Did the ambulance come yet?

I was about to believe that I was seven years old again. It was possible, right? I always wanted it to be.

My mind and skin were in two places. I remembered sitting on the bed, watching Ông put on his best clothes. He used to wear them when he was a part of the orchestra. I should have remembered all of that as it was. It was December 16th, Age 7. I was going to have heart surgery right after that weekend. And Ông was excited to take me to the Sabier City Opera House. He got free tickets to the Christmas symphony every year.

But I was also twenty-eight years old. I hadn’t been seen the Sabier City Philharmonic Orchestra in years. I didn’t get to play for them like I always dreamed of doing. And I just attempted suicide with my…with Axel. Axel who was beyond labels.

How was he doing? He took so many pills. I took enough to wonder what was real and what wasn’t in my mind.

“You look beautiful, sweet cháu ngoại,” said Ông.

At least I knew he always said that.

That one was special. Ông was going to be the pianist for the big finale! He took me to the stage when no one else was there so he could talk to the regular pianist. I sat on the stairs and pretended I was playing piano right there.

She spoke English and I couldn’t understand or remember a word of it. Even if I was Thu at twenty-eight, who spoke English, it was all jumbled in my memories. She wore all black and I couldn’t remember any other thing about her.

Well, whatever, right? I was seven years old and at the Christmas symphony!

“Thu? She my only granddaughter. She play very well,” said Ông. It was the best English he could muster and that I could understand. He gave the pianist a proud, content grin. “She play here one day.”

He wasn’t right. I’d be an unhappy CEO at best.

But the part of my mind that was still seven years old and happy knew he was right. I was going to be the best pianist this city heard and I’d never have to give up any of my dreams.

No one was sitting at the piano on stage. It was the coolest one I’d ever seen! It was black and trimmed in gold and always perfectly tuned. And the sheet music for the symphony was already open. I remembered all the notes. I wasn’t as good at it then but it wasn’t going to be the last time I tried to play Waltz of the Flowers…

“Thu, I think we should save that for later,” said Ông. “There’s a piano in the lobby.” The pianist gave him a confused look, so he switched to English.

“Stop.”

He always meant well in any language. I used to think that the weird, blunt way he spoke English was right too. I spoke that way for years until…until I met Andrea.

I listened, but I wanted to argue too. “But Ông, I’m gonna be the next pianist here! I wanna practice.”

“I’m not the one you have to ask,” he said. I looked up at the pianist and her dark, blank face. I wished that I still remembered it.

“Please? I play good!”

Still no.

I was disappointed at seven years old. I wanted to feel big on stage for the first time. I only played for Ông or people at church. It wasn’t going to prepare me for the stage and crowds and the way sounds resonated in the theatre. And I was confused at twenty-eight at the same time. Was my brain melting? This was how the night went in reality. I knew that much. But that was just a sequence of events with the details making no sense.

That pianist had a face! I swear she did.

In fact, I couldn’t remember anything about the crowd at all. And my drugged-up mind was trying its hardest. I guess that night, there was one woman wearing a long, black-and-white gown with sleeves. A man wearing a pressed wool vest over a white shirt. People of various skins and races, since this was Sabier City. And that was it.

Also, they weren’t seating attendees until later. So a lot of us were downstairs.

Some other lady was at the piano.

There was a rack full of stuff about the opera house’s upcoming shows. Ông couldn’t get me into them though. I wanted to see an opera and then go home and play all the music by ear but the tickets were expensive. He told me about how he was a part of tons of operas and played me pieces from La Boheme all the time.

“Well, I just have to wait ‘til I’m nineteen,” I said to myself. That was when Andrea took me back here for the first time since Ông died. He had yearly passes for the best seats in the theatre. He told me all the time about all the operas and musicals and plays and symphonies he saw. He was a huge fan of Ông and…

…and he and Leah used to go to the Christmas symphony too.

I could picture them perfectly. Andrea, after asking me of course, showed me so many pictures of when he was younger. He didn’t change much at all. He had the same wavy, shaggy hair since before he got married and it started to grey early. Leah liked putting her hair in a low bun when she dressed up. And they both were really beautiful at forty years old. I was jealous of Leah sometimes. I wanted to be six feet tall and curvy and fertile.

I don’t think I ever met them at the orchestra. Andrea treated me like a stranger when we met in the Fashion District, and he was so smart and sharp that he’d have to remember when he first met the love of his life. It’s what I was to him. He said he knew that from the moment he first saw me.

I went over to Ông and one guy he was sitting with. I wondered if he was a fan or a colleague. He spoke so fast in English and we both nodded along and pretended to listen.

“Oh my god, it’s Bao Duong!”

Andrea was a fan. As he said, the piano was a huge core of any orchestra. It mattered as much as the strings. He would be excited if he saw Ông in the same room as him and he noticed him.

They shook hands and Leah looked on. I never knew how she emoted but I guessed. She’d be less animated than Andrea could be and just a little smug. I envied that about her. I envied everything about her.

