The Old Piano

What a day.  She felt tired to the very core.  How had her life become such a daily beating?  The house was a constant mess and there was always something that was broken.  And not just something small that she knew how to fix, but something major that would ruin her property value if she didn’t handle it right now.  Property Value?  When had she even learned that phrase?  When did it become part of her nightmares?

Things at work had been difficult.  The new project was just beyond her skill set and she wasn’t sure how on earth she was going to figure it out before she made a huge mistake.  Would they fire her?  She’d never said that she was that experienced and it had never seemed to matter until right now.  Right when the restructuring was going through and so many of her co-workers were being let go daily.  It just wasn’t an environment that encouraged the questions that she really needed to ask.

The kids had it rough too.  The last few weeks especially. Xahlia had not slept since Xavier had smashed up the car.  He was fine, the car was fine, but Xahl couldn’t get the terrible thoughts of “What if” out of her head.  Not sleeping was terrible for her attitude.  She wasn’t just cranky, she’d been going out of her way to argue with her twin.  Every single chance she got she took the opportunity to yell at him or snatch something from him.  It was almost as if she was trying to get him back for scaring her.

And now the dog was loose.  She wasn’t even sure how it had happened.  She drove up and opened the front door and the big guy had pushed passed her and out to freedom.  She hadn’t seen him run like that in years, like a streak of black against the undergrowth as he darted into the woods.

“Ben,” she called.  “C’mon, boy!”

She called again a little louder and she waited.

No sound of scrabbling paws or a welcoming yelp to let her know that he had heard her.

“Well, fine, I’ll come get you but I’m changing my shoes,” she hollered over her shoulder as she moved into the house, leaving the door open so he could come back in.

Kicking off her high heels, she grabbed her sneakers.  She noticed the kitchen, dishes in the sink and on the counter, a pan of something still on the stove, the trash overflowing. WHAT was wrong with them?  How was she supposed to cook dinner in that?  She began to gather the dishes to the sink and she heard the dog bark twice and then fall silent.

She put down the pan, and headed for the door.

The air seemed almost misty as she jumped the small fence separating the community sidewalk from the green space that led into the woods.  “BEN!”  “BEE-EEENNN!”  “C’mon, boy!”

She found the overgrown trail that she and Ben liked to walk on when they had time.  There were always wonderful things to sniff and chase.  He loved it here.  She could feel her hair curling in the humidity.  The feeling made her smile, she remembered that feeling from when she was a little girl playing outside.  Her mom would pull her hair back all tight, and as she would play, the curls would gather at her temples.

One foot in front of the other, a slight trip that lead to a skip, and all of a sudden she was running far deeper into the trees than she had been before.  “Ben?” “BEN!” As she rounded a bend, there in a clearing was an old white upright piano leaning against an ancient pine.  Moss had long since crept into the paint on the side board.  The weathered fall board had deep black cracks splitting the white into a spiderweb on a field of alabaster.  The music stand was an intricate collection of chipped white and gold scroll work.  It was beautiful among all the green of the pine forest, shrouded and surreal in the dimming light.

She found herself sitting at the discolored bench and slowly raising the fall board.  The keys were mottled, some of the ivory had fallen off leaving raw spruce gaps in the span of white.  Her hands hovered slowly over middle C, fingers dipping to caress a chord. She closed her eyes and began to play Stairway to Heaven.  At first, her fingers were wooden on the notes, stilting and slow, but as her muscles remembered, the song formed around her.

It shouldn’t have been beautiful.  The piano was out of tune, she hadn’t played this “guitar” song in almost 10 years, but she could still remember trying to learn it on piano before her brother could learn it on guitar.  Oh the arguments they had had over whose instrument was the better.  It didn’t really matter now, they’d both put away their instruments for jobs and the responsibilities of the family.  Her mood dictated the music, for all the strangeness of the instrument, her practiced hands pulled beauty out of it.

The peace of the place and the routine of the playing, rusty as she was, oozed into her frazzled soul.  Gone was the brokenness in the house, the fighting kids, the messy kitchen.  For a moment there was just this green place, resplendent in it’s very decay, and her well-versed fingers on keys too long damaged for polite company.  There was only this small gift in the woods that she could control and relax into.

As she played her mind focused.  She was able to sort out the different threads of problems.  The job, the boy, the girl, these things fell into shape effortlessly.  Her muscles relaxed, the knot she’d had in her shoulder for a month smoothed out and she stretched her neck.  Unconsciously, she ran the song again from the top.   This time, she could hear the lyrics in her head and could hear the guitar in her brother’s hands, as if they were 15 again.  She was able to see how her dreams had unfolded and where she needed to make a few tweaks in her path to begin building toward her dreams again.  She realized that she wasn’t that far off track.

Nearby, a dog barked.

