PIANOS

Renee Sochaux was my favorite student. She really was. When she first came into my schedule, I’d been going through a rough time. I was in a constant state of anxiety, stress, worry, and anger. I would have thought that would have made it hard for a kid to win me over the way she did. But, looking back, maybe it made me more open to it.

She was in second grade back then—seven years old. She had big dimples and a pointy little chin just like her father: a trim and lightly freckled and effortlessly handsome Canadian who never brushed his hair, but whose bedhead somehow always looked stylish. Her light amber skin and straight black hair was inherited from her mother, a rather breathtaking Korean woman. Renee, with her large almond eyes, was cute, but she was also striking. Someday far in the future, long after I’d know her, she would be stunning.

The studio in which I gave my lessons was a small single room that I rented in the local community center. In other studios, people gave guitar lessons, art lessons, even calligraphy lessons. She and her father, Daniel Sochaux, always arrived every Thursday at the exact same time: 5:20—ten minutes before her lesson started. They would take their seats in the carpeted hallway outside my studio and, just like every other Thursday, I could hear them giggling at whatever it was they were talking about.

The two of them had this two-peas-in-a-pod relationship that I never really saw with any of the other students and their parents. Renee and her father had countless inside jokes. They ribbed each other. And when they weren’t making each other laugh heartily, they were discussing things like history or politics or how manual transmissions worked. He drove an old Saab. “It looks so weird, it’s like a spaceship,” Renee had told me once, and you could tell she meant it as a compliment. And then she added, “He’s going to teach me to drive stick.”

“But not with my Saab,” he quickly chimed in.

“Definitely in his Saab.” She laughed.

She was exactly what I’d wanted and was exactly what I didn’t have: a little girl. A little girl who loved me more than anything, and who I loved more than anything—a person who I could share inside jokes and secrets with, someone to whom I could explain the world. This guy in his ratty, faded denim jacket and scuffed vintage sneakers, and his beautiful wife in her high-fashion sunglasses and sexy, stylish skirts, had that. More than that. They also had two sons—one who played the drums and one who played the guitar, both of whom played hockey. They were terrors on the ice, Daniel would mention. Then he’d just shrug and smile. “It’s the Canadian blood, I guess.”

At first, I couldn’t help but hate him for it. The reason why I was going through such a hard time when Renee first came on as a student was because, just one week earlier, Amanda had suffered her first miscarriage.

 

We’d been so excited that we foolishly told everyone the good news after only four weeks. But in the ninth, she lost the baby. So not only were we dealing with the heartbreak of the miscarriage, we had to walk the news back to family, friends, even some of the people Amanda worked with. It was a torturous process. For us, it might have been the tenth, twelfth, fifteenth time we were breaking the bad news, but for whoever we were talking to, it was the first time they were hearing it. Each and every call, we got to go through the shock and sorrow all over again, and then the empty platitudes. Hang in there! Keep your heads up! Everything happens for a reason. Of course, despite our best efforts, there were a few people who didn’t get the news. So in the month after the miscarriage, there always seemed to be someone asking Amanda if her morning sickness was bad, if she had cravings, if she was getting a baby bump—interactions that would leave Amanda feeling numb and glum and the other person feeling embarrassed and desperately apologetic.

I hadn’t expected that first miscarriage to hit as hard as it did. Of course, I hadn’t expected a miscarriage. But, still, it hit surprisingly hard. Amanda seemed to vacillate between two moods: deep gloom or intense worry. She was convinced she’d done something to cause the miscarriage, even though our doctor had previously warned us that there was an elevated risk of miscarriage due to Amanda’s scar tissue from a series of cysts she’d had surgically removed in her teens and twenties. She urged us to be calm and kind to ourselves and to simply keep trying. But for Amanda, it was confirmation of who she always worried she was: a woman who was not meant to be a mother.

At first, I tried hearing her, soothing her, comforting her. But after a few weeks, I found myself resenting her woe and her guilt and her constant fretting. We’d always talked about having kids. This was something we wanted more than anything else. Even when we were in our first months of dating, I told her how badly I wanted to be a father. Mine had died when I was two, a year after he’d left my mother—his mistress—to patch things up with his wife. The two of them died in a plane crash. A little chartered Cessna. I don’t know why the plane went down. My mother was just happy and also enraged that it did. So, for me, the only father I’d had was a stranger in some old photographs. But I could thank the son of a bitch for one thing: he made me determined to be the best fucking father a man could be.

Amanda knew that. And all the doctors ever told us was that getting and maintaining a pregnancy could be difficult. Not impossible. Difficult. This miscarriage was just one setback. How could she give in to such negativity?

We fought. She called me insensitive. I said she was resigned to be heartbroken instead of fighting for us and our child. Our doctor told us these conflicts were entirely normal. Miscarriages, she said, were one of the most stressful things a couple could endure. I wondered if she was just saying that to make us feel better, or if it was true.

It was our doctor’s idea for us to have a little getaway. So Amanda and I took a long weekend to the mountains. We snowshoed and drank too much wine and ate too many pastries. It was a weekend without worry and away from the doldrums. When we came back, we were ready to put the miscarriage behind us and try again.

There were four more miscarriages over the next four-plus years. Every awful time it happened, we went back to the mountains. The getaways were no longer an escape. They simply became part of the grieving process. Now I can’t look at snowy mountain peaks without feeling grief and bitter regret.

