Private Music

In the still, early hours of a misty morning in the Berkshires, far away from the sweltering heat of South India, Kat and her mother stared straight at each other, but her mother had no recognition of her. Kat didn’t know then that she was about to embark on a journey that would bring her closer to her mother, while her mother’s life slipped away.

Just moments earlier, Katherine’s clear soprano voice had floated freely out of the window and mingled with the cool forest air. She hadn’t been able to sleep, which wasn’t unusual in the days just before a performance, so she’d gotten up early, amidst the birdsong, and without waking anyone, she’d padded down the polished wooden stairs in her mother’s sweaty worn-out slippers. She closed the door to her sanctuary – a small room with an upright piano and a small green sofa covered in bright yellow Indian silk pillows. The solitary morning hours allowed her to breathe with a lightness that came from a sense of time’s elongation, a space in which to believe in the possibility of perfection. She sucked in its sweetness.

This morning, Katherine sang a single phrase of music until it stretched out taught from the top of her head, through the open window, and out into the branches of the maple and birch trees outside. As she sang the final note, she experienced again the sensation of her voice existing free of her body, untethered, so that she was merely a conduit through which the music flowed. Katherine sat at the piano and looked out the adjacent window, imagining herself singing for the forest, singing into the dome of nature’s architecture, the place where she felt most at home, for reasons she did not yet understand. She imagined her disembodied voice mingling with the forest world, becoming part of the forest world like the birds.

But the slam of a door against the wall shattered the moment into hundreds of little pieces. Katherine turned to see, framed in the doorway, an image that would haunt her for the rest of her life. It was an image that would cling like sticky webs to the inner spaces of her mind: this was her beautiful mother - her quiet, gentle mother standing in front of her, wild-eyed with anger, dried spittle crusted on the corners of her mouth, her black glossy tresses in disarray around her sleep-creased face, her unblinking eyes unnaturally wide. Katherine’s sanctuary filled with desperation. Katherine searched her mother’s face for a glimmer of recognition but Julia stared angrily back at her.

“Who are you?” her mother’s voice trembled up from somewhere deep in her belly.

“Mom, it’s me, Kat.” Katherine’s knees went weak and a torrent of blood rushed through her ears. “Mom? Can’t you see me?” She forced herself towards her mother, and taking her thin shaking hands in hers, she stood for a moment searching for something behind this new, untamed wildness in her blue eyes. But Julia held Katherine’s gaze steadily and uncompromisingly.

“Who the hell are you? Where’s Katherine? Where’s my daughter?” Julia spat, wrenching her hands free.

“Mom, it’s okay, I’m here. This is me, Katherine – see? You’re just having a bad dream.” She reached out to touch her mother’s face, but Julia swatted her away. After several attempts, Katherine managed to coax her mother out of the piano room and up the stairs.

Halfway up, Julia stopped abruptly and turned around, and in a low, penetrating voice which seemed to emanate from a core of molten-hot anger: “I know it’s you, you know. I’m not stupid. I knew all along it was because of you that he left me and fled back to India.”

Katherine looked at her mother from the stair below. A single slant from the weak rays of morning sun fell between the two women, lighting up the dust between them which looked like an early winter snow squall. The dust caught Julia’s attention; she followed the sparkles with her eyes for a moment and then became confused. Katherine took her mother’s elbow as lightly as she could despite her shaking hands, and guided her up the stairs and steered her into her bedroom where she collapsed into the crumpled mess of bed sheets.

Katherine kneeled next to the bed and watched with wide-eyes as tears found their way into the crevices of her mother’s aging face. She put a hand on her mother’s shoulder, but Julia shrugged it off. As soon as she’d made sure her mother was lying down in bed on the verge of sleep, Katherine fled the room.

At first, she sat at the top of the stairs until she heard the calm, even breath of sleep. When she was sure her mother had fallen asleep, she crept downstairs and sat at the piano. Even as fear gripped her belly, she forced herself to re-enter the music. It was something she knew to be true: in music, pain retreated. She turned on the lamps on either side of the piano and flung herself back into the notes, playing one voice on the piano and singing the other. Her voice faltered; she had lost the synchronicity and focus. She struggled harder to coordinate her breath with the sound, but the more she tried, the airier her voice became until, afraid it would evaporate completely, she succumbed to the tightness in her throat and sunk into the threatening silence.

Defeated, she went back to bed and lay on her back, allowing her thoughts to flood in. She replayed her mother’s outburst: it was because of you he left me …. Who was she talking about? Who had left her? And how did India fit into all this? It must all be just a terrible nightmare, a twisting of her career as an Indian art scholar inside a strange dream. Yet something about the conviction in her mother’s voice made kat wonder. She began turning the words over and over like an archeologist turning bits of stone, inspecting them for even the tiniest clue, because she sensed there was something real.

