The piano made its way to Hartford Street in the early rains of spring. She anticipated the warmth of music, the pleasant pressure of fingertips on her keys, the resonance of every chord pulsing through her frame. The piano had come, after all, from a very musical household. It expected all piano owners to be the same. Unloved, unplayed, she sat in the garage half-covered in a blue tarp like some illicit sculpture, not to be seen. One time the young daughter gave the keys a few good taps and grazes, and a few poundings of the deep notes for good measure. She laughed at the high pitch ring of the far key on the left (her right), and admired the way it sounded when she dragged her fingers all the way from one end to the other, that awe-inspiring crescendo. Otherwise she sat. How she wanted to move, to feel her music again. How wasteful, this seemed, until at last they sold her.
The piano made its way to Douglas Court beneath the peak sunrays of summer. The delivery men dropped her in a mishap around the courtyard fountain, breaking off one of her wheels. When they sat her down in the lobby of a lawyer’s office, she sat off-kilter and unrepaired. The lawyer played her occasionally, cursing often his lack of time for lessons. He apologized to her when he messed up. It was charming. But then he was gone, without warning, and other people came and disassembled his office, took his things, his pictures and plants. Someone said, “Such a tragedy,” but no one bothered to stop and tell the piano what had happened to the modest lawyer. She never got the chance to tell him he was good, the best she’d ever heard. Then the people took her away, too.
The piano made its way to Bargain Music in the cold fog of winter. The place was as dull as its uninteresting name. Bargain was a stretch. She was put up next to another piano marked at nine hundred fifty. But that piano was missing keys, its keyboard looking like an old man’s smile. Everything in here was missing something (her, a wheel), but priced like new. She knew she wasn’t worth a thousand dollars. Not in this condition. As expected, she waited there for a long, long time. Many seasons passed. She, hardly moved around at all, felt the most enjoyment when someone ignored the DO NOT TOUCH sign posted on her lid and gave her dusty keys a little play. Inevitably the staff would end their fun. The warehouse showroom would quiet enough to hear the classic rock seeping through the sound system.
The piano made its way to Pharmer Lane in the red and orange hues of early fall. Ten years had passed since the lawyer vanished. Such a tragedy. Ten years spent in the corner of a dingy used goods store and now, arranged so centrally in the dining room of a rich family’s home in the countryside, she was all but blushing. Every day someone used her properly, which was a welcome change. All the children knew a few songs each, though she didn’t appreciate the young boy’s sticky fingers. The mother had a great singing voice and paired it, when everyone else was out of the house, with some fantastic finger work. The father seemed to know the least, but he wasn’t home much anyway. The piano had a great view through floor-to-ceiling windows of a purple hillside and sparse patches of trees and sunsets like paintings. It was a good life, sadly brief. A downed power line to the south sparked a wildfire. She watched the flames spread over those hills like hot wax. The family didn’t take many belongings when they evacuated, and she couldn’t blame them for leaving a piano behind. The flames ate through the walls, shattered the windows, oozed inside and caught fire to the sofa in front of her. And then she felt wet, soaked, instantly, by the firefighters’ hose. They fought back the flames and though the house was severely damaged, she’d escaped with nothing but some soot in her pins.
The piano made its way to 10th Street Storage Center in the same brisk beginning of fall, where it remained in complete darkness for months. At first she felt fine. Darkness was nothing new to her. But this was different. This became torturous. No one so much as looked at her. The rolling door never opened, not once, for months. She began to hallucinate. She saw the faces of those who played her, for better or for worse, swirling in the dark. Randomly one of her keys would chime out, as if pressed, but surely that was her imagination? The echoes of old melodies hummed through her strings. It would be better to be destroyed, she thought, sitting there on two good wheels and a stump.
The piano made its way to Deer Creek Road in late winter during the hard snow. Twice the vehicle that carried her there swerved and slid on the icy highways. The piano was now in the music class of an elementary school, accessible only to Mrs. Reese’s Advanced Band students, a squirmy, talkative, but talented group of little children. Every student began the year as a novice but mastered the skills that their teacher taught, not just with the piano but with a few members from the woodwinds and brass families, too. It was a treat to be a part of. The children adored Mrs. Reese. However, it pained the piano to see how once the children left for the day and Mrs. Reese was alone, that cheer left her face, and how she would spend about thirty minutes each day playing the saddest, saddest songs on the piano keys.
The piano made its way to Rucker Street in the following fall. When Mrs. Reese quit, the music program ended at her school, so the district shipped all the instruments to a school that needed them. Mr. G was the music teacher here, and though it was great again to be with these young musical talents and this passion and practice, Mr. G never seemed that interested in incorporating the piano into his ensemble. He was all brass and woodwind here, with two percussions and one acoustic guitar. The piano simply watched. She didn’t even get to go to their big recital in the auditorium in the spring. And this was how it went for years.
The piano made its way to Marconi Avenue during a strangely stormy summer day. The piano recalled a similar storm when she was first created, assembled in the workshop of an Italian man with him and his friends and their wives and wine and cheese. The storm knocked out the power and so she was finished in candlelight. And now she was in another kind of workshop, a workshop that worked in the recycling of old things. The piano watched antique dressers get torn from hinge to hinge, sliced down into picture frames and shelving. She watched a solid redwood bedframe get scrapped for planks. She waited in the sawdust for her turn, trying to envision what would become of her parts. It was what she’d hoped for, wasn’t it? When she was locked away in storage, she had thought this would be better than darkness. Now she wasn’t so sure. If she wasn’t a piano anymore, what would she be?
The piano made its way to Woodside Road on a cloudy summer day. An employee at the scrap shop shipped her to his grandma’s house. By now, she had three stumps to stand on, her wheels long gone. One of her pedals was missing. During that last move via rental van, she bounced so hard it dislodged the music rack, and no one bothered to put it back on. Her keys didn’t rest smoothly together as they once did, jutting out here and there like uneven fence posts. The scrapes, scratches, and dents numbered in the hundreds, with a few particularly upsetting tattoos carved into her lid by lovers and anarchists over the years. This was a home for old things, perfect for her. Her owners were old, like her, frail and slow, and rarely ventured away from their bed-and-breakfast business conducted elsewhere in the home. No one played her, but that was just as fine. She liked to be in the living room where she could watch the holiday dinners, the unwrapping of presents, the football games, the babies learning to walk, the family growing. Now and again, sure, someone pulled out the bench and set their fingers loose on her keys, but the piano hardly recognized the sound anymore. Her hammers were old. Her strings were tired. She liked it better to sit still.
The piano made its way.
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