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.