Melancholy Melody

I stood by the bar in this once lavish hotel in midtown Manhattan.
There were some people sitting on stools, nursing their drinks to nurse their nerves or numb their emotions.
There was a piano, a middle-aged lady, playing a seemingly familiar tune with one hand the other hand in the grip of her drink. She wasn’t singing, just tapping the keys and taking short gulps of her drink.

At the bar, the bartender was talking to a couple of women whose accent revealed somewhere in Great Britain. Each of them was wearing New York Knick hats and were casually dressed.
Both had their hair long falling through their hats onto their shoulders. I heard them order, “Cosmos like Carrie from ‘Sex in the City.’”
The bartender laughed and went to work.

Across the bar, a man with a beard was slowly falling asleep, his head bouncing up and down. He was wearing a suit with a blue shirt and light brown tie. The tie was undone and simply sat around his collar. His refill came and he jumped awake.

The woman by the piano was humming a song I could not recognize. She stopped, took a drink, placed it back down and began to play, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”
The bartender approached her and asked her to take her drink off the piano. She stared at him with a confused face as he took the drink and placed it on the closest table.
He wiped the spot on the piano where the glass was and walked back to the bar.
A group of young kids came in, they walked up to the bar and ordered shots of tequila. They each downed them and ordered a second round.

I ordered a Jack Daniels, straight and walked towards the woman who was sitting by the piano. I stood there watching her.
She had light brown hair, brown eyes which betrayed her emotional state.

“You play the piano nicely. I love ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,’ you captured it with the keys and your voice.”

She was watching me as I spoke and to quote Arthur Miller, she seemed to be the saddest woman I ever met.

“I am curious, if you don’t mind?”

“I do mind, actually.”

With that I said, “I am sorry.” And walked back to the bar. But I was curious to hear her story.

The bartender came over, “Her name is Leah, she used to play the piano professionally.”

“What happened to her? She seems so broken.”

“I see a lot of people in that state and I don’t ask questions unless they speak first.”

“I guess that was my mistake. When I got close to her I saw her face and I recognized her from somewhere.”

“She used to have a show on channel 5, a talk show where she would play piano with guests and have conversations with them. It was very popular for a while and then it was cancelled.”

“Why?”

“I heard that she was suffering from depression and didn’t want to go on any medication. There were a lot of shows that didn’t happen, a lot of guests who were promoting an album, a movie or something that were pissed off that they had flown to New York to be met with, ‘we can’t do the show today, we are sorry.’ Her reputation plummeted and rumors began that she was drinking and taking pills. Which, at that point, was not the case.”

The bartender cleared up the tables surrounding the piano and turned to me.
I told him.
“I get it. Depression sucks, been there done that. Not a chapter in my life I would like to visit again.”

The kids were calling the bartender for a third round. He rolled his eyes and went to them.

I walked towards the piano and sat at a small table which was close. She was playing “Rhapsody in Blue” and was smiling.

Not one to hold back, I spoke to her. “That song can make anyone smile.”

“This is one long song I can play over and over.”

“Who are your favorite artists or tunes to play?”

“Too many to name. I love, ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow, the show tunes are always fun to play.”

I noticed that she had come alive while talking about music.

“How about composers?”

“Gershwin, the classical music of Rachmaninov.”

“When you speak of music your whole self lights up.”

“Yeah, it’s been my life since I was able to sit on my father’s lap at the piano.”

“Was your father a pianist?”

“He was a pianist in Europe, but when the war ended, he came to New York and he met my mother. Her father told him to work with him and they can get married. So that’s what he did.”

“What kind of business was it?”

“My grandfather was a manufacturer of women’s pajamas and lingerie. Have you heard about Victoria’s Secret?”

“Of course.”

“That wasn’t him.” She laughed. The metamorphosis was incredible. She went from being a downcast woman to being jovial and talkative.

“But he did very well. The business is still around, my brothers took over gradually and act like they built it, but have no clue how to run it. My father was smart and hired good business people to run it while giving my brothers a salary and a title.”

“Did your father ever regret giving up the piano?”

“He said he didn’t. But there were times I would find him in the middle of the night, sitting there silently. I think I inherited his talent and his depression.”

“It’s a dark place, ‘depression’.”

Suddenly, I saw her disappear. She bent to drink and then her fingers touched the keys, slowly.
“Are you ok?”
Silence, but for her playing a song I could not recognize.

The bartender walked up to me and said, “this happens to her. She enters this catatonic state or something, I don’t know the actual…but I just leave her be.”

I walked to sit by the bar, ordered another drink and then looked around.

The kids were still gathered at the bar, the man with the beard had woken up and was chatting to a middle aged woman, there were two bartenders now and the tables across the tavern were occupied by friends, and couples.

In the background I heard the piano begin to play, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” nobody heard it but I listened. To the silent voice as she played the music and sang the words softly.

I paid my bill, thanked the bartender and I left.

I walked out into the dusky streets of Manhattan. People were rushing somewhere and the car horns were practically non stop. I kept walking, I kept thinking about my encounter at the piano which just added to the melancholia I felt watching the scenes of Manhattan at the end of a day.

I once followed the yellow brick road only to find myself restless. I chose a different path.
Who I was, what I was and my regrets of who and what I wanted to be, oftentimes caused me to want to run back and finish my walk down that path.
I had lost my way too many years ago and there was no going back.