Park, they’d usually slow down and stop for a smoothie before taking the subway home, dripping sweat but relaxed and happy.
Instead of getting a smoothie after her run, Emily sent Ezra a text: Hope it’s not too rough at the hospital. He didn’t respond. But, she reasoned, maybe that text didn’t invite a response. Or maybe it was rough at the hospital and he couldn’t text with her just then. That had happened before. But she was feeling so insecure right then that she couldn’t stop turning his nonresponse over and over in her mind.
She wished she knew what to do. She wished she knew the right words to say, the right move to make. But the one thing she did know was that if she pushed too hard, he’d just pull away even more, roll himself into a ball like a pangolin and stay that way until he was ready to move forward again, on his own terms and his own time frame, nobody else’s. Was he not thinking about how his actions affected Emily? Was she asking for too much right now? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she wished she understood what was going through her husband’s mind but truly had no idea.
* * *
—
To distract herself, Emily called Ari, but her sister didn’t pick up. A minute later, her phone lit up with a text: Hi Auntie Em, it’s Tyler. Mom wants to know if you’re okay, but she’s driving so she gave me her phone.
Hey hun, Emily wrote back. I was just calling to see what was going on with you guys today. She’d been hoping maybe she could hang out with them for a while. There were friends she could try, too, but when she was sad or confused or feeling out of sorts, it was still only Ari she wanted to spend time with.
I’m playing travel soccer, came back over the phone, which is why Mom is driving. Then tonight we’re going to Sophia’s bat mitzvah. From next door. Mom said I can drink as many Roy Rogers as I want.
Sounds fun, Emily wrote back. Good luck at the game. And enjoy the Roy Rogers!
She’d talk to Ari tomorrow. No need to interrupt her crazy day of plans with the story of her meeting last night with Rob. It would keep.
* * *
—
Emily showered and got dressed and then walked into the living room, where the keyboard was still sitting on the dining table. She wasn’t planning to go to the open mic in New Jersey, but she liked the idea of playing at one someday. She turned on the keyboard. What would she play for an audience, if she had the chance?
She fingered a few melodies with her right hand. There were some people, like Ezra, who strongly preferred one kind of music over another—he loved jazz and the Beatles; that was pretty much it. Rob had a slight penchant for 1970s British artists, but he was more like she was, appreciating all kinds of music, depending on the mood she was in. But she’d never really had a chance to choose what she’d play herself, she realized. Her piano teacher chose, her mom chose, Rob chose. What would she play, if she could play anything, any genre, any song?
It wasn’t just the melody, she realized, or the musicality of the song that pulled her toward one or another, it was the words, too, and how the lyrics and the music played with each other. She fingered some Peter, Paul and Mary—“If I Had a Hammer.” There was something about the way those words danced with the song’s rhythm that worked so well. The hammering of the guitar.
There were other songs like that. One that she’d loved when she first heard it in high school, even though it was more than ten years old by that point: Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” The insistent pulsing of it felt like riding in a car, and when Tracy started in with the repetition of the phrase “be someone,” it felt like the car was revving its motor, picking up steam. Emily fingered the melody on her keyboard and then started adding in chords with her left hand. Once she had that down, she sang along with the chorus, tentatively at first, and then full out, as if she were on stage. Her voice wasn’t as strong as it used to be; there were all those muscles involved in singing that she hadn’t been