Esmé Wang - The Border of Paradise

I don’t know why I continue to play the piano these days. Habit, I suppose. It brings me no pleasure. There’s no pleasure even though I’m good at it. I’m not like William, whose body seems to be wired for the pursuit of two things: myself and Beethoven. I think that after my father, and then Mrs. Kucharski, died, I really did stop caring about the piano. Over the last few days even the sound of it has begun to rub at my nerves, because the piano is coming out of tune, and I hear this new sound emerge like a hatchling; but I play it anyway with determination.

“I think, buglet,” William says between songs, “that we’ve got a bit of a tuning problem. When did we last address your piano?” he asks, because we are the ones who tune the piano, we are the ones who were taught by our father to strike a tuning fork, to turn the tuning lever gently and slowly, to never settle for a cheap instrument, and besides, I have perfect pitch, which William does not.

“It’s sort of been a gradual problem,” I reply.

“I guess. Crept up. Well, we ought to do something about that,” he says, scraping the sides of his bowl, “before it gets any worse.”

When Ma comes into the living room and sits next to William, adjusting the neckline of her robe, William says to her, “Gillian’s piano is out of tune — we were just saying.”

“Well, then fix it. Easy enough.”

“We will. We can work on that tomorrow while you’re in town.”

While you’re in town. A flash of bitterness crosses my eyes at the casual drop of news. I will be minded at home; William will be busy minding. I see the K & Bee projected onto the white-and-black backdrop of keys, and the market’s gorgeous cacophony of tins and bags: buy me, look at me. I want to buy and I want to look at the tinned meat and the women with their long hair and long skirts. The boys with pale skin and sunny hair. And I have lost my dog, the dog who provided me with such electric joy over the last epoch of my brittle life. The feeling of bitterness — so closely linked anger and sadness — melts to ache. So we’ll have a few hours without Ma. He’ll want to pursue intimacy. An hour of sex, an hour tuning the piano. The word tune. The sound of the word two encased within the hard d . To tune the body. To make it accurate, strip it down to its essential nature.

I saw Sarah in the morning. I did. I saw her at dawn. Was it my imagination, or did she already look thinner? I did not feed her because I knew that Ma was watching. If Ma wasn’t actually in the hall, gazing out at me, she was staring from a crack in her bedroom door. She would know what I had done. As she said to William, she knows more than either of us does; she always knows everything.

“It is time to clean the kitchen,” Ma says. “Come.”

My brother stands, holding his bowl and spoon. He smiles at me.

“I’ll be there in a second,” I say.

Ma goes into the hall, her sturdy yet slender body dragging the too-long robe behind her, and William, not knowing yet whether to follow, stands in the living room entranceway. “What are you doing?”

I answer, “A consultation.”

I go to the bookshelf. William begins to hum — the “Adagio Cantabile” from Pathétique, his particular sign of pleasure. I take out the OED volume that houses the word tune. Tundra, tundrite. Tune. Common meanings: “sound or tone.” Here it is. A former meaning: “to close, shut; to fence or enclose.”

“What were you looking for?” he asks as I put the book away.

I tell him nothing. I believe in the predictive nature of language.

Sarah is noticeably thinner through the window. She comes still to the house and paces the porch, whining, and will sometimes sound a bark. She is wondering why I won’t come to say hello and to feed her.

Days and nights slither by and Sarah still comes with hope.

She comes and comes, and I know the guai baobao is more faithful than I will ever be.

One night I lie in bed for a few minutes, listening to William’s steady breathing, and then I move his arm without waking him. I slip off the bed. I move into the kitchen.

It’s dark. Everything smells like dank and wet wood and is cold to touch. The bells are strung across the tops of the doors and along the windows, an eternal celebration. I sit in the middle of the kitchen, on the floor, and I try to summon my courage; I could walk out that door. I could make the bells ring. I could run faster than either of them — I could run like a deer-girl, a cervine escape artist. Around the house, down the road, down the mountain, down the hills, both deft and light of foot, faster than a car, faster than anything. I don’t know how to drive or write a check, but I do know how to run — always have. I practically sprinted out of the womb — I was eager to get into the world. I could find refuge at St. Joseph’s Church, where the men brought us during the fire, where it is the job of the holy to take in the helpless. I could find a tendril of bravery inside myself to breathe upon, to make into a blazing flame. It is difficult to be a girl because girls have wills, but no control. It is difficult to be a girl because girls are full of wondering, and then they want to go out wandering. The question is not Will I get away? but Is it really so bad? If I start to feel foolish on the floor, with my legs folded in front of me, maybe it is better if I slink back to my room like a shy thing, climb back into bed, feel the sourness in my belly turn hard onto itself, become a better version of myself, feel more kindness, show more love.

Though I have never prayed in earnest before — not when my father was so sick — so, so, so sick — and I have never thought of God as a constant presence in my life, and though I’ve always wanted to believe in the existence of God, instead of in the existence of nothing, I mouth, Please, let me love. Please. I go to the refrigerator. I open it as silently as I can. I take a plate from the dish rack, and I say, Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. I gather a bone and some withered vegetables. I almost drop the plate because I’m so tired, but I don’t drop it and I close the refrigerator door. In my head I say the Our Father again. I unlatch the locks on the front door. I open the front door in increments, so slowly that I’ve breathed a hundred breaths before there’s enough space for me to shimmer through. The bells are silent and hang across the room, hang across the right side.

In the morning William lies half naked in bed — his slumber the result of orgasm’s peculiarly soporific effect on him — and I am reorganizing the furniture in our room, because sex has the opposite effect on me, and makes it both hard to fall asleep and jittery in conscious life so that I must do something with my hands. I should be playing the piano, but Ma isn’t awake, isn’t wandering around the house or sitting at the kitchen table with her tea, and I don’t feel like playing for no one. Perhaps this is what amplifies the jitters today: unfamiliarity. The house is the whole world; one thing out of place sets everything else off its axis. I thought I heard Sarah barking in my dreams, but I haven’t gone to see her yet. Instead I am arranging several mason jars along the lip of the wide windowsill, which I’ve filled with various things: creatures’ teeth, bleached white bones, pearl buttons. I am waiting for the familiar sounds; I am waiting for Ma’s footsteps. I’m a good girl, and Ma will know this soon enough, and she will treat me as she treats William if I do the right things. She will be glad to know that William is asleep and that I am being good. And maybe she’ll buy something for me after all, despite the fact that I didn’t win the game — maybe a little sweet treat, or something new to play with.