Like a Fantasy by Chase Wolfsohn
Trigger Warning: Suicide
Movement 1:
I dreamt of you last night. You were sitting at the piano and playing your favorite song. Like you always used to. Sonata No. 14 in C# Minor. Your body moved violently, swaying with each note like you used to do when I was young. I used to be scared of your movements, when they pulsed with the music, like your heart was beating with that rhythm instead of a natural one and if you played for too long you would become the song. You were stuck in time and I was stuck with you, listening to each movement over and over until the music got loud enough to make me scream at you to stop.
When I woke up, I played it. It was early in the morning, but the notes were looping in my head and I knew I couldn’t get them out any other way. I could play it with my eyes closed at this point, but I still read the sheet music, tracking each line, letting my fingers have autonomy. You were there too, your breaths on my neck like a metronome, following along to see if I messed up, but I know you would hear any mistake at the same time. You knew every note, rest, and beat of that song so even if you weren’t over my shoulder you could hear my errors from anywhere.
When I was little I had sworn that I would quit piano when I got the confidence to do so. But I have always loved it just as much as you did. It was both unchanging and exciting at the same time. A million songs could come from the union of me and the keys if I spent the time with them. Like raising a child, the ivory notes could be anything if I put the care into them. They have been my only love, though I am afraid one day that I will play and they will sound like your screaming voice and I won’t be able to touch the instrument again.
I finished the song and returned to bed when I remembered why you had been in my dream. It was early this morning, December 16th, which meant two things: tonight was the first night of my tour with the LA Philharmonic and exactly one year ago today you killed yourself sitting at the very piano which I learned on when I was a kid. I hadn’t really thought about the anniversary, but I guess my subconscious had decided to remember for me. I used to think that this day would be a celebration. My hatred for you ran deep for a long time, but being out of your rule when I became an adult helped me see that there was love under the harshness of your words. I used to believe that we made quiet amends. When I had told you that I had finally made it to our dream, playing at a concert venue where people paid to see me, I believed we had finally overcome it all. You had said that finally both of our lives had paid off. I thought you were finally happy.
And now, I can’t focus on opening night. And the stakes are high. I made a mistake yesterday and I don’t make mistakes, not anymore. Not when my career depends on playing perfectly night after night. I wasn’t sure why it happened, but my finger slipped. No one heard it, it was during a forte of the violins in our final run through, but the note rang out to me like a scream. Your scream. When I returned home I played again and you were there with me, ready to correct me. I played through perfectly, but the memory of my failure lingered.
The crowd is clapping and I realize it is my cue to enter the stage. I step out and try not to smile too wide. You used to tell me not to be prideful on stage. That just because I got to sit up here and play for these people didn’t make me any more special than the girl who played Chopsticks for her Kindergarten recital.
The first memory I have of playing is of sitting next to you on the bench and pressing down two keys back and forth while you improvised a melody a few octaves up. You moved my hands where you wanted them, and showed me how fast to play. I was overjoyed just to be doing something with you, to be joining you in something you loved so much. My feet swished back and forth and I remember smiling at you. You didn’t smile back. You told me I wasn’t listening to the music — that my mind was somewhere else.
Eric taps his baton and looks at me. The crowd is silent. I straighten up and look out among the rest of the ensemble who are poised, eyes trained on Eric. He gives the signal to the concertmaster, Laura, who pulls her string across the bow in a single A. She plays it again and the violins join in a cacophony of strings across bows. The rest of the instruments jump in to tune and produce that noise of pure chaos and beauty all at once.
When I was ten you had taken me to my first symphony concert and I listened in awe as the musicians all clashed together in those terrible moments until they found their tune. You told me to listen carefully, that this was the most beautiful part of the entire performance because of the potential in the multitude. I hadn’t heard it then, and didn’t, concert after concert, until I was sitting among them, hearing the music in the dissonance.
Movement 2:
I play softly at first, alone. My introduction is short and soon the violins come in and grab the song from me. It soon goes to forte as the strings take it away with accompaniment from the flutes and I am floating in the music like I am every time, waiting for my moments to play. I fall back into my notes soon and let the rest of the orchestra play around me. Through me. Out of the corner of my eye that’s when I see you. I know it cannot be you, but there you are. You are smiling at me like you did at my first performance with a philharmonic.
It was a small smile, lips barely curved upwards — anywhere else I would have thought it was a trick of the light, a shadow warping your cheeks. But that was true happiness on your face. I didn’t realize that I had never seen you smile for me. You smiled when you heard a good violin solo, or when we tuned the piano, but this one was for me. It was what made me believe you were alright. When I had found you afterwards the joy was gone from your face and you told me that I had been slouching in between pieces.
And now here you are again. I almost miss a note, but I catch myself and continue on in the song. I will not let myself mess up again. Not with you watching me. I am no longer lost in the music, but focused completely on my hands— suddenly aware of how fast they are playing. I breathe deep as they fly across the keyboard and try to clear my mind of that image of you.
I learned this piece a while ago, when I was practicing for my audition for Juilliard. You told me that it was the only school that was good enough for me and even though you had not gotten in, it still held a special place in your mind. That whole trip I had never seen you so nervous, never care so much about something. I thought it was because you cared about me and my future. You told me that I had to get in. It was the only way my life could go. And I listened.
