The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

"Wivel, Liveslivie," I said, "civan yivou ivundiverstivand whivat ivl'm sivayiving?"

"Ivi civerti . . . Ivi civerti . . . vanlivy civan!" she said. "Hivow divo yivou sivay 'Fuzzalorium' ivin Hivorse Liva-tivin?"

"Whivy, ivit's 'Fivuzz-iva-livor-ivi-ivum,' ivof civorse!"

How swiftly she learned, what a pleasure of mind she was! The only way to keep up with her was to have studied something she had never seen, to invent new rules of communication, or to lean way out on sheer intuition. I leaned, that night.

"I can tell, just looking, that you have played the piano for a long time, Ms. Parrish. Just looking at the music there, the Beethoven sonatas on the yellowed paper with the old pencilmarks in amongst the notes. Let me guess . . . since you were in high school?"

She shook her head no. "Before that. When I was a little girl I made a paper keyboard to practice at, since we didn't have money for "a piano. Before that, before I could walk, my mother says I crawled to the first piano I ever saw and tried to play it. From then on, music was all I wanted. But I didn't get it for a long time. My parents were divorced; my mother got sick; my brother and I bounced from foster-home to foster-home for a while."

I clenched my jaw. There's a grim childhood, I thought. What's it done to her?

"When I was eleven, my mother got out of the hospital and we moved to what you'd call the ruins of a pre-Revolu-tionary War house, crumbling great big thick stone walls, rats, holes in the floors, boarded-up fireplace. We rented it for twelve dollars a month, and Mom tried to fix it up. One day she heard about an old upright piano for sale, and she bought it for me! It cost her a fortune, forty dollars. But it changed my world; I was never the same again."

I inched out on another limb. "Do you remember the lifetime when you played the piano before?"

"No," she said. "I'm not too sure I believe in other lifetimes. But there is one funny thing. Music that's no later than Beethoven, than the early 1800s, it's as if I'm relearn-ing, it's easy, I seem to know it at first sight. Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart-like meeting old friends. But not Chopin, not Liszt . . . that's new music to me."

"Johann Sebastian? He was an early composer, early 1700s. . . ."

"No. I have to study him, too."

"If somebody played the piano in the early 1800s," I asked, "they'd have to know Bach, wouldn't they?"

She shook her head. "No. His music was lost, it was forgotten till the mid-1800s, when his manuscripts were rediscovered and published again. In 1810, 1820, nobody knew anything about Bach."

The hair quivered at the back of my neck. "Would you like to find out if you lived then? I read it in a book, a way to remember lifetimes. Want to try it?"

"Maybe sometime . . ."

Why is she reluctant? How can such an intelligent person not be sure that there is more to our being than a flash-bulb in eternity?

Not long after that, at something past eleven in the evening, I checked my watch. It was four o'clock in the morning.

"Leslie! Do you know what time it is?"

She bit her lip, looked for a long moment to the ceiling. "Nine?"

sixteen

"WAKING AT seven to fly to Florida is not going to be pleasant, I thought, after she dropped me back at my hotel and drove away in the dark. To stay up past ten P.M. was unusual for me, remnants of the barnstormer who rolled up under the wing an hour past sundown. To go to sleep at five, wake at seven and fly three thousand miles will be a challenge.

But there had been so much to hear from her, so much to say!

It won't kill me to go without a little sleep, I thought. With how many people in this world can I listen and talk till four, till long after the last cookie has disappeared, and not feel the least tired? With Leslie, and with whom else? I asked.

I fell asleep without an answer.

seventeen

"LESLIE, FORGIVE me for calling so early. Are you awake?" It was the same day, just past eight A.M. on my watch.

"I am now," she said. "How are you this morning, wookie?"

"Do you have time today? We didn't talk long enough last night, and I thought if your schedule allows, we might have lunch. And dinner, maybe?"

There was a silence. I knew at once I was imposing on her, and winced. I shouldn't have called.