Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 33.2: 1994, Georgina

Chapter 33.2: 1994, Georgina

 

My fingers pressed the keys in turn, small sounds. A beginning. My piano sang a song.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by. When hope was high, and life worth living.

My elbows descended onto the keys, making ugly sounds, scattered and wrong. Like the thoughts in my head now. I wanted to quiet them with the sounds, but it wasn't working. The song was too-

A car door slamming outside made me jump. The keys protested, like little creatures wondering why I was destroying their peace. But instead, feeling without love, my fingers fell on them again and continued with night time in my heart.

Why did I feel him in the room? It had been so many years since I had felt him in the room. I felt like he wanted to play a song for me. I wanted him to press the keys, pull me onto his lap like it was yesterday. 

Frankie. 

He slept a summer by my side. He filled my days with endless wonder.

My keys played by themselves, and I let them go. I closed my eyes, feeling the white, heavy ivory under my fingers sweeping by. I wondered if he would like this song. I wondered if he would have played it for me. I wondered if we would have gone to see the production on Broadway together. We never got to go to the theater together. It was a shame, such a shame.

He had wanted to see the Nutcracker with me, but we found out his brother was using his father's box that same night. That same, Christmas-y night. We had to hide, and I was so upset. I was so angry at him, at myself, for having to hide once again. I felt robbed, quieted, ashamed. How could such a bad man get to be normal and get to go see the Nutcracker with his new wife, a baby on the way, too? It wasn't fair, and I'd shouted at my dear Frankie about it. Cried about it.

He hadn't deserved my anger. He hadn't deserved to hide.

I was just so angry then. Mad at everything, because I wanted to be normal like his brother and his wife. Frankie was patient, kind. He understood, because he loved me. That night, instead of seeing a grand production, Frankie patiently sat at my piano in my apartment and as I raged around, knocking the expensive paintings off of the walls and crying and trying to kick holes in the same walls in my frustration, he quietly had started to play the beginning of the Nutcracker Suite. 

Like an angel, he played for over an hour. And by the end, I was calmed, sitting next to him on the bench, watching him. 

I never got to tell him how his gift to me that night, played on the piano, was so much better than seeing the Nutcracker live in his father's box. Let Eddie and his wife keep the grand Nutcracker and the ballerinas. All I wanted was Frankie's sweet piano playing, creating all of the characters with his fingers like sweet marionettes in an aurora borealis of colorful sound. 

My Frankie. I wanted him here. I wanted him to play the Nutcracker Suite for me again. I wanted him to play it every year on Christmas, but I couldn't have it. I couldn't have it because he'd been torn away from me. He'd been ki-

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock

I gasped and my heart jumped out of my chest and my hands desperately clung to the lip of the piano, preventing me from falling backwards off the bench. 

No. It wasn't possible.

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock

Five quick taps on the door, faster in succession the second time. Desperate. Eager. My hand went over my racing heart, stabilizing myself. I stared at the door, my thoughts a jumbled mess.