Apart From Love Read Online Free Page A

great clarity. Everything, son, was as clear as a dream! And then, then I could hear her. I am so blessed. She let me hear it.”  
And I say, “Mom let you hear what , exactly?”  
“Music,” he says dreamily. “Do you remember her fingers, when she played for us, how they looked?”  
“I do,” I whisper in return. “I remember. It was a total blur.”  
And he says, “Exactly. That’s how it was, last night. I could feel her presence. She came close beside me, right there by the bedside, and held me, touching me softly, caressing my arm, stroking it slowly, all the way, right down to the wrist. And I turned the palm of my hand, and opened it to her, to receive her.”
Which suddenly brings to mind a long forgotten moment, when they sat on this sofa, which was brand new back then, its pillows still puffed up and firm. I bounced on it for a while, then got off, leaving a space there between the two of them.  
And dad looked at her over the divide, and said, “Play for me, Natasha.”  
And she said, in a tired voice, “I can’t. You know I haven’t practiced. It’s been such a long time. I think I’m losing my touch.”  
And he looked away, saying, “Just say it. You’re blaming me for all this.”  
There was a long silence, which left both of them worn out—until she reached out. Mom passed a finger along the back of his hand, and his hand turned over, so that she could tickle him.  
And to my great relief, their hands joined. If not for the glint of her ring, you could no longer tell which were his fingers—and which hers.

With a vague stare, my father mumbles, “And then, as she touched me, the air stirred... It was reverberating, vibrating with music. And I—I noticed the fingers, the blur—a total blur, just the way you said—which is how I knew it was her.”  
Uncertain what to make of this I ask him, “And her ring? Did you see it? Did it glow when she played?”  
Which makes him, all of a sudden, come unglued from this memory of last night, and snap at me. “Ring,” he says, grumbling. “What ring? It was lost! She threw it, threw the thing at me, the day she left. You know that very well, don’t you.”
He looks at me with outrage. Perhaps I remind him of something in her, and he rambles on, “What a difficult woman. Whatever I did for her, it was never enough. I mean, not ever! She always had to lean on me, and she leaned so hard.”  
But then, with some effort, he overcomes his anger and he says, “You may not trust me, or what I say, but all the same there she was, playing for me. Her fingers,” he says, “they were flitting, all across my skin, and I closed my eyes, just to be focused, to feel her. With such speed she played, such fury, even.”  
“And you heard it?” I ask, not really wanting to believe him, but remembering suddenly how, every night before bed, mom would tell me to practice my fingering, to play notes in the air—without touching the keys at all—because that was the method passed in her family, from generation to generation: the method of committing a long piece of music to memory.  
“What do you mean, did I hear it,” says my father. He seems to dislike the question, because he never doubts himself. “I sure did. I sure as hell heard it.”  
“What was she playing, then?” I inquire.
“The left hand,” he recalls, “it was playing broken chords. And it alternated, you know, between two scales, where the notes were sharp and rising. And the right hand, it was playing a melody, which hovered in the air, trembling up there, over the left hand chords. After a while the music became wild... It became agitated, and so did I; which made me see things—”  
“What,” I ask, “what was it you saw?”  
And I note that he is listening—but not to me—trying, perhaps, to steady himself, to find, somewhere inside, at the core, a constant tempo. Perhaps, like me, he can hear a beat, the distant beat of a metronome. I wonder if