The Piano, Chapter 8 (now complete)

[logastellus]

The soft whirr of the CD spinning up in his alarm clock wakes Wilson.  He shuts it off before the CD begins playing, and turns his head to look at Julie.  She is asleep, still and peaceful.

For once, he feels pretty peaceful himself.  He knows things are still not well between them, but this morning it doesn’t seem impossible that they will find their way back to one another, will mend the broken parts of their marriage.

Last night he’d come home exhausted.  Over the years he has gotten good at distancing himself from the everyday tragedies of an oncology practice.  He has seen hundreds of patients lose their battle with cancer, and learned to put sorrow away and move on to the next case.  But he has never really gotten used to watching children die.

Julie was quietly sympathetic, like she had been in the early days of their marriage.  She’d warmed up some dinner for him, then poured him a finger of scotch and sent him to bed early.

Much later, he had awakened to the feel of her hands and mouth upon him.  She had made love to him in the darkness, even allowing the condom without complaint.  Afterward, watching her curl up on her side of the bed, he’d reached out to touch her hair and whispered, “I love you.”

And he does.  He still loves her, and it seems she still loves him.  By itself, Wilson knows, that isn’t enough.  But it’s a lot.

He presses a kiss to his fingertips and lays them gently on her cheek, then slides out of bed and heads for the shower.

After morning rounds, Wilson finds himself with fifteen minutes before his first scheduled appointment of the day.  Just enough time to get some decent coffee.

He arrives at the Diagnostic Medicine office just in time to see Cameron, Chase, and Foreman sweep out purposefully.  House remains in the conference room, regarding the whiteboard with a satisfied air that tells Wilson the tests about to be run by the fellows will be mere confirmation; House is already sure of the answers.

Wilson hopes that means House will be in a better mood today and over whatever frustration had made him so spectacularly cranky last night.  Wilson had come to see House before going home, but his friend had been curt and irritable, and he hadn’t stayed long.

“Good case?”

“Just a stupid patient.  She spent four months in Africa several years ago and picked up filariasis.”

Pouring a cup of coffee, Wilson glances over his shoulder at House in surprise.  “Her GP didn’t consider filariasis, with a stay in Africa on her medical history?”

“This is where the stupid comes in.  She didn’t tell her doctor she’d been in Africa.  She’s been leaving it off her medical history, because she didn’t want to get disqualified from giving blood.  She’s convinced, you see, that the prohibition on donating if you’ve been to Africa is racially motivated.  So now we not only get to save her sorry ass from a lifetime of cruel disfigurement, we get to see if the blood bank can track down the people who received her blood, just in case she infected them.”

Wilson rolls his eyes and follows House into his office.  For once, House’s cynicism seems entirely justified.

“I heard the kid died,” House says as he drops into his desk chair.

Sitting across from him, Wilson sips cautiously at his hot coffee.  The blunt observation doesn’t hurt, and he is relieved to find that his clinical distance has returned.  Last night with Julie had annealed him, somehow, given him back the ability to let Seth be just one more patient, a professional regret.

“Tumor lysis,” he responds.

“Tough break.”  House rocks back in his chair, bringing his feet up to rest on the desk.  The practiced move almost conceals the fact that the left leg does all the lifting, but Wilson doesn’t miss House’s faint wince.  The lingering autumn had ended abruptly with a cold snap a couple of nights ago, and Wilson knows the chill has a way of sinking into joints and scar tissue.  That is probably contributing to the crankiness, in fact; the onset of winter generally means House has more pain and less patience.

“Just one of those cases that got haunted by Murphy’s Law.  You want to get lunch later?  My committee meeting got rescheduled.”

“What, Morgen couldn’t get you on her schedule for lunch?”  House’s tone is positively acid, and Wilson blinks in mild surprise.

“Morgen?  Why would you -”  He breaks off midsentence and looks questioningly at House, then starts to smile.  He knows he shouldn’t, but he really can’t help himself.  “Wait, are you…  Are you jealous?”

House looks away.  “Don’t be stupid.”

“You’re jealous.  What, are we in second grade?  I’m friends with you, so I’m not allowed to be friends with her?”  Wilson is trying for annoyed, maybe even a little outraged, but he can’t get past amused.  “Oh, this is good.”

House barks a laugh.  “You’re suffering from delusions of grandeur.  What on earth makes you think I give a damn who you have lunch with?”

“You’re the one who brought it up, but just for that you can buy me lunch for a change,” Wilson says with a grin.  He stands.  “I’ll see you at noon.”

The rest of the morning is busy, and the relaxed moment with House is the only break he has time for.  As he works, though, one corner of his mind is occupied with their conversation, turning over the fascinating nugget he’d uncovered.

