Ivory Tuesdays

“Yesterday was Tuesday. I usually don’t keep track of the days. Up until the last few years, anyway. But starting 6 years back, I always knew when it was Tuesday. Because Theodore was always there on Tuesdays with his smile and an overly packed folder of sheet music. 

Some people who live with me always remember Sundays, because all the residents are wheeled down and lined up to listen to someone who preaches too loud, as if we can’t hear him. He speaks slowly, painfully enunciating each syllable like we’re foreigners. Surely speaking in high volumes with higher levels of condescension will get the message through our heads. Moreover, he fails to realize that some of us are only a little senile, meaning that we know he delivers the same sermon with a different introduction each week. His name is Dave- the preacher. He shakes my hand after the service, holding it limply. It reminds me of lettuce left too long on the counter. He says to me, “Now you have a good week, Evelyn.” I always nod and keep my lips sealed. If I open them, he might not want to come back anymore. 

Or Marge will say I need to take a break from attending the service. Marge knows I don’t enjoy it much anymore. Who can blame me when the pianist, the one with two left hands, plays Amazing Grace and Great is Thy Faithfulness without fail every Sunday. And everyone around me- these strangers that used to be my friends- they don’t sing. They stare blankly forward, smiling or simply sitting like frogs with mouths slightly agape. And all the aides feel the need to strain their vocal cords to make up for the lack of expression among us.  The monotony of Sundays has caused me to dread their approach.

I like singing. But I don’t want to sing like that. You don’t understand, but I’ve heard the same two songs for so long that their words have lost meaning completely. You know how when you say a word over and over again, it’ll start to sound like it’s not even a real word? Then you question whether it’s a real word, who even made up that word, and what does it even mean anymore? Tedium. Tedium. Tedium tedium tedium. 

Marge tells me I should sing because I’m good at it. She says, 'It'll make your friends happy to hear you sing.’ I turn and look at her with an empty expression. ‘Ask them what my name is, and when they can tell you, then I’ll sing.’ She sighs and tilts her head at me like a labrador, then shakes it slowly, saying ‘Oh, Evie, what am I gonna do with you?’

Do I sound like a bitter old woman yet? 

But the thing is, I am not a bitter old woman anymore. I smile some days, and mean it. And I sing some days too. Do you want to know why? 

Because I found someone willing to listen. I sang new songs and old, familiar ones, and Theodore always came on Tuesdays, Fridays with something new for me to sing. So I started to like Tuesdays. Sundays were still a drag. 

But there was one Sunday where Theodore came and played the piano instead of Allison, the 48-year-old woman who thinks the pedals on the piano are mere suggestions. I told him, ‘Young man, if you play Amazing Grace, I will never speak to you again.’ He grinned at me, took my hand, and said, ‘How about some Casta Diva?’ Casta Diva is a song from an opera. It’s the one that got me famous. We didn’t sing Casta Diva that day. But we didn’t Sing Amazing Grace either.

Theodore was 17 when he started to play the piano at Maple Grove Retirement Home. I remember the first time I saw him play. I didn’t make my presence known, and I sat alone on the opposite side of the room. I just listened. Usually, I hum along when a melody catches my memory, but this time, I just listened. He played beautifully. You could tell he was just practicing, and that he had no clue that a small audience with perfectly good, hearing aid-less ears listened intently. I didn’t keep track of time while he played. But he played for a long time. And when he did get up, he gathered his sheets of music, haphazardly shoved them into a folder, and began to walk towards the exit of the building. When he suddenly noticed me, small and tucked away into the back of the room, he froze. His eyes were wide with fear, alarmed at the slightest chance that he had disturbed me.

‘What’re you doing here,’ I asked, and immediately after, realized that it sounded like a demanding and suspicious question. I hadn’t meant it to. I was merely curious. 

‘I...I-’ he stammered, nervously shifting the folder around in his hands. ‘My shift is done, so they said I could play the piano after I clock out because it’s a grand piano and the one I have at home is really small and really flat and I just...it’s just not as good for practicing on. But they said I wouldn’t be bothering anyone by playing the one in here so I thought it would be okay… I’m sorry.’

And then I laughed. And that was the first time I had laughed in over 2 years. His expression melted, and he even cracked a smile. ‘What?’

‘Don’t apologize. I enjoyed it.’

He smiled again, with confidence. ‘Well, good. Get used to it.’

So Theodore came and played the piano after each shift he worked. For a while, I spent a lot of my time in that parlor, not sure when he was scheduled. It didn’t take too long to realize that he would play every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. At 4 o’clock, Ms. Marge wheeled me down to the parlor, and I sat beside the piano, my fingers mimicking the motions in my lap, wondering if I’d still remember how to play anything. Once when he wasn’t there, I did try. I could manage simple melodies, but it was nothing close to the compositions he performed, and I decided I was content to let him do the playing.

I never brought a book or something else to fiddle with because the music was enough in itself. Eventually, he brought in pieces with soprano arrangements and played through the parts to help me learn it. It was nice to sing for someone again.

One day, Theodore asked me to call him Theo. I shook my head at him. ‘I’ll call you Theodore because that’s your name.’‘But everyone calls me Theo. Or Teddy? How about Teddy.’

I smiled at him. ‘My brother’s name was Theodore. It’s a noble name that you should carry proudly.’ I didn’t expect him to understand, but he grinned to himself and returned to the keys. The next day, his employee name tag said Theodore, not Theo. I never brought it up, but I’ll always remember that. 

Theodore and I became very good friends. I would call us best friends, even. We came to know everything about each other. He told me all about his friends, all about the baseball team and the girl in the grade below him who he was just crazy about. And I told him all about my past, from my faded fame with the operas to the garden where my mother grew peonies during my childhood.

