Rachmaninov's Bridge

Rachmaniov's Bridge

by Mick Hale



Where the heart resides: in a shifting place bound by memory and betrayal, and a deep-set yearning for that most elusive of things, love.

Lisa sat in the window, something she often did, thinking about things like love. Oh, there'd been times.

Bobby Moore. Up on the roof, every night for a month. She'd ached for Bobby. He had this way with words.

"I'm a poet."

That was the first thing he'd said. Lisa's heart melted on the spot. One day Bobby was no more. He stopped calling, stopped everything, and just disappeared. No love there.

There'd been Franco. Gold chains, tight jeans, hair plastered to his skull by an abundance of product; there wasn't a reflection Franco passed without a quick coif check. Ah, Franco. No room in that great self involved heart for Lisa. Franco moved on.

Of course, there was one. In every heart there was that missing one. In Lisa's heart it was Scott. Lisa remembered this: blue eyes flecked with green, long tapered fingers, a soft voice, a slow, lingering smile, silence. Scott kept things to himself. He listened, seemed to take forever to answer, sometimes answered with a single word. Lisa was the best part of herself with Scott.

The worst part of herself sat in the window and thought about Scott, thought about the day Scott left forever.

The worst part of the worst part was Lisa holding the door open and slamming it shut after Scott left. The door slam felt good, and final, and satisfactory. That particular feeling lasted about eight minutes. Then Lisa sat down and cried for three days.

Life never stops for heartache. Lisa's mother, Carla, became sick. Not rush to the hospital sick, not surgical knives and miracle drugs sick. A slow lingering fall from the world, a creeping mist across her mother's eyes, a vast empty space settling around her mother's heart.

Her mother was there, but her mother was gone. She sat in her chair next to the old upright piano no one ever played, a throw rug tucked tight around her knees, spending most of every afternoon sipping from a single cup of tea. Tiny sips, a thousand tiny sips. That was Carla's day.

"Just watch her," the doctors said. "She might wander one day."

Wander? Carla sat in her chair all day and Lisa read books by the window. Every now and then Lisa glanced up, looked into her mother's eyes. Every now and then Carla spoke.

"And who might you be, dear?"

"It's Lisa, mom -- your daughter."

"Oh, I have a daughter? That's nice."

Lisa's world became Mohammed's Grocery Number Eight, and the Slave To The Grind coffee shop, and Mrs. Rodriguez on the stoop. Mrs. Rodriguez was always on the stoop.

"How's mama today?"

Mrs. Rodriguez asked that everyday. A kindness, a simple question. Lisa hated the question. She saw something else in the woman's eyes. She saw a reflection of herself, a young woman, not so young anymore; a young woman who sat in the window, read books, did nothing more than look down at the street and the world passing by.

Day followed day. It was better not to dream. Lisa went to the piano, took the carriage clock off the top, put it in the hallway closet. It was better to let time suspend.

One morning she sat in the window and saw spring grace the city day. She settled Carla in her chair, took her book, walked to the park and the aspen trees, the rows of dark flower beds prepared to birth scents of summer days not too distant now. On a bench she tilted her head back, let the winter chill bake from her skin. It had been a long winter. Winds iced in the north, howled along the avenues; the price paid for days like this.

She felt a shadow fall across her closed eyes.

"Lisa?"

Her father stood there.

How many years? Ten, perhaps.

Her father's name was Sven, a tall and handsome man. A salesman with a tongue as smooth as silk, a restless nature knitted deep in his bones.

He sat down next to his daughter.

"It's good to see you," he said.

"How have you been, Sven?"

An awkward pause stretched across the years.

Lisa knew her father would fill the silence. There was no silence in her father's world.

"How is your mother?" he asked.

On the ground two pigeons were in a mating dance across the cobblestone; one pecked, one fled.

Lisa left Sven's question hanging in the air.

"Lisa, I've heard – I've heard how Carla is."

Lisa turned to her father.

"I thought you were in Texas."

"I was."

"And married."

"That doesn't work for me, I guess. I'm better on my own. I did well in Dallas. I was the top salesman at a computer firm called Drysco. I'm retired now."

"Good for you, Sven," was the simple thing she said.

Silence was the only weapon she had against her father. She ran to her heart and checked the box marked Sven there. It was still locked, still secure, all the memories, all the hurt safely sealed away.