But then there was a sixth time. And the sixth time was different. We never said it out loud, but both of us kept a mental catalogue of when the other pregnancies ended. Five weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks, eleven weeks. As we moved past each, it was as if we were driving out of some terrible city, leaving one more wretched landmark behind us. Finally, the first trimester was over and we were cruising steadily into the second—new and beautiful territory. Amanda’s baby bump was growing, her morning sickness was holding steady, her cravings were intensifying. And every time I went out to fetch her a snack she suddenly had an urge for, or a ginger ale to quell her nausea, I felt more like a father.

 

Little Renee had almost immediately become my favorite student, and it wasn’t because she was such a brilliant player. Don’t get me wrong, she was good. She possessed an above-average amount of talent. But she was, by no means, a prodigy.

What made her so endearing was that she was constantly smiling. She was so happy to see me. And when I told her what to practice and how many times to practice it, she would come back the next week, eager to tell me she’d done twice as much. Hardly my most proficient student, but possibly my most hardworking. Another thing—she always thanked me. A lot of times, she would hug me at the end of a practice if I’d helped her overcome a challenging bit of a song. Renee was a child who took nothing for granted. She was thrilled to be there at piano lessons and enraptured by the sound of the instrument when she played it. But even more so when I played it for her. She would turn to her father and silently gasp. I don’t think I ever let it show, but playing for Renee always made me nervous. She expected greatness from me, and I did my best to dazzle her.

So, yes, she was my favorite. But to put it plainly, Renee was just as much of a fan of me. She really seemed to love me, and not just as a student, and maybe it would be too much to say she loved me like a daughter loves her father; but maybe, just maybe, she loved me like a niece loves an uncle. That’s how it felt to me anyway.

Like me, the kid also loved the piano. One week, she came in and showed off her smile: she had lost two baby teeth on either side of her two front permanent teeth.

“What’s it look like?” she asked me, eagerly and expectantly.

“Um . . . a mouth?” I said, confused.

“No, a piano! The teeth are the white keys and the missing ones are the sharps and flats!”

I was astonished by the observation.

“Know what else looks like a piano?”

“What?”

“The set of dominoes we have at home. Magpies look like pianos. Our black and white cat looks like a piano. I saw a white car with windows that were all black yesterday—”

“And it looked like a piano?”

“Yep!”

I hoped that one day my own daughter would look at the world and see pianos, because I knew that every time Renee saw a piano in the world, she thought of me. And that’s what I had always imagined my little girl would do—walk around, thinking of her father—the guy who took care of her and loved her. Not the guy who left her when she was a baby and then died in a fucking plane crash.

Speaking of fathers, Daniel thanked me so profusely, you would have thought I was giving her lessons on a volunteer basis. In their first few months of coming to me, they attended a recital for my students and afterward, he was nearly in tears. “This is what beautiful music does to me,” he said, laughing at his own sensitivity. “But look at how you’ve inspired your students. Look at what you’ve inspired them to do,” he told me as he gripped my shoulder with his left hand and shook my hand with his right.

So when I said I hated Daniel at first, believe me, it didn’t last long. My envy of him, and his special father-daughter relationship, would not make Amanda’s pregnancies any more or less viable. So I made the decision to appreciate and admire what those two had, and look forward to when I could have something like it. Or even better.

By the time Amanda was on her sixth pregnancy, Renee was a pre-teen, scaling the outer edges of puberty. And though she’d grown more than a foot and her still-dimpled face had become something closer to that of a young woman’s instead of a little girl’s, her joyous and unabashedly affectionate personality hadn’t dimmed in the slightest. She was just as happy and focused and grateful and polite. Daniel watched her play the piano just as he had every week for four years, but I couldn’t help but notice that he’d started to look at her with the slightest bit of wistfulness, as if his time with her was slipping by and he was determined not to miss a moment of it.

 

A couple weeks ago, they waited and laughed out in the hallway, and then I invited them in at 5:30. Daniel took his seat on the couch, Renee took her seat at the Yamaha grand.

“Renee, see if you can play the Allemande for me from memory,” I told her.

“Hey, what is this, a pop quiz?” she said in mock protest.

“Exactly right! Pop-quiz time!” I said.

“For every note you miss, I get to take a dollar out of your piggy bank,” I said.

“For your information, I don’t have a piggy bank. I have a savings account now.”

“Well, pardon me, I didn’t know I was speaking to someone with a bank account!”

“Watch out, Troy. Pretty soon, she’ll be shorting stocks,” Daniel said and winked at her, and with that one gesture, I deduced that he’d probably told her what it meant to short a stock, which was a term I’d only heard on the news but had no idea of its actual meaning.

The three of us laughed and then Renee began to play. I walked over to Daniel and reached my hand inside my pocket to get my phone.

“Daniel,” I whispered.

He looked up at me. “Yeah?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I unlocked my phone and put it in front of his face. He looked at the screen in joyful shock. I’d shown him the sonogram we’d just gotten the day before. A girl.

He stood up slowly. “Are you kidding? You two are expecting?!”

I nodded, unable to conceal my pride and elation.

He gave me a big hug. Renee stopped playing and watched us.

“When? How far? What’s the story?” he said all at once.

“Due sometime in early October. The 3rd, they say. We’re 18 weeks in. Second trimester.”

Daniel did some math in his head and then he said, “Yes! That’s, what, four and a half months along?”

