As the fund-raiser continued, Emily kept drifting closer and closer to the pianist. She watched his fingers from behind. She watched how his body moved to the rhythm of the music. She’d played like that, too. In “Queen of All the Keys,” the song Rob had written about her, there was a line about how she danced while she played, her hips swaying, her whole body moving to the music.
Not far from the piano was a high-top table with one chair next to it. Someone must’ve taken the other one to add to a group nearby. After a while, Emily got herself another glass of wine, slid onto that chair, and enjoyed the songs. She saw Ezra across the room, chatting with some other doctors, and wondered what it was that he hadn’t told her about his day, but then she lost herself in John Coltrane and Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Jimmy Heath. All of Ezra’s favorites.
After the pianist played “Gingerbread Boy” and nailed the piano solo in the middle, Emily unclasped her purse and walked over to drop a $20 bill in the brandy glass he was using as a tip jar.
The man, who looked like he was maybe ten or so years older than Emily, smiled at her as he finished the tune, his fingers moving without him paying attention to them anymore. “You’re my best audience tonight,” he said. “I saw you fingering along with me. You play?”
Emily looked down at the Steinway. “I used to,” she told him.
The pianist transitioned from “Gingerbread Boy” into “Blue Skies.” “You’re looking at this piano the way I looked at a bottle of vodka before I got sober,” he said to her. “Good news for you is that a piano won’t rot your liver.”
Emily laughed.
“You wanna play?” he asked. “I’m due for a break anyway. They were going to pipe some music in for fifteen minutes, but I’d be happy to let you take over instead.”
“I couldn’t,” Emily said, even though she wanted to sit down on that piano bench so badly she could feel the desire pulsing through her body, traveling from her heart to her wrists to her fingertips.
“I saw how your fingers move,” the pianist said. “I’m pretty sure you could. How ’bout I slide over and you give one song a go? If I’m wrong and you can’t really play, I’ll just take over again and finish up with one more song before my break.”
Emily looked down at the piano and then flexed her fingers. She hadn’t touched a piano in nearly thirteen years. But she found her fingers playing imaginary keys all the time—scales on her knees while riding the subway, chords along with the radio while waiting for takeout, whole theme songs while she was watching TV. Was it like riding a bike? Like swimming? Or would she sit down on that bench and fail spectacularly?
“I’ll try a song,” she said, her heart speeding up in anticipation or fear or another emotion she wasn’t quite able to name.
The pianist finished “Blue Skies” and slid to his left on the piano bench. Emily gathered up the skirt of her gown and sat next to him.
“Do you need music?” he asked.
Emily shook her head. She took a deep breath and laid her hands lightly on the keys. The piano was beautiful. The keys were smooth and gleaming. It felt familiar, like putting on a favorite sweatshirt on the first cool night of summer.
“Does it have to be jazz?” Emily asked the pianist, putting her hands in position to start the “Maple Leaf Rag,” though not sure if she’d be able to remember enough to get through the whole song.
“Play whatever you want,” he said.
With his permission to play anything, Emily moved her hands into a different position. She’d listened to the song so many times at this point that she knew it in her heart, in her bones, in her fingers. Plus it was so similar to the song she once played with him. The one he sang about her. His queen.
She closed her eyes and began to play—“Crystal Castle.” Her hands felt a little stiff, a little weak. The power she used to have in them, the strength, had lessened. Her fingers weren’t moving quickly, either. She slowed down the song’s pace, slid her foot onto the damper pedal, and then added harmony, the way she used to when she sang with him. Her right hand was playing both their vocal parts, or what she imagined her part would be in this new song. Her left was taking care of the guitar chords he strummed while he played.
With her eyes closed, Emily felt like she was inhabiting a world where music was all that existed. She became the music in a way she couldn’t explain. The sound was her and she was the sound, the rhythm, the vibrations. Everything she’d been feeling over the past few days came out through her fingers: the love, the despair, the guilt, the sorrow, the hope, the frustration, the pain. She got to the end of the song before she opened her eyes again, feeling as if the raging storm inside her had calmed.
When the world came back into focus, the pianist was standing next to the bench, a smile dancing across his lips, and there was a crowd around the piano—Ezra was there, and so were his parents, and a handful of his friends.
“I knew you could play,” the pianist said to her. “But I didn’t know you could play like that. Brava.”
As Emily smiled at him and thanked him for convincing her to give it a try, she heard Hala ask Ezra, “How long has Emily been playing?” And Popper Hopkins, the chief pediatric surgeon, was saying, “I thought she was a therapist—does your wife play professionally?” And then Ezra’s father was turning to him and saying, “Why have you been keeping Emily’s talent from us? She’s fantastic. Why haven’t you bought her a piano?”
