The Piano (Paul Angstrom Stories) #1 Read online

The Pinao – The Paul Angstrom Stories # 1

  By J.L. Hohler III

  ©2013 by J.L. Hohler III

  The Piano

  It was Judith who wanted the house – that was 1967.

  Paul was happy right where they were, in the house on McKinley Street. Yes, it was small, that was true, but Paul like it anyway – it was cozy. It didn’t matter it would be cozier once the second baby – Benji – arrived, because eventually he and Olivia would be off to college and when they were gone there would be more-than-enough room for Paul and Judith. So what if it took 15 years to get there? It was enough they would.

  But Judith was infatuated with the idea of a new house, determined to have one for no other reason than she could, and because she wanted it – no, needed it – Paul had no choice but to need it, too.

  “Just mind the budget,” was the one concession he made, when she finally had her way. “I do not care to be the owner of Mr. Blanding’s dream house, Judith.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you should remember our name is Angstrom, not Rockefeller.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Paul.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “The sad thing is I’m not.”

  “Now, that’s not fair.”

  “Look,” he said. “All I’m saying it doesn’t have to be expensive, just for the sake of being expensive.”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” she said, in the same way she always said it, which was without any earthly intention of doing anything but exactly the way she wanted. “Don’t worry, darling, I can be frugal.”

  * * * * *

  Judith could not be frugal. She liked to think she could, but those days were passed.

  When they first married, 1959, they had little money of their own and she had no choice but frugality. Paul was fresh from law school and opening his practice, and Judy was a secretarial school dropout – she hadn’t yet insisted on being called Judith – and they made do with a tiny little hovel of a ground floor apartment. It hardly had room for the two of them, but they were young and in love and made do, scraping by on her parents generosity and Judy’s ingenuity.

  Eventually, though, when their generosity was no longer necessary, Judith’s commitment to frugality waned, as did her acceptance of the name Judy.

  “It’s Judith now,” she decided one day, out of the clear blue sky, and Paul put up no argument.

  The change in name and financial outlook also brought about a desire for new living arrangements, which she justified with much the same logic she always used.

  “It’s for the baby,” she said, and even if they both knew the three of them could fit in the apartment just fine, she didn’t want to. “You don’t want us to squeeze in here with a baby, do you?”

  He said he didn’t mind, he came from a big family and was used to taking up tight quarters and didn’t see anything wrong with doing it again. He was almost looking forward to it.

  “Well, if you won’t have it for the baby, do it for your own sake,” she said. “You need someplace bigger to work, where we won’t always be tripping over you.”

  Despite what she said, he didn’t need someplace bigger, though he admitted it would be nice to be able to spread out more those nights he did bring work home, instead of huddling over the dining room table after dinner while Olivia kicked around his ankles. Still, to pretend the move was for his sake was almost an insult. The truth was, she wanted a bigger place, a place befitting the family of a lawyer, even if the lawyer himself didn’t mind.

  Shortly, Judith found the house. It was on McKinley Street, came with a yard, a tire-swing, two bedrooms, and almost seemed palatial in comparison to the apartment. A few years on, though, with Benji in utero, the palace began squeezing Judith too tightly, and she deployed the same rational as always.

  “We need a bigger place,” she said and rubbed her belly, already starting to show. “What’ll you do when the baby comes? Use his crib as a desk?”

  Paul said the accommodations weren’t as tight as all that, especially since he’d moved offices and hardly worked at home anymore, but she insisted on it and so he let her have it, if that’s what made her happy.

  * * * * *

  When Judith said they were moving and wanted a new house, Paul believed this meant she’d merely find another house, or maybe had one in mind already, something much the same as before, only larger. It was later – much later – he realized she wanted nothing to do with some old house, used and abused by unknown generations of rabble before her. No, she wanted something completely new, where she was the absolute first to take a bath in the tub, the first to trod the floors, the first to slop on the counters – someplace where the grime caked on door handles belonged only to her.

  But just because this was what she wanted, didn’t mean she would be forthcoming with it, hiding her true desires until she’d finally decided the project was too far along for Paul to derail with his inevitable worries over the budget.

  “This is Howard Keating,” she explained, when Paul came home from the office one evening to find an officious little man sitting at the dining room table. There was a scratch pad laying in front of him, jotted full of notes. “He’s the architect, Paul.”

  “The architect? What on earth do we need an architect for?”

  “For the house,” she said.

  “What house?”

  “The one we’re building.”

  He looked at her, then the architect, then back again.

  “I didn’t realize we were building,” he finally said. “I thought we were buying.”

  “Building is a type of buying,” the architect said, less helpful than he knew.

  “And when did we make this decision, Judith?”

  “After great deliberation,” she said, which didn’t exactly answer the question.

  “I see,” Paul said, doubtfully, then glanced at the architect. “Just mind this doesn’t become Mr. Blanding’s dream house, Mr. Keating.”