I nodded. And then, not that I’d planned to say such a thing, I admitted what Amanda and I had been going through for years. “This is our sixth pregnancy. The other five didn’t take. Never made it past the first trimester. But this time, way different. Amanda’s got way more symptoms. She’s even showing!”

Daniel hugged me again. “I’m so happy for you guys. Congratulations,” he said.

“Okay, what’s going on?” Renee asked.

Daniel looked at me with inquisitive eyes as if to ask, Is it okay for her to know? I nodded. And then he nodded back at me as if to say, It’s your news to tell.

“My wife and I are going to have a baby later this year,” I said.

Renee let out a little yelp, jumped from the piano bench and gave me the longest, tightest hug she’d ever given me.

But, I was on the clock. I’d delivered the happy news. But, once again, it was time to play the piano. When the lesson ended, there was another round of congratulations and hugs and they left. As I greeted my next and third-to-last family for the evening, I saw, near the sofa, a pink water bottle, covered in stickers—Saab and Renault logos, a Canadian flag with its red maple leaf on a white field framed by red bars. Another sticker with writing that I could only guess was Korean. And another sticker depicting the keys of a piano. Clearly, this was Renee’s and she’d left it behind in her excitement.

 

I was exhausted by the end of that evening, and clearly neither Renee nor her father had been missing the water bottle. So I decided not to call them that evening. Instead, I stopped off at Tacos West and got us some dinner. I didn’t need to ask Amanda what she wanted. Her go-to order for the last few weeks was always three soft-shell tacos—carnitas, chicken, and barbacoa—and a large horchata. She’d really gotten quite a craving for horchata ever since the second trimester.

I arrived home, where I found Amanda on the couch watching some teen drama from the ‘90s that I couldn’t quite identify. Beverly Hills: 90210, or maybe Party of Five. Or maybe it was My So-Called Life.

“Tacos?” she asked.

“Tacos.”

“Horchata?”

“Horchata.”

“Good husband,” she said sweetly. “You drink a beer, and I’ll drink a horchata and eat tacos.”

“Am I allowed to eat my tacos?” I asked her.

“No. All tacos are my tacos,” she said deviously. Then she lifted her face and pursed her lips for a kiss, which I gladly gave her.

She turned off the television and we ate and I told her all about my happy day sharing our good news. It was hard to remember all those times of grieving and fighting over the last four years. Or maybe it wasn’t hard. Maybe it was just something I never, ever wanted to revisit again.

 

The next morning, it was raining. I could hear the soft but persistent patter of raindrops on the window nearest Amanda’s side of the bed. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms and then slipped my glasses on. Amanda wasn’t in bed next to me. I looked across the room, and saw that the bathroom door was closed and a line of warm yellow light was bleeding out of the one-inch space between the bottom of the door and the floor. I heard Amanda turn the water on in the bathroom sink. I heard light splashing. I heard her take a deep breath, and then another. More morning sickness. Amanda liked to call it a good problem to have, but I could tell it made her miserable.

I checked the time on my phone, and it was 9:45 am. That was a perk of being a piano teacher. I rarely ever have lessons before 11 am, even if some of my students are retirees.

I got out of bed and walked to the bathroom and stopped right outside of the door.

“You okay in there, honey?”

“Trying,” she said weakly. Her voice was muffled like she was speaking through a washcloth.

“Need anything?”

“Just—” she stopped speaking, and I heard her catch her breath, as if she’d been running laps. “Just start the kettle and I’ll make myself some ginger tea,” she said barely above a whisper.

“Why don’t I just make it for you? You want any honey in there? If you’re hungry—”

“Just start the kettle,” she snapped. “I’ll make it when I’m ready.”

“Okay,” I said and suppressed the urge to say something sarcastic like, Excuse me for trying to be nice. The morning sickness put her in a bad mood, and I had to really make an effort not to let it get me in a bad mood, too.

I headed into our kitchen, where the programmable automatic drip machine had dutifully brewed me a half carafe of coffee. I filled the kettle and turned it on, and then I poured myself a cup of coffee and stirred in two teaspoons of sugar. I like it sweet. Along with some cups and plates and silverware, Renee’s water bottle was on the drying rack next to the sink. Amanda must have washed it the night before.

I dialed up Daniel on my mobile, but he didn’t answer. So, I tapped out, “Renee left her water bottle in my studio last night, but I took it home and Amanda washed it. How’s that for service?” and pressed the send button.

A tiny word soon appeared beneath the blue bubble that contained my message: “Delivered.”

            I sat down at the small kitchen table and looked out into the rain and onto the street in front of us. Cars were parked nose-in in a neat row. It took me a moment to notice the pattern: white, black, white, white, black. D, D-sharp, E, F, F-sharp. Remarkable, I thought. I’ve got to take a picture and show it to Renee at the next lesson. But as I reached for my phone, Amanda slogged her way into the kitchen looking worse than she usually did in the morning.

            “Morning,” I said, trying not to sound too snotty about how she’d just spoken to me a few minutes earlier.

            She didn’t answer. She just fumbled through the boxes of tea until she located the ginger variety and she fished a bag from the waxy paper within. She dropped it in a mug and then poured the boiling water over it from the kettle. “God,” she whispered to herself miserably.

            “You okay?” I asked her. I mean, I knew she wasn’t. But I wasn’t sure what to say, and I could tell she was really feeling lousy.

            “Not really. What about you?” she asked.

