Caprice

‘What was it like?’ People always asked, ‘What was it like growing up in such a musical household?’ 

Elise shrugged every time, not bothering to answer, not wanting to answer, truthfully or otherwise. 

Oh, she supposed the ancient grand piano was magical in its own way, or it would have been if it were staged anywhere other than the cramped dining room filled with unpaid bills and empty pizza boxes. She had always believed it deserved somewhere prettier— some millionaire's mansion where it could have its own room full of windows and a musician that would play it while looking transcendent in a deep red costume. The closest Elise ever got to seeing that was when her father would play Brahms in the middle of the night, hoping that her mother’s lover would stomp downstairs and find out who exactly they were stealing his side of the bed from.  

That had happened once, though it was a Thursday afternoon and instead of her mother’s lover it was her mother herself who had stomped down and told him that he should get the piano tuned. Elise hadn’t listened to the rest, electing to go sit out under the dying oak in the back yard instead of enduring another argument. She had been eight, after all. But she wasn’t eight now, and she didn’t have to listen to the rhythmic thump of her parents’ bed against her own bedroom wall while her father stalked around madly downstairs, piling sheet music on the counters where the dirty dishes were in the hopes that one of her mother’s arias might get stained with old ketchup and fish sticks.  

She wasn’t eight. She didn’t have to be there. Still, she found herself undoing the latch on the screen door and using the key under the mat to get in. 

The house was the same as it had been for years, walls covered in boxes no one had ever bothered to unpack, dust on every lampshade. That wasn’t a surprise. Her mother shouldn’t have been a surprise either, and yet the limping, shambling form that had dragged itself downstairs when it heard Elise let herself in seemed a stranger, hair stringy and limp and unwashed, bathrobe stained with food. 

“So you’re back,” her mother said. “At least your father has the decency to stay away.” 

“You asked me to come,” Elise replied. 

“Hmph.” Her mother turned around and went to the kitchen. 

“Have you started the chemo yet?” Elise asked, following her mother’s slippered footsteps with the clunk and jangle of her own heavy boots. 

Her mother grunted. 

“What was that?” Elise arched an eyebrow. 

“I said it starts Tuesday.” 

“Do you have a ride?” 

Her mother shrugged, opening the fridge and taking out a shriveled lemon. She squeezed it into the water, ignoring Elise’s frown.  

“Do you have a ride?” Elise repeated, voice perfectly level. 

Elise’s mother turned her back to her, clutching at the grimy counters with what had once been perfectly manicured hands. “What do you care?”  

Elise’s lip curled. “You asked me to come here.” 

Her mother turned around, staring up at her with deadened eyes. Elise saw for the first time creases in her mother’s cheeks, skin turned paper-thin, eyes yellowing at the edges. “What do you care?” 

Elise’s stance shifted, her jaw clenching. “I don’t.” 

“Why did you come?” 

The buzz of the lights was deafening. 

Elise met her mother’s eyes, then turned and left the kitchen. 

She made her way outside, sitting in the brown and crackling grass under the oak tree. The dead wind cracked and groaned in the hot wind. Elise squinted into the distance, not bothering to shade her eyes from the setting sun as it shone gold over the endless rows of suburban houses built cheaply in the 80s that all had plumbing issues and probably flooded in the winters. Despite the line of sweat running down Elise’s back, she shivered. 

Last year someone had published a book about her parents, describing their whirlwind romance that ended in a long and happy marriage. They had emailed her three years ago, asking for her story; she had replied with a short paragraph about how unique and pleasurable her childhood had been—her father teaching her piano painstakingly, her mother singing as she cooked. She had left out the bits where her father’s bottle of wine had routinely spilled on her lesson books and her mother had always left the food cooking to bathe and do her hair, and by the time she returned the smoke alarm would have been set off. She had been sent a copy of the book as a courtesy. The cover had had a sunset too. 

She hadn’t read it. She knew the story as well as anyone else, after all, no need to repeat it to her. The composer attends a young woman’s performance and her voice enchants him. The next night he comes to her dressing room and watches her comb her golden hair. He falls on his knees and she turns and sees him for the first time as he begs her to sing what he’s written for her. She agrees, and they fall in love as easily as breathing. Months later, when she finally performs his composition for the first time he comes on stage and offers her a ring so covered in diamonds it looks like starlight. She takes the ring, kisses him, and they live happily ever after. 

Her parents hadn’t told it that way. No, that was reserved for the music columnists and the fans at the parties her mother dragged her along to. Her mother had always kept the parts about the singer’s golden hair and enchanting voice, the sacrifice of performing the composition—of canceling her tour for the man. Her father had done the opposite, keeping the parts about the man’s genius and the ring of starlight but coloring it with remarks on his foolishness and naiveté. ‘As if a woman could love,’ he had said, looking at her with disgust and pity. ‘It’s a shame you were born one.’  

Her mother had heard him say that once. She’d sneered at him and told him to leave and he had slapped her on the way out. Elise’s mother had sat on the side of Elise’s bed after that, eyes blinking too much, pupils covering all but the outermost ring of her irises. ‘He’s wrong, you know,’ she had slurred. ‘It’s not a shame that you’re... you’re a...’ It took her a minute to remember the word. ‘a woman. It’s just a shame that you were born.’ Elise had stared up at her with wide eyes, old enough to know that she shouldn’t cry but young enough not to realize that the scent on her mother’s breath was whiskey. Her mother had cocked her golden head at Elise, trying to absorb her daughter’s dark visage through her swirling vision. ‘You probably think that you’re too good for this. That you deserve better. You... You...” And then she had keeled over. She had still been there in the morning, but by the time Elise had gotten back from school there was a puddle of vomit on the floor and no trace of the woman who had for the first time in her life held her daughter in her arms all night. 

Elise shivered again, having watched the sky turn orange, then pink, then blue. It was still hot out, but that didn’t matter. Elise let out a huff. It never mattered. 

The glass of water was still on the kitchen counter where her mother had left it. Elise dumped the water in the sink and left it to dry. In the hallway, she rifled through her bag for a pamphlet on part-time nurses in the area, and another pamphlet on a ride sharing service. She left them on the kitchen counter next to each other, two garish spots of color in a beige tomb. Elise stopped in the dining room on the way out, trailing her hand through the dust on the piano’s surface. She lifted the fall board gently, the wood creaking as she set it back. The keyboard was dusty too, black keys so thickly obscured that they nearly appeared grey. Elise pressed down experimentally on a C. She scrunched her nose. Out of tune.  

The hallway was quiet when she picked up her bag and left, locking the door behind her before sticking the spare key under the mat. 

Her phone was already in her hand as she slid into the driver’s seat of her car. 

“Hello?” She said, staring into the gloaming as the person on the other end picked up. “I’d like to arrange the sale of a piano.”