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‘I’m not running from,
No I think you got me all wrong,
I don’t regret this life I chose for me …’ (Daughtry, 2007)
Adam still remembers the first time he met Derek. That smile. The way his eyes crinkled up. The wood paneled room, the frayed ends of the soft blue cloth that covered the tables, the dim, flickering lights that made it look faded and old. Adam was finishing his fifth drink of the night. Or was it his sixth? Remembering is like peeling the scabs off wounds that have barely healed.
There was also a Steinway & Sons. The tone of the keys and the feel of the wood confirmed it. Simply a light touch was enough to fill that room, and all the spaces in between. The sound blended into the background, yet you couldn’t possibly ignore its presence.
Adam’s memories of the college trip that followed keep finding their way back into the open air, no matter how hard he tries to bury them. He can’t believe that he is about to step through that door once more. Just as he had that night. And so many nights before that. But there were many afternoons before those nights. Afternoons as a kid with his sister and parents. The first thing Adam does is look to his left. The piano is gone. The table and chairs in that corner are like an incorrect puzzle piece. Adam rubs his nose. It doesn’t take him back to the one day he would do anything to return to.
‘… happy birthday to you!’
The three voices, discordant as they were, still made Adam smile.
‘Mum, Dad, when are we going to open the presents?’
She hadn’t waited for a reply.
Lucy held the gift. It was covered in bright yellow wrapping paper with red, blue and green balloons. She had waved it close to Adam’s face. The carefully applied pieces of tape contrasted with the childish scrawl on the glossy star tag.
It starts deep within his chest, and soon floods his entire body. Memories of rain. Lucy. His baby sister. She was the only one who knew everything. Adam can’t forget the rain that day. It was a slight drizzle that was hardly noticeable at first. But later he couldn’t escape the cold drops of water that fell so hard through his coat they stung his skin. He has hardly any recollection of the 30 minutes it had taken to reach his house from Derek’s.
Adam remembers Lucy’s wide eyes as soon as he had shuffled into her room, the hood of his jacket hiding his face at first. She had jumped up from her bed and rushed into the bathroom, coming back out with a soft cloth, a big plastic Ziploc bag with an assortment of medicines and a mug of hot water.
The time after, he’d needed the hospital.
The memory fades as Adam bumps into a table. He jumps back and slowly shakes his head. His eyes scan the rest of the room. She is supposed to be here.
It had happened one day before a major dance competition. Lucy had trained for months. But an unfortunate slip during practice meant that she watched from the sidelines as her troupe went on to win the nationals. She had imagined the long days stretching out in front of her; days involving doctors’ appointments, physical therapy, no dance, restricted mobility.
But Lucy had not counted on Adam staying home and driving to University every single day those three months. He had taken her to parks, to movies and on one or two day road-trips; they had stayed up late playing board games and watching “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” re-runs. But all that had changed one rainy night when he walked into her room, bloody and beaten.
Sitting at a table near the window, Lucy kicks herself for agreeing to this venue. Her last memory of this place was Adam’s birthday. She had been six years old, anxious for her big brother to like her gift and pestering her parents for more Cola. She can barely remember the days that followed. Time has crystallised her memories into balloons, cake, red roses and shiny wood against the rain soaked earth, a busy house that felt strangely empty and lots of chocolate.
Lucy almost doesn’t recognise the guy who walks in through the door and looks straight at her. The thick brown hair is cropped short. The face is a lot more angular and thinner than she remembers it and his skin paler. But then, they exchange smiles. It is like nothing has happened. She closes her eyes and takes a sharp breath.
Adam hardly recognises his sister. The long, dark brown hair usually worn in a ponytail or scrunched up on the top of her head is now cut in waves that descend like graceful steps over her shoulders. A sparkly blue pin shaped like a star holds up part of the hair over her left ear, glinting in the light that comes in through the large glass windows. They are definitely new. He misses the old ones with the scratched wooden frames and the ornate handles that made it near impossible to open them without putting your entire body weight into the action.
She smiles at him in spite of the tears.
‘So, what was so important that you call after two whole months?’ Even as she says it, Lucy bites her lip.
Adam continues to look at her. He opens his mouth a couple of times, no words come out. He takes out something from his bag and slides it across the table. It is a thick envelope. Lucy’s hand starts to shake, even before she has a chance to reach inside the envelope and look at the contents. A plastic file. With official looking documents, and X-Rays, and CT scans, and all sorts of technical, medical jargon she can’t even begin to pronounce.
Their eyes meet for a second, his dark brown eyes still as intense as ever.
He shrugs his shoulders.
‘Three cycles. They say it’s better. But we won’t know for sure until my final test results. It could take a few more days. Maybe even a week. And there’s a good chance of a relapse’
She looks at his hands.
‘I’ve played a couple of gigs here and there. But not nearly as much …’ He holds up his hands, the long, slender fingers thinner, shaking, even as the muscles of his forearms tense with the struggle to keep them still. After much effort, he winces, puts them back on the table. Lucy reaches across the table to pat them.