Emily looked up and saw Ezra’s face turning red. “I’m going to take the woman of the hour to the bar for a drink,” he said to them all, not answering anyone’s questions.
“Do you want to keep playing?” the pianist asked.
Ezra was coming toward her; Emily shook her head.
“Emily?” he asked, when he got to the piano bench. He was looking at her as if he wasn’t sure who she was. “Why didn’t I know you could play piano?” His voice was light, but she could tell it was an effort for him to make it sound that way.
Emily cocked her head at him, the music still tingling through her body, pulsing calmness with every beat of her heart. “Of course you did,” she said. “When we first met and you talked about your college a cappella group, you asked me if I was into music, I told you I used to sing and play piano, and then broke my hand and stopped. That’s why my fingers hurt right before it rains.”
He took a drink from the highball in his hand, not saying anything.
“I fell out of a tree house, remember?” Emily said, standing up.
He stayed silent for a moment longer, and took another drink.
“How old were you,” he asked slowly, after he swallowed, “when you fell out of that tree house?”
“Twenty,” Emily said. She turned to the piano player and said, “Thank you. I needed that.”
“Truly my pleasure,” he told her. “I hope you take it up again.”
Ezra put his hand on the small of Emily’s back and steered her into the corner of the room near the bar.
“You were twenty when you fell out of a tree house? I always thought you were, like, ten.”
“I wasn’t,” Emily said, realizing that Ezra seemed upset. “I guess you didn’t ask how old I was before tonight, and I never mentioned it. Is that what’s upsetting you?”
“No, that’s not what’s upsetting me,” Ezra said, his voice soft but steely. “What’s upsetting me is that my wife is some kind of piano virtuoso and I had no idea. We’ve been together for more than four years. How didn’t I ever know that? Do you know how . . . stupid I felt just now, with my colleagues asking me questions about you? And my dad? I didn’t know any of the answers.”
“I’m not a piano virtuoso,” Emily said, trying to calm him down. “Seriously. I took lessons when I was a kid, I was pretty good, I was in a band for a while in college, that’s all. I’m sorry you felt embarrassed back there, but it’s really not a big deal.”
“Wait,” Ezra said, looking up from his drink. “You were in a band? In college? Why didn’t I know that, either?”
Emily looked around. They hadn’t attracted any attention yet, but she was worried that they would. “Why don’t we go up to our room to talk about this,” she said. She didn’t want them to be the postparty hospital gossip. Besides, their bags were already upstairs, and she wouldn’t mind getting out of her heels. Getting out of this whole party that she hadn’t wanted to attend to begin with. To their left, Ezra’s parents were chatting with the head of cardiology and her wife. Emily wondered if it was about her piano playing or about something else entirely. She caught her mother-in-law’s eye and pointed toward the door. Dr. Gold nodded.
“Fine,” Ezra said, putting his hand on Emily’s back to steer her out of the ballroom, Emily grabbing a handful of her dress so she wouldn’t trip.
When they got into the empty elevator, he started up the conversation again. “You were in a band?”
Emily nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I was in a band for a few months. I played piano and sang. Then I fell out of a tree house, broke my hand, and eventually stopped doing both.”
The elevator opened onto their floor. They were silent again, walking down the hallway, until Ezra opened their hotel room door. Neither one of them noticed the elegant decor or the chocolate truffles left next to each side of the bed.
“What were you doing in a tree house when you were twenty?”
Emily closed her eyes. She’d never told anyone this story after she told it to Dr. West thirteen years ago. It was still painful. All of it. She did her best to work through it, get past it, and then lock it away. She knew it was part of what made her the person she was, but it felt private—and, if she was honest with herself, she still felt ashamed of how she’d acted then. She blamed herself for so much.
“What were you doing in that tree house?” Ezra asked, sitting down on the side of the bed.
“What happened at work today?” Emily asked him, stalling—and also wondering if dealing with that first might defuse whatever was going on with him now. “Hala mentioned something . . . and it actually made me feel pretty bad not to know what she was talking about. I had to pretend.”
Ezra took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Then he put them back on and said, “You first.”
Emily sat down across from him on a little settee covered in plush velvet. The idea of telling him this story, of sharing it, made her panic. He was such a good person, so straight-edged. He never drank before he turned twenty-one, never smoked or took any medication that didn’t come with a prescription. She hated how this story made her look. It didn’t feel like her anymore. It felt like a story she’d read about a person she’d once known. And there was no rule that said married couples had to share everything. There were stories in her past that Ezra didn’t know—and stories in his past she was sure she didn’t know. His first kiss, for example; she had no idea who it was with. Or why he chose to do his residency in California, so far away from his parents. He got to keep those stories; she got to keep hers. “My story is my story, Ezra. It’s mine to share when I want.”
