.

  “Did you bring yourself a cup?” the man said, not looking up.

  “Huh?” Peter said, confused by the question until he realized the other fellow was talking about a coffee cup. “No, sir. Thank you. I’m just taking a walk.”

  The man did not reply as he continued to work on the wood. The early evening light created shadows along the crevices and thin lines he carved, and Peter could not help but be drawn into the creation of what was before him.

  “What are you making?” he said as he took a step closer.

  “A box.”

  “May I watch?”

  The man said nothing, and Peter decided if he wasn’t welcome there he’d be dismissed. He squatted and watched the thin blade tenderly coax tiny pieces of wood from the block. A deft twist here, a languid stroke here, and the pattern of the far shoreline took place before his eyes.

  “That’s beautiful!” he said softly. “How do you do it?”

  Silence held for a time, and then the man said, “It’s what I do.”

  How long Peter sat there watching, he didn’t know. It was completely dark with nothing but the light of the campfire, but the carver continued, as if he could see with his fingertips.

  “I write music,” Peter said, finally.

  For the first time, the man looked up. His eyes glittered in the firelight. He was not the old relic Peter had first believed. In fact, he was probably in his early or mid-thirties. He simply looked at Peter for a long time, and then turned back to his work.

  “Well, I guess I’ll be going now,” Peter said after a while. The man did not respond, and Peter stood. “Thanks for letting me watch. It’s fascinating.”

  The man nodded only enough to indicate he knew Peter had spoken.

  “Good night.” Peter knew the wood-carver would not respond, and he made his way back to the cabin.

  That night Peter dreamed that Olivia was standing next to the lake, looking to the other side, and that, even though he called and called to her, she could not hear him. At the point of giving up, he started to turn from her when at his feet he saw a box. He picked it up, and the music of his sonata seemed to rise, touching the trees, and kept rising higher until the air and even the stars were infused with it.

  He woke up suddenly. The first rays of sunlight were threading their way through the gaps in log walls of the cabin. It was so clear to him right then how to get his Olivia back. Peter would waste no time implementing his plan. His friend lay snoring in his sleeping bag across the small room and did not stir when Peter got up and slipped outside into the cool freshness of the new morning.

  He retraced his steps along the lakeshore. He did not know where the wood-carver lived, but he was determined to find him. It didn’t take long. The man was stirring his campfire in the same spot Peter had found him the night before. He glanced at Peter.

  “You bring a cup this time?” he asked.


  The question surprised Peter. He laughed unexpectedly and sobered just as fast.

  “No. I didn’t think of it. Sir? I’m here to talk to you about your carving.”

  “I don’t take students.” He carried the coffeepot to the lake where he dumped yesterday’s remains.

  “I’m not asking for lessons,” Peter said. “I want you to carve a music box for me. Can you do that?”

  The wood-carver squatted and rinsed out his coffeepot.

  “I’ve made ’em,” he said.

  “Will you make one for me?”

  It seemed an eternity while the man filled the pot with water and carried it back to the campsite. He measured coffee into it and put it in the coals. From a small bundle of what looked to be a bedroll, he took out a small notebook and pencil. He moistened the tip with his tongue.

  “Tell me your name and what you want.”

  ****

  In early November, Peter carefully drafted a letter to Olivia, asking to see her at Christmas.

  “We’ve been apart almost two years by now,” he had written. “My education is nearly over, and soon I’ll be able to provide a home for you, if you still want me. Please, Olivia, I ask that you give us an opportunity to reclaim what you and I both know is our true destiny. If you are amenable, I will call on you during Christmas week. This time, let us endeavor to heal what has broken between us.”

  The letter he received from her was warmer than previous missives, but not the effusive response he’d hoped for.

  “I’m willing to see you during Christmas vacation. Please call ahead of time. Thank you.”

  Peter moved through the following weeks in a flurry of schoolwork, classes, recitals, and final exams. His heartbeat sped every time he thought of seeing Olivia again, but his time was so consumed with his education that opportunity to ponder or prepare for reuniting with her was scant.

  On December 2, the wood-carver—Malcolm Tyler was his name—showed up at the front door of the dormitory where Peter lived. He looked the same as when Peter first met him, except perhaps shabbier and thinner. He exchanged an exquisite music box for the sum of money he’d required, an amount that Peter hardly believed could last the man a week. He had added as much as he could spare and gave it to Tyler in an envelope.

  “It’s ready for the music movement to be fitted into it,” Tyler said, and showed Peter how to open the box by pressing beneath a butterfly’s wing on the side. And without another word, he slipped off into the night.

  The next morning, Peter took the box into the city to the experienced metalsmith who had crafted the music movement. Although his sonata was unfinished, he had written enough that the smith was able to make a movement that played the introduction. When the music box was complete with the intricate carvings and the delicate sound of his sonata coming from within, Peter knew he had commissioned the perfect gift to offer his Olivia. Surely she would see his very heart in this offering and forgive him for having two loves in his life. Surely she would understand.

  That night, he used what little money he had left after paying for his extravagant gift and made a long distance call to Miss Jane Masters Advanced Academy for Women.

  The voice of the young woman who answered the call was subdued, almost somber. When the operator said, “Sir, you may speak now,” Peter eagerly asked for Olivia Sloan.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the solemn young woman on the other end of the line.

  “May I speak with Olivia Sloan?” he repeated. “Please tell her it’s Peter calling.”

  There was such a long silence that he grew agitated.

  “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?” he practically shouted into the cone-shaped mouthpiece.