            “What do you mean, what about me?”

            “I mean, how do you feel? As in: do you feel all right?”

            “I think so,” I said.

            “Those tacos. Maybe a bad idea,” she said. “They’re doing a number on me.”

            “Oh, ouch, sorry to hear that, babe.”

            “I don’t know, I think it’s the tacos,” she mumbled, as if she was having a conversation with herself rather than me.

            “Yeah, they’ll do that,” I agreed.

She didn’t answer. She just swirled the mug of tea beneath her nose, inhaling the steam. I took another sip of my coffee, and almost immediately, I had the urge to use the bathroom. Coffee usually does that to me, but this was far more urgent than usual.

“On that note,” I said, “I’ll be right back.” I got up and hurried to the bathroom as a churning pressure built in my guts. I shut the door and barely got my pajama pants and boxers down in time before I released a rush of rank diarrhea. The relief I felt was great but short-lived. A moment later, my guts cramped, and there was another terrible release. A cold sweat formed on my forehead and back, and I was hit with a third wave. No, this was not normal at all.

            I was eager to get out of the bathroom, but I was suddenly exhausted and weak. I gathered myself as best I could, cleaned myself up, flushed, washed, lit a match, tossed it in the slowly re-filling toilet, and then walked out of the bathroom with far less speed than I had come in. I was beginning to feel nauseated, but figured it was a passing thing, and I just needed to relax and have some water or tea. The thought of drinking something prompted another wave of nausea. But I swallowed hard.

            “Not good?” Amanda asked me when I finally returned to the kitchen?

            “Not good,” I muttered. “Gonna get some water and lay down.”

            “This has been my last three hours,” she said.

            For a moment, all physical sensation left me. Three hours? That could not be good for her. “Jesus, are you okay? Are you? Are you dehydrated? Have you been throwing up?”

            “Throwing up and the other thing, too,” she said. “I think the ginger tea is going to help, too. And I’m hoping the worst is over because I haven’t managed to leave the bathroom this long since I got up.”

            “Come on,” I told her, “let’s get into bed. You can’t be getting sick like this, Amanda! Think about the ba—”

            Before I could finish the sentence, she snapped, “It’s not like I tried to get sick!”

            “I know, I know. I just mean don’t make it worse by being up and around. Come on. I’ll bring the tea.”

            I had barely gotten back in bed when I had to spring out of it to have more diarrhea. As I sat there on the toilet, doubled over, I was overcome with the urge to vomit. I had only a moment to decide where. The small garbage can was out of reach. It was the floor in front of me, in my own lap, or in the toilet beneath me. I reached back and fumbled with the handle of the toilet before I finally managed to press it down and then I jumped off the toilet without so much as wiping myself. I vomited violently into the still-flushing toilet, droplets of the already fouled water splashed back into my face. I struggled to catch my breath, but before I could, I vomited again and again and yet again. And just as soon as I was able to catch my breath, there was a hot angry rush behind my tailbone, and I hurried back onto the toilet just as an impossible amount of liquid rushed out of me. The experience was so disgusting that I couldn’t help chuckle. I felt like some kind of anthropomorphic fire hydrant whose valves had been wrenched open by mischievous children, leaving me to uncontrollably gush an obscene amount of liquid.

When the vomiting and shitting ended, I washed my face and rinsed my mouth and stumbled out of the bathroom where Amanda was waiting to get in. I curled up in the fetal position on the carpet a few feet from the bathroom. I could hear her retching and whimpering. I looked at the tiles beneath the door. White and black. Porcelain piano keys. I’ve got to remember to tell Renee, I thought before nodding off to sleep and then waking up abruptly to the uncontrollable urge to puke.

Amanda stumbled out of the bathroom, and I rushed in. And not long after that, it was her turn once more. And this is how it went for three hours—a terrible tag team of wretched, reeking illness.

 

By mid-afternoon, the vomiting had relented enough to where we could both fall asleep for a few hours. I was roused from my nap by the buzzing of my phone. I managed a groggy sound that was supposed to resemble the word hello.

“Troy?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled.

“Uh, yeah, we’re at the studio. Was the lesson canceled today or something?”

That woke me up. “Oh, man. Is this,” I struggled to identify the voice, so I took a wild guess: “Steve?”

“No, this is Phil—Tara’s Dad.”

Tara? Her lesson wasn’t until five o’clock. That meant I’d missed six lessons already.

“Phil, I’m so sorry. My wife and I must have gotten a bad case of food poisoning. It was a morning from hell and then we just passed out. Let me get back to you about rescheduling in the next day or two.”

“Yeah, no worries. Jeez, food poisoning? That’s awful.”

“Miserable,” I agreed. My stomach lurched at the thought of it. “Look, I better run.”

“Go. We’ll see you next week.”

After we hung up, I looked at my phone and, sure enough, there were missed calls and voicemails and text messages. Before I went through those, I texted the other three families who had lessons that evening and let them know I’d need to reschedule. Then I went through and texted apologies to everyone whose lessons I’d already missed.

I looked over at Amanda. She was sleeping, but she was breathing more rapidly than normal, as if she was having a nightmare. Sweat was beading on her forehead. I was worried about her, about the baby. I wondered if I should be driving her to the emergency room to be seen. She would almost certainly tell me I was overreacting, but my body felt wrecked after hours of such intense illness, and so I couldn’t imagine how hers felt, nor could I imagine how a tiny, fragile fetus could weather such a storm. But I decided that the last thing I should do is wake her up.

