Coda

In spite of the meanness of their possessions, the apartment was as cramped as Sonia could stand. The landlord’s unit took up most of the floor, leaving not much room for the awkward one-bedroom apartment she shared with Michael, only a claustrophobic little sliver, in fact, into which their lives were squeezed. Winter coats by the entry, backpacks by the bathroom door, an upright piano too large for the living room, a love seat so smothered with laundry it was rendered all but useless—there was room for little else. Charts and lead sheets sat wedged into their two small bookcases and, of the few mementos they brought when they took possession, the only thing of real value to her was a tortoise-shell music box. Her father bought it when she was an infant to gentle her squawking and stifle her tempers. Now they used it as a paper weight.

The apartment lacked even a separate kitchen. It was just a corner of the living room with a stove and fridge, and the counter on which they often ate their meals. A window at the end of the narrow room relieved her sense of encasement somewhat, but it faced the brick and iron of the alley and, except for when it snowed, there wasn’t much to like about the view. Their fledgling livelihoods could afford them little more. Already the landlord was threatening an increase. If not for the help her parents periodically forced her to accept, wearing down her resistance with repeated hints and insinuations, some months they could not have kept their bellies full. As it was, there were times she felt almost hollow, even all the way into her bones.

Weary from another hurried, nearly automatic round of lovemaking, Sonia slumped over the sink and dragged a forearm through her bangs. The heat and steam of the dishwater was almost too much for her. Michael entered from the bathroom and shuffled over to the piano. A stack of music, most of it hers, he dropped onto the floor. Her music stand was folded away in a closet to save space, and Michael liked a bare music rest.

“Could you maybe put those in the bench?” Sonia asked.

It was the kind of thing she said sometimes just to hear herself say it. He had said little since coming to her after dinner, with adolescent urgency and hardly waiting for her to get excited. Now, not even seeing her, Michael flopped down and shifted himself into position. He caressed the keys and pressed down gently, almost inquiringly, eliciting from the instrument the whispered, intimate opening notes of the Pathétique, second movement.

Sonia rattled the cutlery in the rack to get his attention, then rattled it again, but too late. He was already gone. At times, he would wander through hours of repertoire without returning. Sometimes he would forget to eat and she would have to put a plate down at his side before he took note of the time or his own hunger. Her eyes rolled more or less on their own. They knew the routine. She lifted a glass from the water and, minding the chipped edge, twisted the dishcloth inside and around the lip. Then she turned it over in the rack to dry. She was on the verge of plunging for another dish, but paused instead and really looked at him.

Perched on the bench, back rounded towards the keyboard, head slanted away, his eyes half-open but sightless. Adagio cantabile. Slow and graceful. Singingly. His shoulders shifted with the music’s subtle, shifting moods, rising in crescendo, falling or retreating into moments of spareness. Her frustration eased. She could not see them, but knew the way the fine muscles of his hands and forearms must be fluttering visibly beneath his flesh. She could almost feel it herself: how his fingers touched the keys, the dexterous tension of his phrasings, the taut freedom in his playing that one had to know oneself to really understand, and which she did understand, better than he sometimes credited. She loved seeing him like this. Even when it was classical music, which he played infrequently and mostly for the discipline, she found herself drawn in. The purity of concentration, of expression. He never felt more truly there to her, though he was really somewhere else, than when he was playing; and the further away he went, the more her heart wanted her to follow. Sometimes she would come over and lean against the piano just to feel his touch reverberate through the cold, black lacquer of the cabinet.

She closed her eyes and her mind wandered. The night before. Colin on the phone and in a panic. It had taken Michael several minutes to talk him down. Don’t worry. They could rework the sets. Everything would be fine. Yes, he knew they wanted vocals. Sonia had come out of the bedroom to listen. He hadn’t thought of that, Michael had said. He didn’t know. He would ask. Then, to her delight, he did. Could she stand in. Jenn was sick. Did she know the material?

The closing notes of the adagio faded and Sonia watched Michael shift at the piano and stare aloft. He probed the keys for a few moments, his head tilted forward and a little to one side, listening, almost inquiring of them what they wanted. Then he eased into the opening bars of a Jane Siberry tune. Delicate and mournful, “Love is Everything.” Her breath caught. She smiled.

Some weeks before, Michael had heard her humming the melody and, sensitive to its possibilities, he began to work it up. And then last night, at last, when the closing set ran short, he asked her could she do it. Removing her microphone from its stand, she went to stand beside the piano. The stage lights were irritating at first, and the crowd restless, and she too much aware of Colin sitting back on his stool, the neck of his upright bass resting on his shoulder, watching and listening. But then, once she opened her mouth, she became insensible to just everything, everything for the length of the duet, everything except the blending of her voice with the piano. The drive home had been serene. Glowing, she had slid down into her seat, undone her hair, and let her neck go limp against the headrest. She had almost reached over to hold Michael’s hand, before remembering that he didn’t like the distraction when behind the wheel.

Reaching the chorus, Michael’s playing rose to a mezzo forte and the apartment air grew thick and full. The melody was like an eaglet struggling to take flight. A break- up song, it broke her down a little every time. Sonia felt the fear and joy of the night before stir again inside her as she listened. Her stomach trembled and she smiled. It was like he was reading her mind.

She dried her hands and went to him. Her voice was cold at first and lifted off with difficulty. But as her hand fell on the vibrating cabinet, she felt herself grow warm and begin to pulse, and she opened up to it with less and less restraint, the notes climbing on the updraft of the refrain, rising with each repeated phrase until the high was almost more than she could take. Had the ceiling been a lid she would have blown it off its hinges and flown away.

After that, it was just so easy: her eyes closed, her tone colouring, her voice gliding gently down the sweet, attenuated sadness of the melody as she circled back and rode the coda home. Her body was aflutter with the rare, tremulous joy that came to her sometimes, and she breathed deeply as Michael’s accompaniment died away in the song’s fading, arpeggiated chords.

He cut off the sustain, and the notes fell silent. Sonia sat down beside him, smiled, and put her head on his shoulder.

“Last night was wonderful,” she said.

Michael didn’t answer. He only plinked some listless phrases.

“I hope we can do that again,” she added. She watched as Michael’s face tightened. “What is it?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. He hesitantly trilled a pair of keys. “Don’t misunderstand. You were great to stand in. I just don’t think it should be a regular thing.”

Sonia looked at him. “I thought it went well.”

“It did…really…only I have to worry that you’ll forget the words or miss the changes or…I don’t know what else.”

“You don’t know what else.”

She watched Michael stare hard at the keyboard. His fingers repeated their ornamentation: a mordent, a biting baroque gesture.

“Maybe if I had more time to prepare,” she said.

“Sure, but…look, you know how some people—they open their mouths and their whole body seems to hum…like they’re totally free and open. When you sing, it’s like…I don’t know. It’s like you’re closed off somehow. Like you’re trying too hard.”

She looked at him. “But we used to do this all the time.” Michael just frowned.

Sonia rose from the bench and tidied the pages from the floor. She crammed them onto a shelf, but carefully. After all, there was hardly money to replace them. Maybe he didn’t mean it. Not the way it sounded. There was a kind of apology in his unwillingness to look at her, and when she looked at him she could see how very sorry, in his sadness, and his slumping, and his hesitation, he felt. Though, admittedly, less for her.

She returned to the dishes and watched as Michael resumed his noodling, errantly tapping out a few abortive intervals. Major seconds. Or maybe they were diminished thirds. The piano’s even temperament makes it hard to tell. Though, to be fair, the difference is small, only a few cents.