She opened her eyes slowly, as if waking.  “Ben.” She thought, “I’m out here for Ben.”  Slowly, she closed the lid and turned to stand.

At her whistle, Ben barked.  He lolloped over, as if he’d just come back from fetching a ball. “Good boy!”  She kneeled and ruffled his ears, allowing him to lick her face and snuffle her neck.

“C’mon, Ben, let’s go.”  As they stood to go, she looked over her shoulder one last time at that old, broken piano. Humming Stairway to Heaven, she made her way home.

My Contribution to the Left and Right game.

Well, it's been 23 days since I've touched a keyboard to write anything other than the basic email or facebook post.  It's been lovely to take a little break from the have to of NaNoWriMo.

But this morning I got that itch again.  It's Christmas, you see, and there are things to be said.

In our family we play a little game.  I think it's just called the Left/Right game.  It's our version of a White Elephant exchange.  You start with a bunch of inexpensive wrapped toys and gifts, and a bunch of people.  Hand every person except one a present.  The last person reads a directional story that includes at least the words right and left, although some have other directional words like across and skip.  As the person reads, the people with the gifts pass the gifts left and right as the story plays out.  When the story is over, each person opens the gift that they have in front of them.

The more people at the party, the more diversity in the age of the players, the faster the reader reads, the more hilarious chaos.  All of that, and you don't have the kids crying because Billy stole the highly coveted nose-picking game on his last choice.  It's a win win all the way around.


We've done this for quite a few years at this point.  I've always just searched the web for something fun.  This morning, I thought I'd add to the fun with my very own Left/Right poem. 

Enjoy.

All the Right Gifts

T’was right before Christmas and left round the tree

Were presents and prizes and gifts just for thee

I’d left for the store, right round 6 o’clock

I’d searched high and low for the right kind of stock

And I’d found such good things, they were perfectly right

To be left under the tree on that Christmas Eve night.

For instance, right to the left at the back of the store

I’d found a package just right for to foil your snore.

Then I found to my glee when I dug through the shelf

The perfect toe spreaders, and there was just the one left.

Oh Joy, oh what bliss, oh how pleased you would be

I found just the right box of your favorite tea

Now back to the house, I left in a flutter

Quickly grabbing what was left of the right kind of butter.

I gathered supplies I’d left round the house

To wrap my treasures, right near the tree,

or at least, right thereabouts.

I reached for the scissors, they’d just been right there

I found them right under the left blue wing chair

I sliced up the paper to just the right size

I taped til I was left with a beautiful prize

I found the right paper, to write down your name

I left the “From” blank because you’d know just the same

I stacked the gifts nicely, I left them right there

Near the tree, to the right of the left blue wing chair

On Christmas I hope that you’ll find what I left

And be pleased and delighted with all the right gifts

For now I will go right quickly to bed

And enjoy all the Christmas dreams right in my head.

 Stacey Leigh Hamlin

 

Bicycle

Flash Prompt Writing #15 Write a story that begins and ends with a bicycle
10/7/15 11:00 pm…15 minute timer.  (350 Words)

She could hear the dry rapid click of playing cards stuck into the tires of the small boy’s bicycle as he sped by.  She watched him go, delighted with himself for making his bike sound so cool.  The exciting on his face, the wind in his hair. Watching him was like looking at a postcard of early last century, idyllic.

Her mood was more chaotic than her surroundings on that peaceful street where the sunshine streamed down.  The light a little too bright causing objects on the street to take on the flat look of a tin type.  There were very few shadows, the colors washed out.  She could close her eyes and feel the adrenaline rush through her veins, her pumping heart giving away her racing mind.

Where had that man come from?  Just moments before, before the boy had filled her world with noise, she had been alone.  The street normal.  But then the flash and the man standing right in front of the trash can.  She was certain he hadn’t been there just a few moments before, and yet there he was.  Bowler hat, walking stick.  She had thought hysterically that he might just break into a lousy version of Putting on the Ritz.  And then the boy, the sound of his tires on the pavement, the incessant clicking of the queen of diamonds in the back tire.  She had been distracted for an instant, but when she looked again, the man in the bowler hat was gone.  Nowhere on the street, either to the right or left.

As she scanned the street, trying to see where the man had gone, she could hear the boy returning from around the block.  She glanced toward him as he rounded the corner, same face, crumpled in determination now.  Doing his best to double his speed.  As he rode toward the trash can, another flash, and silence.  In the split second of her blink, the boy was gone, in his place a bowler, with a queen of diamonds stuck in the brim, perched on the edge of the trash can.

Perfect Dream

The unreal is more powerful than the real because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.

Chuck Palahniuk

She woke begging. 

Just like the last time.

These last few days had been rough.  Every time she closed her eyes the terrors took her.  She could see him, full of anger, hating her as he noticed a smear on the refrigerator door. 