I very quietly got out of bed and slowly made my way to the kitchen for a glass of water. I let the water warm before I filled a glass. I sat at the kitchen table and, cautiously, took a very small sip. My stomach made a wet, groaning sound as if in protest. I braced myself as a wave of nausea came over me, but it passed. I looked out to the street, but piano formation of cars was gone. Now there were only three cars parked, and all of them were gray.

My phone vibrated to alert me of an incoming call. I pulled it from my pocket and saw that it was Daniel.

“Hello,” I answered in a quiet voice.

“Troy,” he said, sounding much more subdued than his usual self, “I got your text about the water bottle.” He took a breath. “Thanks for grabbing it. I can come by and get it soon.”

“You all right?” I asked him.

“Renee. She must have picked up some kind of nasty stomach virus from school.”

“Stomach virus?”

“Something. We barely made it home from the lesson last night. Middle of the drive, she just turned green, you know? Poor kid was up until 3 am. Couldn’t go two feet from the bathroom.”

“Really,” I said, though not like it was a question.

“Yeah. By the time she got done, it started in on me. Christ, I had it coming out of both ends. Now my wife’s got it, and my sons.”

“So it’s pretty contagious,” I muttered, my cheeks becoming hot.

“Isn’t it always? This is what you’ve got to look forward to,” he said, trying to make light of the situation. “If you thought a night of binge drinking was bad, wait ‘til you have a kid in daycare or grade school.”

“Daniel,” I said, but I didn’t quite know what to say next. The kitchen was swimming a bit. I felt a cold sweat slick my forehead. I felt I might have to make another run for the bathroom. And just as soon as I thought that, I heard Amanda retching again.

“Yeah?”

“I, uh, I don’t know how to say this, but we—I thought we got some bad tacos.”

“Oh, don’t tell me.”

“Yeah.”

“The both of you?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ, that was fast.”

“Did you know she was sick?”

There was a pause, as he considered the implications of the question. “Troy, no. Are you kidding? Of course, not. How many times have we asked to do lessons on video because Renee’s had a cold? Of course I didn’t know. She felt sick on the ride home—not there.”

He was telling the truth, of course. If anything, they were overly cautious about coming in sick. There were plenty of times when they’d asked me to do a lesson over video conference because Renee had a cold. In those situations, it was me who insisted they come in but wear a mask, and I’d do the same. So I had no doubt he was telling the truth about the timing of it either. She was acting perfectly normal, like her usual happy, bubbly, spirited self.

“Troy, you there? You don’t really think I brought her in with a raging stomach bug, do you?”

“No, I—It’s just that . . . do you understand how sick Amanda is right now?”

“I think I have an idea. I think we all do. This is brutal!”

“No, you don’t, Daniel! She was already feeling sick because of the pregnancy, and now she’s puking her guts out to the point where I’m wondering if I need to take her to the ER!”

“Troy, Troy, Troy,” he said, trying to comfort me. “I understand this is an extra stressful time. I didn’t mean to minimize your worry or how she’s feeling. I just meant, I know what it’s like to have this bug. But, look, why don’t I let you go? You take care of Amanda. These things—trust me, these things suck, but they tend to hit hard but only last a half-day, day, two days at most. But, go and—”

“Troy!” I heard Amanda yell. She wasn’t just calling me. She was crying out. It was a cry full of disbelief and fear.

“Fuck, I gotta go.”

“Everything okay?” he asked me.

I hung up.

Her cry had summoned a burst of adrenaline that temporarily blotted out all symptoms of the virus. I sprinted to the bathroom, where I found her crying and rocking back and forth on the toilet, clutching her stomach.

“Amanda, what is it? What do you need?”

“I’m bleeding,” she sobbed. “Bad. So bad!”

“No. God no. Should I call—”

“Call 911!” she screamed at me.

I did just that and was immediately connected with an indifferent-sounding dispatcher. I told her that my wife was pregnant, was bleeding badly, and that we both seemed to be suffering from some kind of terrible stomach virus that I must have caught from my student. The dispatcher assured me that the paramedics were on their way and that I should do my best to calm her down. So I crouched beside her, put my arm around her, and whispered that I swore it would be okay, even though I knew very well I was in no position whatsoever to make such a promise.

 

At the hospital they gave us a private room, where they monitored the baby and Amanda. Machines beeped and displayed various numbers and lines. Doctors spoke to each other in hushed tones, and where nurses had once spoken to us with warm, excited enthusiasm, they now spoke to us in measured, low voices. They did not promise us what I had promised Amanda. They could only promise Amanda that they would do everything they could. But where I had only vomited twice more once we got to the hospital, Amanda continued to vomit, even when there was nothing left—she was producing only yellow-green bile swirled scarlet with her blood. A nurse typed notes onto a keyboard, though I couldn’t see what it was she was typing. In my overly exhausted state, it appeared she was playing piano, and I tried to imagine what it was she was playing. Rachmaninoff, I decided.

They put an IV into her and hooked it up to a glistening bag of saline. They injected drugs into the IV, but whenever she was awake, she violently vomited, and the bleeding continued until finally a beep turned into one continuous tone and a nurse rushed in, and then another nurse, and then a doctor.

The baby was gone. And as one final terrible act, they would have to induce her to deliver what should have been our baby, but instead was a tiny dead fetus.

