Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  Carlos watched the circles of ripples that appeared on the water’s surface, invisible fish looking for food. The life beneath the water was like the unseen world in Phoenix’s room.

  “You saw the piano move?” Carlos said. His tongue felt sticky.

  “Didn’t need to,” Burnside said, leading Carlos on a gravel path toward a large storage room. “When I bought her, I carted her straight to my garage, figuring I’d look her over closely the next day. I wanted this one on sight, for some reason, but I had a feeling the soundboard was shot to hell, and if that was gone, I’d wasted my money. I wanted to put off the bad news. But the next morning, when I went out to the garage, she was gone.”

  Burnside mashed out his cigarette on the path before jangling through his keys to find the one for the lock on the storage door at 8A. “I called the police, filed a report. That same day, my son Danny goes into the workshop behind our store on South Dixie, and the missing piano’s sitting against the wall like it’s always been there. But I didn’t move it there, and neither did Danny. I’m saying it moved itself. And that wasn’t the only time. It showed up here on its own, too. If you don’t believe me, Danny and Susie will tell you.”

  Burnside hesitated, his key poised beside the lock. He overcame his sheepishness and stared Carlos in the eye. “You get me?” he said again, his head tipping forward. Burnside’s eyes were a friend’s, not a businessman’s.

  Carlos nodded, his palms wet. “Yes,” Carlos said, trying to sound sure of himself. He nodded to Burnside. Go on. Let’s go in.

  The storage bin’s aluminum door rolled up with a rusty tick-tick-tick while Burnside grunted, pushing with one arm. The cool, dank space huffed out the smell of old wood, mildew and a strong cleanser, maybe turpentine. Carlos couldn’t see anything except the shadows of what might be a dozen pianos. They stood in a dark collection of silence.

  “I call this my Graveyard,” Burnside said. “Special projects I don’t have time for. About the time I bought this one, I had a bad piano habit. Susie made me stop going to estate sales, so now I only refurbish to customer request. I should get rid of most of these, I guess, but I keep thinking I’ll get to them one day.” He surveyed the dark room, which apparently didn’t have any lighting beyond the open door panel. “Shit. She’s done it again.”

  Carlos knew, then: The piano was not there. The piano was not anywhere. He had flown to Miami for nothing, and something awful had happened to Phoenix while he was gone.

  Burnside pointed. “This morning she was in back, but there she is, misbehaving as usual.”

  As light poured into the room from the open door, Carlos’s vision improved. Most of the pianos were lined up neatly along the sides of the storage bin, but one shadow stood in the path of the doorway, ten yards back. When Carlos stepped forward, the shadow became a dark, aged piano with two adorning candelabra, room for two candles on each end. Clear as day. He hadn’t seen the piano when the door first opened. How had he missed it?

  Carlos opened his wallet and felt for his cross. This time, he kept it in his balled hand.

  “Not exactly what you’d call ideal storage conditions,” Burnside said. “Even with A.C., this room’s too humid. I’d never bring a client’s piano here. I keep promising I’ll clear the place and save the money on storage. That and a decent round of golf, and I could die a happy man.”

  When Carlos took three strides toward the piano, his feet burned as if he’d stepped into an anthill. Carlos stopped walking, stamping his feet on the bare concrete floor. Phoenix’s mother had told him something about itching feet.

  “That goes away,” Burnside said matter-of-factly, but Carlos noticed that Burnside walked no closer to the piano himself. Instead, he stood in the light, keys still jingling. “Go on, take a closer look if you want. I’ve got a flashlight in the van, if you need it.”

  Carlos didn’t want to examine this piano any more than he would want to lean over a table at a morgue and study a fresh corpse. The discarded instrument glowered, and the thought of bringing this piano to Phoenix’s room felt worse than foolish. It felt spiteful. The piano’s presence was larger than the space it occupied; it filled the room, an unsettled energy that reminded Carlos of what it would feel like if three or four people were hiding inside here, lying in wait. How could this piano do Phoenix any good?

