A Room With A View

Chapter Thirty-Seven - David

October 23, Monday

David tapped his thigh. It was the fingering for Locatelli's Il Labirinto Armonico. Phantom strains of notes filled the room.

He was waiting for Tanya to come home.

When David had quit his job, he hadn't realized just how empty his life would be. He went to work in the morning, and he came home from work at night. He and Tanya enjoyed dinner together, watched some new program Alice had recommended, and went to bed. It was a routine that had worked for them for thirty years.

But now that routine had come to an abrupt halt, and David didn't know what to do with himself.

He had been too scared to pull out his violin. He hadn't even asked Tanya what secret closet now held his treasured Hofner. He hadn't seen it in years. The last time he'd seen it, he'd felt like he was cheating on his current life, with the tenuous dream of something else.

The lock clicked, and the doorknob turned.

David shot out of his seat and ran to the door faster than a trained puppy.

"Hello wife," he said, taking hold of Tanya's jacket and helping her out of it.

"Hello," Tanya said, a bit uncertainly.

"How was your day?" David opened a hidden closet and hung Tanya's coat up inside. He was careful not to look too closely at the top shelf.

"Um, fine." Tanya slipped out of her shoes.

David bent down and picked those up too, gently arranging them on the shoe rack in the closet.

"David what's up?" Tanya asked. She stared at him, her arms folded.

"Nothing. I missed you." David leaned in for a kiss. He felt Tanya return it after a brief hesitation.

"Well that's nice." Tanya picked up her bag and carried it into the kitchen, setting it down on the counter. She ruffled around inside and pulled out a glittering blue binder.

David joined her in the kitchen, rocking on the balls of his feet. "So how was your day?"

Tanya flipped open the binder, looking at whatever was inside. "Fine. The kids wrote their first stories today, so I have to review them by Friday."

"Any good?"

"I don't know yet." Tanya turned toward a glass-fronted cabinet.

David reached around her and pulled out a wine glass. "Red or white?" he asked, holding it up.

Tanya eyed him over the binder. "White," she said slowly. She watched him pull a bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge and pour her a generous glass.

"Thank you." Tanya took a sip, still balancing the binder with one hand. "Seriously, what's up with you?"

"Nothing," David assured her. He was just bored.

"Okay. What did you do today?" Tanya took both the glass and her binder over to the couch and sat down.

"I watched three more episodes of Game of Thrones."

"David!" Tanya exclaimed. She set the glass down on the onyx end table. "We were going to watch that together."

Her face was flushed. David tapped the pads of his fingers against his thumb nail. He felt sheepish.

"I know, but...there wasn't much else to do..." he said.

Tanya leaned back against the couch cushion. "Oh David," she said pityingly.

David hated that tone of voice.

"Why don't you pick up your violin again? It's right—"

"Not yet," David said, cutting her off before she could point in its direction.

Tanya stopped, the binder forgotten in her lap. "Why not?" she asked.

David swallowed. Why not indeed.

He came around the coffee table and sat down heavily next to Tanya. She adjusted her position to face him.

"David?" she asked, her hand on his arm.
It was her teacher's voice. It made David feel like an ashamed teenager. Which was closer to the truth than he wished to admit.

"I'm scared," he said finally.

Tanya's hand tightened around his wrist.
"Of what?"

David looked at his fingers, unable to put the feeling into words.

He had been tied to that violin, both of them seemingly carved from the same wood and tuned to that same, perfect A. David's father had been a musician, and so David had been given his Hofner at the age of four. He hadn't even been able to fully hold the instrument at that age, but he'd known in his heart that it would be the most magnificent thing he'd ever grasp. Excepting Alice, of course.

But David didn't remember ages one to three. He only remembered four and up, and the feel of the violin pressed beneath his chin and the bow held almost lovingly between his fingers. He'd coaxed magic from a chunk of wood and a few pieces of string, and it had been beautiful.
That was how playing the violin should be. He couldn't do justice to those memories now. He didn't remember the motions.

For years David had held on to the dream of one day becoming a world-renowned violinist. If he picked up his violin now, after thirty years of letting those fine-tuned muscles atrophy, it would be the end of that dream. And then everything he had hoped about himself would all come crashing down.

Yes, he was scared. He was scared of pulling his bow across those strings and hearing something discordant, like the sound of something half-remembered. He was scared of realizing, after all these years, that he was not the man he thought he was, nor the man Tanya still believed him to be. He was scared, and it was that fear that kept him looking away from the shadows, not wanting to see the dark, leather case staring back at him.

Tanya took David's hand in hers. She rubbed each of the segments along his fingers. David desperately wished he could see inside her mind.

"Are you scared of these?" Tanya asked softly. She was still using her teacher voice, and like a child in trouble, David nodded.

Tanya brushed each of his fingers with a featherlight kiss. "I'm not," she said warmly, no longer the stern teacher.

"I fell in love with these fingers," Tanya continued, fixing her green eyes on him, "in a smoky college bar, before I even knew who you were. You played there every Friday and Saturday night. And through a crowd of kids learning how to get drunk, I heard you. And I fell in love with you."

Tanya gave David back his hands.

Something was welling up inside him, and he opened his mouth to let it out.

Tanya placed a gentle finger over his lips. "I loved you because of the music. Not because you could play, thousands of people can play a damn good violin, but because I saw that you loved the beauty of it. And I wanted to share that with you."

Tanya sat straighter on the couch. She smiled at him. "I love you, David. And I know that that music is in you. You could pick up a violin right now and turn my heart into a mushy puddle. But if you don't, if you decide that you're never going to do that again, I will still love you. Because you are the music, David, not some piece of wood. And I'm going to share that with you from now until forever."

David's chin trembled. He clenched his hands into fists, feeling his nails bite into the meat of his palms.

"You're—" he started, but he couldn't finish. There was nothing he could say, nothing that could possibly encapsulate all that he felt for the woman at his side.

"Practically perfect in every way," Tanya said, beaming.

And she was. In every way.