Apart From Love Read Online Free

in her fragrance and the aroma of the freshly brewed tea. I imagine the beginning of a hairline crack, right at the joint where the porcelain handle meets the shapely body.  
I can hear my father sipping, and his spoon clinking, clanking against the lip of the cup. I can hear the rustling of her dress as she must be bending again, her chest over him, this time to pick the empty cup, which she slams—without hesitation—right on top of me. I mean, on top of the piano.  
And somewhere in the background there is also a tick-tock sound. It is faint—but it makes me count, makes me mark time.  
I imagine it is just his heart, or perhaps the distant beat of a metronome. Mom had one, I remember that. She used it to keep a constant tempo. I listen to the sound, but what I cannot hear—what is missing in this place—is her music. The sweet, intricate sound of harmony.

My father points his crutch at the piano.  
“The cup,” he tells her. “Take it, take that thing. Don’t leave it there.”  
Anita picks it up on her way to the kitchen, where a tea kettle starts shrieking; which reminds her to turn back and ask cheerfully, “More tea, anyone?”  
“No!” we cry, almost in unison. “Absolutely not! No more tea!”  
Once she is gone he turns to me and, to my astonishment, he says, “I am so blessed.” Which makes me suspect, right there and then, that something is not quite right, I mean, not only with his body but maybe with his head, too.  
And so I cannot help asking, with a chill in my voice, “Blessed? You? In your condition?”  
My father looks at me, for the first time he looks deep down into my eyes and then—not finding what he wanted to find—he pauses for a minute.  
“You used to be such a sensitive kid,” he says. “So fragile, so delicate. What happened, son? You have changed.”  
I look back at him, defiantly, and I say, “I sure hope so.”
“You are still angry,” he says. “Are you? After all these years, angry about mom?”  
To which I say, “No, just about the piano.”  
And he is about to say something, but I do not let him, because something in me flares up and I cry, “What happened to me , you ask? How dare you? What about you, how could you?”  
He hesitates to ask, What? And so I go on to say, “What, do I have to say it? It was mom’s piano! She took such care of it... It was perfect, pristine! And now—”  
A blush spreads across his face.  
I curl myself even tighter in my cave, trying to hold myself, hold me from bursting in anger. And I scream, “I hate you! I know what you have done, what you’ve allowed her—this Anita of yours—to do. All that horrible, horrible damage!”
He glances in the direction of the kitchen door, wondering perhaps if Anita can hear me. And so I raise my voice even louder, “The ugly marks! The spills, I mean, from her tea cups! The scratches from her high heels! The dent, you know, from the weight of that woman.”  
And I cover my face, wailing, barely able to say, “Mom will never come back now. She will never, never play here, not ever... All because of you... You have spoiled it, damn you... Spoiled everything for us both.”  
It is then that he leans over, as much as his brace will let him, trying perhaps to reach out to me. There is, I notice, a strange glint in his eyes.  
And he says, “I understand. I know how you miss her. But try not to blame everything on me. Besides, mom has no need for it. The piano,” he says vaguely, “it doesn’t matter, really.”  
I look at him, utterly in confusion, because this is different from what I wanted, which was some trace, some admission of guilt. It seems that—as usual—he has none.  
“Mom can play,” he insists, “even without the piano. Yesterday,” he says, “in the hospital, I woke up. It must have been well after midnight, and for the first time in a long while my heart was pounding with such force! I was so alive and could hear everything with