Family Saga: A Bad Time to Laugh

About 12 seconds into the performance, I look down, and that is when I notice that I never changed out of my flip-flops. Ari’s in a suit and tie; I’m in my mid-twenties mélange of tight, stretchy, lacy black; Em’s in a long black dress. But my feet are ready for the beach.

On a normal stage, on a normal day, in a normal concert, I would turn away from Ari when my bottom lip started to twitch. But it’s been a long few weeks. So today I look him straight in the eye, and I see the moment where he, too, almost starts to laugh and instead furrows his eyebrows, tilts his head down, and leans forward in defiant comedy. I’ll win this one, he says silently, though there’s an audience in front of us, though Emely is behind us playing thousands of badly-written notes.

Ari and I pluck the strings of the violin and cello, mean and ugly, and as I think to myself, How the fuck did we get here? I give up and start to laugh.

We are playing loud, very loud, loud enough that the audience can’t hear me laughing above this godawful piece we’re playing. But my laugh makes Ari laugh, the way his laugh makes my heart melt, the way it is the only sound that makes me okay when nothing is okay, the way it always has been, always will be. So he throws his head back, chortling, triumphant, tugging the strings of his fiddle and playing with me in this very particular and yucky brand of chromaticism as we lose it.

Em finally notices, and shakes her head in very half-hearted disapproval, but the corners of her lips turn just slightly up, and I think I catch an affectionate eye roll, too. I stretch my toes out and up, these toes usually so hidden and hemmed in in their concert shoes, finally basking in the air.

– Gwen Krosnick, April 2024