Romance in F

Some Brahms puts John uneasily to sleep, and in the morning he heads out while Sadee relaxes before the kids get up. | 

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Music: Johannes Brahms, Romanze in F Major, Mark Budd, piano, IMSLP Petrucci Music Library, "Free Recordings," https://imslp.org/wiki/6_Klavierst%C3%BCcke%2C_Op.118_(Brahms%2C_Johannes)

Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Lies I Tell My Kids. This is episode 8, “Romance in F.”

She laughs lightly, goes silent, and then turns onto her side with a slight sigh and grunt, her back now towards me. In minutes there is nothing but silence, uninterrupted. I’m quiet too but wide awake. It’s dark in the room but the light from the window and the bathroom nightlight causes odd patterns on the ceiling. At one point it looks like an insect moving around and I shudder that its tenuous attachment to the smooth surface might give way, one leg then all the legs on one side, and suddenly there’s a whatever-that-thing-is bumping off my nose. A car goes by outside and the headlights momentarily create something more diaphanous, but also moving, and looming.

I turn onto my side as well, pick up my phone, and insert the jack of the earphones. I go to my “short classical” playlist and tap the random icon. “Romance in F” by Brahms comes on and the left bud of the earphone is crammed into my ear as I settle onto the pillow, the right ear allowing a kind of relief. The first minute feels like pondering and considering, the touches light on the piano keys. It all changes in the middle with playfulness and excitement, intensity, and then low ominous notes leading to a decisive and dramatic decision. The last twenty-five seconds make me cry, things slowing down, sound lowering, and everything ending on ten seconds of a single note. I check the counter and see that it’s been less than four minutes in total. I’m obviously not built for this. I turn it off and put my phone back on the nightstand.

Sadee is awake before I am in the morning, surprisingly early, even before the kids are awake, and she pokes me playfully. I was deep inside a dream of wandering around in a subway station looking for something, my transfer maybe, but I’m suddenly awake too.

“Hey, lazybones,” she says.

I’m groggy and alert at the same time. “Oh. Hi. I mean, hey. Good morning.”

“We should do something fun today,” she says.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, like take the kids and go somewhere. I mean, not to New York City or anything, but somewhere in town, something, like an outdoor thing in a park that we would enjoy too.”

I’m only alert now. “Sure, that sounds good. Anything specific, any specific park or anything?”

“Not yet. I haven’t had coffee yet so my brain is not working at full capacity.”

“How do you feel after the big shopping binge?”

“Surprisingly energetic. I don’t know if I’m Superwoman or if I’m going to crash like at about two o’clock or something.”

She gives me a wet generic kiss on the lips and then gets out of bed very inefficiently, her feet not touching the floor as she makes her first attempt, and falling onto her back after she’s scooched and writhed closer to the edge, and finally rolling onto her belly and sliding backwards till her feet hit the floor. She stands up straight, throws her arms in the air, and bends backward slightly.

“I nailed the landing.”

We both laugh. She’s got her bathrobe on in a flash (literally, oh my God) and I know she’s headed downstairs for her alone time with the newspaper and her coffee. It all seems so normal this morning that part of me wonders what is wrong with the rest of me. But I’m decided on my path, desperate for some kind of certainty.

I get showered and dressed and head downstairs. Sadee is looking at something on her phone, the coffee nearby, and the newspaper in a used, rejected heap on the floor beside her.

She looks at me. “There’s coffee.”

I download my little practiced speech from my brain and open it up.

“Oh, thanks. Listen, I’m going to pop out for a bit and pick up a few things for this afternoon. It’s looking like the kids won’t be up much before lunch time.”

Her eyes stay focused on the screen. “Sure, hun. Oh, and get some rice cakes too.”

I noticed the sign for the place when I worked downtown and was puzzled until I Googled it. All caps, JR PI, and nothing else, and I discovered that this was Josh Reynolds’s way of being a little discreet about his private investigation business.

“People make all sorts of stupid assumptions,” he says, when I sit down and tell him the story. “They figure that if you need a private investigator, it must be for some, you know, nefarious reason.”

I nod and hope that my smile doesn’t look as awkward as it feels.

He smiles back, all teeth, and moves forward with his hands clasped and his forearms on the desk.

“So, John, how can I help you?”