  The Queen Psychic’s intuition felt more fragile in the piano’s presence. This piano was more powerful than Johnita Poston, and he was sure the Queen Psychic had never encountered anything like it. He should have sent her here instead, a translator for whatever the piano was whispering beyond his hearing. He should have stayed with Phoenix.

  Carlos steeled himself and took two more steps toward it. The piano shuddered as some kind of shadow passed behind him, maybe a bird, making the light into the storage space blink. Carlos raised his arm, unconsciously tilting his body sideways as he drew closer to it. The piano felt like an animal, as if it might spring. And it had sprung at Phoenix, he reminded himself.

  Holding his breath, Carlos took in the piano’s details: Dingy, piss-colored keys, a cabinet so weatherworn it was like a skeleton, and two candelabra that looked mocking instead of stately. The piano’s ugliness offended him more because of how majestic it once must have been. It put a bad taste in his mouth. Finally, Carlos looked away. He didn’t intend to look at it again, not soon. He wished he never had to see it again.

  Carlos craved evidence that the piano was the answer, the same standoff he had reached with God when he was thirteen and decided he was agnostic. Did he truly believe he needed the piano, or did he only want to believe because there was nothing left?

  “Can the movers pick it up in the morning?” Carlos said after a deep breath.

  “Danny can wait here awhile, but not all day. Pin them down on a time.”

  “How much do you want for it?” Carlos said. He and Leah had decided to get the piano at any cost. Neither of them wanted to, but they would ask Ronn to help, if it came to that.

  “Well, she’s worse off now than when I bought her, and whatever I paid was too much,” Burnside said. “You’ll be paying more than she’s worth to haul her to New York, so I don’t have the heart to charge you. She never belonged to me, anyway. I’m just a caretaker.”

  The gesture was so appropriate, Carlos forgot to thank Burnside for his generosity. Burnside should be paying him to take this piano away.

  “Why do you want it?” Burnside said. “If it’s not too bold to poke my nose in.”

  “This piano once belonged to Scott Joplin,” Carlos said. It was a silly thing to say before the piano changed hands, but it popped out before he could think. He had to tell someone.

  “No shit? Who says? I read Joplin had a Steinway.” Carlos knew he shouldn’t be surprised Burnside knew that, given his job, but he was. True music lovers were sages.

  “It’s just a theory. A hunch,” Carlos said, and left it at that. “How would I know if this one’s a Steinway? I didn’t see a label.”

  “The label’s faded with the wood finish, but you’ll see all the manufacturing details if you open the cabinet up top,” Burnside said, although he made no move to do so, and the idea of touching it made Carlos feel sick. “It’s a German company. She’s a Rosenkranz.”

  Rosenkranz.

  The torrent of relief that broke loose in Carlos’s chest killed his fear cold.

  Most often, she traveled as light. A speck was all she needed.

  She had learned that it took time and energy to appear as a person, to claim so much space; and every time she did, Scott said he did not see her for several days afterward. Skin and hair had its advantages, because nothing seemed to make Scott happier than to lie beside her in his bed, to embrace the substance of her, to explore her with his hands. The touching was nice, if only because it awakened memories, but the skin she wore here was only a covering. Skin didn’t feel the way she remembered; sometimes when he touched her, she felt nothing at all.

  Mostly, she
was happy just to be in the room with him, flitting from place to place without thought or effort. In one instant, she was in his lamp; in another, she was floating across his ceiling, or gliding up and down his walls. In the process, sometimes she knocked his lampshade askew, or bumped the wardrobe so hard that the door fell open. The piano was easiest to visit, a lure, so often she appeared inside the gleam of its rosewood case, even when it made her feel trapped. Sometimes, she bounced on the high-G key while everyone in the boardinghouse was sleeping, laughing herself silly.

  Scott’s room was her favorite place—probably because the piano was there—but she ventured to the hall, parlor and kitchen to prove her independence. She got in trouble this way. Once, she was amusing herself with the current of water from the kitchen faucet when Lottie walked in, and it was too late by the time she shut the water off. Secretiveness was instinct to her—she was only a guest, after all—but if Lottie Joplin hadn’t seen her that day, it was only because she refused to.