The idea that House might be jealous of his friendship with Ella had never crossed his mind, but it makes a certain amount of sense.  He thinks back, remembers that House had, if anything, gotten more cranky after Wilson let him know there wasn’t so much as a whiff of infidelity to be found there.

They have never talked about it, but Wilson knows that he is House’s best friend, and House is his.  It is charming, he decides, that House might be a little less than completely secure about it, that he might worry just a tad.  He knows House cares about him; even if it has always been an unspoken thing, the evidence is in the way House trusts him enough to relax with him.  Still, it is nice to know he isn’t taken for granted.

Wilson’s good mood lasts until mid-afternoon, when his secretary hands him a large, flat envelope that had been delivered by messenger.  Bierman, Wegner & Stone.  Shit.  Messengered papers from a law firm are never good news.  He slits the envelope, trying to think of recent patients or families that might feel like they have cause to sue.

The papers slide out onto his desk, and he forgets to breathe.

COMPLAINT FOR DIVORCE, the header reads, in re the marriage of JULIE STEIN WILSON, plantiff, and JAMES BRADFORD WILSON, defendant.

He skims the document.  New Jersey law allows no-fault divorces only if the couple has been living in separate homes for eighteen months or more.  Julie has filed on the grounds of “extreme cruelty,” alleging that his refusal to give her children constitutes intolerable mental cruelty.  It is, he thinks numbly, at least a change from the adultery that had been the grounds for his first two divorce petitions.

Looking at the bold strokes of her signature at the bottom, he remembers her radiant smile as she’d signed their marriage certificate.  Later, she had laughingly confessed that she’d practiced signing Julie Stein Wilson over and over the night before the wedding, wanting it to be perfect, nervous that she’d make a mistake.

The petition bears today’s date.  She was at her attorney’s office today, within the last few hours.  While he’d been joking with House and treating patients and feeling hopeful that they would work things out, she had been with a lawyer, ending their marriage.  Ending their life together.

He feels dizzy, and grips the edge of his desk.  He closes his eyes, but the darkness behind his lids holds no reprieve, just the memory of Julie moving above him, the weight of her breasts in his hands, the scent of her arousal, the breathless urgency in her voice when he had touched her just so and she whimpered his name.  She had come to him, and he’d thought it was love.  It had been good-bye.

Wilson draws a deep breath, then another, and opens his eyes.  The papers are still there.  He spreads them out.  Complaint for Divorce.  Prenuptial Agreement.  They’d even included an Affidavit of Consent.  The latter bears a yellow post-it note, with a single word in Julie’s handwriting: Please.  He can imagine her in the lawyer’s office, wanting to write something personal to soften the coldness of the stark black words on white paper, but not knowing what to say, how to explain.

The pre-nup makes the mechanics of divorce simple.  All he has to do is sign the Affidavit of Consent before a notary.

With a sudden motion, he sweeps the papers back into the envelope and walks out, pausing at his secretary’s desk.

“I’ve got a family emergency.  Would you reschedule the rest of my appointments today, please?”  He leaves without waiting for a response.

Julie’s car is in the driveway.  He’d known it would be.  She wouldn’t have gone to the gallery, knowing he’d be getting the papers that afternoon.

Music greets him when he opens the door.  He recognizes the duet from The Marriage of Figaro only because it was in The Shawshank Redemption.  Wilson hates opera.  Julie, on the other hand, loves it, and owns three versions of this one.  This is her comfort music.

He finds her in the den, exactly where he expected to.  She is curled up in a corner of the sofa, knees drawn up beneath her chin and fingers laced across her ankles.  When she sees him in the doorway, she reaches for the remote and turns the music off.

The silence is awful.

It stretches out interminably, as he looks at her, helpless.  He doesn’t know what to say.

Finally, she breaks the impasse.  “James,” she begins, then stops.

He waits.

“Will you sign it?” she asks at last.

“I thought,” he starts to say, but his throat is so dry it is barely more than a whisper.  He swallows, and tries again.  “I thought we agreed to work on this.  I thought we agreed to give it time.”

She comes off the couch like a spring uncoiling, every line of her body taut.  “I have given it time.  We’ve been round and round with this for months.  You say, ‘try to understand, Julie.  Give it time, Julie.  This is hard for me, Julie.’”  She crosses her arms in front of her, and her eyes are bright with unshed tears.  “And I’ve tried to understand, I’ve tried to be patient.  But nothing has changed, James.  At the end of it all, you don’t want children, and I don’t understand why.”

“Don’t you think I wish I could explain it to you?”  She flinches, and he realizes he is shouting at her.  He modulates his tone with an effort.  “It’s just what I feel.”

