It took a while before she played the piano, and when she did he stood beside her. When she finished, he placed a finger at the far right end.
She nodded for him to let it fall, to press it down.
But a piano’s highest note is fickle.
If you don’t hit it hard enough, or right enough, it makes no noise at all.
“Again,” she said, and she grinned—nervously, they both did—and this time he got it to work.
Like a smack to the hand of Mozart.
Or the wrist of Chopin or Bach.
And this time it was her:
There was hesitancy, and awkwardness, but then she kissed the back of his neck, very light, very soft.
And then they ate the Iced VoVos.
Right to the very last.
* * *
—
When I think about it now, I go back through all we were told, and especially all Clay was told, and I wonder what’s most important.
Here I think it’s this:
For six or seven weeks beyond that, they saw each other, they swapped venues, up and down Pepper Street. Always, for Michael Dunbar, there was a kind of welling up, through the newness and blond of Penelope. When he kissed her he tasted Europe, but also the taste of not-Abbey. When her hands held his fingers as he stood to leave, he felt the feel of a refugee, and it was her but also him.
* * *
—
Eventually, he told her, on the steps of number 37.
It was Sunday morning, grey and mild, and the steps were cool—and he’d been married before, and divorced; her name was Abbey Dunbar. He’d lain on the garage floor.
A car drove by, and a girl on a bike.
He told her he’d been devastated, living, hanging on, on his own. He’d wanted to see her much earlier than the night she came to his front door. He’d wanted to, but wasn’t capable. He couldn’t risk a fall like that again, not anymore.
It’s funny, I guess, how confessions come out:
We admit to almost everything, and the almost is all that counts.
For Michael Dunbar, it was two things he left out.
Firstly, he simply wouldn’t admit that he, too, could produce something approximating beautiful—the paintings.
And next (and this was an extension of the first), he didn’t confess that somewhere in his murkiest depths, he wasn’t so much afraid of being left again as condemning someone else to second best. Such was how he’d felt for Abbey, and the life he’d once had, and lost.
* * *
—
But then again, what choice did he really have?