  “Of course,” the architect said. “I assure you, it will be simple and elegant.”

  “You assure me?”

  “Yes, you have my word, sir,” the architect said. “As a gentleman.”

  Paul looked at the architect and wanted to laugh, because obviously he’d not spoken with Judith enough to understand simple and elegant were no longer in her vocabulary. It wasn’t long before he realized this truth, as she immediately began demanding the inclusion of all number of ridiculous flourishes. First, it was a wrap-around porch, something she saw in a movie and decided she had to have. Then she added a second-story balcony, which she decided to support with a series of Greek columns, almost as if she were building a plantation house. Inside, she insisted on back staircases, servants quarters – even though they had no servants – rooms for each of the children, guest rooms for each of their parents, and other assorted dens, offices and libraries, each surely added on the theory that if the best houses had one or the other, the best of the best would have them all.

  When the architect came to understand the mish-mash of styles he’d be required to put together, and what such a thing would look like, he tried – at some length – to scale back Judith’s wish-list and reminded her how he’d given his word to Paul that they’d put up a simple, elegant home. Just as he learned simple and elegant meant nothing to her, he learned his word, given to her husband, meant even less and she assured him she would have a house stitched together from these disparate styles, like a Frankenstein’s monster, whether he liked it or not.

  “As you wish, Madame,” Keating finally acceded, when it was obvious she would accept nothing less than a gaudy eyesor
e of her clearly-demented dreams. “As you wish.”

  When Paul finally had a look at the plans, he was little surprised to find neither simplicity, nor elegance, within them. He never expected them. What he didn’t expect, though, was the scope of the project.

  “I didn’t realize you were building a hotel,” he said, once he totaled up the number of rooms.

  “No, it’s a house – our house,” she said. “For us and the kids.”

  “How many children do you propose we have, Judith?”

  “I’m not going to debate this, Paul,” she said. “This is the house I want, this is the house I deserve.”

  Paul did not think she deserved the house at all but knew no matter how long they went over the point she would never give in, never concede, never do anything accept stand her ground, and Paul was eventually forced to accept it, no matter how horrific the house seemed, she would have it.

  And it was horrific, in most every way. But of all the touches, none struck Paul quite so viscerally as the cupola, perched high at the tippy-top of the house as a massive, glass pinnacle. And even then, the cupola itself wasn’t what he most objected to, because many homes of a certain style had cupolas and given the mish-mash of styles she’d forced on theirs, a cupola was hardly unusual.

  Rather, what he most objected to was the piano she insisted on putting into it, turning that little cupola from a simple retreat into a music conservatory, some place she could go to sit and play and look at the world in all its peace and harmony. Never mind she’d never played the piano, or had any idea how, or ever would. It only mattered she wanted it and wanting it was enough.

  Though she’d have it, this didn’t change that a piano came with its own set of challenges, not the least of which was the staircase to the cupola was nowhere near wide enough to accommodate the piano she had in mind, not once enough structure had been installed to support the cupola.

  “Maybe we don’t need a piano after all,” Paul offered, when he realized the quandary. “You don’t actually think you’ll play it, do you?”

  Even if she didn’t, she said she did and so if it couldn’t go up the stairs as drawn, she’d redesign them to be sure it would and so set herself down that path, only stopping when Paul had a look at the cost of making those changes so late in the game and drew the line.

  “No, if you want the piano, you make it work with what you have,” he said. “Or you have no piano.”

  She argued, but for once he was firm and she eventually decided if it couldn’t go through the door it would go through the window instead. And so one day a crane arrived on-site – they were building this mess on a vacant lot out beyond all the other houses in the township, which was then mostly cornfields but would soon be absorbed into the city proper – to fly the piano to its perch.

  “How much is this costing me?” Paul inquired, with a heavy swallow, when he saw the crane backing up the drive. “Who’s paying for this?”

  “Never mind the cost,” Judith said. “Just never mind.”

  He never minded little else before so it was no struggle adding the crane to the list of things he wouldn’t mind and so he merely stood and watched the scene nervously, as the piano was slowly lifted in the air and flown up to the house.

  “Easy, easy,” he whispered to himself, sure the piano would fall and kill somebody, or would drop through the house, all the way into the basement, or the crane would fall over, or a million other things, all of which ended in the destruction of the house and the untold fortune he’d find himself liable for. But the crane did not collapse, everything went smooth as silk pajamas and in under thirty minutes the piano was through the rough window opening and covered with a cloth tarp, the workers turning their attentions to installing the windows, until then gathering dust in the front yard.

  * * * * *

  On the day the house was finally finished they erected a sign, of Judith’s design, in the front yard, setting the name of the house as Beechwood. Paul had no idea the sign existed until she produced it from the trunk of her Buick and wrangled some of the men to put it up.

  “Why on earth does it even need a name?” Paul said, when he came out to watch the laborers pack the last of the dirt around the posts.

