Music in an Empty Room

MUSIC IN AN EMPTY ROOM
a short story
by
John O’Donnell


    After dinner, Henry and Doreen Hintz took their drinks to the patio. Henry carried the glasses unconcerned that his fingers claimed his wife’s tumbler from the inside of the glass. Doreen followed slowly, unsteadily, and with the aid of a walker used for balance; she pushed through the back door and eased down the wood ramp that replaced the concrete steps that had come with the house. Low, darkening clouds gathered in the western sky, but Henry figured the rain was still an hour or so away. “Light the Tiki lamps, won’t you?” Doreen said when she had made her way to the table. Henry did as he was asked and joined her at the table.
    “The movers will be back first thing in the morning so we have to be up early and ready to go,” he said, as if to himself. For nearly two years now Henry wondered how much of what he said to his wife she heard. Or maybe she was just having trouble understanding him—he wasn’t sure which. The illness had come on so gradually he was hard pressed to know for sure, but two years seemed about right.
    It was about the time Doreen lost interest in gardening and hinted that the yard work in general was just too much for them and that they should look into hiring a service. Before that, Doreen had always been unfazed by the summer’s heat, but now she spent less and less time outside and complained when tomatoes fell uncollected and rotting in the vegetable garden. “I’ve planted too many again this year,” she said. “Who can be expected to eat all these tomatoes?” But the basil, and garlic, and corn died in the earth as well. Henry had to admit it was a big yard that needed lots of work and maybe they were a bit too old (but they were only sixty and sixty-one, respectively) when they decided to take on the challenge and buy the house. Doreen had fallen in love with it, and convinced him with her vision of how things could be, and they jumped in. Over the next fourteen years they worked together: outside in the summers, inside in the winters. In time, Doreen’s vision revealed itself to Henry and the property was a showplace of fantastic flowering colors that seemed to swallow sunlight and left no shadows.
    Ben Hintz only lived in the house the first year, and summers, until he graduated from college, then law school, and eventually settled in California. “California is an awful place,” Doreen declared when she and her husband returned from their only visit. “I won’t go again. Ben will have to always come visit us.” And that’s what happened until Ben and his wife began to have babies and the infants were too young to travel. When the boys got a little older Ben’s practice was such he found it difficult to get away and visits were limited to Christmas, and then just for a few days. After several years Doreen packed up Ben’s room and Henry dutifully moved everything to the garage. The room was re-imagined as a sewing room, although Doreen rarely sewed, preferring instead to keep the door closed to the rest of the house.
    Ben’s younger sister, Jennifer, never went to college, never went to law school, never settled in California. Jenny was the actor in the family and joined a theatre group, landing several good-sized roles, but never the lead. She appeared as an extra in several movies filmed in the area, but only had one screen credit: Girl Number 2. Doreen loved the fact that Jenny was on the stage and in movies, but constantly worried that her daughter would ultimately be disappointed with show business. “One of the most painful things for a parent,” she confided in Henry one night before they fell asleep, “is to see the dreams of your child unrealized.” And then, with one phone call, Jenny was gone. She drowned one morning in the Gulf of Mexico while on vacation. The day after the funeral Doreen packed up Jenny’s room and Henry moved everything to the garage. The room became Henry’s den, although he was not a man who needed a den, and another door closed to the rest of the house.
    And now, the whole house was shut of itself. The wind out the west picked up a bit. Henry silently watched Doreen, who seemed so far away. When they first started to date there were never long periods of silence between them. Then, in time, there were silences, but they were ones of closeness and comfort, not the chasms he felt now. Sometimes no words need to be spoken, and other times words need to be spoken, but nothing is said. Henry went inside to fix another drink and get a shawl for his wife.

