The Body of David Hayes

TWENTY-FIVE

BOLDT HAD NOT FELT THIS nervous since the birth of their first child, who now sat inside the room behind them. They’d flown down as a family. Liz’s sister’s kid, in her last year of graduate work at UC Berkeley, had offered to take Sarah to the Exploratorium, leaving Boldt and his wife on an uncomfortable wooden bench in a hallway that reminded the lieutenant of waiting outside a courtroom.

Liz had busied herself with projects since leaving the bank. The garage was spanking clean. When she offered to index his jazz albums he knew it was time she found work again. For his part, he was back at work, though staying behind his desk. He’d even booked himself back into the Joke’s on You, playing jazz piano during Happy Hour. He felt at peace each evening from five until seven.

From the room behind them they heard Miles’s inspired piano playing. Boldt recognized the song: a Monk ballad the boy had picked up from Boldt by ear.

It had been difficult, the past month. They had not made love yet, and he wondered if that was going to happen, or if they were doomed to one of those marriages of living together but not fully loving together. He didn’t want that.

She asked, “Do you think-”

“Yes,” he interrupted, knowing as only a husband can know, that this question had to do with the child on the other side of the wall. The kids were the sinew that bound the muscle of the marriage. That muscle kept growing stronger with exercise. “They’re going to tell us he’s unusually gifted, and it’s going to be left to us to accelerate that talent or let him develop like any kid his age.” She nodded. “He knows it all intuitively, Liz. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Our little Mozart.”

“It’s going to mean tough choices,” he said. “Financially. Sending him away.”

“They don’t have to be tough,” she said. “We’ll just listen for what’s right.”

He wanted badly to reach down and take her hand just then, but something stopped him. It struck him as too sentimental, or maybe an act of forgiveness that he couldn’t yet afford.

They heard singing from the other side of that wall. A pure, golden voice right on pitch. “Amazing,” he said.

“We’ll work it out,” she said. “You trust that, don’t you?”

This was a much larger question than she let on.

“I do,” he said, the words indelibly reminding him of the original vows they had made to each other.

“I’d like to hold your hand,” he admitted.

“Then why don’t you?” She offered him hers.

“I don’t know,” he said, still unable to take hers up.

“Well, we’ll start there,” she said, placing her hand back into her lap.

The music grew behind them, the clear voice penetrating through the wall, and they both turned to face each other at the same instant. The song pushing through the wall was “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music, his son’s voice so pure and simple.

Boldt caught himself humming along.