The Lesson

Matthew Wood

But now, as she sat at the piano, she only looked out the window. It was early afternoon and there was a fox skulking through the garden. She scored its walk in her head: Dorian, with those raised sixths. Something discordant and faintly ominous, with a hint of brightness, a hint of mischief. Then, when it came closer, it was pure Aeolian. She could see its ribs.

In the kitchen, the phone was ringing—had been ringing. She waited for the voicemail to get it, for Ansel to come home and call them back. It was easier if he called them back, and she didn’t have to try to keep the names straight.

But now the voice on the machine was echoing through: “Hi Doris, I’m calling again from Dr. Klemmerman’s office to remind you of your—”

She didn’t hear the rest. She lay down on the bed. She would not dream. She took prednisone and she did not dream anymore. She lost stretches of time, racing through tunnels of blackness to consciousness. Then Ansel’s weight shifted the bed, and she was in yet another time.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“Like a born-again Christian,” Doris said.

He gently placed his hand on her thigh.

“Now, don’t get any ideas, mister,” said Doris.

And the smile remained as he shook his head. “I’m not an idea man,” he said. “But you can call if you need anything.”

If she needed anything. Ansel went past the window and out the door. Outside, the light was plum colored, gradienting from violet to black, a heavy sag to the clouds. She struggled to lift herself. Her body felt dense. A paradox of weakness.

In the living room, she waited for Ansel to return and ask what she might like to eat. This was their routine. This was something that she could expect. She looked out to the garden, past the lid of the piano, expecting to see the fox.

Instead, the light came on in the garage. It was the blank whiteness of it across the smudged glass and then the dim silhouette of Ansel moving across the glowing window. The particular way he walked. The asymmetrical slouch of his shoulders. These things that endeared her. Then the light went out.

Ansel returned and sat beside her. He carried with him cigar tobacco, the faint dust of the garage. There was a light powdering of debris on his face, almost too small to recognize as something other than the pores of his face.

“I think we should sell the piano,” said Doris.

Ansel shook his head. “No, can do.” He put his arm along the back of the couch, faintly encircling her, but not touching her.

“I’m serious,” she said. “It takes up space. We could get good money for it.”

“Dor, stop,” said Ansel. “We’re not selling the piano. We don’t need to sell it.”

***

When Ansel came in, there was a trail of cold, winter air behind him. He stood in the threshold for a moment and removed his coat and his boots. His eyes were bloodshot and dark. He rubbed his face with his still gloved hands.

In the kitchen, Doris was at the kitchen table, carefully eating a piece of dry toast from her flattened hand. Today was a good day for her. He could see it in her face, her posture. He walked over and sat beside her but didn’t say anything for a long time.

So Doris did. “There’s a fox in the garden,” she said.

Ansel raised his eyebrows. “Is that a euphemism?”

“Just a fact,” said Doris. “A little brown fox that has music in its walk.”

Ansel laughed. “You think everything has music in it. Maybe it’s what’s tearing up the garden.”

“I used to score your walk to the bedroom when you got home,” she said. “Those big plodding chords.”

“I remember,” Ansel said. “Like I was a beast.”

“I listed the piano on one of those websites,” Doris said, sipping from her cup of tea, held between two hands. “One of those around-town things.”

Ansel grimaced. There was a searching look in his eyes. “I told you we’re not selling it. We don’t need to sell it.”

She shook her head now. “We’re all wrong sometimes. It’s OK.” She was smiling faintly, a kind of ribbing look.

He wasn’t laughing, though. “Dor, please. We don’t need to. I know things have been difficult, but we can’t go selling everything off.”

Doris only shook her head again, faintly smiling. “It’s not everything.” She brought a weak hand to his pink face. “We don’t need to keep it.”

He stood, his back unnaturally stiff. He went to the coffee maker and poured himself a cup. He held his cup both from the ear and the base.

“And you need to knock off the cigars,” she said.

But she could tell he wasn’t listening. His eyes were drawn to the floor with that glassy look, his big body crammed into the corner.

“I’m ready to let it go,” Doris said. “It’s harder to keep it.”

Still, he wasn’t listening.

“There’s a young man coming tomorrow afternoon,” Doris said through the silence. “A Daniel or David or something.”

But Ansel only shook his head and sighed pointedly. “If that’s what you think is best,” he said. “Even if I don’t like it one bit.” He put the empty cup in the sink.

Then Doris rose slowly, her hand spread against the surface of the table. She waited for him to embrace her, but he didn’t. He went out.