“…yes, my granddaughter,” said Ông. “She love the orchestra.”

“Is that right?” Andrea asked, as if I was a stranger.

“Hi Daddy!” I said, waving my hand wildly. “I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. This is crazy.”

“You always said that you wished you knew me when you were a little girl,” he said, over the buzz in the room. Every word, even what Ông said, was fading into that. “I’m everything you want me to be.”

“I don’t know what any of this means,” I said, pouting. “I don’t even know if I’m alive or dead.”

“Look, princess, I think you can still remember what I said. Do you remember what I told you on your seventeenth birthday?”

I wracked my mind for it. Everything was so fragmented and more than usual.

“…that you’ll always be there to pull me back before I fall.”

“Exactly.”

“That used to sound nice,” I said. “I felt so good when you first said that…but how are you gonna pull me back now?”

“I always get what I want, even when I’m just a fading memory,” he said. “And it’s what I told you before I passed: you need to have a good life.”

He had a wrapped present with him after waving his hand.

“Why don’t you open this when you get home? Then you’ll see what you need to give me what I want,” said Andrea. “And what you want, whether you’ll let yourself admit it or not.”

It didn’t make any noise when I shaked it. Even money made noise. I was excited to find out but didn’t make a move to open it.

Andrea walked away with Leah. They weren’t as intimate as I thought they would be. For a while I assumed that Andrea treated her and me the same. I faintly heard her talk to him.

“See? If that girl likes the orchestra, then our kids will love it.”

“The answer is no and it’ll always be.”

“You always make me think, daddy,” I said, still looking at the box. I was about to open it until Ông put his hand on my shoulder.

Everyone else started to scatter. We had to as well. “They’re seating. You won’t believe the seats they gifted us this year.”

They weren’t front row seats but they were the closest we ever got to the stage. This was so cool! I rocked my legs back and forth as I waited for the lights to dim and the orchestra to take the stage. Ông closed his eyes and listened to the audience and the pianist doing a sound check. Reality set back in for me. This was how the symphony was every year. I was a seven year-old girl who loved it and dreamed of it all year.

At least this happened to me in real-life. The swelling strings filled the theatre and I was so glad to have been there in reality. They started with pieces from Magnificat including the choral portions, with a boys’ choir.

I thought about them a lot each year. It was unfair. They weren’t much older than me but they got a starring role in the Christmas symphony, but I wasn’t supposed to touch the piano. They trained but I did too! It was just at home with the greatest pianist in the city.

But I enjoyed the music more than thinking. Ông told me years before that I could only go with him if I stayed quiet and I did. All the music he played and that I loved came to life with a full orchestra.

I didn’t even stop to think about Andrea and his wife. I figured that they loved the music as much as I did. As I learned, he paid a lot for yearly passes.

—

“Okay, so Ông said to go out the first exit,” I said to myself. That part was also real. I could easily get lost in the opera house. There were a lot of ways to exit the theatre and lots of crowds. And now in my memories, everyone looked the same! I didn’t know if that was supposed to make it easier or harder to find Ông.

Intermission was boring to me. I wanted more music. Ông said that he wouldn’t let me try any wine, even if he had the money for it.

So why was I looking for him near the bar? I confused myself as much as this dream did…

…I thought about Leah a lot for someone I didn’t ever meet, didn’t I? Maybe it was because I wouldn’t have met Andrea without her. He wouldn’t have been miserable enough to meet me if he wasn’t a widower. There were a lot of nights when I dreamed about being the bride she was. Sometimes I wanted to be Elena instead, but only Leah was married to Andrea. I wanted her big breasts and rounded tummy and to break a wine glass under my foot. It sounded cooler than taking vows and eating cake.

And Leah was always dressed well. She wore stylish black clothes wherever she went. I once tried on that black dress, since Andrea still had it. It hung over me like a curtain but then I saw a picture. She was stunning. I wondered what else she was like. Andrea liked her image and all the adventures they went on, but never how she acted. How she felt. Why he fell in love or out of it with her.

I never felt bad for being his second wife while I was. But it finally felt bad. I was in the same headspace as my dead husband’s dead first wife.

“You know, he had every right to marry me,” I said to her. “That’s not my fault…but everyone keeps telling me I should feel bad about it.”

I never heard her speak but I always imagined that she sounded like Tessa. Tessa had a husky voice that sounded sweet if you didn’t know her and if she didn’t have a hand in killing a baby. “Everyone has a story, even me.”

“Yeah…uh…but no one listens to mine!”

“I will. Children need to be listened to. I know that I’m sometimes the only person who will listen to mine.”

“Do I have to change?” I asked her. “Everything’s been going really wrong lately. I don’t know if I have any real friends or a future or people who love me. What if it’s all me? What if I’m gonna die like that? ‘Cause, uh, you see these people? My mind’s melting right now.”

