Author’s Note: “While I was working on a collection of ‘micro narratives’ about my matrilineal line, my mother shared this story with me. Her memory of these small details during a chaotic and difficult time struck me as both poignant and powerful, but lingering in the background was a secret that travelled with her from China to Taiwan, and then eventually to the United States—the truth about my grandfather’s other family.”

The Communists are coming. On the boat, my mother is 11.
They have suitcases, trunks, crates, a Simmons mattress stowed
below. Money and jewels sewn into the folds of clothing, papers
declaring who they are. The Liang Family. Nationalists.
Kuomintang. They leave behind furniture, dishes, a piano⎯a
country. My mother steps onto a bridge that joins the dock to
the ship, holding her older brother’s hand, their mother pressed
close. Behind them trails a nurse with a young boy,
my mother’s half-brother. Her father, resplendent in a brown
western suit, waves them to their room.

My mother swallows a lungful of air, holds it in. Another boat,
the Taiping, was sunk two months ago—fifteen hundred people and
their gold lines the bottom of the Strait. For three days, they
drift over those bodies, those ill-fated treasures. On the fourth
day, the rise of a dark green mountain range set against an
orange dawn sky. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever
seen. Paddle boats idle as they pull into port. Hello, friends,
hello! The locals are selling bananas. In her pocket, my mother
fingers a silver dollar before tossing it to the man below. She
awaits, arms outstretched, for a first taste of freedom.

_____

“Daybreak” is the first of four of Darien Gee’s powerful micro narratives in Volume 11 of Delmarva Review. Gee, from Hawaii, is the author of five novels, published by Penguin Random House, and an award-winning book on writing memoir. She is a former Vermont Studio fellow and received a writing grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in numerous literary journals. Say hello at: dariengee.com.

Delmarva Review publishes the best of original new poetry, nonfiction, and fiction selected from thousands of annual submissions by authors within the region and beyond. The independent, nonprofit literary journal is supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Obtain the paperback edition from Mystery Loves Company, in Oxford, and Amazon.com. An electronic edition is also available from Amazon.com. Website: DelmarvaReview.org

Delmarva Review Editor’s note: The meaning of “saudade” is from the Portuguese and not easily translated into English, though it imports a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia. Poet Luther Jett explains that Portuguese “saudade” songs are ballads of intense poignancy, often incorporating images of the sea and of cities. He was intrigued by the concept and composed this poem.

Delmarva Review: Saudade
By Luther Jett

While the river overruns its banks,
I sit by an open window — The light
breeze carries salt and a memory
of tar, of small boats bobbing on the tide.

The cities we have left behind, the towns
we’ll likely never know, turn up their lamps
when twilight drifts across the green
as sighs of dying lilacs scent the air.

You were my first, my last, my neverending
road escaping over nameless hills,
my flight of arrows, my cascade of spears,
my brown wren weeping under the clematis.

Seas that have parted and seas which roar
between us, stars whose names no voice
will ever sing — These are the gifts I leave
behind with nothing in my pockets but my hands.

If you listen in the morning to the dew-
fall, you will hear the footsteps of my melody,
and in the evening the sky will burn red —
My blood is on fire for wanting you.
__________
W. Luther Jett’s poetry has been published in Delmarva Review, The GW Review, Beltway, Innisfree, Potomac Review, and Little Patuxent Review as well as several anthologies. His chapbook, Not Quite: Poems Written in search of My Father, was released by Finishing Line press in 2015. He is a retired special educator from Montgomery County, Maryland.

Delmarva Review is a literary journal of national scope, with regional roots. The nonprofit review publishes compelling new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from authors within the region and beyond. It is supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Visit the website: DelmarvaReview.org. Obtain the paperback edition from Mystery Loves Company, in Oxford, and Amazon.com. An electronic edition is also available from Amazon.

Mama had a dream last night, Jefferson. You were still alive but barely, your liver failing, your shaven belly mustard yellow, and the vets said there was nothing they could do, so we brought you home, and we gave you a bath where something biblical happened: the water washed away your jaundice.

As Mama told me about her dream, every cell in me stirred, because it was like her love for you. Powerful. Mine, too, though I know I’m just Mama’s sister whose visits were cameo appearances that began with a car beep. Baby’s here! You went nuts whenever you heard that, didn’t you? Howled your head off! And whenever I began to gather my things to go, you’d grow quiet. Disgruntled. Traitor…

You know, Jefferson, a person can’t count on many things in life, but as I’d begin to drive away, slowly, my foot barely on the pedal, the chance that you’d be staring back at me through the window was always excellent. I’d brake, and our eyes would lock like magnets, and we’d stay in that pull for a long time. In a way, that’s as deep as it goes. Famous friends, not like you and Mama—I’m not delusional, you two were twin-spirits roaming this plane, and the next, if there is a next, Mama and Jefferson forever. Though sometimes your attachment was extreme, and you’d become so glum we’d say Jefferson’s on suicide watch, because you’d lie in bed all day, not eating, not moving, just waiting for her to come home. Mama aside, when it was just you and me, we occupied a special space, a poetic place with your paw over my wrist. Didn’t we? By the way, Jefferson, when I say we gave you a bath—in Mama’s dream, I mean—she didn’t say whether “we” included me, but I like to think I was there, in dream life, helping to rinse death off you.

