The Dusty Piano

He let the silence envelope him. It was the kind of silence that made his ears ring, deafening. This must be what normal houses are like. Houses that aren't constantly filled with chatter, scales, riffs and old records. This is what a Sunday morning sounded like. Not like his Sundays growing up that were filled with his mother making pancakes and singing show tunes, harmonizing with his sister Ava, while dad slept in from managing the jazz club the night before. Sundays in this house were full of joyful noise. Every moment of silence was merely a rest between notes. Now, it was uncomfortably quiet. 

She sang as easily as she breathed, that is, until she stopped. Her mouth was open as if she were singing the moment she collapsed in front of the kitchen sink. He could almost hear her holding the final note to "A Little Fall of Rain." Her voice hadn't been the same since dad died, but Webber hadn't been the same either.  

The world went on but the pain was paralyzing. He couldn't leave the kitchen. He could still hear his mother singing "A Little Fall of Rain" now accompanied by his father on the piano along the stairs in the living room. A fine layer of dust collected there, where it hadn't been touched in three years. 

The silence could drown him. It was rising in his throat like a scream. The floor squeaked behind Webber. The scream fell like a lump back into his gut. He twisted around to see Ava, his younger sister behind him looking as if she had just woken up wearing leggings and an oversized sweater with furry boots. Her hair was hastily thrown into a pony tail on top of her head with fly-aways littering her neck and forehead. This was early morning for her. She was the singing hostess of a downtown cabaret and variety show. It was where most people congregated after leaving dad's jazz club on the weekends. Webber always contemplated extending the hours but the bar staff would kill him if he suggested even longer hours. 

She immediately pulled him into a hug, sobbing. She was a mess. Webber didn't know what was wrong with him, hollow and angry. The silence was broken and he wanted it back. The racket made him nauseous. His natural instinct was to be strong. He took on her emotion letting it absorb into him so it could lighten Ava's despair. His eyes hung on the dust that glistened off the music stand of the piano in the morning window light. 

"I can't believe this is happening," she cried. "I knew something was wrong. I didn't get her text before I went on last night," she said, sounding ridiculous. Webber broke their hug and pushed his sister away. 

"You couldn't have known," he said. He forced himself to look away from the piano, having to walk away from it entirely. 

"What do we do now?" she said. She was four years younger than him, still a college kid. He wasn't ready to have all the answers, but here she was looking to him for guidance as if he were a parental figure instead of just another lost twenty-something. 

He shrugged. "We can't do anything about the funeral until tomorrow," he said. The paperwork was on the table with a business card from Dignity Oaks and his phone. His wife was still on the other side of the town sitting in the church parking lot. She arrived early to lead worship that morning thinking Webber and his mother would meet her at church. At last count he had eleven text messages from her.

He looked around the living room, his pulse thumping more rapid until his eyes stopped at the entry to the kitchen. With a gasp for air, going unnoticed by Ava still weeping, he took a step into the kitchen careful not to disturb the mat where his mother lay just an hour ago. He ripped open a cabinet in the kitchen and unloaded furniture polish and disinfectant. 

His sister sniffled behind him earning her a mop that he handed off to her forcefully. This was all he could think to do - clean until they knew what was next. 

A bird twittered and clamored outside. Ava glided to the window and whistled a tune back to him, sad and gentle; to Webber, agitating. 

Webber swept the hardwood in the living room while Ava mopped the kitchen floor. He tried to break his own natural movement to eliminate the audible rhythm they were creating with their every motion. While doing chores his mother would sing, or hum along. It was engrained, a mannerism of both siblings. Ava was fighting the urge to whistle only letting out a riff here and there. It was a fight to stay quiet, but every note was a heavy load. 

Memories flashed in his mind like a slide projector. Images stuck in his head like songs. Some of them were songs. Each stroke of the vacuum cleaner switched to the next scene. His dad playing at the jazz club, his mom singing in church, his mom directing the music in the community theatre's production of Carousel, his dad's hands as he showed Webber how to play during his first piano lesson. He clenched his eyes closed as if to trap it all inside. A shriek yanked Webber out of his memories. His sister dropped the mop handle to the ground with a slap against the linoleum. Webber rushed into the kitchen. 

"Are you alright?" 

"Oh my god!" Ava yelled in response. She held a vinyl record in her hand, The Magic of Judy Garland. "Mom stole it. She knew where it was the whole time. She had it! She hid it in the pantry!" 

"Well it was her record," Webber said. 

"She still lied when I asked if I could have it!" Ava shuffled into the living room and unsheathed the vinyl disc. "She could have just said no and I would have-"

"-stolen it," Webber interrupted. 

