Pianissimo

Sitting inches apart on the piano bench, their hands hovered over the keyboard of the old upright. Jake could barely breathe. I can’t believe I’m here with her. Isabella was so close that one of her blond curls brushed against his arm. A light waft of vanilla, like fresh-baked cupcakes, rose to his nostrils. Just as he had imagined, she smelled as wonderful as she looked. He examined her long slender fingers suspended next to his. I wonder what it would feel like to hold her hand. Without moving a muscle, he glanced out of the corner of his eye at her milk-white skin and soft pink lips.

She’s perfect.

Isabella was going to begin the lesson by showing off a little, but decided against it when she noticed how much Jacob was trying to mirror her every move. She dropped her hands into her lap. Still staring ahead, he lowered his quivering fingers to his knees.  

“Jacob?... Jacob. Are you ready to get started?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Of course. Whenever you’re ready, Isabella,” he said, sitting up nice and tall.

Isabella couldn’t believe she’d agreed to give lessons to this fifth-grader from two houses down – and on his old clunker of a piano. Admittedly, it was summer and she had nothing else going on. And she knew that the Fosters couldn’t afford to pay a real piano teacher for their son right now. But, most of all, she knew that she could use the money for the car she was planning to buy when she got her license in a couple of years.

But is this really worth it?

She could literally feel the piano bench shake in six-eight time along with the boy’s scrawny, hairless legs.

Calm down, kid. It’s just a piano lesson, for God’s sake.

She remembered being nervous at her first lesson, too. But she’d only been six years old and had had some actual things to be scared about. First, there was her teacher, Mr. Flaherty (a smelly old man with hair growing out of his nose and ears); and second, there was that great big grand piano, the unplayed and untouched centerpiece of her family’s home.   

Isabella’s nervousness then had not lasted long, however. Her frightened six-year-old self had responded quickly to Mr. Flaherty’s gentle, disarming approach – like when he described the two-key and three-key groups of black keys as “the little house” and “the big house.” She’d giggled out loud when he told her how the black keys were like little birds sitting on their mommy’s shoulders singing just a “wee bit” higher or lower than their mama could. Isabella still got goose bumps every time she remembered playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” at the end of that first lesson – all by herself. 

“Well, I guess that’s it for today, Isabella Tarantella,” Mr. Flaherty had said, placing a grandfatherly hand on her shoulder.

“Already? Just a few minutes more… please?” she’d replied.

But I was a six-year-old girl then, and little houses and baby birdies made it fun. Jacob’s a ten-year-old boy. He’ll probably think those kinds of things are stupid. Well, if he catches on right away, I might not even have to worry about it. I guess I’ll figure it out. Here goes nothing.

“Okay, Jacob, let’s just relax a bit before we get started. So, why don’t you tell me how come you want to learn how to play the piano.”

Geez, are you kidding me? I didn’t know you were going to ask me that. What do I say? That I’ve been in love with you since we moved into the neighborhood a couple of years ago? That I found out this winter that you’re pretty good at the piano and that I begged Mom to ask your parents if you could teach me this summer?

“Uhm… I guess I just fell in love with… this old piano. It was here when we moved in. I thought it might be neat to learn how to play it.”

“Well, that seems like a pretty good reason. Do you know anything about the piano, I mean like the keyboard and stuff?

That’s more like it! I was waiting for you to ask me about that. Thank God for the internet.

“As a matter of fact, I do. This is a standard piano with 88 keys, 56 white and 32 black. There are seven octaves, each one having seven white keys and five black keys. There are four extra keys, three on one end and one on the other. Sorry, Isabella, but I don’t really understand how come those are there.”

Smart kid. I’m impressed. Thank God for the internet.

“No, no, that’s awesome, Jake… Oh, by the way, is it okay if I call you Jake?”

Isabella, you can call me anything you want!

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

“And you can call me Bella, if you want – all my friends do.”

Jake smiled. “Really?”

Bella smiled back. “Really.”

“So, what if we start with something simple, like learning the names of the notes you’re going to play? It’s easy. Start with the first seven letters of the alphabet.”

“Okay.” Jake counted them out on his fingers. “A, B, C, D, E, F, G.”

Bella exhaled. Even if she hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, she’d been nervous about giving lessons to this young boy from the neighborhood. Maybe not as nervous as she’d been at her own first lesson, but nervous none the less. What if he had turned out to be a wise-mouthed, runny-nosed brat who was only taking piano because his mommy wanted him to get some culture? How would she have handled a kid like that who had to be force-fed every last bit of every last lesson? But Jake didn’t seem to be like that at all.

He actually seems interested in learning how to play piano from me.

“Well, believe it or not,” Bella explained, “those are all the notes you’re ever going to play, except in piano language that group always starts with ‘C.’ So, C, D, E, F, G, A, B is an octave. Remember you told me about the seven octaves on a piano? Well, we’re going to start with the octave right in the middle of the…”

Jake exhaled as the lesson continued. Bella was as beautiful close up as she had been from a distance, but he hadn’t expected her to be like this. At first, the thought of being near her was all he had cared about – piano, schmiano. That’s how come he’d been so shaky at the beginning. But she was so much easier to be around than he had thought possible. She didn’t treat him like some pain-in-the-neck little baby who just wanted to fool around all the time. And her explanations of things made picking out the notes and stuff pretty easy.

She actually seems interested in teaching me how to play piano.

“… next week. You did a nice job today, Jake.”

“That's it? That went by so fast. Thanks, Bella.”

Bella stood up leaving Jake alone on the piano bench. On the music easel in front of him, she placed a single piece of paper with six lines of large letters printed in red marker.

“But before you go, I’d like you to try playing this.”

“On my own?”

“On your own.”

Jake plunked out the seven beginning notes – CC, GG, AA, G – grinning as he recognized the familiar tune.

Goose bumps.