The piano concerto is my favorite form because it feels like I am playing not just for the audience, but for the rest of the musicians. I get to teach them the tune, show them what I can do and listen to them copy the melodies in enthusiasm. It was like Eric wasn’t there any longer as I played. Like I was the conductor, and the entire orchestra. If I could play all of the instruments at once then you might let me see your smile again. As the music progresses I realize that I am playing the correct notes, but my mind is hearing something else entirely. I am listening to the song that you were playing in my dream. But there are no mistakes.
When I was fifteen, you told me you wished you were dead. You were drunk, I think, and you sat on the couch while I played your song for you. Somewhere in the middle I paused too long, losing my place on the sheet, and you stopped me and told me in a quiet voice that every mistake I made convinced you that life wasn’t worth living. You told me that if a mother couldn't get a single song from her daughter that a mother doesn’t have anything to live for. I didn’t know what to do then, and maybe if I did, you wouldn’t have followed through twenty years later. One year ago today.
The song finishes and the applause erupts. I feel my heart beating fast as I look for you in the crowd, but I know you weren’t out there for the song. You were up here. Playing with me. Leading my hands. Telling me to play right and listen to the music.
It was after one of my performances at Juilliard that I finally told you how much I hated you. You had flown to New York to see it, even though I didn’t ask you to be there. We got dinner afterwards and I decided to say what had been circulating in my head for years. I told you about the pressure you put on me, the way you made me hate myself, the fear that I got from your voice. I told you all of it in a stream of anger and resentment until I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe and people in the restaurant started to give us weird looks. I expected you to yell back. You said nothing at all.
Movement 3:
We all bow in unison and exit the stage. The aftermath is filled with quick goodbyes as I make my way through the back rooms and to my car. We are supposed to stay a while after, to meet, but as soon as the song ended I felt my heart beating too fast. It is not just the post-concert excitement, but something else. I am in my car and driving before I let myself think about it too much.
When I was young I would have panic attacks frequently. Sometimes they were the quiet ones where I would huddle somewhere dark and close my eyes until I was so deep in my head that I felt like I was floating somewhere and couldn’t find my way back into my own body. More often than not, I would hide underneath the grand piano we had inherited from your mother. It was dark brown and was so big you got rid of our couch to make room for it in the living room. It was forced into the corner and when the bench was pushed in, below was entirely enclosed. Other times, the attacks were loud. Where the lights would scream, and I would scream back until my voice gave out it felt like nothing could quiet the world around me. I don’t know which one was worse.
I can’t tell what this one is, but as I pull up to my house I just want to close my eyes and lay down in my driveway. I make it to the couch without collapsing, but my head is spinning. I cover my face with my hands to block out the light from outside street lights that spotlight me in my living room like I am on stage again. I ask the world to stop for a moment.
You used to play when I would huddle under the piano. You were never one for hugs, or telling me you love me, but you would play for me. Underneath, it was so much louder. Totally encompassing. And no matter what you played I felt comforted. In those moments, the music became my world and I wasn’t a little girl under a piano, or a mind lost in the dark, but a single note among the hundreds that you played. You wouldn’t just play slow, soft songs, but some of the fastest most intense music I had heard. It would calm me down anyway. I remember opening my eyes and seeing your heels tapping the pedals violently — sustaining and dampening in a beautiful dance between your feet and the piano. There was peace in that harshness, quietude in the deafening.
I open my eyes, now, to the sound of you playing. I stand and see you at my piano, playing the same song as you were last night in my dream. Your favorite one. I see myself too, under the piano, examining your movements from the safety of that enclosure. I watch you play the song in awe, unmoving. You near the end, slowing, and then approach the last concluding melody on the keys moving faster and faster until you hit the last notes with a fermata, a sustain, and then finally lift your hands. You sit still looking at the keys.
When I got the call that they had found you dead on your piano the first thing I wondered was what song you were playing when you died. I knew, deep down, which one it was, but I lied and told myself that you had merely stumbled to the bench in the stupor that comes from taking that much Valium along with a bottle of Grey Goose. I imagined that it may have been an accident, that you had forgotten that the medication that you took for most of your life couldn’t be coupled with alcohol. I hoped that it had nothing to do with the fact that I had skipped a note somewhere in the middle of my performance that night and couldn’t find you afterwards. I fantasized that maybe it hadn’t happened at all.
. . .
“You held the notes too long at the end,” I say, “He intended the end to be abrupt.”
“It sounds better that way,” you say, looking at me from the bench.
“You think you know better than Beethoven?”
“Yes,” you say, smiling.
I smile back.
“Will you play it again?” I ask.
You nod, place your hands on the keys, and begin again.
Chase Wolfsohn is a Master of Theological Studies student at the Candler School of Theology. His short fiction pieces focus on the intersections between faith, religious systems, identity, and interpersonal relationships. Having studied religion alongside creative writing, Chase has incorporated religious motifs into his writing in order to fully capture how belief operates to the individual and the communal. His academic work in the field of theology including projects on queer sexual ethics, cosmological narrative, and scriptural formation have been key themes in his creative work.