Julie throws up her hands and turns away, walking to the window.  “I have no idea what that means.”

“What does it have to mean?  It’s just what I feel.  It is what it is.  Look, I am trying here, Julie.  I love you, and I want to be with you, I want to make this work.”

She turns back to face him.  “You say you love me, but -”

“I do love you!”

“Then why won’t you have children with me?” she shouts in frustration.

“Because I don’t -”  He stops abruptly, appalled at what he’d been about to say.

Because I don’t want to be one of those dads who only sees his kids every other weekend.

“What?  You don’t what?”

Is that really it?  Has he been avoiding having children because deep down, he has never really believed their marriage would last?

“James, what?”

He loves her.  But in a razor-edged moment of clarity, he realizes that he never really committed to her.  From the very beginning, from the day they signed the pre-nup, from the day they took their vows, he has been waiting for the end.

All the anger of the fight drains out of him in a rush, leaving him hollow.

He loves her.  It is a lot.  But it isn’t enough.

She crosses the room to stand before him.  The effort to understand is plain on her face as she looks up at him.  “James, what?”  Her voice is gentle this time.

No, it is not nearly enough.

“Yeah.  I’ll sign.”  She is so lovely, and he can’t bear to look at her another moment.  He turns, and walks out.

House likes to mock the Volvo as being life-threateningly dull, but the truth is that Wilson loves driving it.  He’d taken the highway north to a little scenic byway along the east bank of the Millstone River.  The S80 feels solid and powerful beneath him, covering the hills and curves with a smooth confidence that gives him an illusion of control.

His window is halfway open, and the rush of wind and road noise is deafening.  The chill air stings his face and lungs, but it feels good.  This must be how House feels on his motorcycle, he thinks.  Raw.  Connected to the experience of forward motion in a way Wilson doesn’t get in his climate-controlled, sound-proofed passenger cabin.

Nausea washes through him suddenly, and he pulls over with a lurch.

Sitting sideways in the driver’s seat, head between his knees, he feels like he could wake up if he tried, could find himself burrowed beneath the covers with Julie, an hour or two left before the alarm summons him to the day.  But he can hear the river in the distance, and one shoelace is coming untied, and the bitter tang of bile stings the back of his throat.  He swallows firmly and wills the nausea down.

After a few more slow breaths, he feels sure he isn’t going to lose his lunch.  He stands, locking the car, and walks toward the river.  There’s a path alongside it, a slender strip of pavement winding among the bare trees.  It will be beautiful in the spring, like one of those postcards sold at gas stations and tourist traps in a vain attempt to get the word out that New Jersey is, in fact, a pretty state.  But in November, the riverbank is all washed-out shades of brown, the river itself grey and forbidding.  Only a real nature freak would find the scene anything but dismal - or an oncologist, accustomed to seeing past the ravages of cancer and chemotherapy to the bones of beauty beneath.

Today, Wilson is just as glad it isn’t lush and green and welcoming.  Dismal suits his mood.  He turns up the collar of his coat against the breeze and jams his hands in his pockets.

The worst part is, he just can’t think of anything he could have done differently.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  He could have been more attentive, could have insisted they get marriage counseling when the children issue wouldn’t go away.  He could even have agreed to have children with her, though the thought still makes his guts twist.  In the end, though, he doesn’t think any of those things would have mattered.  He had failed her from the very beginning.  Even while he’d been patting himself on the back for working so hard at the relationship, he’d been setting up its demise in a self-fulfilling prophecy that would have been amusingly ironic if it had happened to someone else.

He doesn’t know what to do next.

Wilson stares at the river as if some secret wisdom might lurk in its depths.  It flows by, placid and unhelpful.

The surface of the bar is well-worn, scarred by years of fights and games and sweating glasses.  Someone has scratched I ♥ Lacey into the wood.  He idly traces the words with a finger.  Lacey’s admirer must have sat here long ago; the marks have been polished smooth.

The tavern is clearly a local watering hole, but the bartender had been friendly enough when Wilson sat down and ordered a beer.  He drinks the first half quickly, then props his elbows on the bar and scrubs his face with his hands.  The cliché is dreadful, he knows; pathetic guy en route to his third - third! - divorce, parked on a barstool and looking for answers at the bottom of a bottle.

With sudden certainty, Wilson knows he doesn’t want to be here.  He leaves a five dollar bill on the bar and walks out.

The drive back into Princeton seems endless.  Dark has fallen, and there is nothing to see but the road illuminated by his headlights.  He replays his conversation with Julie over and over in his mind.  It seems a world away from this morning, when he’d been so hopeful.  How had things gone so badly wrong?