He looked like she’d slapped him. She hadn’t realized what she said would sound that way, would make him react like that. She was usually better at reading him than this, but she felt like ever since the miscarriage, her sensors were off. Maybe she was too focused on herself, on how she felt.
“You don’t want to share your story with me? You haven’t wanted to share your story with me before?” He loosened his tie, looking like it might be choking him.
Emily’s head felt fuzzy from the wine, but not fuzzy enough that she couldn’t think straight. Still, she opened up a bottle of water sitting on the table next to her and took a sip. “You didn’t want to share what happened at work today with me,” she pointed out as she recapped the bottle. Logic usually worked with him. “There are some things you don’t tell me, either.”
“It’s not the same,” he said.
“Isn’t it?” she asked.
He shook his head, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. “What happened when you were twenty, Emily? Why won’t you talk about it?” Then his face looked stricken. “Did someone— Oh, Em, did someone—”
“No,” Emily said quickly. “Not that. Thank God, not that.”
“Then what?” Ezra’s eyes were filled with emotion; his concern for her was there, even through his anger, his hurt.
Emily took a deep breath. When he looked at her like that, like she was someone so precious, someone he cared for more than anyone, her heart always grew a little; it swelled with her love for him. And that swelling of love made her feel strong enough, sure enough of him, to overcome her worry. Besides, he’d asked. She’d never kept anything from him when he’d asked.
“I was dating a musician,” she said. “We were in a band together. And we were young and stupid and got pregnant. And I got into a fight with Ari about it and climbed up into an old tree house at my dad’s house in Westchester. And then my boyfriend came up, and we got high, and I climbed out of the window instead of the door—it was dumb, but I thought I had a smart reason—and then I fell. And he caught me, but I broke my wrist and three fingers.”
Ezra’s face was white. “Where’s . . . the baby?” he asked, his knuckles gripping his knees.
“I lost it,” Emily said, “after I fell.” And she started crying, thinking not about that baby but about the other one. The one who would have been hers and Ezra’s.
Ezra stood and then sat down next to her. “You had this whole life, this whole . . . ordeal . . . that happened to you and you never told me.”
“I never told anyone, except Ari and Dr. West.”
Ezra was looking down at his hands.
Emily saw them in his lap. His hands were usually so calm, but now they were twisting around each other.
“You didn’t trust me?” he asked. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me this?”
“It’s not about trust,” Emily said, trying to find the right words to make him understand. “It’s about . . . it’s about not wanting to be that person anymore. Not wanting to associate myself with the way I acted then, the decisions I made, the pain I was in.”
“But this is such a huge part of you. I feel like I married someone I don’t really know.”
“You know me,” Emily said, trying to look him in the eye, but he was still looking down, still focused on his hands.
“I don’t feel like I do,” he said, lifting his head. “I feel like you’ve been lying to me for years.”
She looked him straight in the eyes. “Ez,” she said. “I didn’t lie to you about anything. I’m still me. I’m still the same person.” Emily thought to apologize for not telling him, but she didn’t. She was sorry he was hurt, but she didn’t think she’d done anything wrong. It was her story.
“It doesn’t feel like you are,” he said, leaning against the back of the chair. “When have you been practicing piano?”
“I haven’t,” she said, simply.
“You can play like that without touching an instrument for more than a decade?” He looked at her incredulously. He’d never looked at her like that before.
“Believe what you want to believe. I’m telling you the truth.” The therapist part of Emily recognized that the trust in their relationship was now broken and needed to be repaired, but she responded before thinking about whether it was the right thing to say.
“I hate that I don’t believe you,” Ezra said. “I hate that you made it so I don’t believe you.”
There was a pause. A moment where they both looked at each other, sized each other up.
“I hate that you don’t believe me, either,” she said, finally. She didn’t want to explain, didn’t want to tell him how many times she’d listened to that song and why. How she’d known how to play it years ago, and that she’d been playing it in her mind all afternoon, imagining her hands on the keys again. She knew she should. Still, she’d answered so many of his questions. It was time for him to answer hers.
“What happened to you at work today?” she asked again.
This time Ezra responded. “Malcolm died,” he said, flatly. “And his mother blamed me. She was hysterical. Her husband had to hold her back. She—she tried to hit me. She said that I killed him, that if I were a better doctor he would still be alive. It was . . . awful.”
“Oh, Ez, I’m so sorry,” Emily said. She thought of Malcolm’s siblings. She thought of the pain they must be in, that his mother must have been in to act that way. And she thought about Ezra, too, how those words had likely confirmed his own feelings, his own failure. Probably made him feel exposed in front of his colleagues. She wondered when he’d cried. Where he’d been. She wanted to hug him, but he’d wrapped his arms around himself, leaving no room for hers. “I wish you’d told me,” she said. “Not just so I would’ve known what to say to Hala, but so I could help you.”