  “The best houses all have names,” she said.

  “It sounds like a bed and breakfast, Judith.”

  “Don’t be smart, Paul,” she admonished, a tone she often used lately. “It sounds distinguished.”

  Paul thought the name sounded like something, but not distinguished.

  “At least tell me what the hell it means.”

  “It’s a name,” she said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It has to mean something.”

  “It’s just a name,” she said. “Like your’s.”

  “Mine’s a family name,” he said. “It means something.”

  “Not to you,” she said. “And Beechwood doesn’t mean anything to me. I just like it, that’s all.”

  He persisted, trying to discover what was under this, but for once Judith had no ulterior motive. She simply insisted she liked it and so Paul left it at that.

  * * * * *

  Judith never learned to play the piano, never bothered to learn, but Paul never expected she would. Having an instrument might be something she thought desirable, but actually taking it up was another matter altogether. Sometimes, she could be counted on to sit at it and plink away, and they could hear the sounds in the house, but she never went at it with any discernible rhythm or intent, and never for very long – only long enough to know it did work if she ever decided she did want to learn to play. Mostly, though, she spent her time caring for it, lovingly rubbing polishes and waxes into it with one of Benji’s diapers, in ignorance of all else.

  “Oh my god, it is that late already?” she gasped, once, when Paul came from the office, expecting to find dinner ready and waiting but instead found the kids wandering in the yard, filthy, while Judith tended her folly. “I must’ve lost track of the time.”

  She might’ve said she lost track of the time but Paul knew her well enough to know she probably knew exactly what the time was and simply didn’t care.

  But just because she’d never use the piano for its intended purposed didn’t mean she’d allow others to do so, forbidding everybody from touching it, especially the children. Being children, though, they couldn’t help themselves, sneaking up and caressing the holy grail in a spare moment, only to find the door fixed with a lock the next time they tried, the key dangling from a chain around Judith’s neck.

  Only once did she ever use the piano as more than a useless piece of furniture, dragging Paul up late one night, after the children went to bed, and demanded to be made love to atop it – she never made love with him, it was always made love to by him – and she spread herself across it, like they were newlyweds again. But they weren’t newlyweds and sex atop a piano proved endlessly uncomfortable and when Paul kept mashing his palm down on the keys in an effort to find something to hold onto, producing nothing more than an atonal caterwauling that threatened to wake the children and their neighbors to what was going on, they abandoned the moment.

  Six months into the house, Paul realized the piano was more to Judith than just a useless paperweight, when he came awake in the middle of the night, to find her side of the bed cold and empty. Searching her out, he didn’t find her in the kitchen having a snack, or listening to the radio or smoking a cigarette, or in Benji’s room, who she was obsessive in watching. Instead, he found her in the cupola, a blanket spread under the piano where she was curled up, peacefully sleeping. What the piano meant to her, he couldn’t say, but he couldn’t deny it meant something.

  * * * * *

  A year after they moved in, 1969, Judith left. One day over dinner she announced it straight out of the clear, blue sky, like she might mention she’d spoken to her mother on the phone, or needed money to pay the paper boy or wanted to be called Judith.
r />   “I’m leaving,” she said, in response to Paul’s request to pass the potatoes. “Paul, I’m leaving.”

  “What?” he said, not sure he heard her properly.

  “I’m leaving,” she repeated. “I want a divorce.”

  “Because I wanted potatoes?”

  “No, you ass,” she said, and handed them over. He did not dish any onto his plate, merely held the serving bowl, in confusion.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What’s a divorce, mommy?” Olivia said, still wide-eyed with wonder at the world.

  “Never mind, Livie,” Judith said. “The adults are talking.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course, I’m serious,” she said. “This isn’t really the kind of thing you should joke about.”

  “No, I know. But…”

  “I just don’t want to be married to you anymore. It’s that simple.”

  “Just like that?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Just like that.”

  “It can’t be just like that.”

  “All right, if you must know, I’ve thought about it and I don’t think I love you anymore,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever did.”

  He looked at her, knowing he should feel some bit of heart-wrenching pain, but the whole situation just left him dumbfounded.

  “This is…this is absurd,” he finally said.

  “So you say, but there it is.”

  He tried to reason with her and say she couldn’t leave until she slept on it, but she wouldn’t sleep on anything.

  “I’ve slept enough,” she said. “And this is my decision.”

  “You know I can fight you,” he said. “I don’t have to let you go.”

  “I know you can fight the divorce, but you can’t make me stay,” she said. “Is that what you want? To be married to somebody who doesn’t want you?”

  It was not what he wanted and so she left, packing a suitcase for herself and another for the children and saying she’d be at her mother’s, if he needed anything.

  “But you don’t need anything,” she said. “So don’t call.”

  And just like that she was gone. Once gone, she never came back. Not for clothes, not for things, not for anything. She was just gone.