“Spanish Eyes”
Pops and I sit together on the burnt yellow armchair in the living room. It matches the couch, which is covered in plastic. The scent of biscotti permeates the apartment and finds its way into my nostrils. For a moment, I feel as though I am in a cozy village somewhere in Italy instead of Twelfth Street in Newark. I am perched on Pops’s knee, a spot that has been my throne ever since I came into the world. He starts to bounce his leg and hum, and I recognize the rhythm. He begins to sing, his low, raspy voice hitting the notes I’ve heard him sing a dozen times. Blue, Spanish eyes. I giggle softly when he gets to the words sí, síbecause they sound like my name. He smiles a toothy grin and pats my head. When I go home, I still hear his voice in that low, raspy register. The notes bounce around in my head as I try to fall asleep.
***
It is 1971, and my father sits at the mahogany piano. Slumped over, his toes barely touch the pedals. He is eight and he doesn't want to learn how to play, but Grammy forces him to take lessons. Pops comes into the room, sheet music in hand. “Here, play this,”he says to my father. Pops sits on the smooth wooden bench next to my father and places the sheet music on the rack. My father protests; he says playing the piano isn’t “cool.”But Pops knows how to trick him. “If you can play ‘Spanish Eyes,’all the girls will love you,”he says. My father’s face lights up and he grabs the sheet music. The two of them sit there for a few hours and try to learn the song. It is nowhere near perfect, and my father gets frustrated. “It’s okay,”Pops says, “You’ll get it one day.”He sits there for hours, days, years, until he perfects the steady pace of the harmony and can play both octaves of the melody with his tiny fingers reaching to find the keys, playing it all from memory.
***
Snow has fallen to the ground and today baby Jesus was born. I am inside Grammy and Pops’s apartment, staring at still-wrapped presents under a fake silver Christmas tree. In the next room over, Pops is lying still and silent in bed like he has for the past few days. The tips of his toes have started to turn blue, a bad sign. Old songs play throughout the apartment to distract guests from loud gusts of noise coming from the oxygen tank next to Pops’s bed. My mother tells me it is time to say goodbye and I am confused about what kind of goodbye she means. She can see the fear painted on my face and quickly tries to fix what she has done.
“We have to go to Aunt Stacy’s house to eat dinner. Go say goodbye to Pops before we leave,”she says.
I slowly shuffle my feet to the bedroom, and when I enter, Pops sees me and does something he hasn't done in days. He speaks. The words somersault out of his mouth, a jumbled mess, not making much sense. But they count, they are words. I kiss his forehead hard, as if to tell him it’s okay to be quiet now, to tell him the things I am too scared to say out loud. As I turn to walk away, “Spanish Eyes”begins to play through the apartment and Pops begins to hum. His humming slowly transforms into singing. His low, raspy voice is so quiet and small, yet it seems to echo and rebound off the walls. I want to run and get my family so they can hear for themselves what Pops is doing, but I am scared if I leave he will fall silent by the time I return. So I sit on the edge of the bed with him and grab his withered hand. His skin feels like worn leather. He sings to me softly, and I feel like a little girl again. This is just adios and not goodbye. He dies nine days later.
***
“Daddy, did you really play?”I ask my father. We stand staring at the mahogany piano in the family room of our house. This is the piano’s new home ever since my aunt sold my grandparents’apartment and my father couldn't bear to leave it with the new owners. The stain on the wood is faded and it is terribly out of tune.
“Yes Sweetie, I did,”my father answers.
“Play for me,”I beg. We sit down on the bench together. I watch my father place his fingers on the keys; the once pristine ivory is now stained yellow and the lowest E key no longer plays its designated note. I look at my father as he closes his eyes and begins to play. He plays a few notes, slow and steady, then he stops. I open my mouth to ask which song he is playing, but he cuts me off with a melody that is all too familiar. His fingers glide across the keys and remember perfectly the steps to a dance they haven't done in almost 40 years. I sit and watch, in awe of what my father is doing, and suddenly I swear I can hear a low, raspy voice accompanying the piano. I close my eyes and see Pops on the bench. He smiles in a way that only a proud father could as my father plays the song flawlessly. Pops looks at me and flashes
me his toothy grin. He sings to me once again. Soon I’ll return, bringing you all the love your heart can hold.