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The Fastest Beethoven in Maine
A Kiss Is Not Just a Kiss
The Horse Pulling
Shame, Blame & Regret
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Stories From a Childhood in Maine - First Piano LessonI grew up in a house where books and music were more important than food. In the early days there wasn't much money for food, but there were always books and always, always music. What with the Texaco Hour every Saturday afternoon, the unforgettable voice of Milton Cross talking of grand opera, and of course Stokowski and the New York Philharmonic. Occasionally my father bought a record and there was the family to make its own music, especially the family. Dad was a fine baritone, played cello, mandolin and guitar; Mother had a fine singing voice; Aunt Lenore, a perfect coloratura soprano, trained for the grand opera; Aunt Jean, piano, graduate of the Boston Conservatory, and assorted other singers and amateur musicians. I should not forget Aunt Rosamond, who died young, and who knew the opera the way Ted Williams knew home runs. There wasn't any TV in the country and the winters were long. Telling a good story was more than entertainment. As a matter of fact, on more than one occasion it kept my two older brothers and I out of serious trouble with my father, who did not believe in sparing the rod. The following is a true story and it illustrates the power of a tale excellently told. Well, true as it can be after several decades of remembering. When I was six or seven it was decided that my older brother, David should have piano lessons. I was judged too young which did not please me at all. He was sent to an octogenarian piano teacher, Miss Fanny Piper, who was both genteel and eccentric. When my oldest brother David came home I asked him how it went, being curious about everything he did. He smiled sinisterly. "You don't want to know," he said, voice filled with dread and mystery. Didn't want to know, right. I wanted to know! I wanted to know more than I wanted a genuine Louisville Slugger baseball bat! I was ready to believe. Didn't that ancient crone live in a Victorian Monstrosity more fit for Boris Karloff? Wasn't the house always dark and silent? Didn't she have an equally eccentric younger sister, only seventy-five, who was the Post Mistress and who had more hair on her upper lip than my Uncle Archie? We knew nothing of hormones and Nair in those days. "C'mon," I pleaded, "tell me." Good story teller that he was, he delayed and stalled and talked of other things until the suspense nearly drove me mad. He finally gave in, as I knew he would. "Well," he said, "I went up to the door and pulled this weird lookin' handle six or eight times. I could hear the bell ring somewhere back in the bowels of the house. A half hour later she finally came to the door. She doesn't move very fast. She didn't say anything, just crooked one of those bent fingers old people have and beckoned me to follow her. She shuffled off toward the back of the house and I followed. "She wears those long dresses that look like the drapes in Aunt Rose's room," he said. "It came right down to the floor. She doesn't have much hair 'cause I could see most of her scalp, which had some kind of nasty looking flakes coming off it. The skin on her face is so wrinkled you coulda lost a quarter between the folds. It took us another half hour to get to the back of the house where the piano was. It was terrible dark in there. Don't know how she gets around without fallin'. Maybe she can see in the dark. I've heard…" I hung on every word. This was my much-admired oldest brother Dave at the height of his story telling power. "Still she didn't say nothin', not a word. It took another half hour to get to the back of the house. There were weird things all over the place, and a clock with a loud bell rang every ten minutes. The room with the piano was so cluttered it was hard to find a place to sit. The piano bench was long and I wondered where she was going to sit, then I saw she was going to sit beside me, it made me some kind of nervous I can tell you." He shivered dramatically. "When she sat down I could hear her bones snap, like popping two pieces of Double Bubble. I couldn't stop looking at her lips, which had a bad color and seemed to be stuck together. I figured maybe that was why she hadn't said anything; she couldn't get her lips unstuck. That's when it happened…" "What, for Pete's sake?" Silence. Dave seemed to be lost in the wonder of what he'd seen, and I, of course, was sucked in as easy as a trout takes a may fly. "C'mon! Judas Priest, Dave, what happened?" "Wellll…the first thing I seen when I sat down was a big screw driver sitting on a little shelf on the front of the piano. Had a wide flat blade and bad colored stains on the blade. I wondered what it was there for; I mean what did she plan to do with it? Maybe she'd drive it into the top of my skull if I didn't get the notes right. Then she picked it up…" "Yeah, yeah, and then…" "You aren't going to believe this." Of course I was. I believed every damn thing he told me, even when I knew it was a lie. "I will, I will, honest! What happened?" "She gave me a peculiar look that scared the crap out of me, then stuck that screw driver between her lips and pried them apart. They snapped open with a little flllappp, then she gave me a piano lesson. She must have had to do that six or eight times during the lesson when they got too dry and stuck together." "Bulllll!" "Truth, swear to God." "Bulllll!" "Told you, you wouldn't believe it." He went off to do whatever older brothers do, which was certainly more interesting than what little brothers do, I was sure of that. I believed him, how could I not. Didn't he save me from getting my butt kicked by a gang of bigger kids? Hadn't he taken punishment from my father for something that was my fault? Hasn't he pulled me out of the river when I jumped off the bridge and smashed my foot? "You'll find out when you have your lessons, you'll see." So off I ran to ask my mother when I could have piano lessons. Of course it wasn't because I had any great desire to emulate Horowitz, but I didn't tell her that. It was another couple years before I finally went for my first piano lesson. All during that time Dave never changed his story, and my brother Bob confirmed it. I was impatient. I had to see this thing for myself. I had to hear for myself, that horrifying, disgusting flllappp as those ancient lips snapped open. My mother, who believed any occasion when I had to leave the house, meant my hair should be combed and slicked back with water, prepared me accordingly. Naturally, about six seconds after I left it was a mess, but that didn't seem to bother her. She had done her good mother thing. I walked the mile from my house through the small town of Cornish, Maine to Miss Piper's house on the High Road. My mind was agile and ever willing to exaggerate the smallest detail of life into something more interesting than what was, in fact, a fairly bucolic, country existence. Consider the fact that I was fully prepared to believe that the guy living in the old house behind the library was a German spy simply because he had a short wave antenna on the roof and spoke with an accent. I pulled the bell handle, heart banging at a nice pace. Anticipation, that source of endless excitement and occasional disappointment, had me ready for anything, no matter how bizarre. She appeared, about a minute later. So he stretched the time a little, who was counting? She was dressed just like he said, old-fashioned dress down to her ankles. She beckoned silently with that crooked finger. I remembered that. We walked back through the house, about a minute, to the room with the piano. All I could think of was the screwdriver. Would it be there? Would she have trouble getting it between her lips like he said? What if she cut herself? I didn't like the idea of trying to staunch the flow of blood. Blood, anybody's, had always been my downfall - I mean that literally. It was there! Just like he said, on a little shelf on the front of the piano. My breath stopped as she reached for it. I'm sure I leaned forward with lurid anticipation as she picked it up. She glanced at me and gave me an odd look. Then I knew true disappointment. She banged on middle "C" a couple times, reached inside the piano with the screwdriver and adjusted something. She did this for a half dozen other strings while I wilted. Then she told me to sit down, and she didn't have any trouble getting her lips unstuck at all. That dirty lying S.O.B. "Why do I believe him?" I asked myself. He'd got me again. I don't remember much about the lesson after that. She could have run around the room naked and I wouldn't have been impressed. I had a few more lessons and it was mutually decided that my career as a pianist would have to wait until after the baseball season. A fella's got to have priorities. (There were a few other reasons, but that will have to wait for another story.) Dave's story was so much better than reality. I learned something without knowing that I'd learned something. You're probably thinking he didn't fall for any of his brother's stories again, right? Wrong! I was a sucker for a good story then, when I was seven, and I still am, fortunately. |
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