She stood.

"I've got to get going."

"I'd like to take you to dinner."

"Not tonight. I'm busy tonight."

"Tomorrow then. I'll pick you up at seven."

"I don't . . ."

"Lisa, please. It's important."

Inside she felt the box lid creak.

"Alright," she said. "But not at the apartment. I'll meet you here."

She saw it in his eyes, a flash of relief. She didn't understand. This man, this source of so much anger, his words were there, sharp words, cutting words, there was no relief in her heart from the memories.

He turned and walked away. And then she saw.

He is not the man I knew. He is older now, the years wrapped round his spine. It is the years that brought him here.

When Lisa returned to the apartment, Carla was in her chair. The teacup was empty, but Carla still put it to her lips, taking invisible sips.

"Mother," Lisa said, "I saw Sven today. He looks much older now."

"Do I know you, dear?"

Lisa knelt in front of her mother. Carla still had the loveliest smile. She took her mother's soft hands in her own.

"It's Lisa – I'm your daughter."

"Oh, I have a daughter? How nice."

The next morning Lisa lay in her bed and let the day grow outside. Usually she was up before dawn, but today she watched the streaks of sun crawl across the wall. She listened to the city wake. Mohammed ran his iron gate up. A street-sweeper passed. She imagined tiny swirls of dust disturbed into the air, only to fall to the gutter again.

It's alright, she thought. She didn't know why, it just seemed that way. It's alright.

The day went quickly enough. She even had a bright smile for Mrs. Rodriguez.

"Your mama feeling better today?" the old woman asked.

"Nothing ever changes. Is that good?"

"Sure, mostly change is a bad thing it seems to me."

At seven o'clock that evening she walked down to the park. Her father waited there.

They went to a little bistro called Julia's and her father ordered wine, spoke French with the waiter.

"Un vin de Province, je pense. Chateaunuef du Pape?"

"Naturellement, monsieur, qui serait un bon choix."

The waiter left, silence came. Her father filled it with translations of the menu, musing over choices, then deciding for them both what it was they ate. Lisa was content to sit there, let her father speak, and they found their way, as sometimes people do, through the meal with small talk, nothing of consequence, carefully skirting topics that might ignite a fire.

Finally, over coffee her father said, "I was wondering – when I left all those years ago, there was a trunk filled with some things of mine. Some medals that belonged to my father, and a Norwegian flag, some pictures of my mother. Do you remember it?"

Lisa nodded.

"I would like it back. When a man gets old . . ."

"I don't have it."

Her father looked at her. "But it was always there."

"I took it to the dumpster, tossed it all."

It made her feel good, this blow to her father's heart. She saw the color rise in his face, felt a passing moment of regret, but didn't speak.

Sven said, "Those were the only pictures I had of my mother."

Lisa was sure now there was a way to seal her father away forever, to secure the box and throw away the key. She spoke slowly, everything drained from her voice. She had waited for this moment for years.

"I have a picture of my mother, Sven. I see it everyday. She is sitting in a chair. She never moves. Her world is lost to her. Her heart died long ago. There is only time now, endless times, but no memories, no joy, nothing left of her at all. That is the picture of my mother I see everyday. I share it with you now. I want you to take it and look at it everyday. That picture is the life you left us with, Sven. It is yours to keep."

She left Sven sitting in the restaurant.

The streets were full of life, the city on a Friday night, the first warm night after winter's draft; a night for theater, lingering dinners, and couples wandering at lovers pace. Lisa had no eyes for the crowds she passed. Her heart was heavy. This wasn't right. On the night of her triumph, her victory, her father vanquished, she slowed her steps to a stop, almost turned around, then gathered herself and started for home.

There were no dreams that night. In the morning she rose and began again her life with Carla; moving her mother to the chair, fixing her tea, sitting in the window, and pretending as the day progressed, nothing had changed at all.

On Sunday morning the doorbell rang.

Lisa looked through the peephole; Sven nervous in fish eye, dressed in a serge suit, as if on his way to church.

She opened the door.

"Good morning, Lisa."

"Sven."

A hallway of silence, for once, Sven at a loss for words.

"Would you like to come in?" she asked.

"I wasn't sure you'd invite me in."