 

Amanda was discharged from the hospital two days after we had checked in. They wouldn’t let her go until she ate a small meal and kept it down. We drove home from the hospital in silence. Amanda stared out of her window. I kept my eyes on the road, but kept thinking about how this was supposed to be the drive I would make with a newborn strapped into a car seat in the back instead of nothing whatsoever.

When we got home, Amanda went straight to bed without a word. I called after her, asking if I could bring her anything. She didn’t answer, though I know she heard me. I got a bottle of whiskey from above the refrigerator, and I sat down at the kitchen table where my coffee mug and water glass from the other day still was. I took a pull straight from the bottle, hoping the burn of it would somehow shock me out of the horrible numbness in which I was cocooned. Instead, I barely felt it. And so I drank some more.

We had not called our families from the hospital. Amanda had been too sick and then when she was well enough to speak, she simply did not want to. Maybe she couldn’t really admit to herself what had happened. Or maybe she was so sick of saying the same thing for nearly five years: we lost the baby.

But it was only a matter of time until someone was going to call and ask, good-naturedly, How’s mama feeling today? It would be best if I preempted such a question. I pulled my phone from my pocket. Three missed calls from Daniel, five text messages, all of which were just checking up on us. The tone was friendly and reassuring at first. I could tell he’d been confident everything was going to be OK. By his last text message, I could read the doubt and worry. Hey, I know you must have your hands full, but just send me a note real quick to let me know you guys are on the mend. We’re all 100% over here—hopefully you are, too.

I replied, “Amanda and I are over the virus, too.”

And then I started to make the phone calls I had hoped I would never have to make again.

 

“Troy, I got you sick! I’m so sorry,” Renee said. She still had trouble pronouncing her Rs, so it sounded like sowwy. I would have typically found this to be endearing, but I found myself wanting to tell her to grow up and learn how to speak.

She leaned in to give me a hug, but I took a step back. “Better not,” I said.

She looked up at me, a little hurt. “Okay. Do you want me to play some scales?”

“Sure. Start with some scales, Renee,” I told her.

She sat down on the piano bench. Daniel, instead of sitting on the sofa, hovered by me. He wanted to talk. I did my best to ignore him and focus on her scales.

“Renee, build up your bridges,” I told her, in reference to her hands, which were not in the proper position.

“Troy, I—” Daniel whispered.

“Hang on,” I told him. “Renee, more. Get your hands how they should be. More. There. Like that. There’s no point in practicing bad habits, is there? Then it’s just bad over and over and over.”

Renee quickly corrected her form.

“Troy,” Daniel tried again.

“Just wait a second,” I said to him. “Renee, you always do the C position. Why don’t you try something that’s actually hard? I know everyone wants to do the easy stuff, but how about we all just make the slightest effort and try to push ourselves a little?”

“Um, okay,” she said, looking both confused and a little ashamed.

“B flat.”

“Troy,” Daniel tried a third time.

“Jesus Christ, am I giving piano lessons here, or is this a social call? What?!”

“Hey,” he said firmly, as if I wasn’t his kid’s teacher, but one of his actual kids. “First of all, I don’t like how you’re speaking to Renee, and I sure as hell don’t like how you’re speaking to me! Now if you have a problem, we ought to talk about it.”

That tone. That protectiveness of his daughter. Now he wasn’t just Daniel, the Canadian with the quirky Swedish car and the teenage fashion sense. Now he was a full-grown man, an angry, protective father, and I was just a pathetic piano teacher.

“I do have a problem. The problem is—I’ll tell you what the problem is,” I said, suddenly feeling like I was running out of breath. “The problem is that you brought a goddamn virus in here that wiped me out, and, even worse, it wiped Amanda out!”

“What are you, 10?” he said, raising his voice.

“Daddy,” Renee whimpered.

“You’re an adult!” Daniel continued. “Have you honestly never had a stomach flu before? It happens. It sucks. But you don’t blame someone for it, especially when they had no idea they had it!”

I grabbed onto the sleeve of his denim jacket, and he looked stunned, like he couldn’t believe we were about to start fistfighting. But, just as quickly, he realized that I wasn’t doing it to fight. Instead, I was pulling him out of the studio and into the hallway. He stumbled along behind me until we were out in the hallway—the place where he and Renee had told either jokes and stumped each other with riddles and explored the intricacies of the manual transmission and the risks and rewards of short selling stocks.

“Amanda lost the baby,” I whispered. “She lost the baby.”

The fearsome expression vanished from his face. He brought his hand to his mouth, and his eyes grew wide. All he could manage was, “No. No.”

“Yeah. Five fucking years almost. And God knows how much money on fertility treatments. But fuck the fucking money. This was supposed to be the one. She lost it!”

“Oh, Troy.”

“We were sick. I mean, I was sick. She was even sicker. And then she started bleeding. I called 911. We went to the hospital. But . . .” there was nothing more to say. I’d already told him how the story ended.

Daniel was now shifting back and forth on his feet, stepping backward and to the side, and rubbing his face and the back of his neck. “Jesus, Troy. I don’t know what to say. That’s terrible. I am so sorry. God, I’m sorry. What can I say?”

I shook my head.

“I feel terrible,” he muttered. “I really do.”

I looked at him. And all I could do was nod.

“Christ, you really blame me, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I guess I do.”

“How can you? It’s just terrible luck. We had no idea. Believe me, no idea.”

