Sara doesn’t like Thelonious Monk. Says it sounds like a piano falling down the stairs on purpose.
Which is fair, I suppose. Monk’s not for everyone. There’s a moment in Brilliant Corners that even I struggle to defend. But it still makes me laugh that she married me anyway—me, a man who once made a Year 11 class listen to Epistrophy for forty minutes just to teach them what dissonance actually feels like.
Anyway, it was Sunday. We were making paella. I say “we” in the loosest possible sense—Sara was chopping peppers, and I was holding a wooden spoon and pretending to stir when in reality I was just watching her move around the kitchen like someone who knew what they were doing.
She was humming something.
And that’s when it happened.
I realised I recognised the tune.
It was ‘Round Midnight.
I didn’t say anything at first. Just leaned back against the sink and let her finish. It wasn’t perfect—she doesn’t claim to have pitch, or timing, or memory for lyrics—but there it was. Monk. Out of her.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
She looked puzzled for a second, then shrugged. “Oh… probably from the wedding. That was your fault.”
I’d almost forgotten.
We had a trio play at our wedding. I pulled in an old friend from college, upright bass and all. Sara had wanted a string quartet—classy, white-wine-on-the-lawn type of thing—but she let me have my little jazz moment. And they played ‘Round Midnight while we cut the cake. Her mum hated it. Thought it was mournful. Said it sounded like someone had died.
But I loved it. Still do.
I think Sara did too, even if she never said so.
She doesn’t talk much about her musical life. She’ll joke that she’s “not musical,” but that’s nonsense. I’ve heard her sing along to João Gilberto in the car, matching his phrasing better than half my old jazz choir ever could.
When we first moved here, she didn’t say it out loud, but I could feel how hard it was for her. Uprooting everything. New language. No friends. The wrong kind of butter. She coped in that way she does—head down, list in hand, dealing with things. No drama, no panic, just quiet competence.
And I think, sometimes, jazz reminds her of home. Of me. Of us. Not because she loves the music itself—but because it’s in the background of all our best years. All our worst ones too, come to think of it.
I asked her, after the paella was done (too much rice, again), if she remembered the rest of the setlist from the wedding.
“No,” she said. “But you made them play Monk. That, I remember.”