  “Yes, I’m here,” came a strangled-sounding voice. “I’m sorry. A moment please.”

  “This is long distance,” he said. “Please, would you get Olivia Sloan for me?”

  “Sir? Sir, I’m so sorry to t-tell you …” There was the unmistakable sound of a sob. “I’m sorry, but Olivia was k-killed in an auto accident this afternoon.”

  “What?” When she continued to sob, he shouted, “What? What was that? I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you!”

  And then he did. The truth slammed into him with the ferocity of a sucker punch. He dropped the receiver from his hand and slumped against the wall.

  That night, two weeks before the end of the semester, Peter left Bracken Institute and never returned. He did not return to the state of Minnesota, and he never saw his home or family in Michigan again.

  19

  When Peter Starne finished telling Annie of his life, his eyes were so full of pain she could hardly bear to look back at him.

  “I am so sorry,” she said.

  “It was my fault she died,” he told her, “and I have lived my life knowing that.”

  “Mr. Starne,” Annie said, laying her hand on his. “You know you had nothing to do with her death. How could you when you were in Minnesota, and she was in Georgia?”

  He shook his head and pulled his hand free of hers.

  “If I had not put music ahead of her, if she had been my first love, my only love, we would have spent the rest of our days together.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “I knew Olivia; I knew her better than anyone else, even her parents. If I had told her she meant more to me than my music, she would not have consented to go to that women’s college so far away, no matter what her father would have said or done. She would have stayed right there in Halstead and waited for me. Or, more likely, we would have run off together after graduation and been married. But I broke her heart, and she left me.”

  He swallowed hard, and his hands shook. Annie took his cup from the table, poured him some fresh water and gave it to him. She waited until he drained the cup.

  “I gave up my fancy dreams, Annie,” he said. “How could I follow such a life, knowing the price that had been paid? That night, I vowed never to return to my first love. See how I still call music my ‘first love?’ Olivia should have always been my first love. So, I became a piano tuner and nothing more.”

  “Oh, Mr. Starne,” Annie murmured. Her heart ached for him. “The world undoubtedly missed out on one of the most gifted American composers of the twentieth century.”

  He shook his head. “Musicians come and go, but there was only one Olivia.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, wishing she knew something to say that would make him feel better, but she didn’t.

  “The sonata—the one I wrote for Olivia,” Peter Starne said. “It’s not unfinished. I finished it, but only in my mind. I could never write down another note of music after she died. I still hear it—that sonata—day after day. It haunts me like the ghost of my unhappy love.”

  “It’s a beautiful piece,” Annie told him. “It stirred me when I heard it. It made me long for … I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but it made me long for my late husband.”

  He nodded. “Yes. It’s that kind of music.”

  She picked up the music box.

  “Did you break off the comb on the movement?”

  “I did. And then I took the score of the unfinished sonata and put it into the secret compartment in the bottom of the box.” He fixed his eyes on the box. “For forty years, I kept that thing with me. I thought if I got rid of it—if I buried it or destroyed it—maybe I could bury or destroy the past and bring some peace to my soul. By that time, I was living in Stony Point. No one knew my life’s story. I was just the piano tuner. I struck up a friendship with your grandmother, and when I realized I could not destroy the box or the sonata myself, I asked her to do it for me.”

  “And she agreed to destroy it?”

  “She said she would ‘take care of it.’ I thought she would destroy it, since that’s what I’d asked.”

  Bitterness crept into his voice, and Annie rushed to soothe him.

  “As I said before, Gram was a steward of things, not a destroyer. And she basically did w
hat you wanted: She took it from your sight and put it in a place where you no longer had to deal with it.” She paused, letting her words sink in. “Am I right?”

  He sighed. “Yes. Yes, of course, you are.” He met her eyes. “I suppose on some level I knew she could never burn it or bury it. Maybe I just needed to hand it over.”

  “Yes,” Annie said. “Hand it over. And now, Mr. Starne, you need to hand over your guilt and your despair. You’ve mourned your Olivia, but you’ve gone beyond that. By taking on the burden of her death, you haven’t allowed her to rest. That’s why you continue to feel haunted and miserable.”

  He stared at her, his eyes searching her face almost frantically, as if searching for hidden deception and cruelty.

  “Do you think so, Annie? Do you really believe that?”

  She reached out again, grasped his hand, and this time he held on.

  “I absolutely, positively believe it. You are a good man. You have lived an honorable life. It’s time to take another step and forgive yourself.”

  Tears filled his eyes, and he clutched her hand with both of his.

  “I want to! I want to more than anything.”

  “Then it can be done.”

  ****

  Annie woke up at dawn on Saturday. The first thing she did was to look out the window and greet the clear sky with gratitude. She hoped the entire day passed with a bright blue sky and warm golden sunlight. The last thing she—or Alice—needed was a stormy, rainy day.

  She had invited Peter Starne to the cookout, hoping to reconnect him to some lively company and laughter. In fact, she had made a point to stop at the desk on her way out and had asked if someone from the facility would be willing to bring him.

  “I’ll see what I can work out,” the red-haired young woman behind the desk told her. “He’s such a sweet old fellow, I’d love to see him have some fun instead of staying in his room reading all the time.”

  By the time her guests started to arrive in steady numbers, borrowed lawn chairs and folding tables were ready. The grills were heating up, giving up fragrant smoke in preparation for the hamburgers, pork chops, and hot dogs. A table full of appetizers and drinks waited for anyone who cared to partake. To give the party a more authentic feel, Western swing music played on a CD player.