“I know,” I said. “I just can’t help it.”

He was at a loss for words. We stood there in the hallway outside of the door of my studio, neither of us able to look the other in the eye.

A small voice from the other side of the door. “Dad? Troy?”

“Look,” I said, trying to strike a cordial, amenable tone. “I’ll give you a refund for this lesson. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can look at Renee right now.”

“You don’t blame her, do you?” he asked, in disbelief.

She’s the one who had the virus, I wanted to say. Instead, I said nothing at all.

“She caught it from someone else,” he said as if he’d read my mind. “Christ, Troy, she’s a kid. Blame me. Don’t blame Renee. You know she really thinks the world of you!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. And though I wished I didn’t feel the way I did, I guess I didn’t actually feel sorry about it. I didn’t have it in me to feel anything else but sad and angry.

“You’re going through a lot,” he said. “Take some time and—”

But I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, because I was already hurrying down the hallway toward the bathroom so I could burst into tears.

 

            I think Amanda said all of a dozen words in the span of that first week home from the hospital. She didn’t cry. She didn’t do much of anything except sleep and stare through the television, seemingly unaware of whatever images were flickering on the screen in front of her. I’d asked her if she wanted to go to the mountains. She said no. She was done with the mountains.

            And then, as if some unseen hypnotist had snapped his fingers, she came back. She asked me to take her out for sushi—one of her favorite foods, and something that was forbidden when she was pregnant. She ordered a large bottle of Japanese beer for herself. She smiled a subtle smile after she took a long sip of it. She looked up at me and her smile faded.

            “I want to stop trying,” she said as she rubbed her thumb against the slick surface of her beer glass.

            I nodded. “For how long?”

            “I just want to stop. We’ve tried enough. It’s not going to happen.”

            “Amanda, what?”

            “Are you really surprised?”

            “Yes, I am really surprised. We’ve spent God-knows-how-many thousands of dollars and almost five years of our marriage on it!”

            “That’s exactly it. We’ve given it time and money, and it’s not happening.”

            “It did happen, though!”

            “And then it didn’t. And I can’t keep putting myself through it.”

            “But this last time was meant to be!” I argued.

            “I don’t know how you can say that when . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence because she didn’t need to.

            A waiter arrived and set between us a wooden boat bearing an ornate assortment of sushi. The cuts of fish were ruby and pink and white with stripes of iridescent silver skin. It looked beautiful and repulsive all at once.

The pieces of fish were all in neat rows, and I did my best to not see it like the way Renee would: like the keys of a piano. But I couldn’t help it, and Amanda wielded her chopsticks and carefully plucked a piece of tuna—the third from the left. The C. I picked up my chopsticks and squeezed them, as if to crush them into splinters right there in the palm of my hand.

“You didn’t lose the baby this last time,” I said through gritted teeth. “It was taken.”

            Amanda looked at me with a baffled expression as she fit the tuna and rice into her mouth, chewed slowly, and then swallowed. She washed it down with beer. “What do you mean?” she asked finally.

            “My student, Renee. She took the baby from us.”

            A look of utter disbelief came over her face. “That’s a really terrible thing to say about a child, Troy.”

“Terrible, or true?”

“Are you serious right now?” she whispered.

“Of course I am!” I said, and then I connected the dots for her: “You were doing great. The baby was doing great. I gave her a lesson. She was sick. She got us sick. And because she got us sick, we . . . My God, I can’t say it. I’m going to fucking scream if I do.”

“Viruses are everywhere, Troy. This little girl did not set out to infect me. She didn’t even know she was sick! The poor kid!”

            “She brought that virus into my studio, and I brought it home,” I stated plainly. It was undebatable.

            Amanda’s eyes welled up with tears, but she didn’t wipe them, and she held them back from streaming down her face. She took a long drink from her beer, and she sat back in her chair and sighed. “I know this is hard for you. I know it was hard to lose the baby this time around. And I know how badly you’ve wanted this,” she said, looking at the table instead of me. Then, finally, her eyes met mine. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” I shot back. “Don’t apologize. Don’t you dare. Renee is the one who needs to apologize.”

Amanda stared at me for a moment, disappointed and angry. “You’re making me realize how lucky we are that we haven’t been able to have a baby.”

It took a moment for her words to really sink in, and I marveled at their cruelty. “How could you say that?”

“Having a baby isn’t about you. It’s not about me. It’s about the baby. I don’t think you’ve ever really understood that,” she said with a shrug.

“How could you say that?” I asked her again, shaking my head in bewilderment.

She didn’t miss a beat. “Because you are accusing a child of killing our baby.”

“I’m not saying she meant to.”

“I’m not hungry anymore. I’m going home.”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

“No you’re not coming.” She stood up. “I mean it. I don’t want to see you tonight.”

She left.

 

I paid the princely price of the sushi boat and beer, then I got into my car. I considered going to a hotel or a motel, but then decided to save the money and sleep on my sofa in the studio. I stopped off at a Fill’R’Up and bought a six-pack of Coors. Tall boys. Unable to wait to get drunk, I chugged a beer in my car as soon as I parked. Then I chugged another. I called Amanda, but it went straight to voicemail. So I ripped another Coors from the plastic rings and cracked it open. I took a long sip and then let out a mighty belch, which made me laugh. I wasn’t a heavy drinker, so I was definitely feeling the effects of the alcohol. I dialed Amanda again, but it, once again, went straight to voicemail. I gulped down the rest of the can and tossed it with the other empties in the footwell of the passenger seat.

