Even the last real conversation we had, on the Saturday night before my great uncle and his wife came to pick him up, was tainted by the drugs. He sat me down to give me the advice he thought I still needed. He told me to sit on the couch and he sat in the recliner across from me the way he had for years when he was imparting whatever piece of wisdom he felt I needed at that point in my life. I never really listened because I didn’t think I needed his wisdom. That night I sat. And I listened. I’d listen to anything he wanted to say. I was greedy for it, desperate for whatever words he had left to give me, even if they were delivered through a drug-addled haze.
He told me a lot of things that night and I remember them all. There was talk of women and unforgiveable things, porch swings and red brick houses and memories that didn’t exist yet.
***
I have to be at Drew’s for dinner at 6:00 which means I need to get in the shower now and find some better clothes to put on. Drew’s mom likes it when you dress for Sunday dinner. It’s not any fancy thing, but according to Mrs. Leighton, dressing nicely makes it special, so that’s what we do. I tried to get out of going, but she wouldn’t let me. I haven’t gone to Sunday dinner in three weeks. I don’t hate it. It’s actually fun most of the time. I get to eat real food that I don’t have to cook and Drew doesn’t act like such a douche around his family. It’s just that, when I go there, I feel like I’m in an episode of Sesame Street, stuck in the upper quadrant of the TV screen while they sing that one of these things just doesn’t belong here. The normalcy of it reminds me, in detail, of how f**ked my life actually is. I could stand here all day thinking of all of the reasons not to go, but I know I’m not getting out of it, so I suck it up, pull some decent clothes out of the closet and jump in the shower.
CHAPTER 14
Nastya
There are twenty-seven bones in your hand and wrist. Twenty-two of mine were broken. Relatively speaking, my hand is kind of a miracle. It’s full of plates and screws, and even after several surgeries, it still doesn’t look quite right. But it works better than they thought it would. And it’s not like it can’t do anything; it just can’t do the one thing I want it to. The thing that made me, me.
***
I never had much of a social life, even before. After school, I spent my hours in the music lab or in private instruction and my Saturdays were spent playing the piano at weddings. There were times during wedding season that I’d hit three in a day. I’d run out of one church, jump in the car my mom would be waiting in out front, and rush to the next. It got crazy sometimes and I rarely had a free weekend, but the money was awesome, the time commitment minimal, and it was easy. Most wedding coordinators and brides aren’t very original. I had about five pieces of music that were rotated through; the standards that you tend to hear at every wedding. I took it for granted that I could sleepwalk through those things. I had three dresses that got rotated just like the music; all conservative and girly with varying degrees of formality depending on the wedding itself. I wonder what they would have done if I walked in dressed like I do today.
When I wasn’t playing weddings, I played at upscale malls and restaurants. I was a pretty little novelty in the beginning. I was everybody’s pet. I don’t know if anyone really knew my name; they mostly just called me the Brighton Piano Girl, which was fine, because that’s who I was. Once I got older, everybody was used to seeing me here or there, but back when I started, around eight years old, people usually did a double take. I’d wear my frilly little dresses and my hair would always be tied back out of my face with a matching ribbon. I’d smile and play my Bach or Mozart or whatever overused pieces of music they asked me to play. Everyone knew me and people would always clap when I got done and say hi to me whenever they saw me. I loved every second of it.
By the time I was forced to stop, I had quite a bit of money put away. I was saving it to pay for the summer music conservatory in New York that I had been drooling over for three years and was finally old enough, at fifteen, to apply to. My parents said if I wanted to go I had to work for the money, but that was a joke, because work meant play and playing was never work. Between that and school and private instruction and recitals, it hadn’t left much time for a social life, but it was a small sacrifice. Plus, if I’m being honest, it probably wasn’t any sacrifice. I didn’t go to parties and I was too young to drive. I liked Nick Kerrigan but mostly we just looked at each other and looked away a lot.
I didn’t have a bunch of girlfriends to go hang out at the mall with and my mom bought most of my clothes anyway. Even at fifteen, I was younger than fifteen. My style was Sunday school-chic. The couple of friends I had were like me. We spent all of our free hours practicing because that’s who we were. Piano girls. Violin girls. Flute girls. That was normalcy. My grades weren’t awesome and I was the polar opposite of popular, but it was ok. It was better than being normal. I never gave two shits about normal. I wanted extraordinary.
Normal people had friends. I had music. I wasn’t missing anything.
These days I’m missing everything. I’m haunted by music; music I can hear, but never play again. Melodies that taunt me note by note, mocking me with the simple fact that they exist.
I still have all of the money that I saved for the conservatory. I had more than enough, but I never did get to go. I spent that summer in and out of hospitals, recovering, in physical therapy, learning to pick up quarters off of a table, and with therapists talking about why I was mad.
At this point I’ve regained enough control in my hand that I could probably bang something out on the piano if I tried, but it would never be what it used to be, what it should be. Music should flow so that you can’t tell where one note ends and the next begins; music should have grace and there is no grace left in my hand. There are metal screws and damaged nerves and shattered bones, but there isn’t any grace.
Today is Sunday and I have nowhere to be. I never had weddings to do on Sundays but I usually spent the mornings filling in at the Lutheran church if they needed me. I wasn’t religious; it was just a favor to one of my mom’s friends, so I did it. Afternoons were usually spent at the grand piano upstairs in the mall outside Nordstrom’s. Then I’d actually practice the real stuff in the evenings and once in a while I did my homework.
Now homework is about the only thing I have to do, so miraculously, it’s been getting done. But I’m still kind of crap at it.