Every Nothing (512 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.33 on 10 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by ripple (View user info) at 2006-05-02 14:48:55 EDT
"It's all about emotion, but it doesn't matter if you have any or not." He sets down his guitar and sits in front of the out-of-key piano in our high school's music room. Kevin's slender fingers spread out over the chipped keyboard and he grins at me before he begins. I close my eyes for just a second to hear the music fall like raindrops; I open my eyes and watch melancholy concentration fill his features. I feel his intensity and the sadness of the music. The minutes pass like moments for me, but Kevin finishes with a grimace. "That is the worst piano ever."
"Not that it mattered much," I laugh slightly. "What was that, anyways?"
"Erm . . . Mendelssohn? One of the Songs Without Words." He shrugs, "I don't remember exactly. It doesn't really move me. See what I'm telling you about faking?"
"Kevin!" I exclaim, "That was amazing! I almost cried. Well, not really, but . . ." He looks at me as though I'm a child and shakes his head. A strange expression passes, clouds his face, before he simply states: "It was just the pseudo-emotion."
-
"To our futures," Kevin says, lifting his falafel pita in a toast. I raise mine in return and take a large bite. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and hummus fall indelicately into my plastic basket and somehow taint the sentiment. Kevin is happier than I have seen him in months, but I feel a deep sense of foreboding. He compensates for all that emotion he fakes in his pieces with violent mood swings and bouts of depression in his real life. He's a stereotypical struggling artist.
We eat in comfortable silence for a minute. Eventually, he asks me to come see him play keyboards in the house band of a club in the Village. I shake my head. No. Kevin sighs. "I should've known," he mutters and stands to leave. "I should get back to campus, Allie. I've finally booked a practice room and there's a concert next month. No doubt you won't be able to make it."
"Hey, Kevin," I say, standing to stop him, "that's not fair, I need to work tonight! I kind of want to stay in college, man!"
"Work, of course." He hugs me close, lingers almost imperceptibly, and walks out the open door, disappointment in his eyes. He turns to face me at the last second, "Hey, make sure you save May 28!"
"I will. I promise."
-
The next time I see Kevin, his shaking hands are shrouded in mittens and his eyes are red. I navigate through his trashed dorm room and sit next to him on his bed. 'What happened?' I wonder to myself, but I don't bother to ask. He asked me here to tell me; I'll know soon enough.
He looks at me but doesn't meet my eyes. I touch his wrist to comfort him, but he flinches away. The silence grows uncomfortable. I sit for what seems like hours in a room that smells like sex and cheap beer before he can tell me.
"It's over, Allie," Kevin murmurs, swaying slightly. I realize that he's drunk. "Everything . . . everything is over." He pulls off his mittens and shows me his right hand. I can't help but gasp. Even through the bandages, I can see the damage.
"There was an accident," he tells me softly, "I tripped, caught myself on a spike. The main tendon in my hand is ruined. I'm all done; I might as well go home."
My lip shakes. I can almost see his fragile dreams snap like a wishbone in a cruel twist of fate. My heart breaks for him.
"Think of Schumann. He couldn't play anymore, so he began to compose. Now he's world-renowned. No one would remember him, but for what he wrote." A half smile's shadow plays across Kevin's mouth, but his eyes are sad as ever.
-
Kevin spends the night of the twenty-eighth on the floor of my dorm, trying to forget about the concert. I try to take him to a club, a party, anything, but he just sits silently and studies theory. I guess he'll stay in school, after all.
-
The musical reviewers have nothing but the highest praise for Kevin's original score and the new, off-Broadway musical it accompanies. I sit next to him on opening night and watch the action. Kevin is riveted on the orchestra. The music he has written showcases the piano and perfectly matches the dark, emotional play. In the final song, the piano's perfect accompaniment brings tears to many an eye, but Kevin is livid.
"That bastard had nothing," he tells me after the production, speaking of the pianist. "He played false, didn't feel the hurt. Maybe no one else knew, but I could feel it." Kevin looks horribly wounded; he hates his job teaching music to children and only needed to finance this last hope. Now, something unnoticeable to most people has ruined his fantasy.
I go home that night and realize what has made Kevin so upset: When he lacked the emotion, he had the ability, and now, with so much pain, he cannot play. He never truly enjoyed the music until the day he couldn't express it.
-
The note they find, though not revealing to most, is perfectly clear to me.
"When I had it, I wasted it; now I have nothing."
It was simple fear at losing everything. Perfect cowardice.
The play runs in his memory this week and I attend his funeral on this perfectly sunny Tuesday. As I stand with his parents, I know that if I could play, I would make my very instrument weep.
---
Another Kevin sits in my lap and calls me his mother. Though I insisted upon the name, a knife twists in my gut almost every time I say it. My husband, Kevin's father, has athletic dreams for our firstborn son. At first, I protest and try to instill music within him, but I eventually give up.
-
As a freshman, it is obvious that Kevin's abilities do, in fact, lie in basketball. With each passing month, more college scouts offer future scholarships and starting line-ups. One night, Kevin comes in to my study and asks me if I would be disappointed if he chose basketball. I smile. "Kev, if it makes you happy, then I can't be angry, but make sure that you always feel it." My best friend's haunted visage shifts into my memory and I give my son one last piece of advice. "Just promise me you'll never let it be all you have."
-
As it turns out, Kevin never became a basketball star. Two years into NYU, he tore his Achilles' tendon. Though he lost his scholarship, my husband and I were able to cover his remaining tuition. He majored in mathematics and became a university professor. His safety net worked, but nothing could save him and his father from a drunk driver on a rainy night.
---
Life endures for me, but I see no point in living. Every gray day passes in monotony and I think mostly of the Kevin I knew as a child. When he lost everything, he had the courage to end his life. Oh, sure I saw it once as cowardice, but now I have taken the same, mind-boggling fall. But I cannot kill myself. I can only wait passively until emptiness takes away what little I have left. It really can't be too different.
User Reviews
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-03 00:06:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by ripple (user info) at 2006-05-02 17:18:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-05-02 16:18:34 (#)
Ranking: -1
"He played false, didn't feel the hurt. Maybe no one else knew, but I could feel it."
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this sentence annoyed the shit out of me.
faux-emo
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yeah, there were a few things like that in there. im surprised more people didnt comment. out of context, it actually annoys me a lot too. fuck, i wrote it.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-05-02 16:18:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
"He played false, didn't feel the hurt. Maybe no one else knew, but I could feel it."
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this sentence annoyed the shit out of me.
faux-emo
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2006-05-02 16:15:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
To whomever it was that spent one American dollar on the Uberboard - and I realize that for some of you, this represents a huge percentage of your weekly bring home pay - I am currently working on a new post and expect to have to finished, complete with new camwhore to use on all of your photoshop projects, sometime between Thursday and September 4th.
Please, Shlongy asks for your patience. Thank you.
Submitted by FilthyAssistant (user info) at 2006-05-02 16:08:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Well, that was uplifting. Anyone for tennis?
Submitted by stevie_says (user info) at 2006-05-02 15:59:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2006-05-02 15:52:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
interesting
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2006-05-02 15:31:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by TheSpook (user info) at 2006-05-02 14:53:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2006-05-02 14:52:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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