It was his fault, of course, his failure.  That he hadn’t cheated on her is almost a technicality.  Still, he hadn’t cheated, had tried so hard to make it work.  That should count for something, should matter.

But of course, it doesn’t matter at all.

He slides the Volvo into a parking spot and kills the engine.  It is only when he gets out of the car that he realizes, with distant surprise, he has driven not to his home, but to House’s.  Pocketing his keys, he walks to the door and rings the bell.

If House is surprised to find Wilson on his doorstep, he doesn’t show it.  Without a word, he steps aside to let Wilson in, then walks into the kitchen, leaving him to make himself at home.

Beneath the chatter of the television, Wilson can hear something sizzling.  It smells sort of Asian, and his mouth waters.  House is a good cook, though probably nobody but Wilson and Stacy knows that.

He collapses lengthwise onto the couch and stares up at the ceiling, tallying the measure of his life.  Three divorces, all of them his fault.  Professional accolades aplenty and a job he loves, when it doesn’t break his heart.  A bevy of chummy acquaintances, half of whom politely loathe him for his meteoric rise at Princeton-Plainsboro.  And two good friends, each profoundly damaged in their way.

It probably says something telling that he is better at being friends with House than he is at being married, but he has no idea what.

His gaze drops to the piano.  Sheet music is scattered across the top, and the keyboard cover is open.  He feels a little relieved to see evidence that the piano has been played recently.  He wonders what it means that Greg hasn’t played for him.

As if summoned by his thought, House walks in with a bowl of something fragrantly spicy, a pair of funky red and orange chopsticks confirming Wilson’s guess of Asian.  “Dinner’s on,” he says, parking the cane and dropping into his chair.

In the kitchen, Wilson finds that House has left a full bowl, a pair of chopsticks, and a beer on the counter for him.  He can’t suppress a grin when he sees the black and white lacquered chopsticks; put them together and turn them just so, and the seemingly abstract white patterns join to form the Playboy bunny logo.  Collecting his food, he heads back to the living room.

Dinner turns out to be a pork and vegetable stir fry, in some sort of peanut sauce, served over rice.  Wilson digs in appreciatively.  He has never picked up the knack of getting the rice to turn out properly sticky so it could be eaten with chopsticks, but House does it perfectly.

The Daily Show provides a good excuse not to talk, and Wilson finishes his meal without having to say a word.  When the show ends, he grabs the remote and mutes the television.

“That was good.  Thanks.”

“Mi comida es tu comida.  Invite yourself over anytime.”

Silence stretches out between them.  Wilson knows House will never ask.

He hasn’t wanted to talk about it, and isn’t entirely sure he wants to now.  Mostly he doesn’t know where to start.

“I’m getting divorced,” he says finally.

House studies him for a long moment.  “I’m sorry.”

The direct blue regard is a little unnerving, and Wilson looks away, his gaze falling again on the piano.  “I think… I think maybe I’m done.  Three is enough.”  He pauses, trying to think how to explain it.  “I don’t know how to fix what went wrong.  I never cheated on her.”

House doesn’t say anything, but Wilson can almost hear the gears turning.  “She wants children,” he continues.  “And I…” he hesitates.  “I realized I can’t make that kind of commitment.”

Wilson glances at House, who meets his eyes with an unreadable expression.

“If you need someplace to stay…” House says at last.

Wilson nods shortly and looks away.  “Maybe just for a few days.  Until I figure out what comes next.”

Suddenly restless, Wilson stands and collects their dishes.  He knows House’s kitchen as well as his own, and easily finds containers to pack up the leftover stir fry.   He dribbles dish soap over the small pile of dirty dishes and cookware in the sink, and runs hot water.  House likes to cook, but hates cleaning up.  Even before the infarction, Wilson made a habit of thanking House for a good meal by taking care of the dishes.

He is rinsing the skillet when the music starts.  He freezes for a moment, until he is sure.  It is not a CD, but House, at the piano.  He puts the pan in the dish drainer, then braces his hands on the edge of the sink and closes his eyes.

Wilson doesn’t recognize the piece, is nearly sure he hasn’t heard it before, but something about it seems almost familiar, like déjà vu.   It has a rolling, bluesy feel, tense with dissonances that resolve into bittersweet chords.

Walking to the living room, he pauses at the doorway to watch House play, watch his long fingers move smoothly over the keys.  His head is bent, eyes half shut.

Wilson settles quietly on the couch.  He closes his eyes again and listens, trying just to be in this moment.  Tomorrow will be soon enough to think.  Right now, he just wants this, to be right here, where he doesn’t have to answer any questions, doesn’t have to do anything but sit and listen to his friend make music.

As much as anywhere else, he is home.

Fin.