Bonifas - Requiem

Nicholas Bonifas

REQUIEM

With a small tap, Marshall set a glass of water on the top of his mother’s upright piano. He stared through the glass and watched the wood grain gently ripple with the vibration of the instrument as his mother’s fingers grapevined along the keys. She didn’t say anything. Marshall settled on the floor next to her bench and leaned against the piano as he picked at his cuticles.

He took a deep short breath and said, “I passed that exam I told you I was worried about.” Music continued to glint through the air around Marshall’s head and he stared hard at a small red well at the edge of his nailbed. “And a boy in my class got in trouble for smoking in the bathroom,” he tried again. He looked up at his mother, but her face was behind a curtain of long hair. There were silver strands beginning to infect the strawberry blonde around her hairline.

Marshall reached up and plucked one before standing as his mother continued to play.

“Your fingertips look sore,” Marshall said, “you should take a break.” He watched her for a moment before turning away.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal for dinner. “I’m going to go and get groceries after school tomorrow,” he called out to his mother. Marshall took his cereal to the couch and sat, his back to his mother and the piano. He pulled his knees up, pulled an old green crocheted blanket over them, and turned on the television. He watched a nature documentary on mute. Chameleons crawling across the screen in malleable chromatic patterns mesmerized him until his eyelids were heavy. He set his bowl on the coffee table in front of him and watched as it seemed to grow scales in the reflection of the television.

Marshall’s head lolled against the couch muffling the sound of his mother’s piano. He recognized the song, but couldn’t place a name to it as he was falling asleep. He turned around to ask, but instead of his mother he saw a small lizard running back and forth on the keys. Marshall stared at it over the back of the couch, it opened its mouth as if to speak.

ϖ

The alarm clock in Marshall’s room at the end of the hall blared between notes of Chopin’s “Nocturne No. 20.” Marshall blinked away sleep and used his sleeve to wipe a line of drool from his chin. He kicked the crochet blanket to the floor to stop sweat from continuing to build on his back and pulled himself up to look over the back of the couch. There was no lizard, his mother still sat at the piano.

Chopin followed Marshall down the hall as he went to shower and dress for the day. Before leaving for school Marshall stood by his mother’s piano. He grabbed her hand just long enough to get a look at her fingertips before she tugged her arm away from him and continued to play. They were blistered, some were beginning to burst.

“You need to stop playing,” he said as he went out the front door.

ϖ

He returned that night kicking the door open, his arms full with two brown paper bags about to tear. The bags slumped onto the kitchen counter and Marshall filled a glass of water at the sink. He took it to the piano and replaced the water he had set there the night before. A few of the piano keys held dried smears of brownish-red. Marshall watched as his mother’s fingers left keys and new stains were left behind.

He turned away, and as he walked down the hall, ran his finger along the rim of the old glass clearing away a very thin layer of dust. He wiped his fingertip on his jeans and opened the bathroom door. The bottom of the glass clunked against the counter next to the sink much harder than Marshall had meant for it too. He bent closer and watched as a single drop of water grew at the bottom of a new crack in the glass until it fell onto the counter and a new one replaced it. A small pool formed. Marshall opened the mirror to retrieve a box of band-aids. The pool began to drip into the sink.

Two open band-aids sat on the top of the upright piano as Marshall, holding a third, made grabs at his mother’s hands. Even when he did catch one or the other he could hardly hold on to it long enough to get a bandage on properly. Disjointed notes jangled against his ears and his mother’s bloody fingers writhed in his own. When she pulled her hand away for the fourth time Marshall gave up, throwing the box of band-aids against the back of the couch and going to the kitchen.

Marshall washed his hands and turned on the television before beginning to chop vegetables from one of the brown paper bags. He stood at the counter that looked out on the living room. Toucans swooped silently across the screen. The mute symbol moved from corner to corner. His mother played “Carol of the Bells.” Marshall’s knife thudded against the cutting board as he split the skin of bell peppers, tomatoes, onions. Toucans scrambled into holes in trees. His mother breathed. Marshall heated a pan of oil on the stove. The mute symbol could not stay in one place. Marshall watched pepper skins shrivel. His mother bled. The toucans croaked silently. Marshall smashed tomato chunks under his spoon. His mother played. Marshall seared. Marshall boiled pasta.

