“I still don’t understand why you’re making me take piano lessons,” the boy griped, swishing his shaggy auburn hair out of his eyes. He was slumped down in the passenger seat of his mother’s Hyundai with his arms crossed, causing his dirty sweatshirt to pucker like a series of mountains. “Don’t parents normally push their kids to do stuff like this when they’re seven? You’re about a decade too late on this one.” His forehead crinkled, causing excess skin to hang over his coffee eyes.
His mother said nothing in response, having spent the last week and a half arguing with him about it. Annoyed, he directed his gaze out the window. The trees seemed to be racing the car as it traveled further down the dirt road. The boy pressed the button to lower the window and was immediately greeted with a crisp breeze cooling his face and playing with his hair. They had been driving down this way for a while, but they went deeper still into the forest.
“Who even lives in the woods anymore? And why won’t you tell me who I’m taking these stupid things from?” he asked, slamming himself against the headrest. Again, his mother said nothing, but just continued to focus on the road like she was trying to pay close attention to a lecture. Just as the boy was about to complain again, his mother made a turn onto a driveway. It was so overgrown with brush that she almost missed it.
The house was something straight out of a fairytale. The front was covered in ivy, making it nearly impossible to tell what color was hiding underneath. Washed out blue shutters framed the windows. Thin wisps of smoke were climbing out of the chimney, rising into the sky. Despite the lack of upkeep near the entrance to the property, vibrantly colored flowers lined the walkway leading to the cherry colored front door. His mother shut off the engine, but did not yet unlock the door.
“Now you listen to me,” she said, speaking her first words since getting into the car. “You be polite to this woman. All she has is this house and her piano. It would be nice if she had some company for an hour a week. You drop that attitude you put on when I picked you up and get in there.” A click sounded, signaling that his door was ready to be opened. “I’ll see you in an hour.”
The boy begrudgingly hopped out of the car, slammed the door a little harder than was needed, and started shuffling up the pathway. His dark wash jeans dragged slightly, collecting dirt in the cuffs. Knowing his mother was watching, he walked at a normal pace up to the front door. He searched for a doorbell but there wasn’t one there. Raising his right hand, he formed a fist and knocked three times, hearing a satisfying thump for each one. The boy waited a moment, but no one came. He turned to ask his mother what to do, but she had already left. Again, he knocked, and this time he heard a faint voice telling him she was coming.
A few seconds later, the door swung open. His nostrils were rushed with the unmistakable scent of old lady—a mix of mothballs and perfume that should have been thrown out a few months ago.
“Well, come in then,” the woman rattled. Without waiting for him to do so, she turned and headed off down the hall. Her movements were that of a windup toy, teetering back and forth with each step. The boy shut the door and followed her, stifling a sneeze. He could taste the dust settling in his throat. Craning his neck to see into the rooms he passed, he saw sheets that were white at some point covering the furniture. Paintings hung on the walls, but their coloring was off, like a soda can left out on the porch for the summer.
Facing forward again, the boy found that the woman was no longer in front of him. He backtracked and poked his head into the rooms behind him. In the third he checked, he found the woman sitting on a bench with the piano in front of her. He almost missed her. She seemed to blend into the room, like she was a part of it. The boy went into the room and sat next to the woman. He rested his hands on the piano was shocked to feel that it was caked with dust as well.
“My mom said you use this thing all the time,” he said confusedly, more to himself than to her.
“No,” she answered simply, shaking her head. “I haven’t played in years.” There was a touch of sadness in her voice that the boy could not quite place. This was the first time he was able to get a good look at the woman. He had never seen hair so white before. Hers was tied back into a bun that hung limply, too thin to support itself. Skin discolored from years of being inside, much like the room, collected around her eyes and under her jaw. Veins jutted out on top of the bones in her hands when she lifted the cover to reveal the keys. A look of longing filled her eyes and the corners of her mouth turned up as she ran her fingers along them. “Play,” she whispered after a moment.
“I’ve never done this before. Shouldn’t I at least have some music or something?”
The woman shook her head and lifted a misshapen finger. “Play.”
Not sure what to do, the boy blindly placed his fingers on some keys like a child playing a party game and pressed down. His ears were assaulted with a sound like the one his cat made when it got its head stuck in the rails of his steps.
Before the hour was out, the woman was able to teach him proper finger placement, and even how to play his first song. Each week he went back, his skills improving every time. He would never admit it to his mother, but he enjoyed the time he spent with the woman. She never tried to ask him about his life, always getting straight to the point until the hour was up. The boy went back every week through the end of his senior year and the summer following until he went away to school.
A year later during one of his breaks, he found himself driving down the now familiar pathway up to the house he had spent so much time in. His heart sank when he drove up to find that all the windows had been boarded up along with the front door. He got out of the car anyways and started to search for a sturdy branch. After prying the board off the door and forcing it open, he once again stepped into the house. It hadn’t seemed to change since he left it.
On his way to the room with the piano, he took time to look around the rest of the house for the first time. He could not find a single photograph anywhere. Who was the woman that had taught him to play the piano? Feelings of regret swarmed his head as he realized that he never once tried to get to know her while he had the chance. Now it was too late. Why had he never once asked her about her life, or how she had come to live alone in a home so far away from everyone else? He decided to go through the house and attic to search for clues as to who she was. But he had something to do first.
The boy sat on the bench, and drew in a deep breath. After slowly letting it out, he lifted the cover and began to play.
