I slid onto the bench. A brass lamp illuminated the music stand. It matched the brass fish inlaid in the wood, Charlie’s signature. Just behind stood the thirty-two-foot reed pipe, first of its kind, nearly touching the ceiling. This was one of the good ones.
“Turn this way,” the photo boy said, and I obeyed. “Chin up,” he commanded, and I did as I was told.
“Now let’s get one of the performer . . . ,” Anna said, leading him away. “Thank you,” she called back with a wave. Then I slid around on the seat to face the instrument. The stops surrounded me, the pipes towered over me. My husband’s final deed.
When Charlie was dying—his liver a mess of problems the doctors attributed to childhood diet, but we knew it was a result of radiation—one night he said, “Do you know what the smartest thing I ever did was?”
“Tell me, love.”
He wrinkled his nose, which by then was as close as he could manage to a smile. “Married a girl way out of my league.”
“No,” I told him. “You married beneath you. She just rose to your level.”
His tongue ran over dry lips. “You never got to attend the conservatory.”
I held a cup with a straw for him, he took a good suck of water, then I set it aside. “You and me, Charlie. That was my greatest performance.”
He relaxed then, surrendered to his deep fatigue, and I knew it would not be long.
Something about that memory made me shift on the bench, and my elbow nudged a key. It sounded. Only a fraction of a second, but now I knew: Mr. Elaborate-Bow had neglected to turn the instrument off.
Oh, didn’t I sit up straight? And open the trumpet stops? And put my worn hands to a shape so familiar, they might as well have been caressing Charlie’s brow? In one gesture, both hands, both feet, I came down on a single unabashed chord. The one Charlie played in the Dubie’s Music showroom in the fall of 1943: a great G major.
I let it sound, then released, then listened as it dwindled for the count of five. Such a room. Such expert voicing. The chord lived for five full seconds.
What came to mind then, of all things, was the charge Reverend Morris gave us at the end of our wedding blessing: make a joyful noise. Which is exactly what Charlie and I spent a lifetime doing, so why stop now? No question about what piece of music it should be either. My one and only performance of it. “Toccata” means touch.
Already I could hear men rushing down the aisle, to protect the instrument, I suppose. To stop me. But they were forty-one years too late. After checking my posture, I began, the opening notes like the peal of a trumpet. Which meant that no one dared interrupt—if not because I was the organ builder’s wife, then because it was Bach, king of this instrument, calling on us all to pay attention.
I have paid attention, and learned one thing in this life: Whatever you love, no matter how fiercely, you will lose it one day. That is the only certainty. Therefore be as kind as you can. Don’t fear your mistakes, as long as you learn humility from them. There is no such thing as perfect pitch.
As I continued playing, the organ came alive under my hands: pipes singing, bellows pumping to fill them. I could feel Charlie breathing through the instrument, so I did not fear the difficult passages ahead. I leaned into every note.
And that is how I was able to touch him one more time.