Katherine went to her mother’s room to check on her, but she was still fast asleep, her white nightie twisted around her like a tourniquet. Katherine considered untangling her, but the idea of her mother waking up again unleashed a cold, rushing fear as if the ground beneath were giving way. She couldn’t see any way to untangle her without disturbing the peace she had found in sleep. She looked at her watch and wondered if it was a good time to call her father. He was in Dublin on a year’s sabbatical from his job at the local hospital. Kat knew he was working some afternoons at a hospital over there, so she decided to call the hospital instead of at his brother’s house where he was staying. She preferred to catch him at work because that was where he was at his most composed; she knew this would be a shock for him. She also knew he would know what to do, because Kat hadn’t a clue.

With cold fingers, Katherine dialed the hospital in Dublin and left a message for him to call home as soon as possible.

He called back half an hour later.

“Dad?”

“Hello, Katherine.” It wasn’t often he used her full name. “It’s good to hear your voice. Everything alright?”

It’s mom. Something’s happened.”

“Just a minute.” She heard him cover the phone and a door close in the background. “What is it darling? What’s happened?” his voice was calm, unflustered - just as she’d hoped it would be. This was the version of her father that she missed – the one that made her feel the world was safe and secure.

“Mom came down in the middle of the night,” she sucked in her breath, “but she didn’t know who I was.” She wanted to dissolve into tears, but she managed to hold herself back.

“Oh.” Kat heard him switch the phone to his other ear, “Is she any better this morning?”

“She’s still sleeping. Dad, I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

He spoke quickly, “There’s something we need to talk about, but I’d like to wait until I get home. Lets see, I fly tomorrow, so I’ll be home the following morning.”

“Do you know what’s happening? Why can’t you tell me now?” Her mind suddenly filled with the loud chaotic sound of a flock of flapping pigeons. And then she remembered, the concert was in three days. She had rehearsals every day and she absolutely could not miss a single one: it was only been a year since she’d been asked to join the small, world-renowned ensemble, The Baroque Singers.

“Not on the phone. I’m flying tomorrow afternoon and should be home very early Thursday morning.”

“I have a rehearsal all day Thursday, but I can try to pick you up from the airport if you get in early enough.”

“No, don’t pick me up.” He was unusually curt. “Don’t leave your mother alone.”

“But dad, that’s impossible. The concert’s on Friday and I have rehearsals all week. What am I supposed to do? I’ll have to leave her here by herself. If I don’t go to rehearsals, I could lose this job.”

Hugh was silent for a moment and then breathed out a heavy sigh, “You’ll have to call your sister.”

Katherine’s heart did a tiny flip, “Can you call her? I haven’t talked to her in a long time. I don’t even know what to tell her about what’s happening.”

Hugh agreed to call her sister, jo, and ask her to come home as soon as possible.

“It’ll be difficult for her to get away from the kids, and Mark’s annual WHO conference is next week, I think.” He was silent for a moment, then added, “Actually, I will arrange for a home nurse to come and look after Julia as soon as possible. Don’t know why I didn’t thnk of that,” he mumbled into the phone. As a doctor he knew so many people at the local hospital, Kat knew he’d have no trouble getting someone.

After hanging up, Kat went back to her mother’s room. She was still sleeping. She crept across the room and sat in the armchair and at the foot of her bed. She sat back and closed her eyes, trying to settle her thoughts, but without success. The idea that her mother had an illness so severe her father couldn’t discuss it on the phone, and that both her father and sister would be here at the house within the next few days, made her sick with anxiety. But the worst of it was the concert still loomed ahead; it was a concert that could launch her career into the competitive world of classical oratorio - if her solo went well. She knew she had it in her; she’d been practicing for months. She had been chosen from over three-hundred singers, most of them graduates from some of the best music schools around the world. She knew she needed to sequester what was happening with her mother for the next week – just until the performances were over. She longed to stay here next to her peaceful sleeping mother in the warmth of her bedroom, but it was time to leave.

The smell of rain in the moist air struck Kat as she stepped outside to get into her little car. As she drove down the steep forested hillside, the wind blew so strongly the trees seemed to bend inwards forming a tunnel – a tunnel to the outside world of normality.

She usually used the forty-five minute drive to the studio to do her vocal exercises and warm-up her voice, but this time, her thoughts were so hot and jumbled that by the time she arrived, she wasn’t able to remember anything after the tunnel of trees.

After the rehearsal that night, kat arrived home weary and irritable. The conductor had pointed out that she was straining to reach the high notes. She only had a few days left to reach her peak, and she knew this public rebuke was a warning sign. If she could not get rid of the strain in her voice, she would put her career in jeopardy. As soon as she got to the house she went straight to her mother’s room. To her relief, the door was closed. She could hear someone moving about and her mother snoring lightly. She’d had an email from her father confirming a nurse would arrive that evening and that he had been able to get on a flight leaving late that night. So, in the morning, she would discover what was wrong with her mother.

In a haze, she went to her room and changed for bed, hanging her gold necklace on its hook. It was a gift from her mother for her eighteenth birthday. She remembered sitting in an arm chair, her legs folded neatly beneath her, carefully opening the tissue paper to reveal a tiny jewellery box. Inside was a necklace with a puzzling gold figurine of an Indian woman playing what seemed like an oversized guitar. She glanced at her mother who was smoothing out the crumpled tissue paper and didn’t look up. It wasn’t that the tiny woman on the necklace surprised her - Kat knew it to be a Hindu goddess - they were dotted around the house in various forms. There were statues on shelves and pictures of them on the wall, but this was the first time her mother had given her a gift of one.

