"'All your life you're yellow. Then one day you brush up against something blue, the barest touch, and voilà, the rest of your life you're green.'April smiles curiously.'Except that's a bad example,' Nana says. 'Because we're all rainbow-colored inside, exact of us a different arrangement, of course. The kiss just makes all the colors more concentrated, so intense they can be hard to look at. Or feel, rather. Like a Mediterranean sunset." Her expression has not changed, yet the same lines that drew a picture of indifference now spell bone-crushing grief; she has been carved out, marauded from within.“Imagine a boy who grows up without a single person who loves him. Imagine if I had grown up without you, Oliver? Who’s to say I wouldn’t have killed by now? Who’s to say I haven’t?It hurts not because she is a failure, but because he finally sees so.“I know your problem, Oliver. In your head is a girl who doesn’t exist. You went to college. You must have read Jung.”To Oliver’s surprise, Al reaches over and gives him a quick hug, slapping his back. “Three Hail Marys and an Our Father,” Al says. “And do what you have to do.”“Beethoven,” he says seriously. “The second movement from Symphony Number Seven.”Her mouth opens in amazement. “Tell me it’s not the one I’m thinking of, that sleepy allegretto.”“That’s the one.”“You’re out of your mind. That’s not even close. In fact, that is probably the last song on earth that matches me.”“I didn’t even have to think about it,” he says. “It’s always been you, since we were kids.” “Well, that proves it, Oliver. You just don’t get me. You never have.”“Or maybe you’re the one who doesn’t get you. Have you considered that?”“For one thing, the tempo is too slow.”“Name one thing about that song that’s like me, even one.”He folds his hands under his head; she can see he is hearing the notes in his mind. “It’s moving, exhilarating, transcendent. The harmony is always changing but the rhythm never does. It unfolds subtly, hypnotically, like a trance. It gives you a sense of something that was already there, like the recognition of something you always knew. It extinguishes time. It doesn’t matter what came before or what will come later; each note holds everything. The music unfurls in a necessary way, like the roll of the tide. It opens out and lifts you away with it.”She is silent for a moment, barely breathing. “That’s lovely, but you didn’t answer my question.”“Yes I did.”“No, he should have stayed focused. He ought to have felt her there.”She glances over at him. “Maybe she wasn’t meant to be saved,” April says.“It was himself he failed to save,” he says, his eyes fixed on the stars. “She wasn’t just his wife, she was his soul.”
