Page 18 of Sounds Like Love

She hugged me tightly and left for her car with an echo of “good night.”

I HAD TOjiggle the key a little before the door would unlock, and pushed it open with my shoulder. Moonlight spilled into the foyer, before the door swung shut again. It smelled the way it always did—of stale beer and musty cigarettes and old metal. Music venues didn’t have a lot of windows; they were bad for acoustics. But I didn’t need light to know my way around the Revelry.Even though I lived thousands of miles away, I could still walk it with my eyes closed.

I drifted through the lobby and into the main hall, sliding my hand along the cement walls until I found the light switches, and flicked them on. The halogen houselights blinked on with apop, paling out the colorful murals on the walls and the red-rusted steel beams overhead.

If I closed my eyes, I could still hear the squeal of sound checks and the riff of a guitar, the tap of a drum, the screams of the crowd. The light riggings always let off this warm buzz that sounded like honeybees. I missed the way my ears rang with all the music, the way the Revelry howled with life.

I know it sounds silly, because how could a stagnant place, a pile of bricks and a few rusted steel beams and scuffed cherrywood floors be more than just walls and a roof? But when there was music in this place, it felt alive. Those bricks hummed, those steel beams swayed, the floorboards creaked like a heartbeat. If this place didn’t have some sort of soul, then it had mine.

I’d forgotten what it felt like to belong somewhere, but there it was—that warm and soft feeling ofhome.

And soon it wouldn’t be.

I grabbed a bottle of Maker’s Mark from the bar, and a glass, and poured myself a drink. I drained it, the whiskey burning all the way down, and then poured another as I made my way up onto the stage to the closed curtain.

When I was little, I used to jump off it so Dad would catch me, and he’d swing me around and tell me I was so good at crowd diving. That I was born for it.

The thick black curtains were heavier than I remembered as I drew them back to reveal the stage.Mitch—or Gigi—had already pulled the Steinway piano, beat-up and scuffed and loved, out for tomorrow night’s Elton John impersonator.

I sat down at the bench, putting my glass and bottle on the corner, and opened the lid to reveal yellowing ivory keys.

Mom taught Mitch and me everything from “Chopsticks” to Chopin to Cher on this piano. I studied arpeggios and accidentals, chords and codas. When I didn’t have words, there was always a melody that explained my feelings.

I slid my fingers along the keys, fingertips touching the cool notes, brushing across sharps and flats, feeling all the nicks and indentions made by rough hands and too much time.

Mitch had always been better at piano. He showed me upsooften, too. He was always a bit of a brat that way. Music wasmypassion, but he was just so naturally good at it, it made me want to scream—and he didn’t evenwantto do it. He did everything else under the sun instead, and deep down I sort of envied that.

This was all I knew.

I pressed middle C, and the soft, warm note filled the building. Slightly flat, but the baby grand at the Revelry always was. It felt like my childhood, and my teenage years, and my young adulthood. It felt like my first kiss, and my first heartbreak, and the nights Dad pulled me onto the dance floor and spun me around to someone’s cover of “Tiny Dancer” and “Piano Man” and “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”

There was something beautiful and quiet about the Revelry after midnight, silvery moonlight pouring through the two skylights in the ceiling and spreading long rectangular bars across the scuffed hardwood floor. Motes of dust drifted in the light, sparkling like stars suspended. It was so quiet that when I closed my eyes, I swear I could hear the old building breathe.Its heartbeat was the songs that still echoed.

I was losing my mom. Bit by bit, day by day, her memories eaten by some parasite of time. But to lose the Revelry, too? My memories of her were alive within these walls. She was so much a part of this place, shegave upso much to be a part of this place. When I first told her I wanted to be a songwriter, that I wanted to move to LA, she had this far-off look in her eyes like it was a song she’d heard before. She’d told me bits and pieces of her life, but when I finally asked why she never pursued it herself, she had shrugged and replied, “Life got in the way.”

Life—thislife.

As I thought, my fingers fell onto the piano keys, but every note sounded wrong. They sounded bitter, burnt, sour—curdled.

When I was younger, I saw the world through music. I could bring everything I felt to life in a series of notes, chords strung together like daisy chains. Pain, joy, loss, triumph,love—and I could always bring them to life with song.

I should be able to now. I should be able to take my heartache and fold it into a melody. I should be able to rip out my jagged pain and set it into staccato notes, my sadness into minor notes, my frustration into forte—

But my head was so deafeningly quiet.

In frustration, I slammed my fists against the keys. A loud, dissonant chord replied. Jarring. Ugly.

I pressed my palms against my closed eyes hard enough that color bloomed in the darkness. I opened my mouth—but the knot in my chest was so tight it caught my voice. My chest shuddered.

I couldn’t evenscream.

I couldn’t save my home, and the knot hurt, oh ithurt, cutting off the circulation to all the things that once brought me joy,and it wasn’t fair—it wasn’t fair that Mom was losing her memories. It wasn’t fair that my days with her were finite. That this would be her last good summer.

That someday—someday sooner than I wanted to admit—I would have to say goodbye.

There were no melodies for that. No love songs to tell me how.

I was broken. My heart, my head—all of it.

---