She bobbed her head from side to side as she considered the idea. "Yeah, you're right, I would have." 

Her face dropped as she stood before the record player with the album in her hand. Her eyes looked sticky with half dry tears. He could see it, the silence was swallowing her too. The bird had stopped its racket. It felt as if they were living in a snow globe - devoid of sound or time. They were in their own hollow world that looked undisturbed but was actually shaken to its foundation. 

They both jumped at the sound of the front door slamming shut. 

"Sorry," said Webber's wife, Carmen, with her arms anchored with take out bags. She had kicked the door closed with more force than anticipated. 

"I brought lunch," she said, wide-eyed and breathless. The silence was broken again, saving them from the next wave of grief. 

Carmen listened tentatively while Ava told a story about the previous night's show. She was waiting for either of them to need her, to crack. 

"-so I'm about to go on and I start going through my little warm-up ritual and-" she stopped mid-sentence. This was when she checked her phone seeing no heart texts from mom.  

“Anyways, both of you stop for a lunch break,” she said. “I ordered a bit of a variety, twice as much as we need and got all the condiments on the side because I didn’t know your feelings and well, condiments are gross so I’m certainly not going to be held responsible for that mess.” Carmen rambled as they unwrapped foot long subs filled with various meats, cheeses and vegetables. 

“Oh Carmen, awkward,” Ava said. “I went vegan.” Disappointment fell onto both their faces but Webber held in a snort of a laugh. 

“I’m so sorry Ava, how bad is it? I can go back or make you something. I didn’t even think about that,” Carmen said. She trailed off the moment the smile parted from Ava’s lips. “Funny, yes, lets give a panic attack to the anxiety girl,” she said. 

“Oh come on, we can’t pass up a good vegan gag,” Webber said. 

“Vegan’s the new gluten,” Carmen shrugged. 

They dug into their sandwiches and let the conversation stray from the waves of emotion that started their cycle five hours before, the various exploits and mishaps from the week before and Webber’s growing to-do list. Ava and Carmen loved to swap performance stories. Carmen’s from her year as a show woman and Ava as the high school theatre teacher. 

“Yeah, I’m telling you, she can hit that high c,” Carmen said of one of her students in the fall musical, singing the note near the top of her range.  

“What? This one up here?” Ava sang back. Next thing Webber knew they were singing back and forth between bites of pastrami and bacon. 

“We should probably get back to work,” Webber announced rising from the table. His head was pounding. 

“We’re not done with our food yet,” Ava said. 

“Yeah, Web take a break. Finish your pickle,” Carmen said. 

“I want to get to get everything cleaned up and I have a headache.” 

“Well I have ibuprofen, antihistamine, antacid,” she listed off while holding up her shoulder bag.  

“I’ll just do everything,” Webber said and stormed away from the table. 

“Hell no, Webber you don’t get to do this again,” Ava said rushing after him with a shuffle of feet. She stopped him in front of the piano by the stairs in the living room. “You’ve been a pain since dad died but that was years ago. You don’t play, you barely smile I don’t know what Carmen could have possibly seen in you because she’s stayed with you through all of this shit and you’re a wreck. I’m not going to let you get worse. If that’s even possible.” 

“Well, you’ve only kept it together because I’ve done everything for you. I arranged the funeral, helped mom with the house and finances-“

“I’m a college student what finances do you really expect me to help with?” 

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” 

“I would rather have my family than the finances or the ‘help.’”

“You’re just like mom. You break down and stall when things get hard. You turn on a record and sing about your problems. You think things will just solve themselves and the damn sun will come out tomorrow but that’s because dad and I were getting the shit done in order to survive.” 

Ava was no where to be seen by the time he finished yelling. She had left once he spit out the Annie reference and had run upstairs. Her stomps could be heard from ground level.

“You feel pretty lucky to be an only child?” He said turning back to Carmen. 

“Not at all. I’d rather of someone to argue with and blame shit on than to have to handle all of this alone,” she said. 

“Theoretically,” he said. 

“Web, come on. Your mom’s been gone six hours. If Ava wants to sing instead of sterilize every inch of the house, then let her sing.”  

The regret of what he said resonated in the air like static. “I wish I could just play the pain away.” 

Carmen grabbed his hand, kissed it softly. She took a long quiet moment before pushing him gently towards the doorway. 

CD shelves lined the upstairs hall that led to he childhood bedrooms of Webber and Ava. Ava was on the floor of her bedroom, feet curled under her, an old guitar in her lap.

"I'm sorry," Webber said. 

Ava's answer was a staccato strum, aggressive and sharp. She tuned a string, strummed again. Finally, she started picking mom's favorite blues song, "Rock Me Baby," BB King. The song was half-empty without the piano. Webber knew the notes but hadn’t played them in years.