  Lottie knew someone else was in her house.

  For one thing, Lottie heard Scott talking to her. Scott didn’t try to hide her from Lottie, no matter how sick Lottie looked when Scott got to talking with his ghost and stubbornly refused to glance Lottie’s way. He didn’t talk to Lottie nearly as much as he talked to her, or with the same tenderness. She was mostly a memory, after all; Lottie wasn’t at the same safe distance.

  But she understood Lottie, even if Scott didn’t. She didn’t blame Lottie for being in Scott’s room today, slowly packing his clothes into an old brown suitcase that seemed too small to hold the remnants of a man’s life.

  “I knew you’d never come to nothin’, Lottie Stokes. That’s your name, you know. Stokes, not Joplin,” Scott said, slumped on his bed as she packed his things. Scott chose cruel things to say at random, trying to escape his fear. He was afraid all the time.

  Lottie didn’t glance at him, intent on her task. Lottie pulled out the spotless white suit hanging in the wardrobe, but she didn’t fold that one to pack. Lottie ran her fingers across the shiny fabric, a small smile surfacing on her lips as she remembered how dandy and successful he’d looked when he wore it. In Lottie’s mind, this was the one suit proclaiming that this man was Scott Joplin, the Ragtime King. When Lottie replaced the suit and closed the wardrobe door, her smile had become a tear in her eye.

  “Yessir, you’ve always been Lottie Stokes,” Scott said again, one last attempt to hurt her.

  “I know my name,” Lottie said, giving him a wan smile. Most people had trouble understanding Scott’s slur, but Lottie understood better than she wanted to. “I know who I am. So do you.” Lottie’s smile was so brave it was heartbreaking.

  You stop that, Scott, she whispered. Try to see past your own pain. Lottie’s hurting nearly as much as you, as much as anybody outside your skin. She’s been wanting to come in here and pack your things for two weeks, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She lets the music play late in the parlor, but she cries herself to sleep. You call her by her true name.

  “I won’t,” Scott said, a stubborn child. “She’s casting me out.”

  She can’t keep you by herself.

  “Well, she ought to try. This is my room. My house. This is my piano.”

  “Bellevue has a piano, Scotty,” Lottie said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Nobody’s talking to you,” Scott said. “This piano’s mine, you hear? Nobody better touch it. Not Sadie, not Sam, not none of them. It better be right here when I come back.”

  “It’ll be here,” Lottie said. She chuckled. “Thought you weren’t talking to me, Scotty.”

  Music came through the wall from a neighbor’s flat, a thumping piano bass line that sounded like a boogie-woogie, even though nobody called it by that name yet. The piano was probably old, because it was badly out of tune, but the player had found a few good notes to bring joy to it. People always made music with whatever they had. The happy, rousing sound erased the cruel lines from Scott’s forehead, but fear shrouded him again. When Lottie stood closer to his bed, Scott reached for her hand.

  But Lottie didn’t offer her hand right away, withholding. “Say my name,” Lottie said.

  “Lottie Joplin,” Scott said. He’d even made the effort to speak slowly and say it clear.

  “I sure as hell won’t never forget that, and I’ll make sure nobody else does neither,” Lottie said, clasping his trembling hand between both of hers. “It’s all right, Scotty. Now tell me where you went and hid that symphony. I won’t get mad.”

  Instead of answering her, Scott began to sing through an exaggerated grimace. “Oh, I wish I was in the land of cot-ton…” His voice was ruined, bitter, as he sang “Dixie.”

  Lottie ignored his singing, speaking over it. “That symphony could make you a great man, Scotty. And that ‘Lenox Avenue Rag,’ I bet that’s good, too. Tell me where they’re at.”

  She decided to try to help Lottie, to enlist Lottie as a partner. Weren’t they both wedded to Scott? It was hard to make yourself known to people who didn’t want to see you, but she tried. Riding the wings of a horsefly, she threw herself against the bedroom’s windowpane, tapping hard. If Lottie went to the window and stared straight down, she might see a page or two of music in the alley below. As soon as the snow started yesterday, Scott had taken an hour to pull himself out of bed, open the window, and toss out the pages of Symphony No. 1, hoping to bury it in ice, not ashes.