Wherever you are, I want you to know I’m writing this on a gray January morning, spheres removed from that dreamy day when your parents and brother picked you up at the airport and brought you home in a puppy crate. You were something called a golden doodle—your brother had allergies, and, well, it boiled down to a poodle, a doodle, or nothing. Our family had been dog-less for a quarter century, which was fine with me—confession: I was never a true dog lover, always thought they were a bit of a bother—but after work, the summer sky still light and bright, I stopped by just to catch a glimpse of you. A what doodle? A decade ago, that’s all you were to me. Not that it was love at first sight for you, either.

So there you were, and will always be, a beautiful little lamb, a red-collared pup on all fours, refusing to face us. Wherever we set you down, on the grass, on the floral rug, you’d make an about-face, taking orders from your instincts. Paralyzed. I guess if I were plucked from a peaceful farm in Oregon and took a loud scary plane ride for five hours, I’d turn away, too. But I also think that’s how God made you. Introverted. Stony to strangers.

Your love, once bloomed, was reserved for us, your family. That drew me in; made you and your love more special. Some things I found so fetching: the way you’d position yourself so my hair would fall on your face whenever Mama trimmed my ends. The way you growled whenever my husband hugged me—Hands off my Baby! You were a thinker, like my long-gone dad, and call me nuts but were you trying to tell me something with those soulful brown eyes? Oh, if paws could write… Spiritual, too, in a doggy way. Sometimes you broke into a crazy—okay, I’ll just say it—possessed bark, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were barking at ghosts dancing around my head.

Granted, you could be dogs-just-wanna-have-fun, too.

Give me treats!

Hide my tennis ball!

Take me to Hidden Pond!

Ah, Hidden Pond. Granted, you loved your home, especially your spot by the big lumpy elephant-gray sofa, but mention Hidden Pond, and everything flew out the window. It was your favorite place in the world, where your soul became one with every enchanting rock, trail, stream, and falling leaf. Hearing Mama say Let’s go to Hidden Pond! could awaken you from your deepest sleep. Well, almost.

I’m regretting something right now, Jefferson. I rarely went to Hidden Pond with you, just a couple of times, and always opted for the easy trail, otherwise known as the Orange Path, which cheated you, a little. The Green Path, your trail of choice, was too long and treacherous for me. Believe it or not, I started out life as a tomboy who could outrun and outjump any boy in class, a skateboarding fiend, but then I got all poetic and lost myself in words, not woods, and emerged a rock in some ways yet a delicate flower in others—ugh, I agree. Maybe Mama can hop over steep rocks while eating gummy bears, “but I’d fall into some crevice and never be heard from again.

By your tenth birthday, you could still pass for a fluffy puppy but then, abruptly, you slowed down. The staircase was a struggle, each step a crawl-hop. Once, after a long walk in Hidden Pond, your legs gave out, and you had to be lifted into the car. Born with hip dysplasia, you had surgery early on, but here it was, back to haunt you. Oh, you were such a good boy at the vet acupuncturist office last summer, model-still with all those needles sticking out of your doodle fur. But it was worth it because your breed’s lifespan is fifteen years. Miraculously, the acupuncture worked.

Back to Hidden Pond!

With a spring in your step!

True, your walks were abbreviated now. That majestic tree, the grandest in Hidden Pond, standing like some ancient tree of life, now marked the end of your journey. Time to turn around.

But damn it all, one day in mid-December, you stopped eating. The following afternoon you were admitted to the animal hospital—your bilirubin levels were high, pointing to liver disease. The next night, Saturday night, Mama and I went to visit you, though she’d been in and out all day. The hospital staff and décor tried to be cheery but failed miserably; frankly, I had bad vibes as we waited in a room with a maroon rug for an eternity, you weren’t going to get well here. Finally, a nurse walked you in. You plopped down, your shaven belly and ankles and the whites of your eyes all yellow. Worst, your expression was gone.

Where were you, Jefferson?

Just before we left, you perked up in a pup-like way only because you had to pee bad, really bad, so Mama leashed you and the two of you charged out of the room, through the hospital lobby and automatic front doors, leaving me in the dust. Suddenly, it was like it always was, Mama and Jefferson together forever, and what I’m about to tell you will break Mama’s heart when she reads this: something about the starless vision of your silhouettes running into a pitch-black night shook every molecule in me, and all I was thinking was, Run you two, keep running, somewhere, anywhere, don’t turn around, even if it means you never come back because if you come back, Jefferson will never get out of this deathtrap alive and the dream will be over.