***

It was late afternoon when Daniel or David showed up. He stood on the porch and rang the bell. He rubbed his arms in the cold while he waited. When Ansel finally opened the door, David stuck his hand out to the imposing and blank-faced man.

“I’m David,” said David, putting his unacknowledged hand down. “I’m here about the piano.”

Ansel only grimaced. He stared down at David’s oily brown hair and his shadow of stubble and his leather jacket. He pulled the door back and swept the air, issuing David into the house.

“Thank you kindly,” said David. His boots echoed off the hardwood floors.

“The piano is over this way. My wife will tell you about it.”

“You have a lovely home,” David said. “I like the aesthetic. I like antiques.”

Ansel raised his eyebrows at Doris.

“You must be David,” she said, putting her weak hand out and letting David delicately shake it.

David nodded. Ansel studied him, the way he examined the texture of their lives, the accumulations of their past. Then he offered coffee, which David accepted, and he went off to the kitchen.

“It’s in the living room,” Doris said, leading David. “We’ve had it forever.”

David gasped. He said, “Wow, wow. This is awesome.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment.

“It’s in such great condition,” David said, starting to sit down. “Do you mind if I play?”

But now she was leaning against the wall, her face turned toward the window. “Please,” she said. “By all means.”

David folded back the keyboard cover and played a G-minor triad. Then a C-minor. Then he ran through the C-minor scale, his fingers folding over themselves on the flats.

“It’s so resonant,” he said. “You can really feel it in your gut.”

“You’ve been playing long?” Doris asked.

“I’m mostly a guitar player. This is for our band room. We have a few numbers that have piano in them.”

“Oh, a rock band?” said Doris.

David nodded. “We’re sort of rockabilly. A bit of blues. Real old-timey and vintagey.”

Doris’s expression fell. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

David was running through basic scales in every key, flubbing notes. He played a boogie-woogie figure, tracing major scales in the lower registers, humming in his raspy voice and bobbing his head, his greasy hair swinging lightly over his forehead.

“You make me lovesick,” he hissed.

Something shattered in the kitchen. Doris put her hand out, hovering over the keys to stop him. The notes decayed and finally dissipated as David took his foot off the sustain pedal. It was quiet for a moment.

“You OK, dear?” said Doris.

A voice came back from the kitchen, indistinct. A moment later, Ansel came in with coffee cups on a tray. He silently set them down on the table and left.

“Have you had any formal lessons?” Doris asked, watching David take a cup and drink from it.

“No, self-taught,” he said, a glimmer of pride in his eyes.

“Would you like some lessons?” she said. “I can teach you some things.”

He shrugged in a self-effacing way. “I don’t think I can afford the piano and the lessons.”

“The lessons will be free. I want to teach you some things to make your playing a little easier. When we’re done, I’ll sell you the piano.”

“Oh, that’d be great,” he said.

***

They started with posture. She taught him to sit up when he played, to not slouch. How to lay his hands on the keys, how to play them, the correct fingering for the scales that he ran through with a metronome on his phone. She told him she could not show him but had to tell him. Her hands did not function as they used to.

She found he could not stay focused for long. His mind wandered and he played old Beatles tunes or occasionally, Little Richard. He played hard and with abandon. He played percussively, callously, and without grace. He lost himself in it. He became something else entirely. Until she stopped him.

His eyes glazed over when she brought out sheet music. He said something about not being able to “feel” the music, and she had no idea what this meant. She told him that learning to read music would benefit him in the long run, that it would make him a better musician. That he could play more effectively, more compellingly. That he could do more with his songs, go different places. Then he could focus again.

The lessons lasted about 45 minutes, twice a week. David would come when Ansel was at work, and Doris talked music with him before each lesson. She tried to show him some classical pieces that might pique his interest, starting with Rachmaninoff. On the third lesson, she started to bring out shorter pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin. She guided him through the pieces, helping him parse the “feel” of the music that he said he needed. She explained waltz time, the boom-thwack-thwack of it, the extrapolation into 6/8, the waltz’s link with the blues.

And sometimes, too, she would try to play. She would wince and whimper through a few chords, a stray melody, a whisper of harmony. These reaches toward the sublime. Then she would stop, her hands shaking, her face tight with pain. She would let him resume his practice, standing beside the piano.

And after, he seemed a bit more diligent. He sat up straight and held his hands in the spider position. He listened to the metronome and counted the beats and started to think in measures and bars, instead of however he was understanding music before. Instead of that abstract “feeling” he referred to.

“You’re getting better,” Doris would say.

“I feel better,” said David.