No, thought Lisa, you're not sure you want to come in. She stepped to the side.

Sven had in his hand a small bouquet of flowers, an empty gesture in Lisa's eyes. She took them and put them on a table. Carla looked up from her chair, a bright smile on her face.

"Hello," she said.

"Carla, my dear, you look well."

Lisa moved to her mother's side, put her hand on Carla's shoulder, felt the bones beneath her mother's paper-thin skin.

"It's Sven, Mother. Do you remember Sven?"

Do you remember his handsome face and easy laugh, his words that could charm the flowers into bloom? Do you remember the hopes and the dreams you shared, the child you bore? Do you remember the empty nights waiting for him to come home and the endless night he never did? Do you remember these things, Mother?

There was a blessing to Carla's timeless fog; she remembered nothing at all.

Coffee was made and served in china cups; cream and sugar and a trembling veneer of civilized chat. Nothing said, everything unspoken, cautious glances, laughter quick to follow and trailing into a bottomless canyon. Carla seemed to enjoy Sven's stories, though she couldn't follow one sentence past the other and kept asking the same questions. He was patient, went over things again, and for this at least, Lisa was grateful.

There came a moment when Sven turned to his daughter and said, "I've learned something and I want to share it with you."

It was some tone in her father's voice, some set to his words, some lingering shadow in his eyes that turned Lisa's heart to ash. The box broke loose spilling all the tears, all the sorrow, all the pain onto the floor.

"Something you want to share," she said. "Something you've learned. How nice of you to come up here, to sit in a chair and drink coffee after all these years."

Sven stammered at his daughter's frozen glare.

"Lisa, I . . ."

"Do you think this is enough? A bouquet you bought at Mohammed's on the corner? Small talk to a woman whose heart you ripped out of her chest, now that she no longer knows who are, has no sense of the pain you caused? You're making a fool of her, kneeling in front of her, listening to her, telling her stories like she's a baby. We don't want you here, Sven. We don't need you here. You didn't come to visit, you came to try and ease the guilt rattling in your head. You came to try and find some peace, or find closure, or whatever idea you had, but you didn't come because you care for us, or you missed us, or any other Hallmark moment worth the price of a cheap greeting card. You came here for yourself. It's always been about you, Sven. And it always will be."

"Lisa," Carla said. "Do not talk to your father that way."

Lisa turned to her mother. "Mom? Do you remember? Mom?"

Her mother always had beautiful eyes, almost gray, set in sadness. In her day Carla captured hearts with her eyes. She looked up at her daughter, a flickering smile on her lips. No words, just that smile and those beautiful, gray eyes.

Carla picked up her cup of tea and took a tiny sip. She put it down again. She picked up the cup yet again, took a sip, put it down. The china made the smallest chink.

A piano note, a single one, followed by another; Sven sat at the old upright and began to play. Lisa had never heard her father play. Those crooked keys had not been touched since she was a girl.

Sven sat there, his shoulders hunched, his back to both the women, and played a piece by Rachmaninoff, something he'd learned, something he wanted to share. Melodies from another place, another time.

The sound was delicate, hesitant, not a master's touch, but Lisa's father's touch.

"Lovely," Carla said, when he had finished.

Sven looked across at her a moment and then stood.

"I didn't know you played," Lisa said.

"I have so much time now," Sven said. "Something to do, I guess. Something from when I was a boy."

Lisa went and sat in the window. She kept her face turned from her father. "It's not enough, you know. To arrive after all these years and play a piece on the piano."

"No," said Sven. "I suppose not."

He went to the door.

"Are you going?" asked Carla.

"It was good seeing you again," he said, then closed the door behind him.

Lisa watched him from the window. His walk was slower. He never looked up.

She went into the kitchen, took a vase out of the cupboard, filled it with water, placed Sven's flowers in, set it on the piano. She ran her fingers lightly across the keys, not pressing down, not striking a note, just feeling the old and worn ivory.

She went and sat on the floor by her mother.

"Mom, Dad was here."

"My father? I don't remember him."

"Not your father – my father – your husband."

"What was his name?"

"His name was Sven."

"Oh, Sven, I like that name."

Lisa laid her head on Carla's lap. After a moment, Carla lifted her hand and gently brushed it through her daughter's hair.