I got out of my car, the half-empty six-pack of beer hanging by an empty plastic from my finger, and I looked into the sky. Not a single star to be seen. Too much light in the city. I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. An infinite fucking universe full of trillions and trillions of stars, the light of which were all choked out by meagre, insignificant streetlights and fluorescent Fill’R’Up signs.

I shuffled across the crosswalk. White stripes interrupted by black asphalt. Christ, Renee was right. There really were pianos everywhere.

I dragged myself up the stairs and down the hallway toward my studio and was surprised when I turned the final corner and saw Daniel and Renee there at my studio door.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Troy,” Daniel said, and he looked down and noticed the beers dangling from my finger. He held a hand up to keep Renee from getting too close. “We didn’t expect you this time of night.”

“Well I’m just full of surprises.”

“I wanted you to have this drawing I made,” Renee said. “I was going to put it under your door.”

“She worked really hard on it,” Daniel said.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked, doing my best to give a warm smile. I crouched down to be at her eye level. “Renee, you know what I worked really hard on?”

“Troy—” Daniel said firmly.

“Having a baby. But then my wife got sick and—”

“What the fuck, Troy!?” Daniel exploded. He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me up and slammed my back against the wall.

Renee started to cry.

“You’re making her cry, Daniel,” I said, and all at once, I was laughing.

“You need help. Get fucking help,” he said.

“I did get help! Got all kinds of fertility treatments. But all it took was a half hour with Renee,” I told him, and then I looked at Renee. “Right, Renee? You and your little stomach bug put an end to that, didn’t you?”

“Daddy,” she said. “I want to go.” She was now crying even harder.

“We’re going. I’ll catch up, honey. You get going, I’ll meet you down the hall.”

Without giving me a glance, Renee ran off around the corner and down the hall. Daniel and I watched and listened until she was out of sight and out of earshot. And when she was, I looked at Daniel. “I’m a little drunk—” I started to say.

But I was interrupted by a fierce punch to my gut. With the wind knocked out of me, I doubled over.

“I felt bad for you at first. Now I’m just glad you’re not a father, because you’re a real prick, you know that?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time I heard that today,” I sputtered.

But Daniel was gone, catching up with Renee, to take her home in his five-speed Saab to the warm home they shared with that beautiful Korean woman and those two terrors on ice.

I managed to get myself up and staggered my way into the studio and onto the bench in front of the Yamaha. I slugged down a Coors and then popped another open. I texted Amanda, “I’m sleeping at the studio tonight.” I considered adding some kind of apology or peace offering, but I felt neither sorry, nor like I wanted peace. Being punched in the gut was more than I’d felt in a long while. More of that, please, I thought. I pushed the send button and waited for the little word to appear below the bubble indicating the message had been delivered, but it didn’t. She’d clearly turned her phone off as soon as she left the restaurant and had no intention of having contact with me.

I drank down another beer in one go and then struck out a series of thundering chords on the grand piano. But just as quickly, the sound faded away and I was left in the same silent world I had been in before. If all the stars in the universe couldn’t be seen, then music sure as hell didn’t stand a chance. I’d gotten a PhD in classical piano performance, and for what? To give lessons to schoolkids and retirees. Even if we could have a kid, how would I be able to support a family teaching childish songs such as “Clock Shop” and “Jumping Bean”?

You’re making me realize how lucky we are that we haven’t been able to have a baby, I could hear Amanda telling me.

No, I didn’t feel much like playing.

I laid down on the couch and looked around the room. There, next to my electric tea kettle, I spied the pink water bottle that Renee had left and that I had brought back in, but that, in my anger, I had forgotten to give back to them. Amanda had almost certainly gotten sick from washing it. Or maybe because I’d touched it and then touched her food. Why didn’t I just leave the bottle at the studio instead of bringing it home? Why did I hang onto such a terrible object? Why hadn’t I just thrown it away? Renee could get a new water bottle. But I’d apparently never get a baby. The piano-key sticker gleamed in the lamp lights. What an ugly instrument, I thought.

I scrolled through the contacts on my phone until I came upon Daniel’s number. I dialed it up and put the phone to my ear.

“Jesus, what?” he answered.

“I can’t teach Renee anymore,” I said. “I don’t know if I can teach anyone anymore. I don’t think I’m meant to spend time with kids,” I said without the slightest hesitation or self-pity. It was a simple, obvious fact, and it had slipped right out of me as easily as I might have said my own name.

He let out a long sigh, as if he were contemplating what to say. Finally, he said coldly but sincerely, “Renee will miss you,” he said. There was no question about it. He was agreeing with me.

“I’ll miss her, too.” And then after a moment or two of hesitation, I said, “let her know she was my favorite student, hands down.”

“I don’t think there’s any reason to make it complicated or emotional.”

“You’re her father,” I said. “You know best.”

“Yes I am, and yes I do.”

I was about to hang up when I remembered about the water bottle. “Daniel,” I said. “I still have Renee’s water bottle. If you want, I can bring it by, or I can leave it in the community room downstairs.”

There was no response. I looked at my phone and saw that it was no longer connected. Instead, it was displaying the lock-screen wallpaper: the sonogram of the little girl we almost had, black and white like the keys of the piano.

The call had ended.

Daniel was gone.

I was talking to myself.

I was talking to nobody.