He sounded better. He sounded like he understood the instrument, its place in history. He understood the dream logic of a piano, the organization of Western music theory. Even his breakouts into rockabilly cliches sounded more confident, less self-consciously raw.

So they began counterpoint. On the stereo, Doris played Bach’s Mass in B Minor, humming along with each independent voice to indicate its individual path. She explained how these voices constantly moved but always retained harmony with every other voice in play.

“This is critical,” she said. “This is what the best music does for us. It produces harmony from what seems to be chaos.” Her eyes were closed, and David could see a tremor coming through her frail body.

He listened for a while. He did not speak for the entire first movement. Then, in the second movement, he said, “You ever heard The Beach Boys, Doris?”

She opened her eyes. There was no expression on her face. She shook her head no, her eyes falling.

“Let me show you this. It’s going to blow your mind.” He went to the stereo, where he switched it on. He looked for a cord to connect his phone for a minute or two and then gave up. Finally, he sat down and played “God Only Knows” on his phone and explained the story of Brian Wilson while the verses played: the slow descent of his mental health, his gradual withdrawal from society, his excesses. And when the contrapuntal portions began near the end, he quieted down, pointing at the phone, saying, “Same thing, right?”

***

Gradually, he began to understand the lessons. He could suss out “Moonlight Sonata” from the sheet music. He knew the correct fingerings. He could assemble extended chords and run through the modes. He could also fake it by learning things by ear and pretending to sight-read. He’d sit down and look intently at the book and pretend to slowly piece things together.

Doris figured this out pretty quickly and began to give him pop quizzes. She’d pull a random piece and put it on the stand and ask him to parse it. She’d ask him what specific notation meant, what key the piece was in. Most importantly, she’d ask him about what he was doing and why and how these things went together.

Because there was something in his face. Something that reminded her of when she was learning. What it was like to learn something, to see the world new and whole and logically oriented. With linearity and reason and cause and effect. These things that she had missed.

And as he learned, she, too, started to find meaning in his music. She understood Brian Wilson and the Beatles and Buddy Holly and Robert Johnson. She heard the complex harmony in the blues music that lived ambivalently between major and minor keys. She heard the way it formed rock ’n’ roll, the primal underpinnings of it all.

But today, Ansel came home early. He removed his boots and his coat at the door and stood motionless in the threshold. In the living room, he looked both at and past her and David. Then he went out.

“I’m sorry,” Doris said to David.

But David only waved it away, because he already knew. Doris had explained why Ansel was unhappy with his presence. She shared portions of her life with him in sketchy vignettes that came unprompted.

Today, though, this would not stand. She excused herself.

In the garage, smoke hung thickly on the air, rolling through the debris. She called Ansel’s name with an edge in her voice, an abrasion. A kind of reaching inquiry across the stillness.

Eventually, he appeared. There was a troubled look on his face, something beyond the affable expression he usually wore. It stopped Doris for a moment, but not for much longer.

“That was rude,” she said, her hands up to her hips. “You could at least acknowledge him.”

But Ansel only let out a whistle of air and shook his head. He would not look her in the eye. He held the cigarillo like it did not belong to him.

Something was off. Something more than annoyance was getting to him. She stood far away from him, her eyes narrowed and unwavering, and said, “What’s your problem? Why are you being so rude?”

There was a moment of fight in his eyes. A flash and tremble and finally, cold resolution. “He’s a thief, Dor. He’s been stealing from us,” he said. “All these little things. Things you wouldn’t notice. No, listen—”

But she would not listen. “He’s not a thief,” she said. She shook her head violently. “What has he taken?”

Ansel was steady now. Unnervingly so. “He took the clock in the guest room. The one from my grandmother? He took it.”

Doris let out a snort of air. “The clock? Jesus, Ansel, he didn’t take the clock. You’re out of your mind.”

Ansel only shrugged. “Check your jewelry, Dor. Take a good look around. Things are disappearing. He’s stealing from us.”

Doris blinked like she had been struck. “You’re out of your mind,” she said again. “He’s just a kid.”

“A kid that goes to see an old lady from the Internet twice a week?” Ansel said. “What kid does that?” He dragged on the cigarillo, released a stream of smoke. “He’s bad news, Dor. Don’t be naive.”

But she only took a step back. “How dare you,” she said, but nothing more. He watched her move slowly back toward the house.

***

Now Ansel wasn’t talking to her. It had been weeks, and he went through the house as if she did not exist. He regarded her impersonally and coldly and rose before her and slept in the guest room. He spent the nights in the garage alone, smoking.

