Swan Song by Sarah Safsten

Swan Song | Sarah Safsten

One Sunday night about a year ago, you were practicing Chopin’s Nocturne in E Major. I can’t usually name the song you’re playing, but this time I could; it was the same melody Mom used to play for me at bedtime. I was five years old; she was sitting on the pink-cushioned bench at your old Yamaha piano in our living room, and I was lying in the bottom bunk in my dark bedroom down the hall. There was a yellow triangle of light on the carpet. The melody lilted through the slightly open door. 

On that Sunday night, you didn’t know I was listening. But I was. I was sitting at Mom’s kitchen table, forgetting about the card game I was playing, and I was listening. I heard a few wrong notes here or there, but it didn’t matter. You played those ending trills with such precision, and with such tenderness, that I couldn’t help but close my eyes, exhale, and try to memorize the sound. After the last notes faded, I wondered how many more times I would hear you play.

***

A few weeks after that night, you slept behind the closed door of Mom’s old bedroom, watching whatever was playing on PBS, and I stood near the baggage claim in the Orlando airport with goodbyes on my mind. If you had been there, I’m almost sure you would have been irritated by our group of noisy, disheveled ballroom dancers, goofing around and waiting for our 31 suitcases filled with rhinestone-studded, ostrich-feathered costumes to fall onto the carousel. If you had been there, I’m not sure you would have chuckled at my coach’s quip, “wouldn’t it be terrible if your suitcase got lost right before your swan song?” 

Swans aren’t one of our regular conversation topics, but if they ever come up, I’ll complain to you about the fact that swans don’t sing. It’d be nice if the myth were true. The image flatters our anticipatory grief—the graceful long-necked, wide-winged bird giving one last aria before sinking under the water. But, according to ornithologists, the Tundra Swan bellows a noisy high-pitched yodel, Trumpeter Swans sound like an old car horn, and the European Mute Swan is mostly silent. If swans do make a sound before they die, it’s most likely a hiss or a snort—their throat’s last, unmusical, involuntary rush of air. 

***

If you knew that I’ve said all the words you think are bad—and said them more than once, if you knew that I’ve watched violent movies, skipped church, voted for people you’d never vote for; if you knew that I’m obsessed with The Beatles, that I believe things you’ve spent your life arguing against, that I’m a lesbian—I don’t know what you’d say. 

I don’t feel close to you in the way some granddaughters feel close to their grandfathers, although I’ve seen you almost weekly since you moved in with Mom. Most of what I know about you is what Mom told me. She said that before you lived with her, when you lived in your trailer, you would forget to eat or drink—you would just sit in your chair for days and days. Several times, she found you home alone and unconscious between August and November. Once, you fell and smacked your head on the sidewalk. It was then Mom knew she had to be your full-time caretaker. I wish we had decades to learn to know each other, but if I were in your shoes—living on for seven years after the death of my partner, losing my independence, still paying student loans at 79 years old—my fingertips would be itching for their finale.

***

After I wrangled my suitcase off the carousel and found my hotel room, most of my team headed to the pool. I crashed onto the bed and didn’t get back up for a while. The next day, I stayed horizontal too, half-watching Netflix on my phone, half-thinking about swans. I didn’t get up until two hours before our call time. What are you supposed to do when your last time is only hours away? I ate a granola bar.

***

I’ve never seen a piece of music stump you. If you were a swan, you’d be the most prolific singer in the flock, so much so that ornithologists would believe they’d discovered a new species that really can sing (perhaps they’d call you the first Cygnus Cantare). 

One night, during family dinner, you listed your favorite pieces you’ve ever played – songs by Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Prokofiev, Copland, and Debussy. Of Chopin’s “Nocturne in B Major Opus 62 No. 1,” you said, “that one’s a beast to play, by the way. A whole page of trills. But I love it.” I chuckled under my breath, knowing that if you, a master pianist, called it a beast, then I’d never have a hope of playing it. This was the first moment after you moved in with Mom that I almost felt like I knew you. I’ve since made those pieces into a playlist, and as I listen, I hear the echo of notes played by other pianists, but I try to imagine it’s your hands playing those notes on our Yamaha piano with the pink cushioned bench and the chipped middle-C key.

***

Did you feel your shell crack—peeling like a hard-boiled egg before your last recital? Did the pieces of your shell slide from your nervous sweaty hands like mine did on the night I danced for the last time? I looked at my reflection in the dressing room and breathed through my litany of lasts: Zip up this dress. Step into these shoes. Whisper backstage. Listen for my cue. 

***

I’ve inherited your short-fingered, piano-playing, exceptionally sweaty hands. Even as I write this, I have to stop and wipe the sweat off my keyboard, and I think your hands are a curse—I really do; they are a curse that causes my fingers to slip off every chord that requires precision. And I think damn it, Grandpa, why couldn’t you let me inherit something less embarrassing?

