Accidental Notes: A Novel
Chapter 36
An Audience of Ghosts
Not sure what this story is? The synopsis is available here.
Catch up on chapter 35 here.
It’s colder than it ever gets in California, but to me it feels warm. The sun has come back, narrow on the horizon now, blue sky reminding me of home, but mostly what I think is that tonight I’ll be able to see the stars.
I never took my jacket off when I went back to Grandma’s house and I pull it tightly now as I walk. I don’t know where I’m going as I kick my way through the slush. I text Grayson that something came up and I won’t be back for a while, absorb his hug gif like it’s around me, then mute my phone so I can focus. Without the piano or the sheet music, I don’t know what to do. This time tomorrow, my audition will already be over, and I have no idea what I’m going to play for Mr. Gutierrez.
While I walk, I review the short list of songs I have memorized. Most of them are too simplistic. The rest don’t make sense to audition for an accompanist role. I’m only about ten minutes away from Grandma’s house when I know for certain nothing I have memorized will work. I feel so alone now, and like I haven’t been by myself in a long time. Even at Brennan’s grave, he felt there, with me. I shove my hands into my pockets. The sun is out, and it’s warmer than it’s been, but that isn’t saying much. With time, the cold still gets to me.
I stop and take in my surroundings for the first time since I walked away from the piano. I’m not far from the church. I wonder if Dad’s gloves are still there. It hasn’t been windy, so maybe they are. Maybe I can get them back now that my hands have healed enough to wear them. I follow the path with purpose now, my thoughts still often circling back to my audition, but thinking about other things, too. The gravestone I’ll have to see again. The brother I’ll never get to see.
The cast-iron gate is cold against my fingers when I push it open. The hinges creak, but no one is here to notice. So much snow has melted that the grass is as wet as it would be after a rainstorm. Mud splashes up my legs and stains my jeans as I walk. I note the detail, but it doesn’t bother me, not until I see my brother’s gravestone, and the two navy lumps that must be my gloves sitting nearby.
I don’t want to kneel and cake even more of myself in mud, so I crouch down instead. It’s awkward and I feel childish, especially as I apologize like a kindergartner. “I’m sorry I yelled,” I say. “I’m sorry I punched. It’s not your fault. I don’t know why you did this, and I probably never will, but I shouldn’t have taken out my anger at Dad on you.”
Apologizing to his gravestone feels equally weird and right. I feel lighter as I pick up the gloves and put them in my pocket. They’re too muddy to wear today, but they just need rinsed. Then I can give them back.
As I stand, I notice lights on in the church. Not candles in the window, but lights. There’s only one car in the parking lot, as far as I can see, and I’m cold after my walk. Maybe I can go inside, just for a minute. Isn’t that what churches are supposed to be? Places to take refuge?
Before I can change my mind, I step out of the cemetery, cover the distance from gate to heavy door, and go inside. No one is in the foyer. The doors to the sanctuary are open, revealing an equally empty space. I walk that way now, down the center aisle. Soon the only thing I can see is the piano. While on Christmas Eve I felt like it was mocking me, in this empty room it’s more like an invitation.
The last time I stood on that stage, I messed up so badly I needed to escape. Same with the first time I performed there, in my best outfit, at my first piano competition. But so much has changed since those things happened. I walk up the green velvet stairs that lead from the floor to the stage and sit down in my muddy clothes on the polished black bench.
An audience of ghosts waits for my encore. The people here the first time I played, when I was perfect, and it wasn’t good enough. The mourners who wanted a song to help them remember my grandmother, but got my mistakes instead. I want to play something for them, but I already figured out I don’t have anything worthwhile memorized. I stand and turn around, opening the bench and praying for a miracle.
I get one. This bench is overflowing with music. On top are the hymns we sang at Christmas. Right below those, though?
“Heaven Can Wait.” The pages I left on the stand as I rushed out of here, embarrassed. I triple-check, because it’s a long song, but every single page is here. I lift them out and sort them on the piano.
I rest my hands on the keys, a whole step higher than the F I usually start on for warm-ups, because this song starts in G. I play the chord — an octave in my left hand, the three notes of the G major chord plus the octave in my right. Switch to C. Start the arpeggios. Note after note pours out of me, and I think of Brennan while I play. The melody isn’t in the music, but it’s in my head after all these years. I understand now why Dad always had this song on repeat. I didn’t even know Brennan and it reminds me of him. I get to the key change, from G down into F, into our family’s key. Then I go back into G.
I press into the notes hard, a forte they don’t call for, because it’s a loudness I feel inside me. The lyrics to this song don’t make perfect sense, but they feel real and honest and raw. Maybe I make mistakes. I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter. It’s more than five full minutes before I reach the end.
From my audience of ghosts I hear, unmistakably, the sound of applause.
Sitting halfway down the pews is Pastor Clark. “That was beautiful.”
“I’m sorry I let myself in. I just — ”
“Music does something to the body, doesn’t it. Lets you relax into it. When people say God is everywhere, I’ve always been certain what they mean is that God is in the music, and music is everywhere.”
Eighty-eight perfect keys sit in front of me, not mine. I suddenly feel like I’m trespassing. “I still shouldn’t be here. This isn’t my piano. This isn’t my home, or my church, or even my town.”
“God’s house is for everyone, but especially for those who make it more heavenly. The way that you just did.”
“Like my brother?” I ask. I can’t forget the first thing Pastor Clark ever said to me.
“That was all you, Adaya.”
With one quick motion, I push the sheet music into a single pile again, then I slide off the bench and down the stairs to meet him. He holds out a hand to shake. I don’t take it.
He seems to get the hint and sits down again, patting the hard wooden pew. I join him, trying to focus on him but more interested in sneaking glances at the baby grand, the one that made even my broken, scarred fingers feel like magic today.
“You know the parable of the talents, I’m sure,” he says. I don’t. I’m afraid he’s going to give me this whole sermon about, I don’t know, breaking and entering, but what he says instead is this: “In the parable, God is a master, giving some of his money to his servants to steward, which means to take care of. One of them buries it, afraid he’ll otherwise lose it. The other two take a risk and invest them. Do you know who the master praises?”
I shake my head.
“Not the one who plays it safe, but the other two. God didn’t give us our talents so we can bury them.”
An idea rises in me, so clearly on wings my whole abdomen is butterflies just thinking it. There’s not a lot of natural bravery in me, but my words press through the fear. They can do that, when it’s important enough. “Uh, Pastor Clark? What are the chances you have wifi here?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with your natural talent, but we do. What do you need the internet for?”
I tell him about my audition, and all the ways I didn’t do it right the first time, how the second chance got taken from me by the storm. I skirt around the fact that the reason my grandmother’s piano isn’t available is because I baptized it in wine. “So, is there any chance I could bring my laptop here and video audition with this piano? And this song?”
He pats my hand. “I’m a sucker for a good redemption story,” he says, and writes down the password to the wifi.
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