    In the morning they rose early and Henry helped Doreen in and out of the bathtub, helped her dress, then showered himself. They were having coffee when the movers arrived. Some boxes were labeled with a red Sharpie, others with a black marker. The red boxes would go to their new home, furnished, in a nice community they could not afford. The black boxes, all the furniture, and everything in the garage would be unloaded into a storage unit Henry rented a month ago. They would keep the television with them, since Doreen didn’t trust the movers to move anything fragile, but all the appliances would stay with the house.
    The men worked silently, efficiently. To all appearances the Hintzes were simply an older couple moving to a more manageable home; indeed, that is what Henry told everyone, including Doreen and Ben. In the new home Doreen would have a nurse at her disposal, catered meals, and the companionship of people her own age. No one would have to know the true reason for the move until they were settled in their new home; Henry was a proud man, but not prideful, and thought his current circumstance embarrassing. He was a man who had always worked—forty-eight years with the railroad, not including a two year stint in the Navy—raised a family, cared for his wife; in short, he had carved out a fine life for himself and those around him. And then, at once it seemed, it was all gone.
    But it wasn’t all gone at once; rather, it slipped away over time like years to an old man. Law school had been an expense Henry didn’t see coming until it was upon him. Ben had worked hard for the privilege and Henry insisted on shouldering the financial burden. Ben’s success was a source of pride Henry and Doreen shared equally: Henry was proud to know that he had put his son through college and law school, and Doreen would tell whoever would listen about all the rich people her son knew. And there were medical expenses for Jenny first, and later Doreen. And, most recently, the monies lost in the stock market and a diminished pension. Henry took out a second mortgage on the house when repairs proved to be more costly than they first appeared. Soon he was in arrears, and finally, in foreclosure. Although many in the neighborhood knew that Henry and Doreen Hintz were moving to a more “manageable” home, no one, perhaps out of politeness, asked about the lack of a For Sale sign in the yard. Henry’s responses, however, (the fact that an empty house looks larger to potential buyers, or there was so much cleaning that needed to be done before Doreen would allow the house to be shown, or there’s no real hurry to sell and we’re waiting out a down market), were always at the ready.

    Sutton Gardens was a gated retirement village just one town to the north. With rolling lawns, a three-hole golf course, and an attractive recreation center featuring indoor and outdoor pools, the Gardens, as it was known locally, had all the trappings of a luxurious, insulated community. “Perhaps the kind of place where Ben lives in California,” Doreen said when she and Henry had first visited. And so, the Hintzes loved the people, loved the grounds, loved the nurses and banquet facilities, and Doreen loved the pool, although she was not a swimmer; in fact, she hated swimming and everything about it. Always had. Henry, on the other hand, had been a fair swimmer “in my day,” as he told Ben and Jenny on at least one occasion when they begged for a pool in the back yard, “I swam the medley and almost went to State.” Still, the Hintz family pool only floated in the imaginations of two children and a failed State champion.
    Doreen loved the nursing staff at Sutton Gardens and imagined they would be her servants. “How wonderful to have a drawn bath in the afternoons and dinner served promptly when we arrive,” she mused on the ride home that first time. “I’d like males in the evening, but only maidens at bath time. You’ll be the only man to see me in and out of tub, won’t you,” she said to Henry as he drove. “We’ll swim and dance, and with our small garden your vegetables will garnish our meals all summer,” Henry said, languishing in his wife’s excitement for a moment. “I’ll need a bigger area in time,” Doreen said, “but they’ll all see that.” Then, resolved and excited: “Henry, we’re making the right decision, aren’t we?”
    As new residents of the Gardens, the Hintzes were treated to an afternoon brunch. When the luncheon was over, Henry and Doreen walked like young lovers to their new apartment; her right arm felt strong in his and the walker was long forgotten on the dance floor. Red boxes were in their respective rooms and one of the movers had taken the initiative to take the television from the backseat of their car and put it in a position that seemed best for looking at TV. There was nothing personal in the bedroom but boxes marked bedroom. The smell of white paint and air freshener clung to the walls; their footprints, the only ones on the vacuumed carpet, were soft helloes to a new world. Henry coaxed an excited but tired Doreen to the bed. “Lie down, Mother, and rest until the nurse comes. I have to go back to the house,” he said.

    It is a melancholy feeling, like music in an empty room, to know you are seeing something for the last time: a wave that crests, just for a second, then engulfs you while swimming in the ocean; an infant who will change the instant you leave the room; a smile from a stranger who will never become a friend. Henry imagined these things as he drove home, pulled into the garage, and left the motor running until the car was out of gas.