We stayed up to date on each other's current lives as well, even though his had a lot more excitement than mine. After he caught wind of my fluency in French, he brought his homework with him and demanded my assistance. It made me feel like a parent again, racking my brain for how to divide fractions by other fractions for my 6th-grade child. Speaking French was one thing. Knowing the ins and outs of its grammar was another. I told him he should just go to France- it was the best way to learn. ‘Oh, really,’ he questioned, pulling out his laptop. Theodore proceeded to find dirt-cheap flights to Paris and calculate how many more shifts he would need to work to buy the ticket. He then doubled that number. ‘So you can come with.’ I didn’t say anything, but my old heart started to cry. He smiled at me. The smile nearly killed me.

One day we were in my room looking through a tall stack of photos from my performing days. He was poring over them and kept looking back at me, trying to spot the resemblance between the two very different women. One was young and passionate, the other old and tired. One was bright and loud, the other dulled and meek. We were nothing alike. The Evelyn of my youth died years and years ago. Theodore held one up, where I was beaming as the audience around me rose and clapped. It was the most overwhelming sensation I’d ever felt. But when Theodore told me that the two women looked the same yet, the sensation I felt at that moment was even more powerful. 

In the springtime, Theodore took me to the botanical gardens. He pushed me around on all the paths. And though he didn’t mention it, I knew it probably took weeks of convincing Marge to let me outside without an official aide. We stopped at every fountain, every tree that was even slightly remarkable, and every pink flower. Even though it was against the rules, he picked one for me. I pressed it when I got back to my room, wanting to keep it forever. In the gift shop, we bought wind-up toads that hopped around, usually flipping onto their backs with legs mindlessly continuing to flail about in the air. They looked ridiculous, and I laughed that Theodore and I, a 17-year-old boy wheeling around an 81-year-old woman, probably looked just as ridiculous. But just like the frogs didn’t seem to notice or mind that they were all turned about, I don’t think he did either.   ‘Why do you hang out with old people so much? Don’t you like your own generation?’ I asked. He shrugged. ‘They’re okay. But none of them appreciate classical music. And none of them actually listen when other people talk. You always listen to me. I like having someone to talk to.’ In that moment he seemed so eloquent, but the 17-year-old in him resurfaced quickly as he picked up a rock from the sidewalk and hurled it over a fence into a nearby fountain, resulting in the shouts of a nearby security guard. He hastily fled, wheeling my quickly to the waiting car in the parking lot, the both of us laughing uncontrollably. 

‘What’s your biggest fear,’ he asked once. I knew right away, but paused, pretending it was something I hadn’t spent days of my life thinking about. ‘Dying without someone significant caring,’ I eventually told him. He shook his head slowly. ‘That won’t happen.’ ‘My kids visit twice a year. Sometimes, only once.’ His face fell. ‘I know it’s not the same, but… well. I visit you a lot. And when you do go, I’ll care. I’m significant. I’m your best friend.’

When he left, I heard him out in the hallway, talking with Marge. He asked for my son’s phone number. 

On Valentine’s Day, Theodore brought me a bouquet of pink peonies. On my birthday, he gave me a silver necklace with a treble clef charm, and I’ve never taken it off since. He also brought me a CD with recordings of songs that he played. In messy scrawl, the face of the CD said, ‘To Evelyn, in case there’s ever a Tuesday that I can’t make it.’

5 years later, Theodore was 22 and engaged to Kate, that girl he’d talked about for years and years. He didn’t work at my retirement home anymore. But he still lived in the area. Every Tuesday, Theodore came and played the piano for me. He was just as good as he’d been as a high schooler. It was too hard for me to sing at 86, but sometimes Kate came and sang with him. She learned Casta Diva and proudly sang it for me once. She had a very beautiful voice. Theodore said she worked on the song for 2 months. 

There’s now a stack of CDs from Theodore sitting beside my bed in my room. Pressed flowers from years of Valentine’s Day bouquets hang on a string above my window. Traces of our friendship are scattered throughout my home. They remind me that I have someone who will care when I grow too tired of this life. Theodore and I would have conversations about death and dying. He asked if I was afraid of that day. ‘A little. But not as much as I used to be,’ I told him. ‘I’m gonna give you the most beautiful eulogy that this world has ever heard. And I’m going to make your music famous. And the world will rue the day that they slept on your ballads.’

But that isn’t quite how it worked out. He promised to speak at my funeral, which won’t be too far off, but here I am, speaking at his.” The following words were barely choked out. I saw his mother with eyes full of tears in the front row. “Theodore Avery Martin was my best friend. When I was with him, I wasn’t 89 and tired of this earth. Theodore gave me the best life that a wheelchair-bound old woman could have. He had a beautiful soul. He was the best piano player I’ve ever heard, not only due to sheer talent but also his genuine love for the music and the instrument. When all else failed- my siblings and husband gone, my kids too busy for their old mother, and my friends losing the battle to dementia and other ailments of old age- Theodore was there. He was always there, and he was a gift,” I said softly, looking over at his casket laden with flowers. Writing this eulogy hadn’t taken long; the words had come easily, but delivering them here, with all these people watching and listening, was much more difficult. Yet, even with the pain of missing him, I knew these words needed to be said. I knew that though his legacy was short, it carried far more impact than many others could achieve in a full lifetime. And I wanted everyone to know about the importance of his friendship to me and how it changed the conclusion of my own life. I took a deep breath and lowered the paper I held with shaking hands to my lap. “I miss him dearly. But I know that I’ll get to see him soon. So thank you, Theodore. Thank you, my dear friend.”