The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [66]
“This isn’t normally.”
“Well, maybe we could all use a bit of normally right now,” Julia said.
Kathryn walked to the window and wiped away the condensation that had formed on the panes. The snow was indeed thick, and the driveway had not been plowed. There must have been eight inches already on the cars.
She sighed. It was always difficult to refute Julia’s wisdom, especially as Julia so often turned out to be right.
“Don’t leave the house,” Julia repeated.
Through the long afternoon, the snow fell steadily, thickening as it did so. From time to time, the wind whistled and howled but then seemed almost immediately to subside, as though the storm were giving up its attempt to become a blizzard. While Robert made calls from Jack’s office, Kathryn meandered from one room to another, looking at the walls and out the windows, crossing her arms, uncrossing them, then wandering into a different room and standing in it and staring at the walls or out the windows again. Lately, just standing and thinking had sometimes been all she could manage.
After a time, she found herself in the bathroom. She took off her clothes and turned on the shower, letting the water heat up until it was almost scalding. When she stepped in, she bent the back of her neck to the spray and stood in that attitude for a long time. It was such a pleasurable sensation that she stood there until the hot-water tank had emptied itself and the water turned cool.
When she shut the water off, she could hear music. Not a CD, although it was piano music.
She adjusted the collar of a long gray bathrobe, a brushed cotton that fell to her ankles. An ancient woman stared at her from the mirror, a washed-out face with hollow eyes.
Brushing her hair as she walked, she followed the music down the stairs and into the front room, where Robert was playing the piano.
She knew the piece: Chopin. She lay down on the sofa, folding the robe closed over her lap and legs.
She shut her eyes. Fantaisie Impromptu was a lavish piece, unabashedly pretty, with an extravagant number of notes. Robert played it as she seldom heard it, without sentimentality, yet it carried with it the delicious weight of stirred memories and forgotten secrets. When she heard the glissandi, she thought of scattered diamonds.
The piano stood in the corner, sideways to the windows. Robert had rolled his sleeves, and she watched first his hands and then his forearms. There was something about the hush of snow that improved the acoustics in the room, or perhaps it was that there was no competition from any other noise; the piano sounded better than she remembered, even though it had not been tuned in months.
It must have been like this years ago, she thought, listening to Robert play. No television, no radio, no videos, just the space of a long white afternoon in which to make one’s own time, one’s own sound. And it was safe. She could put her mind elsewhere, not think about the crash or Jack or Mattie. The piano hadn’t been something she and Jack had ever shared. It had been Kathryn’s alone, a solitary pursuit, though a link to Julia, who was also safe.
“I had no idea,” she said when he had finished.
“It’s been a while,” he said, turning to her.
“You’re a romantic,” she said, smiling. “A closet romantic. You play wonderfully.”
“Thank you.”
“Play something else?”
She saw then, in a way she hadn’t quite before, that Robert was a man with a past — of course he was. He had an entire life she knew almost nothing about, a life during which he’d mastered the piano, learned to fly, become a drunk, married, had children, divorced his wife, and then had somehow become involved in his extraordinary job.
She recognized the tune: “The Shadow of Your Smile.” Changing the mood in an instant.
When he had finished, he scratched the back of his neck