“How often do you tell yourself that there’s no hope?” she asked me. Her voice darkened and she looked out the huge windows of the atrium. The city shined down at us through them. “I know that you say it all the time, but answer it for yourself.”

“But I don’t think it’s taken me to a great place.”

“Well, baby Thu, some people are better off dead,” she said, crouching down to my level and speaking in my face. “Once someone in the world ruins you enough, where is there to turn? You can’t fix being broken, being used, being guilty for doing the same to innocent people you were supposed to care about. He’ll always hold that power over you and everything you love.”

“That’s not what I wanted to hear!” I said, recoiled back from her touch. “I thought you’d be sweet and positive. That’s how I always thought about you.”

“No thought exists without a long purpose trailing behind it.” She walked away with slow, sullen steps. “Everyone in your head says something imbued with meaning. So how do you want me to make you feel?”

“Good? I need something to make me feel that way.”

“It’s too late, Thu. For all of us.” The hall was turning to a black void, piece by piece and creeping up to her feet. It was like what Andrea described happening to him one dry autumn night, but without a speeding car.

“I…I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said to her, as she wept and teetered close to the edge. “Maybe I should have–”

Did she jump? She and her fitted black dress were gone, but someone else took her place in an instant.

She sounded the same when she cried, even though I never heard Tessa cry either. I had to guess it, from when she yelled or whined or complained. She did a lot of that to me and Andrea, and it was always followed by a slight, satisfied grin before she turned away. She never cried…she shouldn’t have had a reason to…Andrea said she didn’t.

“Hey, none of that was true! He wouldn’t do that to you,” I yelled out to her. “He really wouldn’t.”

I almost felt the floor crack under my feet and took a leap back. I wasn’t going to blame Andrea. This was a ton of pills and alcohol talking…though they usually didn’t say this.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” I said, stepping back more and more.

“She always makes me sick.”

I recognized his voice, even when he was angry. I almost didn’t want to turn around. I wondered how much control I was in at all. I couldn’t get anyone to say what I wanted.

But if this was all in my head, what could he do to hurt me?

“See? I make everything better,” he said, giving me the biggest hug ever. He was so perfect. I must have imagined my favorite cologne on him.

“I know…I used to always trust you,” I said. “But why do I feel like you’re always my last hope in the world? Like, I…you don’t know the mess I’ve been since you died.”

He picked me up and I wrapped myself around his hips.

“You’re not going to get there by changing,” he said.

“But it almost sounded right.”

“Lots of things sound right at first, but not every idea is worth considering. This is why we have boards and trustees.”

“You won’t believe what people think will work.” I rolled my eyes and wanted to laugh. I might have been the biggest dummy to sit in Andrea’s chair, but there was so much he taught me and no one else.

“Maybe we have enough time before intermission to talk all about it,” said Andrea. “But first, I didn’t see anyone at the piano in the lobby.”

“I missed you,” I said to him, still holding on like a needy baby when we got downstairs.

“You’re telling me! Now, play Waltz of the Flowers before the orchestra does.”

That was the best part about being seven yet twenty-eight. I could tap into twenty-five years of piano and play anything I wanted to. I was good at seven, but not that good.

And to think, that this dream was the closest I ever got to playing in the Sabier City Opera House.

It was so good that I didn’t even know that my whole world was turning black.

Even the piano disappeared from beneath my fingers. That was the most heartbreaking thing. I couldn’t find anyone. Ông and Andrea and friendly blank faces all disappeared. Was this was death, like Leah wanted?

“No, she can’t win!” I sobbed into my hands. “It shouldn’t end like this.” My voice echoed in the dark and it made me feel even worse.

“No one says she will, princess,” said Andrea. He held his hand out to me. “Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere. Just…anywhere in the past. No one gets how much I like it.”

“And isn’t that unfair?”

“It…it is.”

I hugged him around the neck. “I don’t want to move on from you,” I said. “You’re the only rock I have in this world. You’re the only one who listens.”

“I know, I know…why don’t I help you think of a great day?” he asked me. “There are more we had then you might think right now.”

“I could use the help,” I said. “I just need a hint. My mind feels like mush.”

He leaned down to give me a kiss on the cheek. “Does that feel familiar?”

“Oh god, that could be any day!”

“But which kiss on the cheek was the best one ever?” I knew Andrea for only nine years, but he still made it difficult. He gave me a kiss on the cheek or temple every morning before work and every night after we made love. But when it came to the best nights ever, I soon knew what he was thinking about.

My life peaked on May 7th, at age 20. And the day after was even better…

A/N: I usually don’t credit the content and lots I use (’cause those lists would be a mile long) but this is a special chapter that needs special thanks:

WildlyMinatureSandwich for her Mannequin Overlays

The Project Gaming for their Myshuno Performing Arts Center. All I did was replace the theatre seats.

StoryBookSimblr for her beautiful cello and cello poses. Lol fuck that bitch

