The Dead Circle (31 page)

“I didn’t even know he was ill? I’m… you must feel… Is there anything I can do?”

“No, no. Just tell Chris. I assume he’d want to know. I’ve got to run. Bye.”

“But-”

Rita had hung up. Sarah stared at the receiver in her hand dumbfounded until she heard the shower stop.

“Who was that?” Chris called from the bathroom.

“Uh…” Sarah didn’t know what to say. She debated whether it was a good idea to tell him now, right before a concert, or if she should wait.
Is waiting dishonest or kind? What is the right thing to do here? What would he want?
Still undecided, she chose to stall for more time. “Nobody… it was the hotel calling to let us know that we can have a late checkout.”

“Oh sweet!”

The shower resumed.

Sarah sat down on the edge of the bed dumbly staring at the faded blankets. Chris’ family always freaked her out a bit. They had very little contact with Chris and he didn’t talk about them very much. She saw them at the occasional holiday and at their wedding of course, but their relationship always felt perfunctory.

It was obvious that Chris and his father hadn’t been close, at least not since he was little. But it was equally obvious how powerful an influence his father had been on his life. Sarah couldn’t always tell whether Chris was subconsciously trying to please or piss off his father, but his actions always seemed to use his father’s opinions as a reference point.

She felt paralyzed.

Fuck! I have to tell him, but before or after the performance? Oh God, what the hell am I supposed to do here?

She couldn’t seem to make a decision so she kept stalling and pretended that everything was normal. Chris, being remarkably intuitive about other people’s emotions, even if he was fairly dense about his own feelings, could tell that something was wrong right away
.
When he got out of the shower he saw her still sitting on the bed staring at the wall. When she noticed him, she jumped a bit and started fixing her hair.

“What’s going on? Are you OK?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, I just spaced out there for a second.”

“Is there something on your mind?”

“No! Not at all. We should get moving, we don’t want to be late!”

“I’m not playing until after intermission.”

“I don’t want to miss the first half. I love Beethoven!”

She seemed to be talking very loudly without realizing it, over-selling her cheerfulness. Chris was disconcerted. She never kept secrets and he wanted to know what was bothering her so much. He asked a few more times, but she continued to deny that anything was amiss. They sat together in the back of the theater and watched the first half of the concert in silence.

An hour later, they stood backstage while the orchestra re-tuned. Chris pulled Sarah into the wings next to the wall of thick ropes that operated the theater’s fly system.

“Seriously, what’s wrong?”

“What makes you think there’s something wrong?”

“You’re acting weird. I know something is up.”

She sighed. “Yeah, OK, there is. But I’ll tell you after the concert OK? Intermission is almost over. You gotta go play!”

“Come on, tell me now or I’ll be so distracted I won’t be able to remember the music.”

Sarah frowned. She knew she was trapped but she also knew that whatever the right decision was, it definitely was not telling him less than a minute before he went on.

Chris pressed the issue. “Oh shit! You’re not pregnant are you?”

“No. No. I… uh…”

“Then what!?”

“Fuck. That was your mother on the phone. Your father died.”

Chris froze. His face didn’t change, it just stopped moving. “Oh. OK.”

“Chris I’m so sorry. Are you alright?”

“Yeah, of course. I…uh…” The sound of the orchestra tuning finished. There was an expectant silence from the stage. Chris nodded. “That’s my cue. See you after the concert.”

He walked onto the stage and sat at the piano to a smattering of applause. The conductor raised his baton and looked at Chris. Chris nodded again, the timpani rolled and he began to play.

From the very first notes, the iconic falling octaves used in so many movies, TV shows, and cheesy commercials, Chris felt completely different. Something about the music felt strange. He would best describe it as ‘loose’. His fingers were hitting all the right keys at all the right times, but he felt like there was magically more space—more space in the room, more space between the keys. He even felt like there was more oxygen in the air. It was a completely indescribable sensation. He wasn’t used to feeling anything but tight when he performed. Now he seemed to be feeling ten different emotions at once. He felt sadness, relief, freedom, joy and despair all at the same time. He was so overwhelmed by all of his emotions, he was losing track of the math of the music. He wasn’t thinking about his fingering or the exact tempo markings, he was just reacting to the sound. He was somehow completely in charge of and completely at the mercy of what he was creating. He wasn’t just exactly replicating what Grieg wrote more than a hundred years ago, he was expressing what he was feeling right in that moment.

That night, Chris was free. He was absolved of the expectations and restrictions he had felt his whole life and was free to feel and do whatever he wanted to. His father was dead. His father was no longer watching him, no longer telling him to ‘play it right’ through rum-thickened lips.

Chris noticed that he was grinning to himself. It was a surprise. He had always been teased by his friends for having such a serious face while he played, as if he were angry at the music. Chris knew he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t feeling much of anything, he was just concentrating. But that night, he was grinning. He was sad, but he also felt lighter than he had in his entire life. He caught himself quietly humming along to the melody.

Most of the people in attendance that night probably couldn’t explain why the performance was so great, but something special was in the air and they all knew it. The audience members who may have been dragged there by a spouse—and expected to be bored silly—forgot all about checking their phones for fantasy football updates. There was no typical rustling of programs in the quiet sections. The audience barely even shifted in their seats.

Chris knew he may never be able to replicate a performance like that again. But all that mattered to him was that Sarah had been there to witness it.

