"I . . . I can't," he spoke quietly, ashamed of
his words.
"But listen to him play," she pleaded. "Can't you hear his soul
aching?"
The man did not speak. All was silent save for the sound of the piano. It was such a
hollow feeling: the one song alone in the empty night, being played over and over.
"Go. He has lost his grandfather. Now he needs his father."
"And me? Who is there to comfort me?"
"Only your own heart. You suffer too much for me to know how to ease your pain.
But the boy still has his father. Please, go to your son."
His father was leaning against the wall. Tears were in his father's eyes. He could not
look into his father's eyes, into his father's pain. He had too much of his own. He looked
down at his hands instead. They played, and he could not stop them, and he did not want
to. He had written the song and it was Grandfather's favorite. Now it was a part of him
and he could not control it. He began to play more violently. He watched his hands in
their fury toward the keys, but he did not see them. He wanted to cry, but couldn't, not
while he played.
His father was there now. He rested a hand on his son's shoulder.
"Jonathan."
The boy did not respond.
"Jonathan."
The boy played.
"Jonathan," he called his son's name softly and there was no urgency in his
voice, only love.
"Jonathan, I know."
The boy stopped. The last note echoed, and Jonathan looked into his father's eyes.
"He loved that song," Jonathan said, and began to weep. "I never played it
enough. I wrote it one day and played it for him, and he liked it, but I didn't. I just
put it away." The words were coming now. He could not stop them. "Every time he
asked me to play it, I'd tell him I wrote another song, a better song. When I played the
new song, he always said he liked it, but he never did, not as much. I never understood
why he loved it. Just a simple song I wrote one day. Maybe because he bought me the piano,
and it was the first song I ever wrote for him."
He turned away from his father's gaze. He looked at the keys of the piano his
grandfather had given him on his tenth birthday, six years ago. His grandfather had been
the only one who knew how very much he wanted to play. He had never dared tell anyone
else. He felt no one but Grandpa could fully understand him--not even his own father. He
drew in a deep breath. He began to speak, more slowly now.
"So I played. I've been playing for a long time now. I hoped - I mean I thought
maybe--"
"Nothing will bring him back."
"No. But he can hear it, can't he? Wherever he is, he can hear it?"
"Yes," his father said softly, "yes, he can."
The woman could hear whispering in the other room. Even with the big wool blanket
draped over her she felt cold without her husband at her side. Yet not to have sent him
would have been selfish. The worst pain in the world for a mother is to know her son is
hurting and that she can do nothing about it.
The whispering stopped. The floor creaked in the hallway. Her husband opened the door
just wide enough so he could come through and then closed it again. He crawled into bed
and put his arms around her. Their son began to play again.
"Jonathan?"
"Here, father."
Jonathan was standing by the window. The moonlight made pools of his deep brown eyes.
"Your mother worries about you."
"I know."
"I worry, too." He moved to stand beside his son. "Your gift, Jonathan,
it's magnificent. And yet forever you play this one song. What can you do with a single
song? I know you loved your grandfather. I loved him. Playing the song won't bring him
back, it will only trap you."
"I feel I owe it to him."
"You gave him your love. That's all a man can owe another man."
"No. I owe him the song." He did not know how to explain to his father that
he felt compelled to play it, that neither his fingers nor his heart knew any other song.
So he said, "I will not play it forever. I'll know, somehow, when it is time to let
go."
His father could say nothing. He only accepted his son's words. And when Jonathan
turned back to the window, his father turned with him. They gazed together at the stars,
father and son.
Jonathan ran a graceful finger over the album cover. He peered at the dust that had
accumulated there. He could not believe this album had been shoved into a bookcase and
forgotten all these years. He opened the cover and turned the first page. It made an odd
cracking. Jonathan handled the album carefully, afraid it would come apart.
Here was a picture of him in his new red wagon. Grandpa was pulling it and smiling.
There he was on the swing Grandpa had made for him, laughing as he was pushed.
Here he was at the rickety old piano in grandpa's basement, banging on the keys.
There was his grandfather, sitting with him at the new piano and teaching him to play.
Jonathan turned the page and saw photographs, four decades old, of his father and
grandfather. They were so dreamlike, more like paintings than photographs. It wasn't until
he saw them that he realized how much his father must be hurting.
He felt strange looking at those photographs, as though he ached with a fond
remembrance. But the things they showed belonged to the past, and he had never been a part
of them.
Jonathan closed the book gently. One tear rolled down his cheek and slipped onto the
cover. In the other room, out of a hopeless silence, came the sound of a single note.
Could his father be playing the piano? He had never shown any great interest in it
before. Jonathan got up an walked into the room. He found his father sitting in the big
arm chair with a book in his hands. He was not reading. He was staring at the piano.
Another note sounded. The piano played. One key after another pressed down. It played
the song. Father and son watched until the last key was depressed, until the last note
faded into the night.
Jonathan walked slowly to the piano, as if in a daze. He ran a hand tenderly over the
keys. His father now stood on the opposite side of the piano. Jonathan looked up and met
his father's eyes.
"He's setting you free," his father told him. "He wants you to play
another song now. So play it beautifully."
Jonathan sat on the wooden bench and played. He played for his grandfather, who was
setting him free. He played for his mother, who always worried so. He played for his
father, who had helped him survive the pain.
And there, at the piano in the center of the room, he did something he had thought he
would never be able to do again. He played for himself.