I was wrong. You came home on Monday, the same day I developed a cough, easy to ignore at a time like this. The hospital vets said there was nothing more they could do except give you meds and let’s see what happens. Uh, five thousand dollars later and let’s see what happens? What happened was an emotional rollercoaster: one hour you were walking around the block, the next hour your legs buckled; one hour you were barking at the television, the next hour one breath from death. Jefferson, I’d say, knowing you’d come to life if only for a split second, you’ve got to get better so we can go to Hidden Pond.

What happened in the end is that on Friday, December 23 at ten in the morning, eight days after you stopped eating, the in-home euthanasia vet arrived with his assistant. I’m telling you this because I’m not sure how conscious you were, lying on the floral rug, Jefferson. You seemed at peace, even ready to leave us, but when I later learned you were doped up on morphine, I wasn’t so sure of anything anymore. Maybe you were in some drugged-induced state, dreaming of Hidden Pond. All I know is that you surrendered to the vet’s needle without a stir. In case you weren’t aware during those last moments, your grief-stricken Mama was sobbing Mama loves Jefferson, Mama loves Jefferson, petting you so feverishly no doubt you’ll feel her love forever. When you were gone, she collapsed on you, and I, her sister shadow, collapsed on her. You know, Jefferson, I never got to say good-bye to my dad—he was here, then gone forever. So, despite the tragic hour, I’m grateful I could say goodbye to you.

Her next blink, your inconsolable Mama began lamenting Where is Jefferson now? I need a sign he’s OK…

I’m not a religious person, not by a long shot, and only in dream life could a baptismal bath wash away your jaundice. But signs of afterlife, I’ve had a few, and I’m not talking about when someone’s thinking about their dead friend Mike, and then a Michael & Son truck happens to drive by. God, no, that’s not what I mean. I mean something tangible and magical when you least expect it. Yet poor Mama couldn’t wait—Baby, I need a sign he’s waiting for me now. I could believe she might get her sign from you someday but not today, not this soon.

On Christmas—two days after you left this earth—your parents and brother went to Hidden Pond in your honor. I would’ve gone, too. You know that, Jefferson, but by now my cough had progressed to bronchitis. Their original plan was to walk the Green Path trail to the majestic tree, scatter some of your ashes along the way, but Mama couldn’t bring herself to give any of you away, and I don’t blame her.

When your family reached their landmark, they discovered something that wasn’t there last time, something uncanny. On a bed of leaves in the crook of the tree’s hollow, nestled if not deeply rooted, sat a tiny pup with a red collar—a figurine, of course, too sacred to touch, of ancient thistle or twine, Mama guessed. The figurine, Jefferson, was you. At least the image of you just out of your crate one long-ago summer day.

Now, if that wasn’t Mama’s sign from beyond the universe, then signs just don’t exist.

Well, Jefferson, under cursed skies, my little ode to you comes to a close. It’s still January, and I’m still coughing here—that’s how fresh your loss feels. However silly, a part of me wants to hold onto the cough as if otherwise your memory and a bewitching figurine will fade into a dream or a myth. No…not a chance. Maybe I’m not Mama, but I cried writing every word of this, and I’ll be looking for you in the window for a long, long time.

_______

Frances Park is the author of ten books including novels, memoirs and children’s books. She has been interviewed on NPR, The Diane Rehm Show, Voice of America, and Good Morning America. In addition to Delmarva Review, one of her essays earned a spot on The Best American Essays 2017 Notable List. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Delmarva Review is a literary journal of national scope, with regional roots. The nonprofit review discovers compelling new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from authors within the region and beyond. It is supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Visit the website: DelmarvaReview.org. Obtain print or digital editions at Amazon.com or Mystery Loves Company, in Oxford.

“And the field for cotton goods, that is every day enlarging, as
the East is answering to the impatient calls of commerce, gives
no prospect of a speedy check to this vast power of the produce
of the slave.”
⎯ A Carolinian, Slavery in the Southern States, 1852

Luck is a field
white as stars
in a sky of jade

harvest season
heads full of cotton
hands full of cotton

we dream of buds
aching green with envy
flaring their white

blossoms open at dawn
pink by sundown
then red

withering until
the bolls beneath
crack open

foaming white
this high cotton
we’re rolling in

our mouths
so full we choke
on our own spit

Holly Karapetkova’s poems and translations from the Bulgarian have recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Delmarva Review, and other publications. Her second book, Towline, won the Vern Rutsala Poetry Contest and was published by Cloudbank Books. She chairs the Literature and Languages Department at Marymount University. Her website is www.Karapetkova.com.

Delmarva Review is a literary journal of national scope, with regional roots. The nonprofit review publishes compelling new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from authors within the region and beyond. It is supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. For copies and information, visit the website: DelmarvaReview.org.

“Take heart that in Detroit
Every three seconds
A car is born.” – C.K. Stead

It takes 6720 man-hours
to make a baby, give or take.