Kat asked her about the gold figure, wanting to show how interested she was. Her mother described it to her: it was the Hindu goddess, Saraswati, who symbolised learning and the arts, especially music, her mother had emphasized. The large instrument she held across her lap was called a veena – she spoke with a spontaneous energy and a brightness in her eyes that it made it impossible for Kat to say what she was really thinking: I am never going to wear this in front of my friends. Even though the necklace was handmade in gold, and looked pretty from a distance, the tiny goddess looked strange and she didn’t want to wear it. But when Kat thanked her mother, and told her in the most convincing way she could that she loved it, her mother had smiled her beautiful, rare smile, and this made the strange gift worth it. She wore the Saraswati necklace (underneath her clothes) everyday for months afterwards. During her university days, though, she had forgotten about it. It wasn’t until the day of her audition for the Baroque Singers just over a year ago that she’d remembered it. She’d worn it every day since.

The next morning, after listening at her mother’s bedroom door for a moment and not hearing anything, kat crept downstairs. She knew her father was arriving early in the morning, but she still jumped when she saw him in the living room, stretched out asleep on the couch, his stocking feet resting on the arm, and his glasses next to an empty mug on the side table. She went into her music room determined to smooth out the strain that had crept into her voice yesterday. She knew what this meant: controlling her thoughts and emotions and focusing all her mental energy on the music, following the notes as they moved up and down, and not allowing a single thought to poke its ugly head into her mind.

But an hour later, a knock on the door woke kat from her thoughts and she realized she had been sitting at the piano staring at the keys. She had not practiced a single note. She opened the door and hugged her father.

“Hello darling.” His voice was weary.

“Hi dad.”

Hugh sat down across the room from kat in an old wooden chair. He leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees. He wore his usual thick corduroy trousers and checked button down shirt. Light from the rising sun was diffusing through a thin layer of cloud and pooled on the carpet where Hugh had placed his stocking feet. Kat sat on the wide velvet piano stool, observing the hem of her jeans. Her uncombed hair fell over her shoulders and formed a barrier around her face.

“I can’t sing.” Katherine said, her head bent low over her crossed legs.

“I’m sure you can, darling. Don’t push yourself.”

“I’ve just been sitting here for an hour. Like I blanked out. This has never happened to me before.”

Hugh levered himself out of the chair and began to pace back and forth across the small room. After a moment he stopped and placed his hands awkwardly on kat’s shoulders, “It will come back, Katherine. You won’t be paralyzed like this forever.”

Kat watched him as he moved over to the window and looked out into the forest he loved so much that he and her mother had chosen to build this house in the middle of it.

“You don’t know that, Dad. You might be trained to understand the human body, but not the mind.”

“You’re right, kat, I’m not a psychologist, but I do have some experience. I am your father after all and I know how determined and tenacious you are. You take after your mother in that regard, you know. I know I haven’t been a huge part of your or your sister’s life recently...” his voice trailed off as if he were about to say something but he let it evaporate into the atmosphere instead. “Kat, I have absolute faith in your resilience.”

Katherine looked at her father with wide eyes, wondering if she’d ever felt this before, that he cared what happened to her.

“Anyway. Enough about me: what’s going on with mom?”

Hugh jingled the change in his pocket for a moment and stared at the floor.

“She has cancer and it’s gone to her brain.”

“no,” kat stared at her father. It simply could not be true.

“I’m sorry kat.”

“I don’t believe you. how do you know?”

“we’ve known for a few months, but …”

“wait, what? You knew?”

“yes, we knew your mum had cancer, but she didn’t want anyone to know just yet. She wanted to wait until your important concert was over. No one expected it to spread so quickly to the brain.”

“That’s just not possible. Why wouldn’t she want her own children to know? Does Jo know?”

“not yet. She’ll be here tomorrow.”

“I don’t believe this. Why would mom not want us to know?”

“we were waiting for some test results to come back that would confirm things. She didn’t want you to worry - especially just before your concert. But I want you to know I’ve been agonizing over it.”

“but this doesn’t make any sense. She was fine just a few days ago. I don’t understand, dad, I just don’t get it.”

“I know.”

“this is not supposed to happen. I can’t believe this. In fact, I don’t believe it.”

“listen, kat, the focus has to be on keeping your mum comfortable now. I’m sorry you had to find out like this. She would have hated for this to happen.”

“you know what she said to me that night – the night she didn’t know who I was? She said ‘I know it’s because of you he left me to go to india’”

hugh sucked in his breath.

Kat noticed an intensity in her father’s eyes. “What? Do you know something? Is there something true about what she said?”

“no of course not. I haven’t a clue what she meant.”

Kat walked aimlessly around the small room which now seemed more like a tiny prison cell than a music room. She had to get out.

“I have to go, dad. Sorry.” Kat walked out without looking back, got into her car, her small safe place, and drove away.