The Weight of a Piano Read online

  “What are you doing? Why are you doing this? This isn’t just a one-night stand, Clara. I want to be with you.” He threw the jeans she’d handed him back onto the floor.

  “This was a mistake, Peter. Okay? A mistake.”

  He flung off the covers and nearly leapt out of bed to stand in front of her. “What the hell are you saying? We made love all night! Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do that with you? How the hell can that be a mistake?”

  She turned away from his naked body. “Because you’re my best friend, and if I lose that I won’t have anything.” The sadness in her voice stunned him into silence. She turned around and handed him his shirt. The soft flannel slipping from her hand felt like a good-bye, but she refused to take it back. “If we stay friends—just friends—then we won’t ruin it.”

  After a long pause, he said, his voice cracking, “This is the mistake, Clara. Not last night.” He put on only his jeans, grabbed the rest of his clothes, and stormed out into the dark, cold morning, slamming the door behind himself.

  He didn’t speak to her for more than a week. While she refused to give in, neither would she give up. She invited him to dinner, bought him tickets to a Lakers game and a monster-truck jam, borrowed a customer’s Harley-Davidson for them to take on a joyride. Gradually, over the next few months, they tentatively resumed their friendship, until it almost seemed like things had returned to normal between them. Then, toward the end of summer, she met Ryan.

  * * *

  —

  “So I decided something yesterday,” Clara said, and Peter glanced at her over his shoulder. She caught his eye, then looked down at her cast. “I put up an ad for my piano.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To sell it.”

  Peter stopped working on the TV and turned around. “You’re kidding. Why?”

  “It’s time,” she said. “Plus, I need the cash.”

  He sat down next to her on the unmade futon and ran his hand over his face. It wasn’t even noon and already he had a five o’clock shadow. She could hear the whiskers rasp against the calluses on his hand. “If you need money, I can help.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll be okay, but thanks. I’m tired of that damn piano anyway. Dragging it everywhere I go. Up and down stairs. Every time I move, it costs a fortune to get it tuned. And I can’t even fucking play it.” She lifted a shoulder. “So.”

  “But we just moved it up here.”

  “Don’t worry—if someone buys it, I won’t ask you to move it again. If somebody actually pays the three grand I listed it for, I’ll be able to afford professionals this time.”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  “What, you don’t think I should sell it?” Clara leaned forward and put the bowl down on the floor, then gathered her hair into a ponytail and struggled to twist the band around it. Until yesterday, she hadn’t considered the movements that went into such simple efforts as holding a spoon or tying her hair. With a deep sigh, she shot the elastic band across the room with her good hand.

  He walked over, picked it up, dropped it in her lap, and went back to connecting the cable. “Actually, I think it’s probably a good idea.”

  She tossed the rubber band on the futon and pushed her hair off her face. “You do?”

  He swiveled the television around to face the futon and turned it to ESPN, where the camera panned the crowd and the commentator said, “Today’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway will be one of Danica Patrick’s ten NASCAR Sprint Cup races this year…”

  “Yeah. I mean, we’ve moved it”—he closed his eyes, counted—“three times now. I don’t know how many times you moved it before you broke up with Frank, but I for sure know it’s been a pain in your ass.”

  “It hasn’t been quite that bad.”

  He wiggled the fingers of his left hand. “Okay, maybe not for your ass, exactly.” Then he looked down at her unmade futon with an unreadable expression—though Clara could guess what had crossed his mind. He dragged the twisted covers up before sitting down next to her and settling chastely against the wall. Directly across from him, the Blüthner matched his shiny black hair, his bulk, his untroubled nature. They were like a pair of sentries, each of them looking after her.

  Her father had given her the Blüthner the week before he died. She hadn’t asked for a piano, never once had thought of playing one. But she remembered how excited he seemed when he brought it home. He pulled out the bench seat so they could sit side by side. “This is for you,” he told her, beaming, resting a hand on the keys, his other arm around her. “Something very special, so you know how much I love you.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d been too hasty. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Peter, standing up.

  “The race is gonna start.”

  “I know. I just need to take the ad down.”

  He put his hand out to stop her. “Clara, leave it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. I know why you’re hanging on to it, but you don’t need it.”

  “No, it was a stupid impulse. I can’t imagine not having it after all this time, you know? I’d miss it.”

  He made a huffing sound through his nose and shook his head.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He stabbed the remote, turning up the volume. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  She took the remote from him and switched it off. “What?”

  “You’re focused on the wrong stuff is what. You just got dumped and your hand’s broken. But look. You’re in a new place, new part of town, new paint on the walls. It’s time to shake the dust off and start over. Think about the future for a change.” When she didn’t reply, he let his hands drop into his lap. “Hey, it’s your piano, do what you want with it.”

  Clara tossed the remote onto the futon. “I will.” Then she got her laptop and sat back down next to him. She opened her e-mail to find the link to delete her listing, and near the top of her in-box was a new message whose subject line read:

  CONGRATULATIONS! Your item sold! Send an invoice now.

  “What the hell…” she muttered, then looked at Peter. “Somebody bought it.”