He couldn’t listen. He was down the stairs by the time she finished the first verse. It echoed through the walls like a ghost. Ava's voice, almost identical to mom's, rang more like a bell but was filled with the same spirit. Carmen was on the phone with one of his cousins, accepting condolences and relaying the agenda. 

Webber escaped out the back door. Mature rose bushes lined the back fence and a metal set of chairs met in the middle around a small fire pit. The sound of a passing car, the squeak of a squirrel, more ordinary sounds for a Sunday afternoon that didn't feel as ordinary. Quiet again, to watch the sky explode and darken with the setting sun. The silence started to overwhelm him, choke him. On cue, Carmen slid the door open and came outside, two mugs of hot tea in her hand. With her came a second of the music that she had put on in the living room, an orchestral mix CD Webber had curated his freshman year in high school to gain inspiration for his career in the high school band. 

"Thank you for calling everyone. Ava has a phobia of the phone and -"

"Oh you do too," Carmen teased. "But, you're welcome. Luckily, I can talk to anyone, anything. I’ve held in depth interviews with brick walls." She held the steaming cup to her face to absorb its warmth. They watched the stars come out. The silence didn't seem to be consuming him with Carmen there. A welcoming sound, the door slid open behind them again and out came Ava bringing more music with her. 

"It does get chilly once the sun sets," she said. The three stood together and listened. 

"Anyways, I think I'll head out," Ava said. "I found the folder of mom’s important documents. I don’t know what half of them are so -“ 

“I’ll look through them,” Webber said. 

“Meet you at the funeral home tomorrow morning?" 

Webber nodded. "Are you sure you want to leave or do you want us to drive you?" 

"I'll make it," she sniffed. 

"Do you have dinner?" Carmen asked as a reflex. 

"Yeah, I'll grab something." 

“As long as it’s food you grab, I will be satisfied,” Ava said and let herself out the back gate.

"How are you feeling?" Carmen asked finally. 

"Very tired," Webber said. "My head's pounded all day." 

"Let's finish up here and get home. We can get to everything else tomorrow." 

She grabbed his hand and led him to the door. He stopped. Staring inside the warmly lit home it didn't look like the haunted husk of a house it felt like all day. Maybe, he could go in and find his mom next to the record player finally putting the needle on Judy Garland. He felt something he hadn't felt all day, something the was unable to feel all day. A tear collected and pooled in his eye, waiting for its release. 

He prepared himself to hear the music, took a deep breath before the plunge. Carmen looked over her shoulder pretending not to notice he was paralyzed. She slid the door open slowly. He blinked the tear away. The house had returned to quiet. The CD had stopped but the echoes of a melody hung in the air. His sister had poured back into it the life that it needed to feel less vacant. Homemade mix CD's and favorite records no longer felt like reminders of pain but mementos of family. He felt sad the music stopped again. Knowing it was sounding through the halls felt more natural than the notion of his both his parents dying before he was thirty. 

Still outside, Webber stared through the open sliding door, across the room to the dusty piano behind the couch. The last one to play it was his dad more than three years ago, before he passed. This time, Webber wasn't disappearing. He wasn't shutting down.

Carmen looked back at him from the inside of the door. A soft smile on her lips as if she knew what he was thinking and was encouraging him to keep moving with a squeeze of her hand.  

"I just need to do one more thing. I'll meet you at home," he told Carmen. She took her dismissal and with a hesitant goodbye, dropped his hand and left out the front door.

The house settled into a new silence. Webber waded through a file folder of paperwork his sister left, separating everything that looked important into a separate pile to take home. His vision blurred. Ears were ringing again. Every time he looked up he was in direct view of the spot on the floor where twelve hours earlier he found his mother. It was now shiny and lemony fresh. He dragged his feet back into the living room. The environment felt muffled, like a hand over his mouth. He needed, more than anything, a release. They weren't a family of people who found peace in the quiet, who found solace in solitude. Without music they were floating through the atmosphere with no tether. Webber had been without a tether for more than three years. He was ready to come back down to earth. 

Untouched through their day of cleaning was his father's piano, still covered in dust. The piano bench creaked as Webber sat down onto the old wood. The hinges on the fallboard were stiff with disuse but still opened with a welcoming crackly squeak. Webber brushed his fingers over the top of the white keys, gently as to not make a sound. Each one had sung a thousand songs, spun a thousand melodies. He could imagine his dad's long fingers dancing over each one, lovingly composed. The house was a shell but this piano bench was his childhood home, still full of life. With a sigh he lifted a hand, rested it at middle C and played a major chord.