But then I look down—no, that’s not quite right—I never actually look down at my hands, because I still obey what you taught me when I was a fledgling pianist: “Don’t look down at your hands.” You covered my hands with a book of sheet music so I would have to rely on feel rather than sight. I’ll start again:  

I sense my hands in my peripheral vision, typing these words without thinking, stretching across each gap like caterpillars stretching across leaves. And during these times, it’s your hands I bless. 

***

Did you know the average swan’s wingspan measures between six or seven feet, but some swans boast wingspans of up to ten feet wide? Imagine having wings as tall as Michael Jordan. Wings taller than a refrigerator, or taller than a Christmas tree. Swans can run up to 30 mph over the water’s surface, beating their gigantic wings before taking off. Imagine running at a two-minute mile pace on top of the water, beating wings longer than a king size bed. Though this feat would be impossible for human bodies, swan bodies are made for flight. They’re the perfect balance of light and heavy: many of their bones are hollow, making them light enough to fly, but they also have huge, dense chest muscles which allow them to operate their enormous wings. They’re covered in 25,000 feathers which repel water and catch air currents. Don’t you wish you could taste what they taste when they’re charging across the water on the cusp of flight, their bodies performing precisely according to their design?

But your body hasn’t performed very well lately. Though you haven’t told me so explicitly, I’ve seen your trembling hands, the slowness of your steps, the wobble of your balance. I have to speak louder and slower for your ears to catch my words. It’s during these moments that I think of you performing in your heyday with all the power and dexterity of a young swan. I imagine you seated at solemn church organs and grand pianos in performance halls. Your elbows stretch out like wings across the keyboard. I wish I could have seen you then.

***

Unlike us, swans don’t need to worry about budgets, day jobs, or the cost of concert attire (okay, I’m torturing the analogy a bit here, but stay with me). You had to fight for tenured faculty positions at a university, make do with living room stages instead of grand concert halls, try to convince reluctant kids to practice, advertise piano lessons on tear-off flyers at Allen’s grocery store, and sell insurance to make up the difference. 

I had to work multiple jobs to pay for dance lessons, scour the internet for discount shoes, and haggle for used ballroom gowns. We’ve never said it out loud to each other, but we’ve felt the gap between our dreams and reality—and the bitterness it leaves behind.

***

Do you know that us grandchildren joke that your catchphrase is, oh, for goodness’ sake, said in the most disapproving, cantankerous tone? I play a classic rock cover of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata? Oh, for goodness’ sake. The Beatles are my favorite band? Oh, for goodness’ sake. My sister and I once went skinny dipping? Oh, for goodness’ sake. Sometimes your crabbiness is funny, even endearing. 

But how easily you cross the line from curmudgeonly to cruel. How easily you dismiss your daughters, berate your son, criticize your family. I know there’s pain underneath that cruelty; you carry all sorts of burdens and heartaches in addition to your unrealized dreams. But if I were bold enough, I might tell you that I’m depressed too, and yet somehow, I’ve managed to not kick the family cat or crack derogatory jokes about queer people. You act as though we, your progeny, disappoint you. Giving you grace isn’t easy.

But when I catch you sitting alone in the living room while everyone else plays games in the kitchen, I see myself in your face. I’m 53 years younger than you, but I know how it feels to be weary, bitter, and depressed. I’ve had my own prickly, irritable moments—times when I’ve been too much of a storm to be in the same room with. Your hands are just as damp and restless as mine; you, like me, are an unapproachable introvert who looks away when someone tries to meet your eyes.

***

If you asked me what the last time felt like, I’d tell you that even though I tried to memorize every moment, I could only hold on to fragments: three solitary notes, a violin, two long strides, a turn. Heat in my hamstrings. Tight heels, slick hardwood floor. Feathered hem floating behind me. My teammate’s face. My heart folded inside a tango’s drumbeat. A pause, then crescendo into my favorite part. The slight creak of floorboards. Applause. 

These are all the fragments I carry, two years after my last performance. You weren’t watching my final steps. And when it’s your turn to go, I might not be there to watch yours. After you’re gone, I will be left trying to hold just a few pieces of you.

***

If I knew I could trust you, I’d tell you I felt hollow the morning after that final performance. I was supposed to return my gown to the team storage closet on my way to work, and though I’ve worn countless costumes over the years, that dress was different. I’d been practicing my goodbyes for months (practice is what you taught me), but I wasn’t prepared to give this raspberry-red gown, stitched for my body, to some other woman on next year’s team. 

As I got dressed to leave, my face grew hot and my throat tightened. I sat against the wall of my bedroom in just my underwear and cried. My partner found me there and held me. I think of you and your shaky hands, and I suspect you know what it’s like to careen downward.  

***

Two years have passed since my last performance. I’m still practicing and failing at this goodbye; it’s coming as fast as a swan can sprint over water. So I’ll just say one last thing before I go: I’ve been practicing Chopin’s Nocturne in E Major. Most nights after dinner I rest my sweaty, too-short fingers on the keys and play mostly wrong notes. But don’t worry, I’m still practicing. I’m looking at the sheet music (not my hands), and stretching my elbows out wide like you taught me. 

Someday I’ll play it well. Maybe, when that day comes, the melody will find you through a slightly open door.

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