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Chapter Fifty-eight
The Gentleness of Heaven
"Thy [God's] right hand hath holden me up, and Thy gentleness hath made me great."
~ Psalm 18:35 ~
 fter
Charlie's eighteenth birthday, she had another reminder of the future that was never
to be hers: Uncle Rick and Mae, the good friends that had hid Charlie and Adam during
their honeymoon in the apple orchard in Oak Glen, welcomed a baby boy into the world.
Once again, Charlie found herself holding a sweet, cuddly infant and telling the
new parents how happy she was for them. And she was. But as she bravely kept back
her tears, Adam was grateful that this was the last baby any of their friends were
expecting for a while.
Adam knew very well that Charlie didn't need any more reminders of the future, and
did his best to distract her with piano lessons. Every day, he had her working on
finger exercises, until Charlie was impatient to play something that actually had
a melody to it. Even "Old Mac Donald Had A Farm," would have been a welcome
reprieve. When Charlie begged Dave to teach her something other than trills and scales,
Dave only directed her to keep her wrists moving properly while she was playing them.
"I don't want to see any stiff movements," he instructed, returning Charlie's
attention to the finger exercise before her. "I want smooth, fluid notes. Try
it again."
Adam continued to alternate Charlie's lessons between himself and Dave. In Adam's
free time, he would take one of Vera's books and sit on the thinking sofa to learn
more about Alzheimer's Disease. At first, he also continued work on his new album,
but as Adam kept reading about AD, the books gradually consumed his attention until
they were all he could talk about.
As much as Charlie loved her husband for wanting to help, she found it difficult
to continually hear about a disease that she was trying so hard to forget. There
was nothing that could be done, so why torment themselves with statistics and medical
journals that all said pretty much the same thing? There was no cure, and Adam's
hoping for it only made Charlie all the more heartsick.
A few weeks after Charlie's eighteenth birthday, the situation finally came to a
head. She was at her piano, struggling with a new exercise that Dave was trying to
teach her, while Adam quietly sat on the tattered sofa with one of Vera's books.
Dave stood behind Charlie, trying to get her form down correctly. "You're not
keepin' your fingers in the correct position," he sighed patiently. "Charlie,
it's like this." He bent down and placed his hand on the keyboard. When Dave
easily executed the exercise in perfect time to the metronome, Charlie groaned in
dismay.
"It's no use, Dave! I'll never get it right!"
"If you haven't already noticed," Dave tried to encourage her, "the
exercises have been getting more complicated, and you've been keepin' up. You're
making good progress, Charlie. Now's not the time to give up."
With a weary sigh, Charlie straightened her back, and tried the exercise one more
time. It was then that she noticed Adam on the sofa, gripping the book he was intently
reading. Her fingers became still as she saw a single tear slip down Adam's cheek
and fall onto his shirt. She didn't want to know what he was reading; it was about
Alzheimer's Disease, and Charlie didn't need an explanation for his tears.
Dave silently resumed his seat at Adam's piano where he had been working on his own
compositions. He didn't feel like playing right now, and sat motionless in front
of the keyboard.
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