The catch is

it must be the same man
and that man a woman.

We cannot specialize.
We cannot automate.
We cannot use assembly lines
or lean production techniques
to accelerate the timeline.

We cannot do anything.
She must do it all.

Her body assembles the baby
step-by-step, though her brain
does not know how.

She builds a heart in only 18 days.
She constructs the intestinal tract,
starting with the anus, of course.

She engineers a custom machine:
designed at random within certain
parameters and built in the dark.

At 6720 hours, the deadline looms
and she always delivers.

Holly Painter holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Canterbury and teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont. She is the author of the poetry collection Excerpts from a Natural History (Titus Books, 2015). In addition to Delmarva Review, her work has appeared in numerous literary journals in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Singapore, and the U.K.

Delmarva Review is a literary publication of national scope, with strong regional roots. In its eleventh year, the nonprofit journal discovers compelling new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from authors within the region and beyond. It is supported by individual contributions, sales, and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. For information and copies, visit: www.DelmarvaReview.org.

# # #

Schubert, it is said, had fat and awkward hands. Though his music sings, he never learned to play the piano really well. Contrast this with the plaster cast of Chopin’s hands, supposedly done immediately after his death. The fingers seem to me implausibly slender and long, but no matter. We impute magic to objects like an artist’s hands, just as we weighed and measured Einstein’s brain, looking for some simple fact of flesh and structure that would enable us to shrug and say, well, no wonder. We have no similar preoccupation with Beethoven’s hands. Rather, his hair, flying, unruly. He had Einstein’s hair, or perhaps Einstein had his.

Occasionally someone will remark on my own long, thin fingers, and if they know of my pianism, they will smile and nod in just that knowing way. Of course. How could Liszt or Rachmaninoff hold any terrors for a woman with such big hands? And I did launch my career on just this basis: the flirty ingénue, the merest wisp of a girl, rampaging through the alpha male repertory, all while showing more skin than might be expected.

It worked for a while. I did the global whirligig for a decade, until the bookings began to slow. I have read an account that states simply that Annie Molloy disappeared from public view after marrying a surgeon. Some truth there, I suppose. God knows I enjoyed my husband more than the umpteenth night of Prokofiev in Poughkeepsie.

Today I am no wisp of a girl, and if I am flirty it is in the manner of an elderly lady who thinks she can get away with something.

What saved me, and saves me still, is Cantabile, my immense and ramshackle house on the edge of the Choptank River near Cambridge, Maryland. I have no children, and my husband is gone, taken by a heart attack a decade ago. But the house endures, and I along with it.

It is, as I say, a big house, twenty-six rooms in all, and I have filled it with pianos: a showcase grand in the main parlor, and other uprights and grands tucked in everywhere. Eight times a year, I also fill the house with amateur pianists from all over the country, some of them coming year after year to spend two weeks living and breathing piano. I’ve recruited a staff of skilled and patient teachers. I teach myself, and I love it. We have an excellent cook, and my campers bring their own booze. I don’t take anyone under 21.

Philip was the exception, from the day his uncle’s Volvo dropped him at my door fully 30 years ago. A glorious day of early fall, the herons at the river’s edge holding their poses, the grass bright and the river like blue ice. Philip was sixteen, and I welcomed him because the chairman of the music department at New York University, an acquaintance who had once wanted to be my lover, said he had never heard anyone like Philip and two weeks with me would be just the thing.

Philip had the ideal pianist’s hands, I noticed from the kitchen window. It was arrival day, and the house was loud with laughter and greetings. Philip dropped his duffel bag on the gravel and clutched to his chest a thick canvas case in which, I guessed, he had brought along every scrap of sheet music he owned. He clutched the case like the floatable cushion from an airplane seat, hoping it would keep him alive but somehow doubting it. His fingers curled around the bottom of the case, the knuckles visible from a distance, the flesh very white. I forced myself to stop spying and hurried outside to greet him.

As I had feared, Philip never did fit in. He was decades younger than the others and sipped Dr Pepper during happy hour while the others whittled down their wine stocks. The older women embarrassed him with their attention, while the men ignored or visibly resented him. He couldn’t tell a joke, didn’t follow sports, and couldn’t answer a question with more than a syllable or two.

What he could do was play the piano.

That first morning, I found myself drawn upstairs by an unfamiliar sound: scales. When I say our campers all love the piano and want earnestly to play better, I do not mean to imply any enthusiasm for such tedium as scale practice. Yet there it was. In every key, major and minor, not just the easy keys with the standard fingerings but the variants and oddities as well, four octaves up and down, slowly and quickly, in four-four time, three-four, triplets, in parallel and contrary motion, even with the left hand offset by half a bar. And all played with perfect evenness and fluidity. I noted the room from which this marvel was emerging and checked the day’s schedule: Philip.

