North Road {HS}

17. Kitty

I read once about a man stuck on an island for twenty-eight years and I had hated the book. The idea of Robinson Crusoe stranded alone seemed so dull. It lacked all of the romance and drama my young soul had wanted when escaping in a book. I wanted to read of young men and women in love. I wanted to be them.

But now I felt an aching familiarity to the deep loneliness Crusoe must have felt. The difference is that I am not alone. I am in a room full of people. One of whom I know is watching me from the corner when he thinks I'm not looking.

But I won't acknowledge him. Nor will I acknowledge the others.

Because none of these people had just lost their mother. None of them knew the feeling of being shipwrecked and the need to scramble to survive. The fact that seeing the everyday pieces of life remain in tact was the only thing keeping me sane. Symbolizing that the world was still turning even though it felt like here on the island where I was stuck, that it had stopped.

I wondered if Crusoe ever went back to normal after those twenty-eight years of being stranded or if he lived the rest of his life a shell of who he used to be.

I wondered this as I passed tea out to men and women the same age as my parents who had decided to stay and visit after the funeral.

"Kitty, won't you play for us?" asked my father. And even though I knew it wasn't really a question I said no.

"Darling, it would lift all our spirits don't you think?" Said a woman who I had seen laughing earlier and gorging herself on cake while she did so. Her spirits seemed fine to me.

But a tittering of agreement seemed to support her statement and giver her more confidence, "I think you should do it for your mother. It would be lovely."

I slammed the tea tray down then and marched to the piano. If they wanted me to play, to do it for my mother as she said, then that's what they would get.

Breathing deep I began a piece. A loud angry one that I knew none of them would like. And when I heard their whispers and sighs of dissatisfaction I only played louder. I wondered if the writer had felt all of the pain, isolation, anger I felt at that moment. I wondered if anyone had ever had the audacity to ask him to play for his dead mother while they sat on and loudly drank tea and pretended they had known her far better than they really had.

I closed my eyes and let it carry me away and suddenly I felt tears. And my shoulders shook and my breathing felt difficult and my island was filled with the angry march that I played and I felt like I had more power than I had had since she'd gone.

My song came to a crashing stop and my island was silent again and my body was shaking. I didn't turn around to see the disdain on the faces of the women or the pity as they sipped their tea with too much milk. Instead I ran. Desperate to find my way off of this island.

But I could have sworn that I as I ran I heard something over the sound of my shaky breath and or the chorus of my heart crashing like waves on the shore of my devastation.

Something that sounded like clapping coming from the corner where he stood.
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The song I imagined her playing was Rachmoninov's Prelude Op. 3, No. 2 in C-Sharp Minor. I'm telling you it's a killer one to play.
Here's a link if you wanna listen. It's not long:
https://open.spotify.com/track/73FHnUWDmI526kxaHweWal?si=rAEMBj2cTTqflER4EMxAZw

Love. ❤️