Piano

I was there when they buried him. His mother had hugged me close and we both cried for the loss of life, the loss of intelligence and promise. We cried about the unsatisfying ending to his book. Afterwards I couldn’t be around her for a long time. He was in every one of her features. He was everywhere in that house. I spent afternoons with her for a few weeks. The last afternoon I knew I couldn’t stay there anymore. I couldn’t look around the room and see him anymore, I didn’t want to. All the things he touched, the beaten paperback on the coffee table, his pack of cigarettes with three left in it, the piano covered in it’s layer of beer cans trying to fit in. That piano. I asked if I could spend some time alone with it. I don’t know, maybe I could pretend he was playing it. I could picture it better if there was silence to stand beside me. His mother was all too polite in obliging my request. If she only knew I was saying goodbye to her, the house, and the boy that didn’t own a winter jacket. Or at least, I wanted to.

I ran my hands over the keys and imagined his hands guiding mine. The haunting refrain of Moonlight Sonata did not pour from my fingers. It never would, not like he played it. Music could never flow from me, tug and pull at my body like a rolling wave. I could still hear some of his notes. It was barely enough. I would have given anything to hear him play it. There was no use sitting by the piano forever, waiting there like he would magically show up wouldn’t make it happen.

"Dana?"

I quickly took my hands from the keys. "Yes?"

"Nobody is using that here. I don't play. I know it's an odd thing, heavy, big, but if you have room for it you can have it," his mother tells me.

"I couldn't."

"Take it. Dana... please. He would've wanted it I think." She ended most of her sentences uncertainly lately. Every one of them a second guess. I guess it's what happens when the world stops for you.

"I don't know how I'd take it. Where I'd put it. I mean thank you, but-"

"Please." I stopped protesting.

"Okay, yeah. Thank you."

Derek, Red-headed Mitch, Blondie, and Jackie helped me move the piano to my house. Red borrowed his dad’s pick-up and Blondie brought over a failed skating ramp experiment to wheel it on and off the truck. We all pushed it out while his mother watched. I’m pretty sure she was choking down tears.

“Take care of it,” she told me.

I hugged her. “I will. Thank you… Goodbye.”

“Bye Dana.”

I got in the truck bed with Blondie and Jackie, taking a hold of the piano. As we pulled out of the driveway I waved to her, still standing outside. The house was for the sale the next week, I never saw his mother again.

We set up the piano in my living room. My mother woke up long enough to have a coherent thought.

“What the hell is this?” she asked.

“A piano,” I replied.

“Did you steal it?”

“No!”I growled.

“Fine. You can deal with your father.”

“I will. Go back to bed mom.”

Then keep it down.” She shuffled back up the hallway she came from, leaving us to it.

“What’s your dad going to say?” Derek asked.

“He’s not going to give a flying f**k,” I replied.

“Okay done,” Red said as he shoved it back into its new place against my wall.

“What are you going to do with it?” Jackie asked.

“I don’t know… just keep it. Take care of it.”

“It’s a beautiful piano,” she remarked.

“Should’ve heard him play it.”

We all go silent. Everyone leaves eventually, leaving me alone with Silence and Theo’s piano. I sat on the bench tapping the keys. They emitted an almost chalky sound, when you really listened. I let my fingers dance across them and listened to the chalky notes.

“I’d give everything to hear you play Theo.”

The tears came easy and didn’t stop. My elbows caused a calamity on the keys. Even that sounded chalky and only served to spur on the tears racing down my cheeks.

“F**k,” I gasped, “F**k.”

I sucked in a breath and wiped the tears from my face.

“Why’d you do it?” I demanded, “Why didn’t you ask me to come that night? I would’ve come with you, you dumb jackass. Was it worth it?! Did you feel something?!”

I paused laying my hand on the keys. “I’m shouting at a damn piano.”

I left the bench and went up to the bathroom to take a shower, just to rinse everything down the drain. I closed my eyes as the hot water washed away the tension in my muscles. Maybe it was leftover feelings from shouting at his piano, maybe I really was going mad, but I turned the faucet to cold, frigid. I plugged the drain and sat down while the water rained down, raising goosebumps on my skin and collecting around my toes.

I swore I could’ve heard moonlight sonata.