At our first lesson Philip told me he had been working on the Chopin Etudes. Not unusual: nearly every reasonably proficient amateur wants to tackle an etude or two to measure himself. Which etudes? I asked.

Philip sat at the piano in my studio with his legs crossed. Mine is the finest instrument in the house, and Philip had taken it in with his first glance on entering and now sat running his fingertips along the keys. “Well,” he said, “all of them, really.”

Over the next hour I discovered that he could, indeed, play all twenty-seven etudes well and from memory. In such a case, the teacher becomes more of a coach. There was nothing I could teach Philip, no technique he lacked, no errors to correct. So I tried to coach him on interpretive choices, to encourage him to listen to himself more closely, to show him the little energy- saving tricks that could help a performer get through such large swathes of difficult music without cramping or breaking down.

When we were done, I said, “What are your plans, Philip? Juilliard? Curtis?”

“I’ll be starting at Johns Hopkins in September,” he said.

“So,” I nodded, smiling, “Peabody. I know a number of the faculty there. You’ll do well.”

“No, not the conservatory,” Philip said. “Engineering.”

“Engineering?” I realized as I said it that I sounded shocked and patronizing, and hastened to add, “Have you not considered a career in music?”

“I don’t want to be a professional musician,” he said.

“With your gift, you’d be…” I almost said “a natural” but stopped myself because I don’t believe such a thing exists and because I knew very well how much labor had gone into creating what I had just heard. “You could be extraordinary,” I said.

“Look, I just don’t want to,” he said. “I won’t be anyone’s performing seal. Okay?”

“Okay, sure,” I said. Philip was looking down and scratching the back of his hand. I suspected I had stepped into a long-running argument, and while Philip seemed uncomfortable telling me to mind my own business, that was just what he had done and would do again if pressed.

He stayed the two weeks, filled his practice shifts, warmed up only slightly in social settings, and, as his contribution to our informal concluding concert, played something relatively easy. I was sure I would never see him again, but the final day, after the last car had pulled out of the drive, as I walked through the hallway of the again-silent house, I took from the table the advance signup sheet for the following year, and there was Philip’s name, halfway down. He would be back. I chuckled, shook my head, and thought about practicing more myself.

Philip did come back the next year, and the next. I tried to guide him into new repertory and paired him with a couple of other accomplished campers for some duet work. When the fourth year began looming and he had not signed up, I dropped him a note to say that if he hadn’t decided yet, I could still hold a spot for him for several more weeks.

He wrote in reply to thank me and to say that he had enlisted in the Marine Corps.

A legend about Glenn Gould, one of the many, concerns the way he walked away from his public career at its peak. He was world famous, in enormous demand. One night, he was pacing backstage when a stagehand asked for an autograph. He signed the program, dated it, and wrote “my last concert” under the date.

I have built myself a similar legend. How I played an afternoon recital in San Diego. Hall half empty, mind elsewhere. Afterward, a dozen or so autographs, the usual smiles, all dinner invitations declined in favor of room service. The next morning, someone named Richard Salazar said in the newspaper that my Liszt Sonata had been “the longest 30 minutes in many a year.”

I tried to work up a robust hate for this man I did not know, but couldn’t. He was right.

Besides, plenty of seats had gone unsold before anyone knew what a snore my recital would be. Time for honesty, I thought on the return flight. I had met Charles and wanted no more Sundays anywhere but home. I had another half dozen commitments to fulfill, but I let my managers know that would be it for a while. I don’t recall any disappointed groans.

Charles was then finishing a clinical fellowship at Johns Hopkins Medical School. He owned a beautiful rowhouse in Baltimore, and that’s where we lived when we first married. I moved my small grand piano from my old apartment. I gave lessons to kids who didn’t want them, plus the occasional adult who lived for them. I found I loved my sessions with the grown- ups and, little by little, weeded the kids out of my garden. Then I read about an adult piano camp in Vermont and thought: I could make a go of that here. I had always lived frugally, and my savings were more than ample to buy Cantabile when I stumbled on it and to gather up a bunch of old but sound pianos. Charles toured the house once, declared that the plumbing and electric bills alone would break the bank, and let me know he would never want to live there. OK, I said, I don’t mean to live here, either, except during camps.

I painted the house myself. I sanded and refinished the floors. I hung my old concert posters, programs, photos, and framed reviews all over the halls. By way of cementing my commitment, I took one last big bite out of my savings and bought a big new grand piano. And one day, while waiting endlessly for a delivery of new kitchen appliances, I dragged out my thick book of the Beethoven Sonatas, Volume I, opened to Sonata Number One in F minor, and started again to learn.

The day years later when I got Philip’s note about joining the Marines, I went to my studio and found Volume III of the Sonatas, creased, stained and dog-eared, on the floor next to the piano. I opened to the last of the thirty-two in C minor, turned to the final movement. And when I was finished I sat on the bench and cried, thinking of Philip in fatigues, thinking of his beautiful hands adjusting the telescopic sight of a sniper’s rifle, thinking I would never see him again or hear him play, thinking this was a great pity, a great pity.