  But Lottie wouldn’t look at her even when a corner of the window flared. Lottie must have thought the light was from a streetlamp; either that, or Lottie was determined to pay her no mind. Some women couldn’t stand knowing that their man had loved before.

  Sam Patterson came to the doorway. Louis’s spirit stood behind Sam, except more quiet, at a distance. Louis preferred to visit Scott in dreams, although he rarely made time for visits. Not everyone liked to visit. Sometimes they waited. The wait was never long.

  “We got a car downstairs, Lottie,” Sam said. “When you’re ready.”

  Lottie did the things for Scott a spirit couldn’t: She found a pair of socks and slipped them over Scott’s cracked, dry feet. Next, she fit his feet into his shiny black shoes and tied the laces, making sure they were even at the ends. Lottie brought in a spiffy overcoat, and while Sam held Scott up, she put the coat on over Scott’s sleeping clothes, buttoning it to the top. Last, she combed through his hair, patting it until he was neat. The sight of Scott looking so good nearly made Lottie change her mind. She had turned him into Scott Joplin again.

  “Please come with me, Freddie,” Scott said. “Stay with me.”

  My name isn’t Freddie, she thought. When she was here with Scott, she had no name.

  “You know that ain’t my name,” Lottie muttered, weary. “I’d rather be called Stokes.”

  “You don’t need the piano to follow me,” Scott said. “The piano brought you, but now that you’re here, you can stay with me forever. The Rosenkranz will keep us together.”

  Lottie lifted Scott under one arm, and Sam the other as they slowly made their way out of his room. They all knew it was the last time Scott would see the room, but they didn’t linger.

  “He talks on about that piano,” Lottie said, shaking her head. “Wish we could take it.”

  “He don’t even play it no more,” Sam said.

  “I think he does, late at night. I hear it sometimes.”

  Panic rose in Scott as they drew farther from his bedroom, closer to the door to the hall and the cold waiting outside. His legs scrabbled weakly against the floor as he turned around, looking for her. “Freddie? Are you coming?”

  She knew Scott wasn’t only inviting her with him to Bellevue, or to the one last place Lottie would send him after that. He wanted her to be with him when he made his Leap, because Leaping alone was terrifying. She had told him it only took an instant, and he would think his fear was silly as soon as his Leap was done. She had told him she couldn’t hold his hand at the end, because she d
idn’t belong with him yet. The part of her that wasn’t Freddie had a bit more to do somewhere else, and the longer she was gone, the harder it would be to find her way back.

  “Please, Freddie?” Scott called, his voice nearly shorn by a sob.

  She landed on his nose and made him itch, so he would know she was there. She couldn’t stand to see him so broken and afraid. I’m here, Scott, she said. I’ll go with you.

  Scott has a powerful but famished spirit, she thought. He was like the drowning swimmer who would pull his rescuer to her own death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Never thought I’d see this thing again.” Gloria stood over the newly arrived piano with her arms folded tight, bracing against a blast of cold. “This is an ugly effing piano. I got it right when I saw it the first time.”

  Es verdad, chica, Carlos thought. But it was worse than ugly. The hair on his arms stiffened as Carlos gazed at the Rosenkranz against the wall, replacing the psychics’ dining table.

  The piano looked worse in the gentle lamplight of the room, without shadows to hide it. The piano’s key cover was down, concealing the keys, so it was easy to forget that it was a piano instead of an oversized, misshapen piece of furniture with no natural use. The twin candelabra, which were probably brass, were black with age. The cracks in the cabinet’s finish were magnified in the light, making it look more like a reptile than an object made of wood.

  Carlos had almost given up on the Saturday delivery he’d been promised when the movers called at six, saying they were on the way. They complained incessantly while Carlos signed the paperwork: They’d gotten lost three times. The piano had slipped off the ramp and almost crushed their feet. Their elevator stalled while they were bringing it up. Ordinarily, it would have sounded like excuses or stumping for tips. Ordinarily.