The piano arrives in a flurry of men pushing, pulling, and shouting directions. They heave it onto a dolly and up the front steps. They guide it through the doorway, then carry and lift and shuffle all the furniture to position it as the focal point of the front room.
In the back room, Clara hides in a corner and eavesdrops. She listens to her mother say, “This is what Clara needs. A hobby. A purpose.” Her father agrees, “Yes, this might help.” Help with what, Clara scoffs. Help diminish her propensity toward solitude? Help transform her into a different girl? Nothing could help Clara fulfill her mother’s expectations.
She creeps out of the shadows to observe the new acquisition. It’s old and heavy, a bulk of gleaming walnut, carved leaves winding down the legs. The ivory keys are yellow in places, chipped in others, but when she pushes one down, a satisfying sound echoes through the room. The surrounding air turns cold, and she is compelled to pick out a scale.
“How did you know how to play that?” her father asks. Clara recoils and darts upstairs. How did she know? She’s never had lessons, never touched an instrument in her life. When the notes resounded through her fingertips, she felt powerful. Felt as though a strange force overtook her, like some other, confident girl, flickered inside her.
Clara works through songbooks like an addict obsessed. It’s easy, effortless, and her parents are impressed. Now they’re saying Clara has a natural ear for music, that she was born to play, and they sign her up for lessons.
The piano teacher is an elderly man with an electric keyboard. He sits in a chair beside Clara and explains theory. He talks about time signatures and key signatures. He points to the grand staff and Clara struggles to get through a simple exercise, her hands like lead. She’s confused when he says it will take time to catch up, that it will take practice to make perfect. Why can’t I play here, she frets. It doesn’t make sense.
At home, Clara waits until her parents go out. She approaches the bench like a penitent attending confession. She sits down and looks at the song her teacher assigned, then closes the book. Poises her hands over the keyboard and submits. The room chills and her mind fills with foreign images. With memories. Unfamiliar faces, another house, a different time. She plays with profound expression, with her entire being. The music is new to her ears, yet she remembers hearing it before.
Each day her talent improves exponentially, she’s playing at a level far beyond her years. Etudes and preludes, sonata’s and mazurkas. Her mother is excited, and her father is proud, but when they take her to another lesson, Clara pounds on the keys and can’t string a melody together no matter how the teacher tries to instruct her. She feels empty, useless. She frowns and stomps her feet, sits brooding in the car. When they return home, she sees the piano solid as a tomb, and she understands.
That night in bed Clara squeezes her eyes shut until she sees colors, attempting to grasp the scenes inhabiting her head. Vague perceptions of falling. Of smashing glass, then absolute darkness. She rises, aching for the ghost girl. Because it is a girl, Clara can hear her voice, laughing in the hallway, luring her downstairs.
At midnight Clara sits down at the bench, smooths her nightgown over her lap, pushes her long hair over her shoulders. It’s freezing, but she’s impervious. She begins a waltz, a gentle, haunting lilt. Chopin, ghost girl whispers inside her head. The piece proceeds, tempo giusto, intensifying as her fingers dance over the keys with precise speed, frightening virtuosity.
Clara’s parents wake and rush downstairs. They draw near to their daughter, one fearful, the other fascinated.
“Make her stop,” her father insists. “Something is wrong.” Clara’s mother reaches out to touch her arm. Clara turns, angered by the interruption. She glares at them with eyes of a color they do not recognize, her body hovering inches above the bench.
“Go on, darling,” her mother says, “keep playing.”
Sara Dobbie is a Canadian writer from Southern Ontario. Her stories have appeared in Milk Candy Review, Fictive Dream, JMWW, Sage Cigarettes, New World Writing, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Ruminate Online, Trampset, Ellipsis Zine, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Static Disruption is available from Alien Buddha Press. Her collection Flight Instinct is available from ELJ Editions. Follow her on Twitter @sbdobbie, and on Instagram at @sbdobwrites.
Idle Ink 