Free Good Things I Wish You by Manette Ansay Page B

set before her like maps. Long walks for the sake of her constitution. New white dresses at the start of each concert tour. The surprise of new towns, unfamiliar performance halls, each piano like a human face, never to be forgotten.
    Now, as she waits in the early morning darkness, shefeels herself growing younger. Stronger. At the sound of approaching horses, she opens the door, hurries down the steps, almost expecting to see her father—but, no. Her maid, waiting with the lantern, is waving the coachman inside to fetch the trunk. And here is Johannes, sleep-rumpled, bareheaded, lifting the heavy satchel of music. He presses something round and hard into her hands—an apple wrapped in his own handkerchief—and though she doesn’t want to accept it, doesn’t want to be burdened with anything more to carry, she finds a place for it in the already bulging pockets of her travel cloak, actually Robert’s greatcoat, oversize but warm.
    Johannes, her friend. Her dear, true friend. Perhaps he is falling in love with her, but what can be done about that? She is, after all, still married. And if he chooses to show his love for her—for Robert, too—by staying with the children, she is not in a position to refuse such a gift.
    “Kann ich denn nicht mit dir kommen?” he says, but she remembers too well how it used to be with Robert, who also begged to accompany her, only to sulk at the attention she received, nursing slights (real and imagined) until he worked himself into fever. No doubt Johannes will behave the same way. No doubt, at some point, she’ll be forced to choose between him and the work she most loves. Already he’s trying to convince her that performing is not important. He believes she should stay at home, live quietly. Compose.
    If only everything could always be exactly as it is between them!

    If only they could remain as they are—friends, best friends—forever.
    “ Mein Johannes, ” she says as he embraces her through the padded flesh of Robert’s greatcoat. He is telling her something about the children, does she have any message for them? No, there is not any message. The children have everything they’ll need. It is best that she leaves this way, in darkness. It is best that, by the time they wake to their bread and hot milk, she’ll be gone.
    “ Und hast du nicht wenigstens ein liebes Wort für mich? ” he asks, but she has no words for him, either. Her heart is with her husband. Her heart is like a stone.
    It is only after the carriage is far beyond Leipzig, after the maid has fallen asleep, as Clara herself drowses—lulled by the rattle and bump of the road—that she feels for him, and for the children, too, that tenderness of heart her father once feared, fought against fiercely, believing it would lead exactly to this: an unhappy marriage. Too many children. Small, dark rooms in which they’ve already awakened, knowing their mother is gone. If she opens her eyes, she’ll see them now, running bare-legged after the horses. If she listens, she’ll hear them sliding through the windows, slipping through chinks in the rattling doors. She’ll smell the crisp scent of the apple as they pass it between them hungrily, silently, hoping she won’t awaken, for if she does, won’t she only send them away, the way she usually does?
    Können wir denn nicht mit dir kommen?
    Can’t we come with you, too?

    She is reading their thoughts as if they are speaking. Why not? Isn’t this the privilege of a mother’s love? And it is love she feels, for the moment, for them all, now that it’s safe to do so. Now that they are only the children of dreams. She can love them completely—Johannes, too—with whatever is left of her heart.

22.

    I AWAKENED TO FIND we were on a dirt road. Hart said, “Do you always sleep like that?”
    “Like what?” I was looking at a group of toy planes, life-size, scattered across a wide, mowed field. Each rested atilt, one wing on the ground, the other extending