Still, the lessons continued. David showed up at the same time twice a week. They listened to Mozart’s Requiem and basked in its glory, the grandeur of its first movement, all the hallowed voices. They talked about Mozart’s singular genius, the force of his vision and his unique capability to compose fully in his head. There was awe rising in David’s face, a raw reverence, the sudden awareness of true genius.

But even so, Doris was watching him. She held a latent tension in her always. Now she was checking her valuables, looking critically at things. Even if she saw no differences in the house. Even if she found nothing missing.

She watched David carefully and consistently until she found she was beginning to let herself ease up. She again shared more of her life with David: how she had started playing music, her career as a lounge singer in the late ’70s, how she met Ansel. She shared these things unguardedly and with quivers of emotion. She looked into David’s expressive face when she said these things.

He only listened while she spoke. He nodded attentively, asking further questions, trying to mine her memories, her recesses of thought. He listened to her like she was the last person in the world.

And simultaneously, improbably, she was beginning to feel like she was not incapacitated, like she could take care of herself, like she had a new agency, even if Ansel still cooked all the meals and handled most of the cleaning. These creature habits, embedded in him.

Today, though, after David had gone, Doris waited in the kitchen for Ansel to come home. The distance had gone on long enough. In her new strength, she had a deep yearning. She had the capacity to yearn for him again.

But when he came in, he lingered in the doorway. She patted the seat beside her. He moved into the kitchen and half sat on the counter.

“What is this?” he said.

“I just want to talk,” Doris said.

He nodded.

“I want to clear all this up, all this tension between us. I can’t live like this,” Doris said, shaking her head.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” said Ansel. “I told you I don’t want him here. You chose not to hear me.”

Her voice was soft. “I think you don’t like him. I don’t know why. I haven’t found anything missing. He’s a nice kid. He’s not stealing from us.”

“Things have gone missing. We’ve had to sell so much to keep afloat. I’m picking up jobs.”

“I know,” Doris said quietly.

“I was retired.” He gestured at the air. “And now I’m working for all for the appointments you aren’t going to. You’re not taking care of yourself, Dor.”

Her expression was pleading for a brief moment before it turned to anger. “And what about you? What about the cigars? Those can’t be good for your health.”

Ansel shook his head, derisively smiling. “Whatever, Dor. Have the kid here. Do what you want.”

The night grew murky and lurid over the garden. The light came on in the garage and Ansel’s form paced back and forth between it. It was the graceful shift of his shoulders, the strength of his silhouette.

In the bathroom, she rinsed her face. She examined herself in the mirror, the run of her makeup. Then down at her weak hands. Her bare hands. There was a flight of fear through her, a sudden jolt of it. She rubbed her left hand and searched along the counter by the sink. Then under the sink. Then through the whole bathroom and the kitchen.

***

Two days later, she found a bagel that Ansel had toasted for her before he left. Still warm. These things that he did by rote, mechanically, without affection or consciousness. These things that were once surprises of love, of their evolving lives together.

She waited for David to arrive. She sat with the crumb-strewn plate and thought absently about Ansel. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach. A pre-loss feeling. Something rising and falling.

The phone rang and she expected the machine to get it. She waited while it trilled on and on. Then she heard the click of the hang-up.

She expected to see the blinking number. Nothing.

Today she was weak, a bad day. She searched her memory for the last time she had taken prednisone, the last time she had gone to the doctor. She could not fix a date to it, could not uncover a memory.

At the piano, she folded back the keyboard cover and felt the texture of the keys. She traced the melody of “February” from The Seasons, the rapid-fire flurry of notes, something she used to play.

She remained for a long time like this. Until the morning waned and the afternoon bloomed. Until the light drew long over the garden, the shadows stretching from the plants across the darkened dirt. She heard music in her head and closed her eyes against it until she didn’t hear it anymore.

Then, when she finally opened her eyes, it was long past the lesson time. She felt the full weight of the loss as a stone in her chest. She heard only a buzzing in her ears, like the white noise of wind pushing past her.

And it was so loud she didn’t hear Ansel’s voice for a full minute, saying, “Dor? Doris?” He laid his heavy hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with a mollifying smile on her face.

He said, “I’m sorry, Dor. Really, I am.”

But she said nothing as he joined her on the bench and finally embraced her in the quiet of their home, where they sat until night fell, just listening to each other’s breathing. Feeling the rising and falling of their chests, just slightly out of sync, the hollows coming together and apart again.

Then, when it was completely dark, they heard the clang from the garden and Ansel went out into the dark night. His dim form moved across the walk and into the dirt. And there, from where she sat at the piano, she could see him in silhouette, shaking his head and holding the empty cage.

© Variant Literature Inc 2023