  “For three thousand dollars?”

  “Apparently. Wait, maybe it’s a joke. Or one of those phishing scams. But why would anybody pretend to buy a piano?”

  “Can you e-mail them back to see if it’s legit?”

  “Yeah.” She clicked on the link to see the buyer’s contact information. “Greg Zeldin, New York, New York. Does that name even sound real to you? It’s probably fake.”

  “So Google him.”

  “No, I’ll send him the invoice. If it’s a scam or something, he won’t pay it. Anyway, now I don’t have to take the ad down, because it says ‘Sold.’ ”

  “I know how much you like signs. You should take that as one.”

  She shot him a look. He winked at her.

  With Peter leaning in to watch, Clara went through the few steps to complete and send the invoice. In the field for special instructions, she typed: I forgot to put that the cost of shipping from Bakersfield is the buyer’s responsibility. “I don’t know how much it would cost to pack and ship it to New York, but I’m sure it’s a lot. No way he’d pay that much plus shipping on top of it. It can’t be worth that much to anybody except me.”

  Peter glanced at her briefly and sighed, turned the television back on. “Let’s watch the race,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  After the NASCAR wreckfest ended, with Matt Kenseth in first place and Danica Patrick a disappointing thirty-second, Peter went home and Clara opened a beer, put on a CD of Chopin’s nocturnes by Arthur Rubinstein, and opened her laptop to check her e-mail.

  From: Greg Zeldin y.com>

  Date: October 21, 2012 at 11:59 AM PDT

  To: “[email protected]”

  Subject: Re: CLARABELL has sent you an invoice

  Greetings:

  I have submitted payment in the amount of $3,000, and will make arrangements for the shipping. My assistants will be able to pick it up about a week from now. What upcoming day will work best for you?

  Regards,

  Greg Zeldin

  From: Clara Lundy

  Date: October 21, 2012 at 3:14 PM PDT

  To: Greg Zeldin

  Subject: Re: CLARABELL has sent you an invoice

  Hi Mr. Zeldin,

  I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but I can’t sell the piano. I’ll refund your money plus the amount for the payment service fee.

  I hope it’s not a problem.

  Clara Lundy

  From: Greg Zeldin

  Date: October 21, 2012 at 3:21 PM PDT

  To: Clara Lundy

  Subject: Re: CLARABELL has sent you an invoice

  Ms. Lundy,

  I’m afraid that is a problem. I’ve already remitted payment and, therefore, the piano is technically mine. If you’ll please let me know where my assistants can pick it up, they will be there on Saturday, October 27, between 1 and 4 pm. I hope that won’t be a problem.

  Greg

  From: Clara Lundy

  Date: October 21, 2012 at 3:23 PM PDT

  To: Greg Zeldin

  Subject: Re: CLARABELL has sent you an invoice

  Dear Greg,

  Like I said, the piano’s not for sale anymore. I’ll refund your payment. Sorry for the inconvenience.

  Clara logged into the payment account and saw that Greg had indeed sent her $3,000. More money than she’d ever had all at once. When her parents died, Clara inherited their savings and a small life-insurance distribution from the university, but her aunt and uncle used some of that to cover the funeral expenses and then, thinking of her future college expenses, invested the rest. Jack, acting on a stock tip from a longtime customer and fellow Texan, even added a large portion of his own savings to Clara’s inheritance and bought shares in a Houston-based company called Enron. They never recovered financially after it collapsed three years later, in 2001, and once Clara was on her own, she had never been diligent about saving the modest income she earned as a mechanic.

  Now, seeing that $3,000 figure gave her pause. Like the nocturne she was listening to, with its two melodic strands playing in counterpoint to each other, she felt equally pulled between the two voices in her head: keep the money, return the money, keep it, return it. Then the piece ended with a coda that sounded to Clara like longing, or perhaps homesickness, and she looked over at the Blüthner. Then moved her cursor to the Refund This Payment icon on the computer screen and clicked.

  KATYA TOOK THE KETTLE off the burner and poured boiling water over the coffee grounds. How much longer would they have electricity? It had already been eight months since Mikhail had filed their exit-visa application; she expected the power to be turned off any moment, and it was almost winter again. She was without help, too. With no money coming in to support all of them, her mother-in-law had returned home to Kolpino and her factory job at Izhorskiye Zavody. Mikhail offered no help with their son, even though he wasn’t working. He had applied for a job as an elevator operator in a hospital, but he was waiting to hear about that, as well. Such menial jobs were quickly filled by Jews living in refusal, all of them with specialist degrees. So he spent the daylight hours brooding, and the nighttime ones sitting in the restaurant at the Hotel Leningradskaya, where a Jewish bartender he’d befriended let him finish the drinks of paying customers after they’d left.