When he was finished Marshall emptied the dish onto two plates. He carried one to the piano. The fork clattered in competition with the keys as he set the food down next to the glass of water.

“I made the sauce from scratch,” Marshall said, looking at his mother’s hands. The few band-aids he had forced around her fingers were already starting to soak through. He carried his food down the hall to his room. The toucans stayed in the living room trapped by the television.

ϖ

The next morning Marshall found a dead fly floating in his mother’s glass of water. He replaced it and scraped her untouched pasta into the garbage. He checked her hands again. It seemed as though the pads of her fingers were beginning to wear away. Marshall peeled off her band-aids out of fear they might hold infection and left for school.

ϖ

“Do you know how to play “Claire de Lune”?” Marshall asked as he replaced his mother’s water that night. “My music teacher played it for us in class today. It was nice.”

He knelt next to the piano and waited. He watched the keys sink and rise until his mother was only using one hand. He took the other and examined her fingertips. In some, there were hard pale knobs just starting to poke out of raw flesh and torn skin. Her fingernails were oddly loose. He gently touched one of his fingertips to hers and felt that the white was hard, was bone. His mother pulled back. A gag waved up his throat, but he swallowed it and struggled to hold on to his mother’s hand. She wrenched it away and hit Marshall’s face hard in the process.

Marshall leaned back with a streak across his cheek and wide eyes. His mother’s eyes were shiny, vigilantly focused on the piano keys. There was a tremor in her hands, and the notes rang out out of time. Marshall stood slowly. He stared at his mother. His mother played Beethoven.

Marshall stepped backward toward the kitchen. He washed his hands then he washed them again. His head felt like a wet cloud. His mother had played until she’d bled before. It was as though there were cotton balls pushed into his ears, soaked in alcohol like his mother used to do to treat an ear infection. He opened and closed cupboard doors trying to think about what he would make for dinner. She had stayed at the piano for days before, but her fingers had never turned inside out. She always stopped at some point. Her bones never showed. As he stared into the refrigerator the first sweet notes of Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” floated into the kitchen.

Marshall went to the couch and crouched on its cushions. The refrigerator door stood open. He rested his chin on the back of the couch and watched his mother play. Her cardigan hung off her arms like the curtains of an open window. Marshall wrapped himself tightly in the old crochet blanket. His mother billowed across the piano.

When she finished the song Marshall went back into the kitchen and made a box of instant stuffing. He got a spoon, returned to the couch and the blanket, and ate straight out of the pot. On the muted television jellyfish sashayed around each other. They swirled at the edge of Marshall’s vision as he half-watched his mother. The stuffing, and the old green blanket, and the cool clear notes of his mother’s piano, and the dancing jellyfish. Everything was calm, and Marshall breathed uneasily. He finished the documentary and retrieved wrap bandages from down the hall. The glass in the bathroom was dry. He wrapped his mother’s hands as well as he could, left the extra bandages on the piano, then he went to bed.

ϖ

In the morning there were two dead flies in his mother’s water. Marshall was running late. He scooped the flies out of the glass with his fingers and dropped them on the piano in a small puddle.

ϖ

When Marshall returned home his mother’s bandages were torn off and piled on the piano bench at her sides. Marshall dropped his bag and headed toward the bathroom, but stopped as he heard a sound that reminded him of long fingernails tapping ceramic hiding beneath the noise of the music. He approached the piano. The keys were crusted over. He looked down to see the ends of his mother’s bones clicking against them as she played.

“You need to stop playing,” he wailed, snatching her hand. She jerked, but Marshall held on. “You need to stop!”

His mother pulled away. She replayed the string of notes Marshall had interrupted. Marshall’s hand was sticky with blood.

