The Siren

Nora had raced to church after school that day and found Søren praying here by the shrine to the Virgin Mary. She’d told him how grateful Jordan was, how shocked the whole school was, how nobody knew why the coach had left so abruptly.

Søren hadn’t smiled. He’d only lit a candle.

“Was that hard to do?” She remembered standing in this very spot and asking him that question. “Telling that guy off?”

“It was frighteningly easy to put the fear of God into him,” Søren had said. “And almost enjoyable. Why do you ask, Eleanor?”

She’d zipped up her hooded sweatshirt and plucked nervously at the ragged cuffs. “I thought it might be hard for you. You know, since you’re in love with me.”

Søren had met her eyes and she saw she’d actually managed to catch him off guard, one of the few times in their eighteen years she had.

“Eleanor, there are suicide bombers on the Gaza Strip who are less dangerous than you are.” He started toward his office. She followed him, nearly running to keep up with his long strides.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” she’d said when they arrived at his office door.

“I’ve always been an admirer of the Cistercian monks.” Søren stepped into his office. “Especially their vow of silence.” And he’d closed the door in her face.

She’d smiled nonstop for the next two weeks.

Nora opened her eyes and stepped away from the shrine and out of the memory. Her heels clicked on the hardwood floors grown slick and shiny with age. She thought she’d find Søren in his office working. But she paused outside the sanctuary when she heard the sound of a piano wafting through the heavy wooden doors. Inhaling the muted notes, she slipped inside the nave and stepped quietly toward the chancel where Søren sat at a grand piano.

He didn’t look up at her as she came to the piano. She placed her hands flat on its polished black top. Closing her eyes again, she let the subtle waves vibrate through her and into her. The last note shivered up her arms and down to her feet. As the note echoed throughout the nave and back to the altar Nora opened her eyes.

“The Moonlight Sonata,” Nora said. “My favorite.”

Søren smiled and played a few stray notes.

“I know it is.”

Nora returned the smile and leaned forward, running her hand over the smooth black surface.

“Happy anniversary, Søren.”

Søren smiled again, one of his rare, genuine smiles that reached his eyes. Something caught in her chest and she let her own smile fade.

“Happy anniversary, little one,” he said, his voice as gentle as the last note of the sonata.

With those four words came a thousand more memories. She and Søren had never, would never marry, had never dated in the traditional sense of the word, but never had they questioned what day would become the signifier of the beginning of their life together. The first time Søren had beaten her and then taken her virginity was thirteen years ago on Holy Thursday, the day before Good Friday, the day when Christ celebrated His Last Supper. Jesus, God Incarnate, had knelt before His disciples and washed their feet on this night. Thirteen years ago tonight Søren had done the same to her. Even as the liturgical calendar changed, they never once considered celebrating their anniversary on any other day but this too-neglected holy day, this last night of Christ’s freedom before He was taken, this last night to share a quiet moment alone with those He loved.

Søren began playing the haunting melody again, and she let it draw her inexorably into its insistent rhythms. She watched his hands, his perfect pianist’s hands, and recalled all too well how intimately she knew those hands, how intimately they knew her. One courageous strand of Søren’s perfect blond hair threatened to fall over his forehead. She longed to reach out and brush it back.

“You played this for me that night,” she said as the music faded. Nora closed her eyes and let the past come to her. “You were playing it when I came to the rectory.” She remembered that night like yesterday, slipping in through the tree-shrouded back door, following the music to Søren’s elegant living room. She stood in silence and watched the priest who would become her lover that night play by the light of a single candle the world’s most beautiful piece of music as if it had been written by him and for her. “The next morning I woke up in your bed for the first time.”

“The best morning of my life,” Søren said.

“And mine.” Nora felt the old tug of love and straightened, trying to brush it off her. “When did the church get a grand piano?”

Søren smiled.

“A mysterious stranger had an Imperial Bösendorfer delivered to my home on my most recent birthday. I donated my Steinway to the church.”

“That was very generous of that mysterious stranger,” Nora said with a sheepish grin.

“Very generous indeed. Although the Steinway still plays beautifully.”

“It’s had a tricky sustain pedal for ages.”

“Yes, and whose fault is that?”

“That is not my fault,” Nora protested. “Do you recall what you were doing to me at the time? I had to hold on to something, didn’t I?”

Søren looked down at his hands. His fingers hovered over the keyboard playing soundless phantom notes.

“You could have held on to me.”