  He was there this afternoon, she assumed. Meanwhile, her old friend Boris Abramovich had surprised her with a visit, bringing a bottle of good Armenian brandy and a cache of needles, thread, and buttons, all of which were defitsitny in the local shops. Katya was so happy to see him, to finally have friendly company to talk to. Grisha was good-natured but still could only babble. She and Boris hadn’t seen much of each other since they’d graduated, almost three and a half years before, in 1977. He did send her letters, usually from cities abroad where his ballet company toured, but also from within the Union. The year before, he’d done the impossible: having a bouquet of hothouse flowers delivered to her after he received the People’s Artist of the USSR award.

  “You are beautiful as ever,” he said.

  She touched her hair, smoothed her sweater, hid a smile. “I was very happy for your award,” she said. “Tell me, what will you do now? How has the world changed for this great choreographer?”

  When he leaned back in the kitchen chair and clasped his hands behind his head, she worried that the cheap metal legs would collapse but said nothing. “This is my wish, Katya. I want to build a repertoire that shows the disorientation created by Communist thinking. A movement metaphor for the oppression of the human spirit,” he said. “It’s good, yes? A perfect cover for a social revolution. What will they think of that, eh?” He laughed in a high voice, almost a giggle.

  Katya put the coffee and brandy and teacakes on a tray and set it on the table. “They will think you are anti-government. A social revolution? It would be very dangerous for you.”

  “For us.”

  “Who is us?”

  Boris shrugged. “A group of us, thinking the same way. We certainly appear innocent, yes? Nobody suspects a traveling ballet company.” He let his chair fall forward again with a thud. “Maybe I’ll produce a Tchaikovsky ballet, but not one of those silly dramas with fluffy swans and sleeping beauties. I mean one about the life of the revolutionary Nikolai Tchaikovsky. Or perhaps a psychological ballet based on Doctor Zhivago. Or The Gulag Archipelago. Something important.” He reached out and grabbed her forearm as she poured his coffee, looking at her with fanaticism in his eyes. “You can help me, Katya.”

  “How?”

  “Like we sometimes did at the conservatory. I create the choreography. You can compose the score.”

  “And then what? Let the KGB drag us to Siberia?”

  “Have you forgotten your ideals, Katya? It wasn’t so long ago we used to talk together about making a better life in Russia. Remember the night we stayed up reading Nekrasov’s poem Who Is Happy in Russia? Our duty is to remind one another of our human dignity. We must do something to defend the future of our children, because the present time is no good. Think of your son, eh? Don’t you want him to have the right to read and think what he wants? To stand up for his own convictions? Not to be an obedient tool of the government?”

  Though she admired his passion, she was no activist. “You don’t have children, Borya. You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s different when you have someone to protect.”

  “I’m talking about protecting all of us, Katya. I’m talking about changing the world.”

  “Through ballet?”

  Boris again leaned back in his chair. The slippers she had given him at the door were too small for him and one dangled off his toes when he crossed his lean legs. “Yes, ballet. You think that can’t change the world? You think it all has to be violent revolution?”

  “So you want to fight Brezhnev with music and dance? Sneak samizdat texts inside the programs at the theater?” She shook her head. “There’s no point. You can’t win—you’ll only get punished. Remember what happened to Rostropovich for denying official musical policies? Or Shostakovich? The wise thing is to keep your head down, I think.”

  “Or leave, yes?” His eyes were mean all of a sudden, and she went cold under his glare.

  As students, they had been very close friends, performing together, sharing meals, a
nd occasionally attending parties, when he could convince her to come along. They took long walks and often ended up at the Tikhvin Cemetery, wandering beneath the trees among the graves of famous ballet masters and composers: Balakirev, Petipa, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky. Things changed between them the night after one of her final performances, when Boris threaded his fingers into hers—hers tired from playing, his chapped from clapping—and declared his love. He had been foolish before, he told her. How had he failed to recognize his true feelings for her? He wanted them to marry, to conjoin their passions, to form their own ballet company, to travel and discover the pleasures and excesses of the world, to have children if she desired. They would have her dark hair and his gray eyes and they would be able to create music as well as dance. Even as he begged her, she was forced to tell him: she was already devoted to Mikhail by then, though she loved Boris still and wanted them always to be friends. Of course he couldn’t take back the passionate plea, which ultimately embarrassed both of them, and ever since she had been careful to keep him at an appropriate distance.

  It occurred to her then that this surprise visit might be a test. Anyone could be an informant. A stukach. It was one of the few means to get ahead—by helping the KGB with the day-to-day work of keeping watch over the Soviet people, reporting on dissidents, rounding up so-called prisoners of conscience. Just the year before, witnesses had seen two agents force a popular Ukrainian nationalist composer, Volodymyr Ivasyuk, into a KGB car. Three weeks later, his body was found hanging from a tree. His eyes had been gouged out.

  “I don’t want to leave, Borya,” she said carefully. “I never wanted to leave.”

  “But your husband does. He has been petitioning. And you will go with him, yes?” It was posed as a question, but it sounded to Katya like a threat, like a dare. She had no idea where Boris’s loyalties lay: for or against the Kremlin? For or against her?

  Then, after a bit of silence, the clock ticking softly on the wall above them, the coffee gone cool, he said, in a soft and pleading voice, “Play me something, Katya. Please? It has been such a very long time.”