Sentimental Short: “The Pianist”

December is a season of anticipation, celebration, and communion. These cold, grey-tinted days bear a secret warmth and light. The cold sharpens our senses and we linger longer over our hot drinks and baked foods. We find comfort in cheerful music. An incorrigible spark of love connects us to human beings of all sorts and stations, fanning the flame of hope in our hearts.

My touchy topics series has a serious tone, but Advent, of all seasons, is a season for levity. I’ll take a break from the series for this month and focus on something a bit more fun! I’m going to challenge myself. Short stories are tricky and I don’t enjoy writing them. But it’s a valuable skill, so I’ll do my best and hope you enjoy the results. My gift to you, this season—a series of sentimental stories written to evoke the feelings I associate with Christmas.

THE PIANIST

Standing in the back row of the choir made her feel like a wide-eyed mouse hiding in a dim corner. The row of singers in front of her filed up the steps of the bleacher, met in the middle, and half-hid her from the audience’s view. The front row followed suit, tucking her further inside the shadows cloaking the auditorium. Below her feet, the conductor arrived, followed by the pianist wearing elegant concert attire.

She should watch their choral director, but her eyes lingered on the pianist instead. The rest of the choir opened their black concert folders a half-second before she did. She gripped the plastic edge with sweating palms. Her gaze returned to the pianist. He took his seat with a flick of his suit tails, tested the damper petal, adjusted the bench. Lithe fingers flipped through pages of music. His chin lifted and his eyes locked on their director. For a sustained moment, thirty-two people hung their breath and blood on the baton.

It dropped. The pianist hurtled them among hills and valleys of living, colorful music. The landscape of the piece grew out of the reverberating strings of that powerful instrument responding to the sinews of his hands. No longer did those fingers look lithe and graceful like the ornamental fingertips of a dancer. The way he struck each key—with just enough power and no more—was the manner of a skilled warrior wielding a weapon.

Though dozens of throats opened, only one mighty voice poured forth. Her voice was folded into a many-stranded chord. The music they wove with the piano’s accompaniment emanated from the stage across the auditorium. Hundreds of beating hearts raced faster. As always, the piece faded away too soon for those captivated by its thrilling spell.

The conductor genuflected, then gestured to the pianist. She watched him bow with the flourish of a master artist. He was relaxed, confident, smiling—apparently just as enthralled by the music he’d helped create as the audience who lauded his part in it. She’d always watched him during concerts with envy... and admiration. The sweat on his brow wasn’t evidence of nerves. His hands never shook. Mistakes did not mar his performance.

After the concert, her toes still tingled with the magic of the music. It reverberated inside her chest and she wanted to be alone, to ponder every trembling note. She walked past her bus stop and kept going as huge flakes of snow began to float down over the city. Burying her nose in the scarf wound round her neck, she leaned into a sudden wind gust that whipped down the avenue. In half an hour her fingers were numb, clutching her concert folder to her chest, but she felt no cold. Her soul was afire with music.

Fumbling with the key in the antique lock of her building, she found herself brought sharply out of the otherworldly landscape to the present. Suddenly, she was wracked with shivers. Without regard for her neighbors at so late an hour, she ran up the stairs with clacking heels. She entered her apartment on the second floor, keys rattling against the door, and rammed the bolt back again. She sat on the metal radiator, tucking her fingers under her legs to thaw.

A beautiful baby grand piano waited in the middle of the room, abandoned by the previous tenant. It took up half the square footage and made the rent cheap—the only way she could afford a room in this building at all. She’d told the landlord she’d keep it. He’d been happy to avoid paying movers. Now, he probably regretted it. Her neighbors complained about the noise.

Without shedding her coat, she moved to the piano bench. Opening her concert folder to the first piece, she spread the sheet and studied it with a furrowed brow. Her tingling fingers hovered over the sun-stained keys. Inhaling through her nose, ignoring a siren screaming by outside, she listened to the opening melody in her memory.

She struck a half-dozen notes before her icy fingers felt the burn of fresh blood. Her music sounded awful, but it would get better. Here, where no one was watching, her music twisted in a warped echo of the landscape he had created. Her ground was rockier, her hills more jagged, her sky full of roiling cloudbursts. She stumbled over notes when the pace of the song quickened. Her skill was nowhere near his in technical execution, but there was a fierce love in her heart for this music. She wanted to make it her own.

This piano was an antique. A tired, worn-out mimicry of the dazzling instrument in the concert hall, just as her music was a sad charade compared to his. Breathe! she reminded herself during a familiar bar of the piece. Air slipped in slowly through her nostrils and her hand flitted up to turn the page, then she raced through the music toward the ending. Here was the glorious sunset of the piece—the part she loved for its splendor, the part she loathed hearing butchered by her clumsiness.

The final notes rang too loud, her fingers unable to obey the gentleness and precision her mind knew the piece required. She leaned back. Her hands dropped to her sides. She grit out a sigh of frustration. During each performance, she reveled in the grandeur of his rendition, only to return to her apartment and wring out something awful in comparison. She was torturing this poor piano. At least taking lessons gave her hope she’d one day be able to honor both the piece and the instrument with something perfect.