“I didn’t want to upset you even more,” he said. “You’ve been so sad.”
“Are you saying it’s my fault that you didn’t tell me?” That was what it sounded like to her. It was her fault when she kept something from him, and now it was her fault when he kept something from her. Emily tried to get him to look at her, but he was still turned toward the window, at the lights shining bright around the edges of Central Park.
“I don’t know,” Ezra said. “Maybe.”
“I can always take on more for you,” she said. “And I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong. I can’t be there for you.”
He turned to her. “I can’t either, Emily. We could’ve talked about what happened in your past, and how it’s affecting you now. We could’ve walked through that together, instead of you reading in bed alone.”
Emily felt the heat rising in her cheeks. “I wanted to stay home with you, Ez. I wanted us to walk through this together, but you left. You went to work and you left me alone.”
“Em,” he said, “I love you, but other people need me, too. Other people like Malcolm. Children who are dying. How can you stop me from helping them?”
Emily took a deep breath. She realized how differently they felt about this, how differently they looked at it. She had to make him understand. “Our baby was dying, too. It died inside me. And then you disappeared. To me, those cells were a child—one who I imagined learning to walk, learning to talk, going to the playground with, taking trick-or-treating on Halloween. That baby was real to me. There isn’t a hierarchy of loss, Ezra. You can hurt or not hurt, but don’t dismiss my pain.”
Ezra stared at her, as if he didn’t know where to go from there. As if he were about to dismiss her pain again, and now that she’d told him not to, he had nothing else to say.
She thought about her sister, about her mom, about how their love for her seemed unconditional. She wanted to feel that from Ezra, too.
“Do you really want to know all my secrets?” she asked, part of her aware of what she was doing, that she was saying something she knew would upset him in the hope that he would prove his love was unshakable, that their love was bigger than this.
He stared at her for a moment. “Now that I know there are more, how could I say no?” he asked.
It was Emily’s turn to stare out the window into the dark of the night. She pushed forward, not looking her husband in the eye. “My ex-boyfriend, the musician—he wrote a song and it’s on the radio. It’s called ‘Crystal Castle.’ It’s the one I played tonight.”
“I’ve heard that song before . . . it’s about some guy who still loves this woman who . . . wait . . . is it about you?”
Emily shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” His voice cracked on the last word.
She shook her head. But then she said, “I think it probably is.” She hoped he would rise above whatever pain those words caused, would stay through the pain, get through it together.
Ezra stared at her for a long moment and then got up and went into the bathroom. Emily stayed seated on the settee next to the bed. She felt somehow like the air in the room had changed, like it had gotten colder. There was a feeling in the atmosphere she’d never felt when she was with Ezra. She sat, still in her heels, not changing out of her gown, waiting for him to come back, to say something to her.
Ezra came out of the bathroom with his face washed, drops of water still sparkling on his hairline. “I think I need a night to myself,” he said. “I’ll just go home.”
“What does that mean?” Emily asked. Had she gone too far? Shared too much? Was his love for her completely conditional?
“Just what I said it means. I need some time alone. I just . . . I need to process what happened tonight. It’s been a really long day. On top of a really long week. I just . . . need space.”
Emily looked at Ezra. He seemed so beaten down. So tired. She’d seen him like this before, when he’d gotten into an argument with his father, when funding he applied for didn’t come through, when he made a choice for a patient that didn’t work out the way he’d thought it would. She’d learned to let him be. But it had never been about her before. They’d never gotten into an argument that made him look like this in all the time they’d been together. And while she’d been fine giving him space to process when the problem wasn’t about her, it didn’t feel fine now. She’d just told him how alone she’d felt, how lonely. “You can’t keep running away,” she said. “When things get hard, you can’t just leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” Ezra said. “I’m just . . . breathing. I can’t breathe with you here. I can’t think.”
Emily took a few deep breaths of her own, slowing her heart rate. No matter how disappointed she was in him, she knew he needed to come to conclusions himself. To figure himself out. And she needed to let him. “Then you stay,” she said, standing and picking up her duffel bag. “I’ll go home.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive,” she told him, slinging the bag over her shoulder. “Should I expect you home in the morning?”
“I think I should probably still grab breakfast with my parents,” Ezra said. “I’ll go straight to work after that.”
“Okay,” Emily said again, realizing she had just been disinvited to breakfast. She walked to the door. “I’ll see you after work, then.”
“I’ll call,” he said, as he walked with her.
After she left, she heard him slide the dead bolt.
And she turned and went home by herself.