An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell Page B

inside the kitchen. “It was hard to get Petra to stop talking and get inside.”
    Suzanne shrugs. “Too much to drink, I guess. Shall we go?”
    Adele begs to sit in the front, but Suzanne insists she sit in the statistically safer backseat. “I’ll sit with you, so we can chat.”
    As they drive across to their side of town, Adele leans her head into Suzanne’s arm, sleepy and sweet.
    Figuring Petra has passed out, Suzanne puts Adele to bed, brushing her teeth for her because she is too tired to lift the brush herself, tucking her in, kissing both soft cheeks.
    When she gets to her bedroom, Ben is packing.
    “I forgot you’re leaving tomorrow.”
    “You seem to have a lot on your mind lately,” he answers, his tone neutral.
    She stalled him after Alex’s death—several days, a week, strange that she cannot remember exactly. She stalled him not because it would have made Alex the last—she hadn’t seen him for a month when he died—but because she feared some emotional ignition. She was afraid she would burn white heat and confess every wrong thing she has ever done. But she could not, or did not, stall longer, and she and Ben have made love several times since. She was surprised by how easy it was to give away nothing. Now she reaches for his hand: they always have sex the night before one of them goes away. It is almost a superstition, a required act. Even when it was her leaving to see Alex, she and Ben would sleep together. The next morning, shaving her legs in a bubble bath, she would separate the two realities into Ben-time and Alex-time, two things that were both true but were divided by water and had nothing to do with each other.
    Tonight Ben has left the light on in the bedroom closet so that he can see her. And she can see him, the ropes of his stomach muscles leading up to the broader muscles of his chest, shoulders, arms reaching to hold her hips, guide their motion. A still-young man who has stayed in shape to play the piano and the cello even though he abandoned performance years ago. She presses her hands on his chest, for balance and for leverage, and she and Ben let themselves go completely, eyes still open. It’s the closest they ever come to seeing each other, to really speaking.
    In the morning she sleeps through his leaving, his good-bye only a short note on the kitchen counter.

Nine
It sits on the center of Petra’s palm, looking more like a computer chip than the swirled snail of the hearing inner ear.
    “The implant imitates the cochlea not in appearance but in function,” the doctor tells them.
    He has the good looks of Spanish youth, reminding Suzanne of the tall, healthy musicians she played Carmen with one summer in Seville. They attacked the music, grinning with the schmaltz of it, taking her later for wine near the university that was once Carmen’s tobacco factory. “Tourist season,” they shrugged, and she felt happy. She was not a tourist but a musician leading an extraordinary life, a woman meeting her lover in Lisbon two days later.
    The doctor’s smile does not seem disingenuous, but it is easy, offered without real thought. “It both will and won’t make her hear, depending on how you conceptualize hearing.”
    Petra repeats her question: “Will she be able to hear?”
    “The implanted electrodes introduce signals that are carried by the auditory nerve fibers to the brain, allowing sound to bypass the damaged portion of the ear. Is this hearing? Yes and no. The sound processor translates microphone signals into electrical stimuli. These elicit patterns of nerve activity that Adele’s brain will interpret as sound.”
    “So the answer is no; she won’t hear.” Petra leans back in the armchair, folding her arms.
    “More than ten percent of patients receiving the implant can communicate without any lip reading at all. They can converse with their eyes closed, you understand, talk on the phone. Most recipients can communicate fluently in spoken language when