She took up her phone, feeling a familiar flip-flop in her stomach. The choir pianist had agreed to teach her, and she still couldn't believe it. ‘Twas a guilty pleasure to spend an hour with him every week, have his phone number, and send him mundane texts. When she’d come to the music conservatory he’d been a senior, she a freshman. It was pure luck she’d gotten a job with the choir he accompanied after graduation. Maybe someday… but no, tackling difficult piano pieces provided enough excitement for now. Better not think about anything so unrealistic.

She typed out a message. 10 am still good for tomorrow?

Yes, came the reply. Did you practice the Strauss?

Not enough, she knew. She stood, the piano bench scraping over the floorboards. She kicked off her boots, one thudding against the wall. Then she scuffed over to the bathroom and turned on the light. Toothbrush in hand, she read a new message lighting up her phone screen—Are you trying to wake the whole building?

She broke off brushing. One of the landlord’s remarks returned to her. Among a volley of complaints about the previous tenant, the piano’s owner, he’d griped, “The idiot could’ve rented out a first-level room to begin with an’ saved me the trouble of movin’ it, but folk aren’t so considerate these days, are they?”

She choked on her toothpaste. Sputtering, she snatched her phone up and stared at the message. There was no mistaking it. Her piano teacher/secret crush/professional colleague had been listening to her butchering music for months. But he still agreed to teach her. She grabbed a towel and stuffed her face into it. Only the towel (she hoped) heard her squeal, “What in the Hallmark-Christmas-movie is this?!”

Embarrassing, that’s what this was. She hated feeling like this. But, it wasn’t the only thing making her curl her toes under the beige bath rug. There was something tugging at her, a recollection of the first time she’d met him. Standing together in the hallway before choir practice, she’d thought he was a choral member. Worse, he sounded like a tenor. She hadn’t paid him much mind. Both of them had conducted the usual first-time-meeting ritual with polite aloofness. Until she’d mentioned her last name, because another girl in the choir shared her first.

“Anna Columbine?” he’d said, with the hint of a smile. “That’s not a name you hear often.”

It hadn’t struck her as odd then. Now, it caused a subtle shift in how she viewed every small interaction they’d shared since she joined the choir a few months ago. Little comments he’d made. How he once said her fingers looked like a pianist’s. Her hand shot to her mouth.

“He knew! From the very beginning he knew I was up here butchering music, his music!” Jumping up to stand before the mirror, she ran her fingers through her hair, massaging her throbbing head. It felt like all the blood in her body had drained to her toes. “Then why did he agree to the piano lessons? He knew how awful I am at practicing!”

Her phone buzzed. A text appeared on the screen, Would you rather work on the choral piece? You’re getting better.

That was the last straw. He’d been playing a game with her, and now she wasn’t embarrassed anymore, she was mad. No more jokes at her expense. She’d pay him for tomorrow’s lesson and tell him she found a different teacher. Stomping down in socked feet, Anna found the first floor apartment that bore the name O’Neill under the room number. Her knock could have roused the dead.

It opened and the pianist draped himself between the frame and the door, grinning at her. “You really should practice at a more decent hour, you know. I keep getting collared by our neighbors because they think I’m still living upstairs. I tell them I moved, but I don’t think they believe me.”

She blinked, wallet half-opened in her hand. “That’s ridiculous. My playing sounds nothing like yours.” She shook her head and dug into the wallet for a few twenties. The neighbors can’t tell the difference because they know nothing about music, she told herself.

“Your music is much more passionate than mine,” he chuckled. “What are you doing with that money?”

“Paying you for tomorrow’s lesson. I found—”

Anna stopped, finally registering what he’d last said. She took a good look at him for the first time since arriving, flushed with anger, on his doorstep. He wasn’t making fun at all. His brown eyes were kind, not distant like when he accompanied rehearsals. A different sort of expression graced his features than the one he wore during concerts. Stiffly, she offered him three bills, but her face reddened despite her resolve. “I found a different teacher,” she lied. It was more difficult now that her anger had dissipated.

“That’s great! It was a little awkward when I was teaching you, so I was hoping you’d find someone else.”

She felt her stomach drop and sadness blossom where she’d felt excitement only a short while ago.

“Anna, I’ve been wanting to ask you—are you doing anything Christmas Eve?”

“What?”

“Let’s go out to dinner. There’s a show I’ve been wanting to take you to see too. Have you been to the opera?”

“What?” She repeated. But she couldn’t repress a giddy smile from spreading across her face. She felt another flutter of embarrassment. Had he known this all along too? That she was interested in him?

“You’re so easy to surprise,” he laughed. “I guess I shouldn’t assume you don’t have a boyfriend.”

“I don’t. And… here,” she said, shoving the bills into his hand. “I really will have to find a new teacher, because I can’t think of anything I’d like better than to go to the opera with you. Thanks for asking me!”

“See you friday then. Merry Christmas, Anna Columbine.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said, walking back to the stairs.

She heard the door click shut behind her, and suppressed a happy squeal as she raced up in her socks. Trying not to slam the door, Anna went and sat on the piano bench. She ran a finger lightly, silently across the ivory tops of the keys—keys they’d both caressed with music. She’d been wrong earlier. This wasn’t a hallmark Christmas movie. It was something far more enjoyable, because, unlike any daydream created by art or music, story or song, this was real. “It just doesn’t feel like it yet,” she whispered to the piano. "But it will.”