How had that gotten there?  She’d wiped it twelve times yesterday and yet, there it was. A streak, semi opaque in the pale light cast by the stove, mocking her.  She should have wiped it again.  He was right to be mad, I mean, all he asked was for the house to be clean when he came home.  She was there all day, every day.  What an idiot.

Last night’s was worse though.  Last night she’d been at the table reading “Where the Red Fern Grows” to the kids when he’d come home from work.  He seemed alright with it.  He was a little early, dinner wasn’t going to be ready for a few minutes.  She finished the chapter, that horrible chapter, and laughed through her tears with the children.  She had directed them, “Let’s get dinner on the table, ladies.”  And they had. 

Then they’d all sat around that table, eating the delicious Garlic Chicken that she’d made because he’d said he liked it.  As she watched the hate fill his eyes the bite turned to sawdust on her tongue.  Why was he angry? Her eyes fell on the book opened face down on the table, where she’d put it so that they wouldn’t lose the place.

She focused on the book as she ran through her sins. 

Table NOT cleaned completely off when he’d gotten home.  

Book laid out in a way that he said could break the binding (she’d never seen it happen, but he didn’t want her to do that).

Jillie’s hair a kind of hay mow on the top of her head. 

Charlie’s was worse, she’d allowed Charlie to put on makeup and she looked about 5 years older than her 11.  Charlie was sitting there with outlined blue eyes and black lashes made for butterfly kisses, pink mouth ruched around her green bean.  She hoped he hadn’t noticed, that he wouldn’t make Charlie feel like she’d done something wrong by looking pretty.

As is the way of dreams, this one cut from sunlight shining on her beautiful daughter to her husband’s hateful eyes, his mouth a hard line, his shoulders granite.  It didn’t really cut, it more oozed from sunlight through thunderheads into inky blackness that encased him so that nothing else could be seen.

“Don’t you think it’s disrespectful to READ when we should be having dinner?  I thought you were trying to be more respectful of ME…I mean C’MON, I can’t even expect to come home to dinner on the table?”

She felt her face flush.  That was so unfair.  Dinner was only 10 minutes behind him.  We were in a good part of the story.  He had been early.  He’d gone straight up the stairs when he’d gotten home, he’d told her he WANTED a few minutes to himself.

But no words came.  Nothing.

Still in the dream she felt that she had said them.  Felt that she had apologized for any disrespect.  After all, the pastor had said that she needed to try to be more respectful.  She hadn’t realized he would think that reading would be disrespectful.

He backed away, angry. His eyes a magnet.  She reached for him, begged him to hear her, begged him to love her, she would try harder.  He shook his head.  How could he hear her?  She was an embarrassment.  She was worthless, revolting.  She never did anything right.

“Please!”

“No!  You disgust me!”

That’s what woke her yesterday.  Woke her sweating.

It had taken an hour for her heart to return to a normal “thrum thrum thrum” that she could breathe around.

Now, here she was again.  How many times would the cinema that was her mind re-invent the hurt in brilliant perfection?  In these moments where the subconscious and conscious met, she wondered at the clarity of her mind.  The stark line between the milky streak and the shiny fridge.  Seriously, it was far more perfect in her dreams than it had been in reality.

The soft fringe of Charlie’s eyelashes around her incredibly blue eyes in that perfect sunlight.  Her daughter was beautiful, there was no mistaking.  But she was also a beautiful 11 year old, who could belch the ABCs.  In real life that made her even better in her mother’s book.  The imperfections, those real moments that showed the humor and the crassness, or maybe the vulnerability.  That was real.

Had he really hated her that perfectly?  In the light of the streaming dawn, she wasn’t sure.  He had hated her so perfectly for so many nights in her dreams she couldn’t remember his imperfect hatred, only the magnified, crystalline hatred of her dreams.

Had he ever loved her?  She couldn’t remember that either.  The last memory of his love in dream perfection had been more than 10 years ago.  She remembered waking wanting him.  Wanting to touch him.  Lean into his neck and smell him.  Wanting to come alive with his touch and to feel his skin under her hands.  It had been as powerful as these dreams were and she’d shared it with him because she loved him.  And she remembered him brushing off her need.  What kind of a MOTHER wakes up wanting filthy sex?  That’s disgusting.

So no, she couldn’t remember any love, only the hate.  And then only the hate that her mind brought about every night in sharp relief, perfectly insane and resolutely unmovable.

She breathed in deep.  The smell of her sheets intoxicating.  She stretched and watched the dust motes swirl in the beam of sunlight snaking through the blinds. 

“This is real.”

“This is imperfect and real and much better than any perfection my mind can imagine.”

She told herself that every morning.  She hoped that someday, it would be true.