Then, one day about four years after Philip’s note, his name turned up in a monthly report from my CPA. He had paid a deposit to return to Cantabile that fall.

Students for that camp began arriving about two hours after Charles departed. My husband, the distinguished and now wealthy surgeon, had taken the better part of one of his valuable days to drive out from Baltimore because he felt he needed to tell me face to face that our marriage was, from his perspective, less than optimal; that he felt he owed himself the opportunity of a fresh start with someone who would be more…what was his word? Committed, yes, committed to him and only him.

Charles also felt that he was still relatively young and that, statistically speaking, his field of choices was encouragingly large. He would be quite generous in terms of a settlement, anything I wanted, really, and since I clearly did not want the same stylish urban life that he did, this was really for the best.

I suspected he had already winnowed his encouraging large field of choices to one, a distinctly stylish and urban young yoga instructor with the right body and the right hair to be just the right ornament for his Mercedes convertible. But as he stood in the foyer making his oh-so-persuasive case, I found I didn’t care much, just wanted him gone before the campers arrived.

The Philip who was dropped off at my door that August was bigger than the boy I had last seen, and he had let his hair grow. He lugged a duffel bag of clothing and a slim portfolio case of music, and he walked with a slight limp. When I came to hug him, he pivoted toward me oddly, and it was only a minute later, as he made his way up the hall stairs, that I realized his right leg was prosthetic.

I had heard about the embassy bombing, of course, but I had not seen Philip’s name in the newspapers. Three of his fellow Marines had been killed, and a dozen injured, and committees in both houses of Congress wanted to know why this and why that and why some other thing.
“It was a dangerous place,” was all Philip would say, the first evening in our welcome reception.

A hot night, faint breeze through the big screened porch where we gathered. Philip had come downstairs in shorts, and his artificial leg was the unmentioned center of attention. He knew quite a few of his fellow campers and seemed at ease, though he still preferred Dr Pepper to wine. The conversation danced around more or less gracefully, until finally a fellow camper asked, “So, do you pedal with your left leg now?” Philip laughed. And then the subject vanished in laughter, drink, and music-chat. I realized, also, that I had blindly made a wise choice by rooming Philip with Bradley, a veteran of the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm. Bradley—never just Brad—walked with a slight limp and had, he said, a picturesque web of scars on his lower back as the result of an encounter with an amateur bomb in Kuwait. I saw him now, gazing benignly at Philip, and then his eyes shifted to meet mine and I thought he nodded, ever so slightly.

And I saw them in conversation, around dusk the next day, sitting on the low concrete wall that reinforced the riverbank. I noticed a tiny red glow passing between them and smiled, sniffing the air.

Any big old house makes noise, and if you sleep alone in such a house you come to terms with the noises. The porch screens hum in the breeze, and each time the refrigerator cycles on, the picture frames vibrate in the stairwell behind the kitchen. That night, or rather in the quietest hours of the morning, I found myself lying awake, thinking intermittently about my defunct marriage and empty future, staring up into the darkness and listening for a tiny sound that was not part of the usual.

Once, when I had first moved into the house, a swarm of bees had somehow taken over the living room, and they had made just such a faint clamor by banging against the bay window in their effort to get out. But this was different, far too rhythmic, and it stopped altogether from time to time. I got out of bed and passed, barefoot and stealthy, through the short corridor linking my suite to the rest of the house.

Dim light rose through the stairwell, and I moved slowly halfway down the stairs. The noise came from the keys of the digital piano on the landing below, left there for silent practice during quiet hours. I had never realized the keys made any sound at all. Even now, only a few feet away, I had to listen acutely. More audible were Philip’s grunts, snorts, and occasional whispers as he stopped, clenched and unclenched his fists, and jumped back into whatever he was so furiously practicing. His leg lay on the floor beside the bench; he was practicing without pedal, working on accuracy and speed. And he was becoming increasingly frustrated. At any moment he might quit and turn around; not wanting to be caught spying, I crept back to my bed.

So it went for four days. In truth, I was frightened by the energy I sensed in Philip’s silent practice, by the way he lunged through every setback and seemed to want to tear gashes in the music and leave it panting. I crept to the stairwell each of three straight nights, lingering where I could retreat should he turn abruptly, watching his hands, those white, big-knuckled hands that had fascinated me on my first sight of him flying⎯sometimes a foot above the keyboard, and sometimes sinking deeply into the keys to draw out a love song. I had first risen from bed because I could not sleep. Now I could not sleep because I wanted, every night, to sit here and listen to Philip’s stunning, exhausting silence.

When not enthralled by his hands I gazed at the stump of his leg. His prosthesis lay on the floor. The stump projected eight inches from his gym shorts, the crisscrossing surgical scars not yet faded. It embarrassed me. It seemed a shockingly intimate sight, the nudest thing I had ever seen. Yet I could not turn away.

