[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

remember."
After an awkward pause, Sharon directed the conversation at
me. "When patients are in rehabilitation, most ask to be taken
home, but Alexandra never has."
Alex flinched. "I've never asked to go home?"
"Not once."
Another long silence ensued, which for the life of me I couldn't
think how to fill, then Alex said, almost under her breath, "New
pathways. Stronger connections. Daily regeneration. Improved
pathways. Stronger connections. Daily regeneration. Improved
couplings. That's my mission."
I looked at her quizzically. "In your life?"
"In my brain. I'm rebuilding my brain."
"That's correct, dear," her mother said, seeming somewhat
mollified. "Physical and mental gains can continue for up to two
years. You should listen to your neurologist. There's no reason to
believe you can't improve. Count your blessings your music box
wasn't damaged."
"Music box?" I said.
"The area of the brain that regulates musical comprehension,"
Sharon replied.
"Everything else is shattered. I've lost my independence, and
simple tasks require all my concentration, but my genius is intact.
It took a week of practice before I could close my hand into a
fist." Alex demonstrated by shaking a fist at her mother.
Her mother brushed aside her hand. "When she hears a familiar
piece on the radio or one of her discs, she can name the
composer, score and orchestra."
"Useless information comes back to me, but I can't control my
emotions."
"Music has been part of her recovery. Her doctors marvel at her
progress."
Alex's voice rose in frustration. "To me, it's slow, this process of
splicing. Why can't anyone understand?"
"I do," I said quietly. "The part of your brain that regulates drive
must not have changed. You had intense ambition when you
were younger or you wouldn't have achieved what you did
were younger or you wouldn't have achieved what you did
musically. You still have it the desire to excel and the feeling
that nothing's ever enough. If you finished tenth in a competition
with a thousand people, you'd obsess about the nine ahead of
you, not the nine hundred and ninety behind. Something like
that?"
Alex stared at me, clearly astonished. "Yes. My music career
was like that. I hadn't finished swallowing before I reached for
the next sip, and I tasted nothing."
"That's not true," Sharon put in. "You can't remember that."
"How would you know? I explicitly remember living every
moment but the one I was living."
"We're so proud of her. Alexandra has survived seventeen
surgeries, and with each one, she "
" risked coming out more deformed," Alex interrupted.
Her mother made a clucking noise. "With each one, you faced
adversity head on."
Alex said tonelessly, "There's risk in every breath we take."
Abruptly, she sat up straight and met my eyes. "And an equal
amount of heartbreak in the dangers we avoid."
I hadn't yet formed a reply when Sharon said gaily, "You never
were afraid. You played Carnegie Hall as if you were born for
the stage."
Alex's head snapped around toward her mother. "Before every
performance, I became ill. Do you remember that?"
Sharon looked away. "You have a delicate stomach. That comes
from your father's side."
"I had to vomit to play, Mother. Does that sound familiar?"
"I had to vomit to play, Mother. Does that sound familiar?"
Sharon spoke to me. "Alexandra has changed since the
accident."
"Mother's changed, too. She used to make the hand signal for
yapping when people talked too much. She doesn't do that
anymore, at least not in my presence."
"My daughter is more spiteful."
"I'm less compliant."
"She becomes easily irritated for no reason."
"The reason is traumatic brain injury. Would you like to see the
scar on my skull, another one that's so obvious?"
"At least she's showing an interest in music again. She
abandoned it fifteen years ago."
"The jingles I wrote didn't count?"
"They were banal."
"The chorus concerts?"
Sharon smiled at me. "Alexandra was a classically trained pianist.
You can appreciate the difference, I'm sure, between playing in
Carnegie Hall with the finest musicians in the world and playing in
a church on Colfax with women who can't carry a tune."
"I didn't know there was a hierarchy in music," I said
purposefully.
Alex mouthed a silent thank you.
They think I can't remember, but I can.
This was my second concert in my first season with the
chorus, and I felt strangely ill at ease.
How had I come to arrive at this place, at this time?
At the age of five, I'd expressed a naive interest in the piano,
and by eight, I was practicing five hours a day. By ten, I'd
become the youngest union member in Colorado, and by
fourteen, I'd toured Europe six times with a national
symphony. At eighteen, I attended Juilliard on full
scholarship, and by twenty, I despised myself. At twenty-two,
I left New York, one month shy of graduation, and for the
next ten years, I didn't touch the piano.
I waited tables and taught toddlers, but the noise became
too much. I painted houses and landscaped yards, grateful
for the stillness. I dreamed of becoming a forest ranger,
librarian or trash collector, anything but a professional
musician, yet somehow I became involved with jingles.
I wrote and recorded catchy phrases that made people feel
an attraction. To cars and dog food and political candidates
and personal injury lawyers.
I hated what I did, but I couldn't stop doing it.
I was thirty-five before I could play notes again for the sake
of music alone. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]