If Sarah had one big secret in their marriage, it was the fact that she had not been there to hear him play that night. After watching him walk onto the stage, she went to go take her seat in the house. Unfortunately, because she was unfamiliar with the theater, she walked through a door that she thought would lead to the seats and actually ended up in the alley behind the building. Feeling incredibly dumb for not noticing that she had walked outdoors instead of into a theater, she turned around quickly to grab the door, but it had already closed and locked behind her. Sarah had been so distracted that she might as well have walked onto the moon. She swore loudly, then winced realizing that she needed to be quiet with the concert resuming. She ran down the alley and returned to the front doors. They were locked. Because Chris was playing after the intermission, they had already closed the box office and gone home.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!”

She screamed in frustration and rattled the doors, it was no use. Nobody could hear her. She had no choice but to wait outside until the concert finished and sneak back in as the crowd left. Tears streaming down her face, she sat down on the sidewalk and berated herself for all of the mistakes she made that night that left her sitting on the dirty sidewalk while Chris played a concert seconds after finding out his father had died.

When she heard the surprisingly enthusiastic applause, she jumped up and waited for the first patron to exit. It took longer than she expected, usually some asshole leaves before the applause, but nobody did. She had no idea that the concert had been a transcendent experience for Chris, but she knew from the cheering that something important had happened. She had to restrain herself from punching the glass.

Eventually she got back into the theater and found Chris sitting on a folding chair backstage. He looked shell-shocked, but when he saw her he smiled one of the most radiant, bittersweet smiles she had ever seen.

“Sarah. I did it. I may never be able to do that again, but I’m so grateful that you were here with me.” 

Her heart broke for him and without hesitating, she told the biggest lie of her life.

Chris didn’t have a miraculous musical breakthrough and become a rich and famous pianist after that performance. The moment of Hallmark movie catharsis didn’t last forever. In fact he has not yet performed with that much freedom and joy again. All of the feelings that were able to escape that night slowly but surely got bottled back up as he attended the funeral, helped his mother handle the estate and eventually went back to his normal life. Freedom is not an easy thing to accept or integrate. It took more courage than he had. But Chris was happy to know, that at least for a moment, that freedom did exist.

***

Chris does not set up the Xbox that night, but he does do something else they’ve been looking forward to doing for months: he charges Sarah’s iPhone. There is no cellular service of course, but by sharing the ear-buds, they can enjoy listening to music together. They start with ‘Florence and the Machine’, and then switch to the first movement of a Mozart piano concerto and alternate back and forth between her selections and his. Charlie sits on Sarah’s lap batting at the wire.

Sarah scrolls through her music library for a moment and looks up to see tears leaking down Chris’ face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just realized that when those fuckers die out I get to play my piano again.”

Sarah smiles and takes his hand in hers. He continues.

“I’m just happy I can even look at the piano again. I haven’t been able to face it since… it was too painful. And right now I can’t touch it, but I know I will be able to someday. Maybe soon, maybe not, but eventually. It’s like finding out that a loved one you thought was lost at sea is still alive and on their way home.”

“I guess even in the apocalypse, nothing is permanent.”

“Other than death.”

Sarah looks back down at the phone, her balloon not quite popped, but slightly deflated by the grim reminder. “Other than death.”

Chris puts his arm around her and gives her a hug. He watches her search for her next selection and something catches his eye. “Wait? Is that date right?!”

The phone’s display reads: 9:12 PM, November 29th.

Sarah shrugs. “I guess we lost a couple of days.”

“Shit! It’s your birthday! I almost forgot your birthday!”

“Because we thought today was the 25th. Besides, I think the days of birthday parties are done sweetheart.”

Chris is already on his feet. “Nonsense! I have a surprise for you!”

“Is it more Advil?”

“Of course!” He tosses her the bottle. Then jumping into his infomercial voice, “But wait, there’s more!”

Chris dashes through the library and heads down the rope ladder into their kitchen. He is gone for a moment, giving Sarah a second to appreciate his childlike enthusiasm for celebrating things. When they started dating, she hadn’t paid any attention to her birthday in years. But on her first birthday after they were together, he arrived at her door holding a large chocolate cake with candles blazing. It both made her laugh and made her a bit melancholy. Ever since, he never failed to produce a cake for her on her birthday.

After a couple of minutes, Sarah spots the top of his head as he awkwardly climbs the ladder holding a bottle of wine under his arm and a plate in his teeth.

“Close your eyes!” He mumbles around the plate.

He reaches up and sets the plate on the library floor while he finishes climbing. On it is a set of five hostess cupcakes each sporting eight blazing birthday candles. He puts aside the wine and brings the plate towards her. He moves slowly so he doesn’t accidentally blow out the candles.

“OK! Open your eyes!”

She laughs and claps her hands. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Happy 29th Birthday!”

“How many is that?”

Chris keeps moving toward her. He’s very pleased with himself for remembering to sneakily grab candles on their trip to Home Depot.

“I think it’s the eleventh
time we’ve celebrated it.”

She grimaces. “Ah, so that’s why there’s almost more candle than cupcake.”

“You’re the hottest woman in the world. And always will be.”

“I might be the
only
woman in the world.”

“Technical victory is still victory!”

Having finally reached her, Chris leans down to give her a kiss. In doing so, he causes one of the top-heavy cupcakes to overbalance, tumble to the floor and roll under the couch.

“Oops!”

She laughs and shakes her head. “This might be the eleventh time you’ve dropped my cake too.”

Chris bends down to retrieve the cupcake from under the couch. It rolls all the way to the back and comes to rest against the wall. The candle’s flame starts to dance with some forgotten junk mail that still seems to live in every corner of their house despite the fact that mail is no longer being delivered.

“Oops! Candles!” Chris drops to his knees and attempts to reach it with his hand. The paper begins to crisp and darken from the heat of the flame.

“Shit! Put it out.”