Issue 3, March 2009
| Editor's Note
Truth next story |
Rebecca Keith
On my way to SAT prep— late as always, West
Seventy-something Street, quadratic formula
not in my head. I prefer the Pythagorean. A-squared
plus B-squared equals so bored. Not to say I was
a simple girl. Still tongue-tied. Could I
get a sentence out straight? Seldom to never. None of the above,
but I liked the love-metaphors of Venn diagrams, or their clique-i-ness.
So I’m halfway down the street, in front of the brownstone
I always wanted. It’s kind of raining, gray February mid-morning,
and there’s a yellow piano out by the curb. Keys wet
and sticking, body Easter-egg yellow, paint chipping,
wood becoming warped, nails protruding. I clunk out a scale
while guys load furniture into a truck. The piano’s getting left behind,
won’t make the move to Brooklyn or upstate. It’s an upright
with one leg loose, hanging by a nail. I grab and amputate, a piece
of uptown to bring home. I’ll make it a table, or a lamp. I’m crafty these days.
On upper Broadway, careful not to stick myself, or anyone else,
with the nail, I look back at the waste. What a waste. And in class, I’ll be
the strange one today.
***
Rachel drives down to the bay in Oakland. We stop by a sign
for Albany Bulb— a park and a junkyard where the ocean
starts (ends, starts). Late March, a bunch of people walking back
to their cars, away from the water. We’re late, towards five o’clock,
our habit. On the path to the bay, notes mix with saltwater—someone
playing exercises or one of those pieces everyone practiced
in the school auditorium, like Für Elise. We find the piano, a little beat up,
but hardly as weathered as an outdoor instrument should be. The man,
a tourist like me, gives up his turn, walks on. We improvise a duet,
she on the bass notes, me treble. Last time we wrote a song
we had no instruments. Just our throat-beats, mmms, and palms
on the dining room table— tried to keep our feet from stomping, waking up
the six-plus housemates. But this afternoon, we’ll shake
the trash sculptures, wake the gulls, scratch hearts and arrows into bricks
with rock-made chalk. We write this song for who we’d like to bring
to the beach next time, climb into an alcove and watch the Bay Bridge
span the bay.
***
One of your neighbors plays piano weekend mornings. Sounds like Chopin,
a nocturne in the a.m. Not outdoors, but coming out of one door
into yours, or through the walls, or out his window (hers?) and rapping soft
at yours. I love the way it’s muted, arpeggios dampened
by sheetrock, your sheets, bedspread. I don’t mind being woken up
this way. Been this way a while, but a while keeps changing— scales
turn to feathers, to fur.
Copyright © 2009 Storyscape Journal
ISSN 1941-3157