I sought him out one afternoon as he sat on the porch and gazed across the river.

“Philip,” I said, “forgive me for prying, but what are you practicing at night?”

My question startled him. “Have I disturbed you? I was using the earphones.”

“Oh, no, no, I’m sure you aren’t bothering anyone. I simply stumbled on you the other night, when I had gotten up for some other reason entirely. Point is, you were going at it hammer and tongs.”

He smiled briefly. “Hammer and tongs,” he whispered. “It’s Liszt. The Don Juan Fantasy.”

“Wow,” I said, and meant it. “I can’t even play that.”
“I doubt you’d want to,” he said. “It’s junk.”
“Then why do you want to play it?”
He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, falling into a series of small nods. “I have been meaning to ask your advice on something,” he said. “I have been invited to play at the White House, on Veterans Day.”

“Philip, that’s wonderful!”

“Is it?” he held my gaze for a moment. “Or is it a PR stunt? The Marine Band is pulling together a whole bunch of us wounded warriors, a bunch of guys who left pieces and parts in various shithole corners of the world but somehow manage to live rich and rewarding lives through music. It’s supposed to be inspirational.”

“Sounds like you doubt it.”

“My first impulse was to tell them to go fuck themselves.” Perhaps I still thought of Philip as a little boy, but the obscenity struck me hard.

“Then I thought,” he went on, “maybe if I do really well, somebody will hear and want to hire me for other stuff. Even accompanist gigs, piano bars, anything would be better than just sitting around my mom’s house.”

“It could happen,” I said. “Though I’d hate to think of you doing requests for a room full of drunks.”

“I’ve done it before. It ain’t that bad.” “But.”
“But,” he said, and fell silent.
“What does Bradley say?”

“Bradley is strongly in favor of the go-fuck-yourself option,” Philip said. “In fact, he says I should accept, perform, knock them on their asses, and then tell the president to his face to go fuck himself.”

“And you? What do you think?”

Philip was silent a long time, or it seemed so. Finally: “When I first came back, I was in the hospital in Bethesda, and on Memorial Day they loaded us into buses and brought us down to the Mall for the concert. Got us nice seats, front row, so we’d all be on TV. There was some C-list actor who got famous playing a disabled vet, plus a bunch of Hollywood bimbos emoting about how much they appreciated us, what heroes we were. All the while I’m thinking, if I approached you in a bar, your bodyguards would beat me bloody. Then they loaded us back on the bus and brought us home. Hurray for the vets, now go away.”

“You said you wanted my advice,” I prodded. “I haven’t heard a question yet.”

“Should I do it?”

“Play at the White House, yes. Insult the president, no,” I said.

“That simple, is it?”

“To me. I’d also consider something shorter and less aggressive than the Liszt. It’s a social occasion, after all.”

Philip smiled, his gaze unfocused across the wide river. “Well, I guess I’ll think about it.”

I lumbered on: “Or, if you really must bring down the house, work with me on it. I would never program it myself, I meant it when I said I couldn’t play it. But I studied it with Alfred Brendel back in the day, and I know it, I know where the snakes are. Stay here for the next six weeks. You’ll have your room to yourself, all the privacy you want, and you can practice on the Steinway in the living room. We’ll work on it together every day. Put a fine edge on the piece before you ride it into battle.”

“I couldn’t afford that,” Philip said.

“No charge. Throw a little something into the grocery fund from time to time, is all.” I stood to leave, and at the door to the house I turned back. “You’re not a performing seal, Philip,” I said. “Seals do things for scraps of raw fish. I don’t know what payoff you’re after.”

That fall, as Philip practiced in the living room, I began work in my study. I would assemble a recital program, I thought, then call in whatever IOUs I might still have to see if I could stage a comeback. A small venue in DC or Baltimore would be best, affordable but still credible as a professional stage. Instead of my old pyrotechnic warhorses, I would play a thoughtful program, suitable for a mature artist, and we’d see what happened.

What happened, most immediately: On our fourth day of work, I had put my hand onto the Steinway keyboard to illustrate a fingering, and all at once Philip’s hand was on top of mine, softly enclosing, and he turned toward me on the bench.

“Philip, we have work to do,” I said.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Not that kind of work,” I said. He let his hand linger a  moment, looked into my eyes, and squeezed. He did not mean to alarm me, I don’t think, but the strength in his hands made me imagine bones crunching. “Philip, please,” I said. “I’m old enough to be your mother.”

“And I’m missing a leg, or hadn’t you noticed?” he said, not letting go.

“Please let go of my hand,” I said softly. He did not let go.

“I know I’m damaged. But everyone is damaged somehow,” he said, now turning and taking my other hand in his, though I tried to squirm away. “Philip,” I said more sternly, rising from the bench. He let my hands slip away and hung his head.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m flattered. But we’d never be good for each other.”