‘How is Kat…?’
His shoulders sag. Through the silence that follows, Lucy plays around with the edges of the colourful menu in front of her. Two weeks to Christmas – specially baked cinnamon stars sprinkled with powdered sugar, mini cupcakes decorated like Christmas trees, gingerbread men with red and white frosting.
‘I … haven’t really told her …’ Adam’s eyes seem to search for her in the view outside the windows.
‘When are you going to?’
Adam’s eyes hold her gaze for a second.
She rests her elbows on the table and looks down at the untouched mug in front of her. The coffee tastes bitter.
‘This is you and Kat we are talking about, Adam. I don’t care if you broke up with her or not, she needs to know.’
Adam traces the intricate pattern on the tablecloth. It is new too. A cluster of tiny shapes following a hazy path, sprinkled with powdery particles. There had been a shooting star when he’d proposed to Kat, that night in Paris. His body suddenly feels heavy,
‘… so happy that night you called me from Paris.’ Lucy finally looks up and at her brother.
‘A moment she wishes she could keep frozen in a crystal globe’ Adam’s voice is almost a whisper.
That week in Prague is all Adam can think about. The Grand Café Praha. The Staromestske. And then the night in Paris a year later when he proposed and she said yes.
Adam opens his mouth. Anything would do at this point of time. But the memory of that rainy night hurts his head. Derek.
‘He’s back, Luce.’
Lucy holds her breath and her hands start to shake again. She holds the mug in front of her. But the coffee has long gone cold. The mug has a smiling snowman. It is strangely grotesque.
‘He called before I could explain to her. He knows our address. Knows that Kat works at Universal Melodies. And how she looks …’
Adam pauses to take a deep breath, eyes squeezed shut, ‘I just couldn’t take that risk of her finding out the truth, of him getting the chance to hurt her, us… ’ He looks down at the table, cracks his knuckles. Kat had slapped his hands every time he’d do that. He stops.
Lucy frowns. She opens her mouth.
‘Look, I didn’t exactly tell her … everything,’ his mouth has suddenly gone dry. ‘Nothing about me and Derek being …’ His voice trails off but he exchanges a knowing look with Lucy, who looks scared.
Approximately five hours later, Adam finds himself gazing up at the large, glass windows of The Grand Café Praha. He doesn’t know whether she even remembers the promise they’d made on their last day in Prague nearly two years ago. Prague, the place he’d first told her he loved her. But there she is, sitting at a table in a café overlooking the Grand Café Praha. He has hurt Kat once, and is about to do it again. A sharp intake of breath.
Adam remembers those twenty odd minutes in alarming clarity, his brain slowing down time so each second feels like a hundred. Her shiny blue gloves, her light brown tresses sprinkled with powdery white crystals, the turquoise woolen knit hat he’d bought for her lying beside her untouched mug of hot chocolate, the look in her eyes when she glanced up at him …
I’m sorry that I hurt you,
It’s something I must live with every day …’
All those carefully practiced words had melted away with the snowflakes. ‘I don’t have much longer to live’ was easier than what he was about to say. Maybe if he ended up beating the cancer, he’d tell her everything one day. Adam wouldn’t have lied to anyone else.
‘I’m not a perfect person,
There’s many things I wish I didn’t do …’
Lucy sits at the same table in the cafe. It is dark outside, the Christmas lights reflecting off the frosty glass of the window, twinkling like stars on speed. She clasps her mug of coffee with both hands. This one has a candy-cane pattern. Her mobile phone is in front of her. She keeps looking at it, and pressing buttons, but it remains silent.
‘The pain you feel’s a different kind of pain.’
Adam stares at the ceiling. 8.15 pm is reflected on it in bright green numbers, distorted by the intricate ceiling, and the surrounding darkness. It has been less than an hour since his return to the hotel. He gets up and shakes his head, his eyes scanning the room. The shiny leather guitar case propped up against the far wall. Bella. He still carried her everywhere out of habit. She’d always been there for him.
A short walk across the room and he holds her. Shaky hands put the strap around his neck, his fingers uncertain. The strings feel cold. Cool. Adam presses his fingertips against them. Tentatively at first, but slowly increasing the pressure as his muscles remember things he was sure they would have forgotten. His right hand strums the strings gently. Light brushes of his thin fingers.
It is a song he hasn’t played in a long time. “You Never Know”. His fingers ache after the first chord but he doesn’t stop. His mind is focused on the view of Prague that stretches out in front of him, the stars like tiny scattered pinpricks against the inky expanse. The haunting lights of the city below illuminate every single particle of Adam’s reflection, every single note of the melody surrounding him. A pale guy stares back at him from the large glass windows. Short messy brown hair, intense dark brown eyes. Holding a guitar as though it was the only thing keeping him attached to reality.
‘And all the pain I put you through,
I wish that I could take it all away
And be the one, who catches all your tears,
That’s why I need you to hear …’ (Estrin, Rob, 2004)