“Mom!” Marshall shouted as he took hold of both her wrists. His mother lurched herself away from his grip. She replayed the string of notes again. “Mom, please! You can’t keep doing this! Please!” Marshall’s cries were matched by the third movement of summer from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons finally moving forward. The two dead flies stared Marshall down.

Marshall knelt down and leaned against the piano. “Please, you’re hurting yourself.” He cried and pushed his palms into his eyes until he saw spots floating in his vision like the dancing jellyfish. “And me,” he said. “And me,” he gasped, over and over, “and me, and me, and me.” Marshall sat and Marshall cried until his mother reached the end of the movement and skipped to the first movement of winter.

Marshall stood uneasily like a ragdoll and scooped up his mother’s slimy bandages. He threw them away in the kitchen. He washed his hands. He filled a glass of water. He took a sip from it. He carried it toward the piano to replace the water he’d neglected that morning. He thought about his mother bringing water to his bedside when he was young and sick. He made it halfway to his mother before he threw the glass instead. It shattered and soaked the side of the piano. Bits of glass reached the keys, lodging between them.

His mother, startled, looked at him for the first time in over a week. Her eyes were red and the skin beneath them was baggy and bruised. Her strawberry blonde hair was dull and stringy.

“Stop!” Marshall screamed. It hurt his throat. His mother rubbed her eyes leaving them more red. She turned back to the keys and began playing the second movement of winter even though she hadn’t finished the first. The shards of glass splintered and scratched against the keys as his mother played. The sopping sleeve of her cardigan dragged behind her hand as it moved up and down the piano, smearing the blood and making it run between the keys. Marshall watched the pink-stained liquid drip onto the carpet.

Marshall’s bare feet tracked water onto the kitchen linoleum. He turned on the stove and twisted two knobs from “LO” to “HI”. He washed his hands and left the sink running. Water dripped off his fingers as he turned to the cupboard above the stove. With his right hand he reached for a pan on the top shelf, with his left he caught himself on a warm brass burner when his foot slipped in a puddle on the floor. “Fuck!” he yelled and jerked away. The pan clanged to the floor. Marshall kicked it across the kitchen for good measure and stuck his hand under the cool water still running from the sink. Blisters were already puffing on his fingertips and palm. He stood with his hand under the faucet and listened. His mother was no longer playing Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” She was playing one half of Franz Schubert’s duet version of Fantasia, a song which she had taught him as a child.

Marshall went and sat next to his mother on the piano bench. He did not remember all the notes, but he played what he could of the duet. Slivers of glass popped his blisters, and his arm brushed his mother’s cardigan. Missed notes made the song sound like it was being played from a broken music box. When it ended Marshall folded his hands in his lap and leaned against his mother as she continued to play.

Eventually, he returned to the kitchen. He turned off the stove, and he turned off the sink without even washing his hands. He took the old green crocheted blanket off the couch and went to bed.

ϖ

The next morning was a quiet, still Saturday. Marshall listened to the birds as he pulled off the old crochet blanket which was again making him sweat. He carried it with him to the kitchen where he started a pot of coffee and took out two mugs. He listened to the coffee pot’s grumble. He couldn’t hear his mother playing.

He couldn’t hear his mother playing. His chest lifted slightly, she had finally stopped, she must have gone to bed last night. He dropped the blanket on the linoleum and stepped into the living room.

Light from the window drizzled onto the curtains of his mother’s cardigan sleeves. She was draped across the keys. She had fallen asleep as she played, Marshall was sure. Marshall shook his mother’s shoulder. Her head lolled on the keys, clinking out a few notes.

Marshall held his hand below her nose and couldn’t feel her breath.

Marshall put his hand under his own nose to make sure he was still breathing. He was. He could still smell the coffee. He could still hear. He stepped back. He stepped forward. He shook his mother’s shoulder again. “Mom?” he said quietly. He moved the stringy strawberry blonde out of her face. He took the wrap bandages that were still sitting on the piano and covered her hands, her delicate fingers bound together in a cloud. He stepped back and stepped back again, and kept going until he was back in the kitchen. He listened to the coffee dripping into the pot. He pulled the old blanket over his shoulders and watched the coffee ripple until it stopped.