“We’d be great together, and you know it.”

“I don’t know it. And if this sort of thing happens again, you will have to leave.”

We went back to work. Philip did not try again. He certainly could have forced me, I realized. We were alone in the house, and he was very strong. Was I attracted to him? Of course I was; he was beautiful. Those hands! But I thought his ardor for me reflected deprivation and proximity more than anything else. He could have better than me, but I would do in a pinch. I was much older than he, and gravity had had its way with my body. Yet I was sure I could please him. I wanted to, and I knew how. And after all, my Charles had gotten himself a new toy⎯why shouldn’t I? Then I thought: I won’t do it precisely because Charles has.

None of this kept the thought from my mind, often at the most unlikely moments. Finally, I made a pact with myself. Later, after the concert, after his triumph—our triumph—we would return to Cantabile that night, no matter how late, and we’d come back into the dark, welcoming house, and if he were still interested then, I would make love to him, all he wanted, and almost enough.

Sometimes in life, you have to wait for the punchline. In Charles’ case, he lived the life he wanted for another six years after he left me, with his box at the opera and his club seats at the football games, and he and his magnificent Celine blasting their megawatt smiles at the photographers at the Cancer Ball.

He eventually deceased himself, as they say, while in the act. I smirked to think of God tapping him on the shoulder right in the middle of that most pleasurable of moments. His quietus smacked him in the chest and he let out a gasp, and a gush, and then his lifeless face landed perfectly between Celine’s spectacular breasts. And she thought he was merely spent, and went on stroking his hair for several moments, until his unresponsiveness annoyed her and she poked him in the ribs. Surprise, Celine.

I didn’t know any of that when I made my pact, but I knew the long-term future was a sucker bet, and I started the next day content with my decision.
As Veterans Day approached Philip put me on his guest list for the White House concert and left off practicing three days beforehand. Enough, he said, he was ready.

The concert would be recorded the afternoon before the holiday and broadcast the next night.

Of the event itself, I have minimal impressions. I was seated well to the back of the East Room, and the acoustics were awful. The president spoke without a microphone. A cellist played, and a blues guitarist, and a young woman did a good job on a tough aria, and then it was Philip’s turn, and he brought his volcanic piece off without a hitch. So much so that the East Room, a well of polite applause if ever one existed, erupted in a standing ovation that went on for three minutes.

Then the president stepped forward and held out his hand, and Philip put his hands behind his back. He said something I couldn’t hear. The president’s smile never faltered but his eyes darted and in a moment Philip had been whisked away. In the post-concert crush I made my way to his side and asked, “What happened?”

“Just what I intended from the beginning,” he said, staring at me and daring me to scold him. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“No, Philip,” I said. “You go. I’ll stay in DC overnight. You take tomorrow to clear your things out of the house.”
“Annie? You’re throwing me out?”

“Music isn’t meant for spite, Philip. You can’t do what you did and be with me.”

At that, he pulled himself up straight and gave me an overstated, sarcastic salute, then walked away.

He was entirely excised from the broadcast, the twenty- minute gap made up with filler. It was as though he had never played, had never been there at all.
Was I wrong to think music could heal Philip? To think something as prosaic as playing the piano could untie so many knots? It was a faith of sorts. We hear the ecstasy in Beethoven’s late music and forget the wretched man. He wrote of kisses for all the world, but his own last gesture in life was a raised fist.

My faith had not even saved me, really. I was alone, in the quietly echoing house on the river. The sun was going down, the birds skimming across the water, diving to bring sudden death to tiny fish deceived to the surface by the dwindling light. So it went, I thought. We watch our weight and eat our veggies and get cancer anyway. We volunteer in soup kitchens and shelters only to be hit by a bus on our way home. We pull ourselves up, shake our fists at heaven, and still die.

I was so exhausted that night that I considered sleeping in my reading chair. But in the end I got up and went to the piano and played, and played through the night to the dawn, ending by playing Bach chorales and singing at the top of my lungs in my lousy German. And then the sun was up and the day had begun and Philip was gone and the fish in the river were doomed.

Well, I thought, there we are. Music doesn’t cure. It doesn’t save, nor redeem. But it’s the only thing I know that doesn’t make everything worse.

Maryland author John McKeon grew up in an Irish family in Brooklyn, New York, though half of his relatives are Italian, and his grandparents spoke German at home. He is the author of two novels, The Point of the Spear and Other Harbors, and the short story collection Cantabile and Other Stories. His story in Delmarva Review was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. It will be aired on “Delmarva Radio Theatre” at 8 p.m., Sunday, December 16, on Delmarva Public Radio, WSCL 89.5 FM. Poet Anne Colwell will read in the main role.

Delmarva Review is a literary journal of national scope, with regional roots. The nonprofit review discovers and prints compelling new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from authors within the region and beyond. It is supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Visit: DelmarvaReview.org. Order copies at Amazon.com.